A strange thing: I had gone to Hungary in some way to understand Ivan better, because being Hungarian was such a big deal for him—and it was only in the villages that I had realized, with a certain shock, that, although Hungarianness was a big part of Ivan, Ivan himself was only a very small part of Hungary. On some level, I had always known that Hungary was a whole country, home to millions of people who had never met Ivan, and didn’t know or care about him. But apparently I hadn’t completely thought it through, because it still felt like a surprise.
