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One hot summer evening unknown perpetrators in unknown circumstances and with unknown intentions set fire to the four corners of Hungary. What we know is that the fire broke out at Agfalva in the west, at Tiszabecs in the east, at Nogradszakall in the north, and at Kuebekhaz in the south. Aflame were harvested fields, ablaze arid meadows, and sometime after midnight the fire reached the first village houses. A most gentle and innocent breeze, blowing from the west at Agfalva, from the east at Tiszabecs, from the north at Nogradszakall, and from the south at Kuebekhaz, was bending and swaying the flames toward the interior of the country. Budapest, unaware, was sound asleep.
It was reported, as the seventh item in the morning news, that in the eastern, western, northern, and southern counties, large-scale fire drills were being conducted since early dawn; this insignificant little piece of alarming news let every Hungarian know that the occurrence was indeed significant.
Although everyone knew the news did not mean what it said it meant, as a public they all pretended not to know what it really meant. In the Hungarian vernacular of the time, significant meant insignificant, for example, and insignificant stood for significant, but since words had not completely lost their original meanings, there could be no consensus, either, on just what they really did mean. Silent agreement, therefore, could extend only to what a nonexistent general agreement could not mean.
