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at the you with disapproving eyes, or on the contrary: with
smiling eyes. He understood what happened. There was also a
former prime minister, who it was immediately clear,
understood everything during the negotioation, but for protocol
reasons he did not speak, only in Hungarian. He was fast and
efficient. The only thing you were in trouble with was his name,
because you had to figure out how to pronounce his sexy-
sounding name in English. His name sounded bad in English,
especially when you said it with emphasis.
After the negotiations in Székesfehérvár and
the industrial site visit, we went to
Balatonfüred at Lake Balaton, because there
the high-ranking visitor from India always
visited the statue of the poet Rabindranáth
35
Tagore , the promenade, and planted a tree.
It was a nice tradition, but it was too much for
the old gentleman. He rested wherever he
could. When we arrived, a crowd was waiting
on the promenade, with cordons, a TV crew, a
welcome reception, a microphone stuck under
my nose - I was filled with terror. There was everything, feast in
his honour. They then waited for the great guest to address the
gathering. He routinely stood in front of the microphone and, in
accordance with the age and the country he was visiting, began
a long sentence about the goodness of people, world peace,
Rabindranáth Tagore, Füred's role, but the predicate of the
sentence did not come out so that the complicated sentence
should lead somewhere. He stopped suddenly and looked into
the air. Apparently, his mind was already elsewhere. He got
fatigued after the long day. The reporter asked in the terrified
silence, and I decided to tell in Hungarian what he said and
what I thought he would have liked to say: I also talked about

35 In November 1926, the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore spent ten days in Füred,
more precisely in the famous Heart Hospital, where, according to some records, his
complaints disappeared after three days.

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