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handing it over but the captain snatches it from his hand with the impatience of youth and flicks through the pages military fashion without even looking at them. “What do they call you?” he asks the shorter man. “Petrina, at your service.” “Is that your name?” Jug-ears nods in melancholy fashion. “I would like to have your full name,” says the officer leaning forward. “That’s it, sir, that’s all there is,” Petrina answers with wide-eyed innocence then turns to his companion and whispers, “What can I do about it?” “What are you, a gypsy?” the captain snaps at him. “What, me?” Petrina asks, perfectly shocked: “Me, a gypsy?” “Then stop fooling about! Give me your name!” Jug-ears glances helplessly at his friend, then shrugs, looking utterly confused, as if unwilling to take responsibility for what he is about to say. “Well, Sándor-Ferenc-István . . . er . . . András.” The officer leafs through the ID document and notes menacingly, “It says József here.” Petrina looks as though he has been pole-axed. “Surely not, chief, sir! Would you mind showing me . . .” “Stay right there!” the captain orders him, unwilling to put up with any more nonsense. The taller man’s face shows no sign of anxiety, not even interest, and when the officer asks him his name, he blinks a little as if he his mind had been elsewhere and courteously replies: “I beg you pardon, I didn’t get that.” “Your name!” “Irimiás!” His answer rings out, as if he were proud of it. The captain puts a cigarette in the side of his mouth, lights it with a clumsy movement, throws the burning match into the ashtray and puts it out with the matchbox. “I see. So you too have only one name.” Irimiás nods cheerfully: “Of course, sir. Doesn’t everyone?” The officer looks deep into his eyes, opens the door (“Is that all you have to say?”) and waves to them to follow him. They follow a couple steps behind him past the clerks with their sly looks, past the desks of the office outside, into the corridor and set off up the stairs. It is even darker here and they almost trip over the turns of the stairs. A crude iron balustrade runs alongside them, its polished and worn underside streaked with rust as they move from step to step. Everywhere there is the sense of everything having been thoroughly cleaned and not even the heavy fishlike smell that follows them everywhere can quite mask it.
    UPPER FLOOR
    FLOOR 1
    FLOOR 2
    The captain, slender as an officer of the hussars, proceeds before them with long ringing strides, his shining, half-length military boots almost musical as they strike against the polished ceramic tiles; he casts not a single look back at them but they are acutely aware he is considering everything about them, all the way from Petrina’s laborer’s boots to Irimiás’s dazzlingly loud red tie, having perhaps memorized such details, or maybe because the thin skin stretched over the back of his neck is capable of receiving deeper impressions than the naked eye can discover. “Identification!” he barks at a lushly mustached, swarthy, large lump of a sergeant as they step through another door marked 24, into a smoky, stuffy hall, not slowing for an instant, indicating with a wave of his fingers that those leaping to their feet at his entrance should sit down, while snapping out his orders: “Follow me! I want the files! I want the reports! Give me extension 109! Then a line to town!” before he disappears behind a glazed door on the left. The sergeant remains stiffly at attention then, as he hears the lock click, wipes his arm across his sweating brow, sits down at the desk opposite the entrance and pushes a printed form in front of them. “Fill it out,” he tells them, exhausted: “And sit down. But first read the instructions on the back of the page.” There is no movement of air in the hall. There are three rows of neon lights on the ceiling, the illumination is