according to our guidebook, "at the end of a long and creepily empty square" stood a psychiatric hospital. Which might be, I thought, some kind of physically manifested metaphor, a metaphor for Eastern Europe. My imagination evoked a large dusty space surrounded by crumbling buildings. Divisions in various uniforms file through the square from time to time, but they stay no longer than needed for the ravage and rapine. They ride off, and the hot dust of the plain immediately hides the horsemen. From the windows of the hospital, the insane follow them with their eyes and pine, because in these eastern regions power, violence, and madness have forever lived in concubinage and sometimes in a completely legal union.
But no, nothing of the sort: this square was not a waste. It was shaded, cool. Before the hospital door, several madmen in dressing gowns smoked cigarettes. The atmosphere was, more than anything, that of a sanatorium, so the heated imagination of the tourist could take a breather.
So anyway, we were drinking aszú and traveling east. Actually, we were fleeing the west, fleeing hopeless Budapest, where in the worst gussied-up dive on Rákóczi Street a shot of pear brandy cost three times what it did in Nagykálló, and the coffee even more. Fleeing the rain as well, because the sky had opened up on the Danube, on Gellért Hill, on the bridges, on everything. But it was August 20, Saint Stephen's Day, therefore even with the downpour parachutists jumped from vintage An-24s, trailing ribbons of smoke in the national colors: green, red, and white. Around Parliament the police stood and made sure no one got too close. The rain fell in buckets on the big limos too, nature being a democrat. On Zoltán Street near the covered market, we had to step back, because the sidewalk filled with roller skaters, five hundred strong, raising their arms and reciting. They looked like a foreign horde bent on conquest. M. said, "That's what cities are becoming. To survive, you'll have to belong to something like that. As it used to be. Loners won't have a prayer." "Unless," I replied, "you're someone like Snake in
Escape from New York.
" Cars couldn't move in the jam. At a bus stop, two black men conversed in Hungarian. The water gurgled in our pockets and shoes. Sirens howled, horns honked, the glare of the city doubled, tripled, and we were ghosts now, having lost confidence in our existence. On Dohány Street, opposite the Great Synagogue, I found the small pub in which, a year before, a producer from Israel told me how a lion had eaten the hand of its trainer, a mishap that sank the film project, because no one in his right mind would do a comedy with a man-eating lion in the lead. The pub was now packed; between the walls papered with gazettes from the days of Franz Josef, it was so bad that mothers had to hold their children in their laps, the children dozing from the smoke and hot breaths. The weary barmaid knew what I wanted, reading my face, and over the heads of the customers she passed us two pear brandies and two coffees. We sat outside under a leaky umbrella, rain pattering in the cups and glasses.
When we took Rákóczi Street to the station at last, we saw a tremendous assembly on its steps. Black-market money changers were there, cabbies, young ladies, railroad employees, smooth operators, vendorsâin a word, everyone: all looking into the deep night. We too turned to look. In the leaden sky over the Danube burst a thousand purple sparks, a myriad scarlet spiders and golden stars. The reports from the explosions, muffled by the rain and distance, reached us with delay, which made the spectacle doubly unreal. Celadon and bile, turquoise and violet, sapphire and silver, emerald and crystalâfictional, ephemeral gems that died instantly in the rain and did nothing to lift the darkness. As if old Austro-Hungary were making yet another effort to give a sign from the beyond. The wet night was a
But no, nothing of the sort: this square was not a waste. It was shaded, cool. Before the hospital door, several madmen in dressing gowns smoked cigarettes. The atmosphere was, more than anything, that of a sanatorium, so the heated imagination of the tourist could take a breather.
So anyway, we were drinking aszú and traveling east. Actually, we were fleeing the west, fleeing hopeless Budapest, where in the worst gussied-up dive on Rákóczi Street a shot of pear brandy cost three times what it did in Nagykálló, and the coffee even more. Fleeing the rain as well, because the sky had opened up on the Danube, on Gellért Hill, on the bridges, on everything. But it was August 20, Saint Stephen's Day, therefore even with the downpour parachutists jumped from vintage An-24s, trailing ribbons of smoke in the national colors: green, red, and white. Around Parliament the police stood and made sure no one got too close. The rain fell in buckets on the big limos too, nature being a democrat. On Zoltán Street near the covered market, we had to step back, because the sidewalk filled with roller skaters, five hundred strong, raising their arms and reciting. They looked like a foreign horde bent on conquest. M. said, "That's what cities are becoming. To survive, you'll have to belong to something like that. As it used to be. Loners won't have a prayer." "Unless," I replied, "you're someone like Snake in
Escape from New York.
" Cars couldn't move in the jam. At a bus stop, two black men conversed in Hungarian. The water gurgled in our pockets and shoes. Sirens howled, horns honked, the glare of the city doubled, tripled, and we were ghosts now, having lost confidence in our existence. On Dohány Street, opposite the Great Synagogue, I found the small pub in which, a year before, a producer from Israel told me how a lion had eaten the hand of its trainer, a mishap that sank the film project, because no one in his right mind would do a comedy with a man-eating lion in the lead. The pub was now packed; between the walls papered with gazettes from the days of Franz Josef, it was so bad that mothers had to hold their children in their laps, the children dozing from the smoke and hot breaths. The weary barmaid knew what I wanted, reading my face, and over the heads of the customers she passed us two pear brandies and two coffees. We sat outside under a leaky umbrella, rain pattering in the cups and glasses.
When we took Rákóczi Street to the station at last, we saw a tremendous assembly on its steps. Black-market money changers were there, cabbies, young ladies, railroad employees, smooth operators, vendorsâin a word, everyone: all looking into the deep night. We too turned to look. In the leaden sky over the Danube burst a thousand purple sparks, a myriad scarlet spiders and golden stars. The reports from the explosions, muffled by the rain and distance, reached us with delay, which made the spectacle doubly unreal. Celadon and bile, turquoise and violet, sapphire and silver, emerald and crystalâfictional, ephemeral gems that died instantly in the rain and did nothing to lift the darkness. As if old Austro-Hungary were making yet another effort to give a sign from the beyond. The wet night was a
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