Rakolnoki embarrassedly. I don’t understand, if you please. After all you have not yet tested my …

Director. I have already put you to the test. He goes to the right door. It was a pleasure to meet you, my regards.

Rakolnoki. In a word … I should slip away somewhere.

Director. Or depart.

Rakolnoki. Oh … Oh … She hurries off in horror.

Director slamming the door behind her, very angrily. I never, if you please. You heard that? She is grateful and I have suggestive eyes. Shouldn’t a person like that make my bile flow?

Composer. You were a little rough with her.

Director. You saw how flirtatiously she looked at me? They’re running mad this year.

Composer. But you were rough with her.

Director. If I am not rough, then they perch on my shoulder.

Composer. But when they do, that’s not such a big problem.

Director angrily. No, not at all. If I accept their embraces, then I must stand for it. They remain on my shoulder. That’s why I said to you, I am not a moralist, but merely …

The servant enters.

Servant calmly announcing. Madame Szeniczey swallowed something, poisoned herself, collapsed, and blacked out.

Director calmly flowing on. … I am not a moralist, merely a man with a sense of taste and the desire to live virtuously in my profession. This is just as serious and dry a profession as any other, if a person takes it as seriously as I do.

Six pages today! Three in the afternoon, and three in the evening, after attending a reading of Anna Christie at Arena Stage. That brings the total to twenty-five pages out of seventy-five, exactly a third of the way through. A good day.

The trickiest word today was “összesett”, which doesn’t even look like a proper Hungarian word; “össze” is a perfectly ordinary prefix, but “sett” lacks plausibility. I eventually worked out that it was a typo for “összeesett”, which makes perfect sense in context.