I am hoe­ing away in the farm­stead garden, splen­did work. The farm­stead coun­try is end­less, the puszta stretch­ing all the way to the hori­zon, and bey­ond it still. Here and there clumps of trees, in the dis­tance a belt of wood­land, and far off the rib­bon of the road winds its way. I and nature…

Fine weath­er, bril­liant sun­shine, time use­fully spent, and one can even think while at it. As I look up from my hoe­ing, some­thing is gath­er­ing in the sky on the south­ern hori­zon. The heat is swel­ter­ing, and I carry on with my manu­al and men­tal labours. All at once I sense an almost imper­cept­ible change. Nature falls silent, no hum­ming, no breath of wind, even the birds have settled. As I look up, whatever is gath­er­ing in the sky is no longer far off, low on the hori­zon, but draw­ing near. A storm on the plain? As far as the eye can see, flat coun­try, the neigh­bour­ing farm­houses nestle in little aca­cia groves, and only the ini­ti­ated know that a house lies hid­den beneath them. The earth is grate­ful for a rain so needed, come so early; it is thirst­ing for mois­ture, and the rain is a bless­ing.

I watch the hori­zon, and curi­os­ity takes hold of me. It is not clouds gath­er­ing, but one single enorm­ous cloud. The sky lit­er­ally darkens as the deep-blue cloud crumples beneath it the yel­low and the green and every other col­our of the puszta. Nature waits, trans­fixed, for some­thing. I lean on the handle of my hoe and simply stare at the sight. Round here the wind and the rain come from the north-west, but this cloud is rising from the south-east, from exactly the oppos­ite of the usual dir­ec­tion. The wind springs up, at first only the odd breath, then stronger gusts. The cloud bites an ever lar­ger piece out of the bright sum­mer sky and stuffs it into its dark belly. On the hori­zon a cloud of dust rises, for out there the wind is already strong.

The spec­tacle car­ries me away, and I leave off hoe­ing. That will wait for me, but this cloud, this storm comes once in a life­time. Now I under­stand why everything fell silent, why nature froze. The storm's tumul­tu­ous build-up can be heard all the way here. The cloud has already taken half the sky, and it approaches like a huge ocean liner across the sea of the puszta. Its top is lost to sight, it is gigant­ic!

I make up my mind: now, now at last I will stand up to the storm! Thought is harder to rein in than the wind, so now we shall see! The ocean-liner cloud draws on, ever more immense, and the gusts grow fiercer too, tear­ing at the foliage. Then the rain arrives, first a single huge drop here and there, as if the wind were scat­ter­ing little black specks into the sand. Every detail of the storm grows more intense: the tone of the sky darkens, the wind rages, the ocean-cloud is racing now, and like a ship's bow cleav­ing the waters, the sharp point of the cloud is head­ing straight for me. Nature weeps, the first waves of rain have beaten down the dust, and the trees ask them­selves: shall we bend or shall we end? The frenzy car­ries me away too, and I hurl the hoe aside, tear the clothes from my body and, arms raised to the sky, cry out into the uni­verse: Come then, storm, let us try our strength!

That was all it took; the storm, none too gentle even until then, flew into a fury: the wind is a tem­pest, the rain pours down, and not merely as if it were com­ing down in buck­ets, no… as if it were pelt­ing my body with pebbles or lash­ing it with a whip, it fur­rows my skin with unbear­able pain. These are not rain­drops, but claws of lead. I am still howl­ing into the storm, but I can no longer hear my own voice, nor do I know wheth­er I am cry­ing out against it or for myself. The vast cloud seems to graze the ground, and I feel it run me down and thun­der on right over me. It is upon me now, not approach­ing but engulf­ing me, crump­ling me beneath it and anni­hil­at­ing me. I stand ankle-deep in water, then the wind knocks me off my feet and hurls me into the seeth­ing flood. I try to curl up tight, but all in vain; the rain-whip, I feel, is tear­ing my body open, and there is no escape. You have won, Nature, I sur­render!

Was that all it took? A few moments, and the leaden-whip rain turns to a drizzle, the wind drops, the liner has sped away, leav­ing a fresh smell of rain in its wake; a few minutes, and the Sun comes out too. Battered, humi­li­ated, tak­ing stock of the aching wounds to my body and my self-con­fid­ence, I weigh up just how we stand: I and nature…