“In my opinion, one cannot change one’s nationality at all. All that can be changed are one’s documents, don’t you think?”
“My homeland,” says the guest, “no longer exists. My homeland was Poland, Vienna, this house, the barracks in the city, Galicia, and Chopin. What’s left? Whatever mysterious substance held it all together no longer works. Everything’s come apart. My homeland was a feeling, and that feeling was mortally wounded. When that happens, the only thing to do is go away. Into the tropics or even further.”
“Even further? Where?” asks the General coldly.
“Into time.”
Sándor Márai, 1942, translated (not from the original Hungarian, but from a previous German translation) by Carol Brown Janeway.
