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Chapter I
TWO STUDENTS ARRIVE AT OLASZRÖSZKE
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Th story I am about to tell has been taken from a diary the I
pages of which have as yet scarcely begun to fade. It is an authentic record of true events and I see no need to alter so much as a single name; nor will I attempt to embellish the story with literary flourishes of my own. The man who recorded these events would not have told a lie to anyone and it is equally improbable that he should have tried to deceive himself. My story is therefore true in every detail; any fictitious version would be a poor substitute for the record of what really happened.
The journal tells us how on a Maundy Thursday, some eighty-five years ago, two students from Sárospatak arrived at the inn in Olaszröszke. They were on their way to Bornóc, a village in the neighbouring county, where they were to spend their Easter vacation, and it was shortly after the hour of the midday meal when they reached the inn—per pedes apostolorum. Students were not then pampered as they are today. At that time, the educational value of the cane still ranked high in scholastic circles, and Shanks's mare was the principal means of conveyance for young people. Nevertheless, students then, as now, were blessed with voracious appetites; perhaps even more so, for the méta, the game of rounders, was a mighty whetter of scholarly appetites. It was therefore with faces as long as a fiddle that our two students—each sporting a moustache and