They congregated around the gossips’ bench on Széchenyi Square and, with squat clay pipes jutting from their fanglike teeth, they rambled on about rinderpest and rising taxes. Beside them, in a separate group, stood the local artisans and tradesmen, complaining about the shortage of cash, which couldn't be raised anywhere these days, because their lordships were playing it safe and kept their money in the Agricultural Bank at 5 per cent interest.

The market seethed in the sweltering heat, humming with noise and ablaze with every imaginable colour. Red peppers shone as brightly as the florid scarlet paint in the paint-shop window across the square. Cabbages displayed their pale-green, silken frills, violet grapes glistened, marrows whitened in the sun, and yellowing melons, already past their best, gave off a sickly choleroid stench. Farther off, towards Petőfi Street, stood the butchers’ stalls where truncated carcasses swung with raw, barbaric pomp from iron hooks, and barrel-chested butchers’ boys in skimpy vests shattered bones with heavy mallets. From Bólyai Street, where the potters gathered, came the clatter of the crockery stalls. Everywhere poultry pecked, maids gossiped and gentlewomen moaned about impossible prices. Above them all stretched a veil of silvery grey dust, Sárszeg's murderous dust which robbed so many local children of their lives and brought the adults to an early death.

Miklós Ijas, assistant editor of the Sárszeg Gazette at barely twenty-four, viewed this scene through the plate-glass windows of the Széchenyi Café. He wore a modish English suit, a turned-down collar and a slender lilac necktie.

He had woken at half past nine and immediately hurried to the Café to read the Budapest papers. Although he'd had no breakfast, he ordered rum with his black coffee and lit one cigarette after another. His lip curled with disgust.

He saw this same scene every day. The celebrities of Sárszeg swam past his plate-glass window as if in an aquarium.

First came Galló, the prosecutor, on his way to court, bareheaded, with a flat brown briefcase in his hand. With a furrowed brow and an affable smile he was rehearsing a stern indictment speech against some heinous Swabian highwayman. Fashionable townsfolk passed slowly by with ivory-knobbed canes. Priboczay was already standing in the doorway of the St Mary Pharmacy, performing his daily manicure with a penknife. Feri Füzes was hurrying towards the Gentlemen's Club.

Feri Füzes was to meet the opponent's seconds in the club dining room so that statements could be drawn up and the thorny affair, which had been dragging on for weeks, could finally be settled, for better or worse, according to the proper protocol. Provocation, duel, court of honour, sabres, plastrons, five paces forward, to the finish–these were the words that buzzed through Feri Füzes's head as his pointed patent-leather shoes creaked their way across the asphalt.

It was he who patched up Sárszeg's wounded prides and damaged honours; the perfect gentleman, a regular cavalier. He exuded eau de cologne and cavorted about with a foolish, sickly grin that never left his lips. He wore his smile just as he wore his chic boater in summer or his fancy spats in winter.

County carriages flew by. Liverymen sat up on the boxes in dapper blue and white-piped uniforms, their hat ribbons fluttering in the wind. Then the burly figure of a gentleman with a bushy, yellow moustache appeared on the pavement of Széchenyi Street. Bálint Környey.

By profession, Bálint Környey was commander in chief of the local fire brigade. But in reality he occupied a far more elevated position in Sárszeg society. He was everybody's friend or acquaintance and turned up absolutely everywhere. President of the Panthers’ Table, fabled drinker, fêted sportsman, he could break a silver forint coin in two with his bare hands. It was he who set the prizes for the Sárszeg Student Games, and he who organised the Grand Venetian Night with floodlights and fireworks on Tarliget Lake each summer. Even now the billboards were still plastered with tattered flyers announcing this splendid July event to the citizens of Sárszeg.

He greeted the young editor with a wave of his stick. Ijas returned the greeting coolly. To local people he was just an editor; they had no idea what a poet he was.

The clocks had struck eleven in Petőfi Street and still all was silent. Even Mr Veres sensed this silence from the depths of his dark, insalubrious workshop.