Metropole (8 page)

There were as many kinds of women on display as there were colours of houses: honey blondes, young girls, women with slant eyes and combs in their hair like Japanese geishas, even one coal-black beauty wearing a heavy silver necklace. There was a woman dressed in white tulle who had a heart-shaped face and long dark lashes and gave a lingering Madonna-like smile, who did not invite anyone but just sat there looking out on the street. She attracted Budai’s attention. He walked to and fro in front of her window so she was bound to have noticed him but still she did not beckon him, only followed his movements with the same modest and happy half smile ... Making a sudden decision, with heart in mouth, he rang her bell like a guilty schoolboy. An answering buzz told him he could enter.

He found himself in a dim-lit hall with an old woman sitting at a table. As he passed her she gave him a tiny slip of paper with the number 174 on it. He didn’t understand what this was for and handed it back to her enquiringly, but the old woman just muttered a complaint of some sort, and pointed upwards. He had to go up to the first floor where a bald, withered old man stood by the door, his face red and wrinkled as a baked apple. He asked for Budai’s ticket, punched a hole in it, then tore a ticket from a book of tickets and handed it to him. Not being able to understand each other it took a while to establish that there was something to pay here, a note bearing the number 10. Budai felt this was expensive and didn’t even know whether it was an entrance fee or whether it covered everything. He was already regretting having come in.

He was ushered into a circular room with four doors beside the one he had come in by opening off it. There were chairs and benches arranged around the wall, all of them occupied by some twenty to twenty-five men waiting as if at the dentist’s so there was nowhere for him to sit down. A speaker was playing waltzes, guests were chattering and laughing. Budai felt no inclination to engage in the usual sign language, suspecting it would be pointless in any case: he doubted that he could explain his presence. Once we are face to face, he thought ... From time to time one of the doors opened and a lightly-clad woman turned around and flicked up her dress. This was what the guests had been waiting for – they had got to number 148 so far – and one of them would go off and disappear with her. But there were occasions when no one came forward, in which case the possessor of the next number accompanied the woman while the first man waited for one of the others. Eventually the whole range of women had made an appearance but the one with the Madonna face was not among them. Perhaps she was just for window-display?

Business was pretty brisk, doors opened and closed with great regularity: the women would spend between ten and fifteen minutes with each guest, sometimes less, while all the time new customers continued to arrive. The loud, constantly changing crowd had practically used up all the oxygen in the room. Several people were smoking though there was no sign of ventilation anywhere. The air was thick with a heavy male smell combined with smoke, sweat, cheap perfume and some insidious disinfectant or insect repellent. Eventually Budai found a seat though he felt no better for that since his head was swimming and his stomach heaving: he blamed the drink he had consumed. He wanted the whole thing to be over but was worried in case it looked like he was running away: he had missed any opportunity of leaving. He regretted spending the money too. In the end he decided not to be choosy but to go with whoever came for him, it didn’t matter which woman it was. The sheer speed and volume of the traffic had put him off in any case.

It was a good long time before they got to 174: a big, stout, red-haired girl with brown skin or possibly a deep tan called the number out. Budai rose and followed her silently into the neighbouring booth. Though they closed the door behind them they could still hear the music as well as the chatter and laughter of the waiting room. The woman was wearing a lightweight white blouse, a wide green skirt, beneath which flashed her healthy stout thighs, and a pair of summer sandals. She immediately started to undress and had already pulled the blouse over her head when he raised his finger to stop her. He addressed her in several languages, pointing to himself, making sweeping movements with his arms, opening his palms in enquiry. What he wanted to know was the name of the town and the country, that kind of thing. But she can’t have understood him though she raised her eyebrows and asked him something twice in a deep, harsh, nicotine-stained voice. He tried to respond by drawing the shape of Europe as best he could in his notebook, complete with its three major southern headlands and major rivers, marking his own birthplace beside the Danube and the city he had come from, repeating its name carefully, syllable by syllable, jabbing at his own breast. The girl gazed thoughtfully at the drawing while indicating that he should sit down and make himself comfortable. He was still fully dressed and unwilling to remove any of his clothing apart from his coat, which he laid on the chair. He hovered in the tiny room, preoccupied, so the girl signalled to him to sit down beside her on the leather couch. She did not hurry him, nor did she show any impatience, though there must have been new customers arriving all the time outside to judge by the rattling, scuffling and scrapings of chairs, as well as the music that continued to pulse. In all the noise, and despite the language problem, she must have been touched by the loneliness of the foreigner and guessed that he was after something different.

Budai tore the page out and gave it to her along with the pencil to indicate that she should draw her own map. The woman misunderstood him, folded the sheet and put it in a metal box that she drew out from beneath the bed. He tried to discover her name as a beginning, then held up his fingers as if to count, one, two, three ... But he could not be sure whether the overlong and slow answer she gave, giving an occasional bitter laugh, was in fact to his question. It was hard to know. She took her box out again, removing a number of miscellaneous items: buckles, brooches, ribbons, scraps of paper with writing on them, old letters, photographs, a pair of opera-glasses, a ring, some coloured marbles and a glass pearl. This must be where she kept her souvenirs and mementos. She closed then opened the box again and carried on talking in the deep hoarse voice:

‘
Tevebevedre atchipachitapp! Atchipachitapp?.. Buttureu jebetch atchichitapp?
’

She kept repeating the sound
atchichitapp
, as she picked out a child’s shoe from among her things, her eyes suddenly full of tears. Budai had no idea who the shoe belonged to, to the woman in her childhood? Or to a child of her own? And if she had a child where was it? ... But she hugged the little shoe so passionately one couldn’t help but pity her: he stroked her hair, soft, red, electric, so it almost sparked as he touched it, caressing her brow and neck too. The woman caught his hand and put it to his face, to her mouth, smearing it with her tears: he felt awkward but he lost his coldness and was overcome by deep emotion. There was much annoyed shuffling and drumming in the waiting room, someone even knocked on the wall. Being hurried like that made Budai nervous and he would have disengaged himself but the girl wouldn’t let him, clinging to him, pressing his head into her lap, practically kneeling before him. He wanted to pull her up but found himself sinking down beside her instead and that was how they remained, clumsy, between floor and couch, in a most unnatural position but in a tight embrace, almost of one body.

People were shouting and banging outside: they really had to hurry now. The woman kissed him on the lips as if in farewell but that only made him sink down again ... He turned away as he put on his coat, and after a moment of hesitation, awkwardly placed another ten-unit banknote on the chair. She wasn’t looking at him but was silently adjusting her hair in the mirror. Budai left by the back door, down side stairs that stank of cats.

The narrow street opened onto a square where a giant ferris wheel was turning and streams of many-coloured lights flashed over booths offering games, target shooting, dodgems, boat-swings, carousels, all the fun of the fair. There was an enormous illuminated roller-coaster; people were shrieking, shouting and trumpeting, small explosions were being set off. Everywhere the unceasing swirl of the crowd, no less dense, no less packed than elsewhere. There were slides, ghost trains, stalls with hoopla and ring-the-bell, conjurers, acrobats, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters, an Indian Rubber Man who could wind his legs around his neck and a two-ton woman who simply stood on a platform immobilised by her own weight, helpless and vast as a Polynesian idol.

There were boats for hire too if you were prepared to wait long enough though he no longer cared about time. Time didn’t matter any more: who cared what the clock said! He paid and was helped into a one-man punt. A slow current carried him down a barrel-vaulted, cave-like tunnel where music blared, some swaying barcarolle, and atmospheric coloured lanterns dangled either side, some even floating on the water. There were miniature castles and forts along the way, waterfalls, sluices, power stations, bridges and the rest; all the usual stuff, nothing special. For him though it was the greatest, most unexpected pleasure of the day, his first moment of pleasure since arriving.

Back home he used to canoe on the Danube. He’d start early in the morning and row a long way up the winding tree-and shrub-lined stream. The water never quite formed a smooth mirror as he proceeded between islands and sandbanks: it was constantly folding, trembling and sparkling, patches of dark billowing beneath the surface. Even on a windless day the river was alive and breathing. He usually tied the boat up on the same tiny unnamed island and took a rest: at high water it would be covered by the Danube, and later, once the water had retreated, the grass would remain exactly as it had been bent by the current, grass blades and the bases and branches of shrubs still tangled in wisps of water-weed but dry, as if the trees had grown beards. A narrow lagoon divided the islet into two, the water continuing to trickle through it. The little boat was easily maneouvrable and could be guided past bending branches and lianas that hid it from view. He never met anyone here, he disturbed a few birds at most. The current picked up where the lagoon ended, the river suddenly lurching into movement, clear and transparent right down to the pebbles at the bottom. This was where he best liked to bathe, the current carrying him, filling the pores of his skin, the water sweetish and soft on skin and tongue. One May morning he saw wild ducks by the sandy bank and observed them silently so they did not see him. The mother duck was teaching her brood to swim, dive and catch fish.

He set off back to the hotel in a light reverie full of happy memories. He had noted the name of the metro station he was aiming for, had even written it down, but just at the moment he didn’t know where he should get on. He was a long way from the station where he had arrived and was unlikely to find his way back to it, nor did he have any success in discovering another entrance with those characteristic yellow rails. He started asking around again in the hope that there might just be someone who understood him, stopping passers-by and pointing down at the paving. Finally a Tataric-looking woman in brown overalls seemed to grasp what he required and encouraged him to come with her, even taking his arm, and indeed, a mere two blocks on, she had succeeded in conducting him to the entrance of an underground public convenience.

By this time he feared he was permanently lost, no longer able even to find the hotel. It was getting late, close on midnight when he realised what he should do: he should watch the crowd and see where it was densest, see what direction it was moving in and note the main current. He located that current and tried to follow it, careful never to be parted from it. There were ever more people around him. Then they turned a corner into an even wider stream that a few hundred metres further on poured into a flat-roofed round building with steps leading down into the metro. Once there it was easy enough to find his way around: he could locate the map, seek out the relevant line on the correct level and note where he had to change trains.

He arrived in the little square from which he had started out that morning. The skyscraper he had been gazing at was still in construction. He counted the floors again to check: there were sixty-five though he clearly remembered there having been sixty-four before. He counted them twice more but it was sixty-five both times with the framework for the sixty-sixth already in place. They must have managed to finish a whole floor since he last looked ... The fat doorman blinked, saluted and pushed open the swing door. Surely he was a robot, thought Budai, not human at all, a machine dressed in uniform programmed to perform two or three movements. He felt like tapping him to see what he was made of, though he immediately recoiled from the thought: he might get an electric shock ...

Waiting for his key, he faintly recalled having left a letter at the desk addressed to the management. What if there were an answer waiting for him in the pigeon hole? Might they have returned his passport? There was nothing there. It was a different clerk again and he couldn’t be bothered with repeating the whole pointless charade. He took his key without a word and went to stand in the queue for the lift.

He hadn’t expected the blonde woman operator to be on duty since she had been there in the morning: it surprised him to see her as the doors opened. She looked exhausted and broken, her face too red, her eyelids drooping as she played the keys with her long, carefully manicured fingers. Could she have been working all this time? Or was this a second shift after a break at home? Where did she live, in fact, in the hotel or with a family? Does she have a family, a husband? ... The air in the lift was more oppressive than usual and only later did he notice that the ventilator was out of commission. Entering he had positioned himself so as to be quite close to the girl. Under the light, tiny drops of perspiration twinkled on the faint down of her brow. Budai’s inhibitions had been loosened by drink and he used his newspaper to fan the girl’s neck and forehead. She slowly turned, more in amazement than protest, and said something too, giving a short laugh. It was the first time Budai had seen her smile. Suddenly he felt weak and tender: he wanted to stay with her, so that she could relax at his side ... Yes, whatever way he looked at it, thinking about her and about himself, that was all he wanted, to lie down with her in one bed and wait patiently as she nodded off, hearing her breathing, seeking out the pulse on the tight skin of her wrist: indeed, that would be the most satisfying thing he could possibly do. She had to remind him to get off when they reached the ninth floor. So she remembered. She had noticed him.