I never actually saw it; it wasn’t a vision. I just knew there was a whirlpool there. At the same time I was aware that there wasn’t anything there, that I was just imagining it—you know how convoluted these things are. But the fact is, when this whirlpool sensation got hold of me I didn’t dare move, I couldn’t speak a word, and I really believed it was the end of everything.

“All the same, the feeling didn’t last very long, and the attacks weren’t frequent. There was a really bad one once, during a natural history lesson. Just as I was called on to answer a question, the ground opened beside me. I couldn’t move, I just stayed sitting in my place. The teacher kept on at me for a while, then when he saw that I wasn’t going to move, got up and came over to me. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. Of course I didn’t reply. So he just looked at me for a while, then went back to his chair and asked someone else to answer. He was such a fine, priestly soul: he never said a word about the incident. But my classmates talked about it all the more. They thought I had refused to reply out of cheek, or stubbornness, and that the teacher was afraid of me. At a stroke, I had become a public character and enjoyed unprecedented popularity throughout the school. A week later, the same teacher called out János Szepetneki—the one you met today. Szepetneki put on his tough-guy face and stayed in his seat. The teacher got up, went over to him, and soundly boxed his ears. From that time on Szepetneki was convinced I had some special status.

“But to get onto Tamás Ulpius. One day the first snow fell. I could barely wait for school to finish. I gulped down my solitary lunch and ran straight to Castle Hill. Snow was a particular passion of mine. I loved the way it transformed the city, so that you could get lost even among streets you knew. I wandered for ages, then came to the battlements on the western side, and stood gazing out at the Buda hills. Suddenly the ground beside me opened again. The whirlpool was all the more believable because of the height. As so often before, I found myself not so much terrified by it as waiting with calm certainty for the ground to close again, and the effect vanish. So I waited there for a while, I couldn’t say how long, because in that state you lose your sense of time, as you do in a dream or in love-making. But of this I am sure: that whirlpool lasted much longer than the previous ones.