Authors: Ferenc Karinthy

Metropole (31 page)

BOOK: Metropole

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The whole thing started with the sound of a whistle: suddenly the square went mad with battle cries. Guns suddenly appeared from under coats and opened fire on the tanks. Hand grenades were thrown as well as bottles filled with some explosive, possibly a household liquid. At the same time a mass of other men emerged through the tenement doors and entered the fray, similarly equipped. Over a hundred of them were now swarming around the soldiers. They ran about in strange formations, zigzagging and turning sharply, now this way, now that, only to straighten out and lob their explosives before immediately throwing themselves flat on the ground.

It was far from enough. The soldiers in the armoured cars ducked back down, pulled down their hatches and fired their guns while those on motorbikes let loose volleys of powerful machinegun fire. The ranks of attackers dissolved and pretty soon the open space was covered with the bodies of the wounded. The tanks started up unexpectedly fast and ploughed into the heart of the crowd ruthlessly crushing those who got in the way. They moved like macabre grinders, accompanied by the most desperate screaming and rattling. The cobbles were turning red.

Budai was watching from a little way off, seized by the awful fear of death and, as he ran away, treading over the bodies of the living and the dead, he kept thinking a tank was specifically following him, catching up with him, grinding him under with its metal jaws. His pistol was still in his pocket and he would have been glad to be rid of it but did not want to throw it away in case he attracted attention by doing so. A lot of people were sheltering under a yellow-colonnaded pavilion at the far end of the oval-shaped open space so he joined them.

Everyone was fleeing: crowds were breaking up and scattering chiefly into the surrounding buildings. But even there they refused to give up the fight, firing guns from open windows or from openings in the roof. Now the helmeted soldiers leapt from their vehicles and pursued them up the stairs and soon the battle was raging inside the tenements, gunfire drumming and flashing on ever higher floors and up in the loft. The drama ended with a body falling from on high and landing with a terrifying clatter on the wet cobbles, followed by another and another, some figures waving arms and legs and crying out as they fell, then more and more, one landing on another, blood mingling and running together in the puddles in the rain. It was impossible to watch: Budai gathered all his strength and pushed past people ever deeper into the pavilion. Suddenly he realised that the little yellow structure he took for a pavilion was in fact a metro station or an entrance to it. He managed to dispose of his gun in a litter-bin in the concourse. There were people moving up and down the steps and through the passageways and a great many more waiting and sitting on the platform though there was clearly no service. Only an indifferent voice issuing from the loudspeaker continuously gabbled an endless stream of information. It was close and hot below ground. Steam rose from Budai’s damp clothes. Not having slept for two nights, he found a corner and curled up.

H
e was woken by the same noise to which he had fallen asleep, the distant, continuous croaking of the personal address system. Down here there was neither night nor day and a great many people were still coming and going, falling asleep or swaying about the corridors and platforms. He stumbled up to ground level but found the gates locked and barred so there was no way in or out and saw that a few white-uniformed soldiers were standing on guard outside with guns at the ready. All he could see through the bars was that it was grey outside – was it dawn or dusk? – and that the oval space, and all the roads leading into it, was completely empty with guards posted on each corner. There must be a curfew, he thought, and went down again to sleep some more.

The next time he woke he could tell by the rumbling that trains were running again and he even felt the familiar draught of their approach. The way out was also open. It was sunny and breezy outside. The street and the square were packed with people exactly as they had been before the fighting started, the road too was just as full of cars as before. The dead had vanished, there was no evidence left of the battle, its effects having been covered over with hoardings and fresh layers of paint. Budai joined the crowd and walked down to the china shop where he had taken shelter. Its windows were boarded up but the shop was open for sales again though the choice was limited. The building next door across which the flag had been hung, the walls of which had collapsed as a result of heavy artillery fire, was covered over with matting.

There were even greater changes in the ruined neighbourhood where the homeless had been carrying away their possessions. The wreckage had been gathered up and taken away. The earth on which the buildings had stood had been rolled flat and smoothed so it seemed it had been a vacant site for a long time, the spaces between the buildings like missing teeth. Where there had been barricades they had not only been dismantled but the broken road surface itself had been repaired. Further on he saw that the building whose progress he had often stopped to note but which had been abandoned by the striking workers was once again firmly in construction: the builders had already reached the eightieth floor.

He found the grey house where fighting had continued through the night. It had suffered too much damage to be easily patched up but the damage was hidden by scaffolding. Perhaps they were pretending it was only normal renovation. The wrecked tank had gone from the entrance. Had Budai not been a party to the events, he would hardly have guessed from the condition of the city that anything had happened at all.

A park extended on one side of the house. Those were the rails he had run past to escape the smoke bombs. The sunshine had tempted people out. Children were chasing each other across the grass, there were boats on the lake and sunbathers were relaxing by the water, taking off their shoes and dipping their feet in. Could the insurrection have been a fairly regular run-of-the-mill event? The black broken walls he had fled among certainly suggested earlier conflicts. Might it be that such outbreaks were a necessary product of the way of life here, that from time to time there were revolutions that channelled people’s furies? Were they a way of reducing the population?

Spicy sausages were being sold again and since he had enough money to buy one he stopped and queued at a stall: the food tasted better than before. Children were playing around him, kicking balls while lovers embraced, others ate and sang or listened to loud pocket radios. Everywhere people were sunbathing, sleeping, skimming pebbles in the lake, enjoying the fine weather. Could they already have forgotten the battles and buried their dead? It seemed a betrayal of trust, but the thought did not depress him. As he lay on the grass and ate he was filled with hope, happy that people were so greedy for life. He felt very much at one with them. He might even have been happy himself. He scrunched up the paper in which the sausage had been wrapped and threw it into the lake.

It was a moment or two later that he noticed the ball of paper had drifted away. At first he thought the wind must have carried it, but no: the leaves on the water, the tiny bubbles under the surface, those thin stalks of reed and sedge were all proceeding in the same direction. The water was moving! The movement was slow, very slow indeed, but there was a definite current. He tried again. This time he threw a little twig into the water and it too was swept away.

It was a moving discovery and it raised his spirits. Because if it was really the case, if the water was in motion, the tide would have to lead somewhere. He started walking through the park, intending to circle the lake. It was an irregular shape no more than two or three hundred metres across. A marble fountain fed into it on one side and further off there was a wide terrace with tall sturdy columns and an equestrian statue prancing against the cloudless sky. The boats – light, colourful, flat-bottomed beach canoes – were gently bobbing in the waves. They were mostly occupied by young people, boys and girls paddling here and there, shouting to each other.

He discovered the draining-off point opposite the fountain. A little wooden bridge arched over it. The stream was quiet and small, more brook than stream, snaking away between the denser clumps of park trees. It was not only slow but shallow too and so narrow that two strides would have taken him across it, but however insignificant and modest a stream it was, it would, sooner or later, feed into a river, into some main current and that would eventually lead to the sea. And once he had arrived at the sea he would find a harbour, a ship, a route to anywhere.

He did not want to think of himself as he had been five minutes earlier: it was as if that person had never existed. All he had to do was to follow the stream and never to lose sight of it, to walk along its bank or maybe hire a boat, or steal one. A boat would be produced from somewhere! He could practically hear the low moan of the sea and smell its salty tang; he could see it, dark blue, as it seethed and sparkled, its foam like marble, the wind forever drawing new shapes across its restless surface and the seagulls plunging into it time and again ... God be with you, Epepe. He was full of confidence. He would soon be home.

eISBN: 978-1-84659-140-2

First published by Telegram, 2008

This ebook edition published 2012

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Cover image © NationalMuseum, Stockholm, Sweden/ The Bridgeman Art Library, London, UK

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