Metropole

by Ferenc Karinthy

  His achievements thus far were sickeningly insignificant. He hadn’t enough information to deduce a system: he could not even put a sentence together. And when he tried using the words he knew, or the words he supposed he knew, to enquire, for example, where he might find a café or a metro station he was surprised to find that he was either misunderstood or not understood at all. Could he be mispronouncing the words? That would not be unlikely, having heard the curious, alien-sounding articulations of the locals. Later though, in one of the underground tunnels of the metro, some kind of altercation broke out, and Budai noticed that everyone else was merely shouting and rambling, with no-one paying any attention to anyone else. Could it be that they themselves could not understand each other, that the people who lived here employed various provincial dialects, possibly even quite different languages? In a particularly feverish moment it even occurred to him that each one of them might be speaking his own language, that there were as many languages as there were people.

  Next Friday on top of all this he found a new bill in box 921. The desk-clerk – another new face, how many were there? – calculated the total as 33.10, only a little less than last time. Budai accepted the bill with a silent nod but did not take it to the cashier to pay this time. There was nothing left to pay with. He couldn’t scrape that much together despite having spent less this time round.

  What would happen now? When would they act and what would they do? Maybe some good might come of it, if they invited him into the manager’s office, for example, to seek an explanation. At least they’d be speaking to him and he could say something, ask for an interpreter ... But maybe nothing would happen, no one would say anything. How long could they put up with him staying here without paying? They were bound to find out. One way or the other the fact was he would soon run out of money. He counted up what he had left again: his entire wealth came to 9.75. That was what remained out of the two-hundred-plus he received when he presented his cheque.

  He made some wild, panic-stricken calculations: if, in the first week, putting aside the rent for the room, he had spent some 130, and in the second, even after reducing his expenses to a bare minimum, his outlay was 26, the amount remaining would hardly be enough to see him through the next few days. What would happen to him if his luck did not turn? He had to get some money. But how?

  To make matters still worse he now had a toothache. It was one of the back teeth on the top row that was causing the trouble. At first it was only a dull murmuring sort of pain that came and went and might have been merely his imagination, something he could ignore. But then it erupted, became acute, ever more furious, ever more intolerable. His jaw was inflamed, his face swelled up. He couldn’t delude himself that it would simply go away if he waited: the pain was well-nigh unbearable now and he had no drugs, no analgesic. The small box of miscellaneous pills his wife had packed for him was in his lost luggage.

  It was pointless trying to explain this or to show anyone at the hotel what was wrong with him for no one would pay any attention or, if they did, they would just jabber on as they usually did. He was so desperate with the pain he ran out into the street just as an empty taxi was drawing up at the traffic lights. Budai yanked its door open without a word and leapt in. The driver, having turned round, Budai held the side of his face and mimed the pulling of a tooth to indicate where he wanted to go. The driver appeared to understand. He did not argue but put his foot down. He was a young, impassive man in a peaked cap and looked faintly Chinese.

  Hardly had they started and turned down the first side-street when the traffic came to a standstill. There was no way ahead or back: every available space was filled with vehicles nosing forward or stuck. They spent long minutes in the same spot, then the lines of cars moved slowly forward until coming to a stop again within a few yards. Their progress was unbearably, infuriatingly slow: far in front of them there must have been a crossroads or traffic-light holding things up, allowing just a few people through at a time. The meter on the taxi kept ticking even when they were not moving but there was not the faintest hope of early escape from this endless traffic jam. Budai could bear it no longer and tried talking to the driver. The man did not want to turn round so he tapped him on the shoulder, pointing once again to his swollen face. But the driver was not to be disturbed. He retained his traditional oriental imperturbability, paying him no attention at all, showing no sign of understanding either him or the need for a dentist.

  The next time he glanced at the meter he was horrified to see that it had just leapt past the figure of 8 and would soon be at 8.40, then 8.80 and so on though the car had made hardly any progress. The engine was merely ticking over. Within a few minutes the meter had crept up to 10 which was more money than he had in his pocket, and who knows how many extras there would be to add. His anxiety and fury were so intense now and his toothache so agonising that he had begun to regard the cab as his prison, a cell jammed between legions of cars, and regretted ever having got in. Things had come to such a pass that he would have beaten his way out with his fists if he could. He would happily have instructed the driver to smash at full speed into the truck in front of them: let there be wrecks and explosions, let there be anything, but let things change.

  The more sober part of his judgement was in favour of escape. What would happen if he could not pay the fare? Would there be an outcry? Would the police be called? In his current condition both these options seemed perfectly dreadful, but what else was there? ... What else? The next moment, just as the driver put the car in gear again and they were rolling gradually forwards, Budai pushed the door open and leapt out. He stumbled over the kerb but was otherwise unhurt. He turned back for a split second to see the driver’s Chinese eyes but the next time he looked the taxi had disappeared in the traffic. He too was looking to vanish into the crowd.

  He hadn’t been in this area before though they can’t have got far from the hotel. The first man he stopped to show he had a toothache immediately grasped the problem and pointed to a nearby multi-storey yellow building. It looked to be a hospital, a clinic or some other medical institution, stately with wings and extensions and a crowd of people streaming both ways through its arched portal. There was an ambulance-like vehicle, a closed white car with siren blaring, turning out of the gateway ... Might it be that his Chinese-looking driver had brought him to the right place after all? And now the poor chap – the only man willing to help him – had to pay the fare out of his own pocket ...

  Everyone here understood his gestures and he was quickly directed to the dentistry department. As he expected, there were vast numbers waiting in the surgery corridors, not just standing and sitting on benches, but squatting on the stone floor, some even lying down on it, many with bandages or sticking plaster on their faces and cotton wool dangling from their mouths. It was slow progress, mind-numbingly slow, people probably being called in the order in which they had arrived. Nevertheless, the order of their going was constantly subject to dispute with squabbles breaking out here and there. There were at least thirty people before Budai at the door he had decided to wait at. But he had no choice and was lucky he had found his way here at all.

  It was a long long wait. He was perspiring with pain and time had lost all meaning when at last it came to his turn. Suddenly everything speeded up. As soon as he stepped into the surgery he was surrounded by men and women in white coats and he no sooner pointed to the bad tooth before he was pressed into a chair. One man held his head back, another sprinkled some cold sweet-flavoured liquid onto his gums and a fourth man, a large bulky figure wearing white gym shoes like a wrestler, was already applying a pair of glittering pliers to his mouth. There followed one skull-shattering arrow of pain, one loud crack and the man held up the bloody tooth before dumping it into a dish beside the chair. Someone handed Budai half a glass of water with which he rinsed his mouth then spat out what was left.

  They went on to ask him something that might have been his name and he gave it to them together with his
home address, though whether they understood this when he wrote it down he could not tell. He had no idea what they were going to do with the information. Nor did he have to pay, or at least no one indicated that he should. The next patient was already there behind him and as soon as he rose from the chair the other occupied it, the new man’s place being immediately taken up by someone else. On the way out he decided to take a different route but was so relieved to be rid of his pain that he got lost. He wandered along criss-crossing corridors, down stairs, meeting dense crowds everywhere, the air thick with hospital smells. There were ever new corridors, twisting and turning erratically, now cutting across an open courtyard under glass. The building seemed to be comprised of various parts of different periods, one added after another. Eventually he arrived in a spacious circular hall.

  It must have been the maternity department. There were hundreds and hundreds of little cots in rows with babies wrapped in white swaddling bands. The newly born, like the rest of the city’s inhabitants, represented the whole gamut of races with every type of physiognomy, from the palest white to the darkest black. They filled not only this hall but the next and the one after that too, baby after baby, white, black, brown, yellow, all the way down the corridor as well, in cots that did not fit into the main halls. There were a few multiple cots, two or three in some wards, designed for twins perhaps or simply babies for whom there was no room elsewhere. And there were more extensions just as packed with infants, and still more after those as if there could be no end of them, and all the while nurses in white gowns were pushing trolleys with yet more babies, those who presumably had just been delivered in surgery, in groups of ten or twenty, all red and furiously bawling after their entry into the world ... Budai liked children and was generally touched by them but he had never seen so many all together and the sight confused and terrified him. He looked to escape, seeking an exit from the clinic. He was losing patience, wanting to see no more babies, worrying what would happen when the present batch grew up and joined the already teeming hordes in the streets.

  Arriving back at the hotel, he found Bebébe in the lift. She immediately noticed his swollen face and looked at him as if to say he should not get out but continue up to the eighteenth floor. Once up there Budai tried to convey to her that he had had a tooth pulled and even opened his mouth to show her where. In examining it Vevede had to come so close that her blonde hair tickled his chin and he could feel the girl’s skin and breath; later he tried to recall whether it mattered who started stroking whose face first, who kissed who, and whether it was she who first offered up her face and lips. Budai’s mouth was still swollen and numb with the anaesthetic or perhaps it was his cut gum that was in the way. In any case he felt awkward and lumpen, hardly capable of sensation, and he might have been a little dizzy too since all this passed in a kind of fog. Meanwhile the lift buzzer started ringing so they had to go down and once it started to crowd up everything that had passed upstairs seemed distant and unreal.

  But this did nothing to solve his financial problem. He had to find work, anything, to earn some money. But how and where would he find work? Who could direct him to an employer? After all, he had failed to elicit much simpler information from local people. Ironically, the longer he stayed here the less he found himself able to ask people things. There was nothing he could do about that, however often he had vowed to change: reticence and withdrawal were necessary forms of self-preservation in the face of so many failures and disappointments. He was becoming ever more confused and detached in his dealings with others, ever less willing to accost people in the street or anywhere else and when he did try to make contact he became almost speechless. It was as if he was frozen. Maybe that is how it had to be. Maybe that was the only way his personality, his constitution could deal with the situation.

  Then he remembered that first Sunday when he passed the market and somebody shouted at him as if inviting him to work. It was the driver of the truck who wanted help unloading vegetables, so he found the cheapest items among his clothes, the more worn of his two pairs of shoes, those that had been practically walked to pieces on his various excursions, and the pullover that he had carried in his briefcase. He put them on and set out.

  It took him some time to find the open market. He got out at the same underground station as before but had twice crossed the enormous square before realising that, this being a weekday, there were no stalls or booths, no folding tables set out with goods, that the square had in fact been swept clean and that in the centre stood a statue of a wounded soldier wielding a rifle. Might it have been a war memorial? The outdoor market, it seemed, was only here on Sundays or other public holidays. On the other hand, the covered market-hall at the far end with its glazed and barred stalls was busier than ever. A great army of customers poured in through the front while the big ramp at the side was busy with cranes, conveyor belts and people loading and unloading goods. There were casual labourers everywhere swarming around trucks that were parked nose to tail, ragged figures carrying bales, ice and boxes into the building.

  It was easy mingling with them. They seemed to be working in improvised gangs on this or that load. All you had to do was to watch where the next laden truck arrived, get over there, offer your back and someone would immediately give you a sack to carry. His sack seemed likely to contain potatoes or onions, nothing particularly heavy. He followed the others inside with it and threw it onto a great pile of sacks like the rest, then returned for another sack. No-one asked him for any ID or other paperwork and, having addressed one or two questions to him that he couldn’t answer, they assumed he couldn’t speak the language and took hardly any more notice of him. There was not much for them to say in any case: his task was obvious and needed no explaining. Nor did the other temporary porters bother with him, being busy with their own affairs. Quite possibly they were strangers to each other too.

  Budai was not scared of physical work. When he was a student on a grant he would occasionally take such jobs when short of money, doing all-night stints at Les Halles in Paris or at Covent Garden in London. His constitution was still strong and healthy and he found himself enjoying the effort and exercise. The only thing he didn’t like was the sacks making his hands and pullover dirty. It took roughly an hour and a half to finish unloading the consignment at which point the driver paid them by pressing a single piece of lowest denomination paper money into their palms. Later he was set to carrying sides of pork, frozen goods, icy and damp to the touch, his back cold, his palms greasy and sweaty. Then it was passing the load from a truck, handing down cages of fat angora rabbits, the kind he had seen in the hotel room whose door he had opened. He earned altogether eight notes in the day plus a little change. He felt a pleasant tiredness and a certain pride too that here he was, making a living with his two bare hands. But at the same time he could hardly wait to get back to the hotel bathroom and a nice hot shower.

  From then on each time he went to the market, whatever time of day, he almost always found some work of this kind. No-one ever asked him who he was. When he worked in the evening or at night he noticed that those who had packed up did not go far but entered the liquor store next door. Others simply lay down where they were among the bales, sleeping on empty sacks or in one of the larger crates in some quiet corner. They must have been tramps and homeless people, their clothes filthy and neglected, their whole appearance uncared for. This was the company he was now reduced to.

  One time, heading home on the metro, he was just descending the long escalators with the host of those arriving streaming past him on the way up when he suddenly spotted a man holding a Hungarian magazine. It was no mistake! There he was holding a copy of Szinházi Élet, an old theatre and stage weekly, its title clearly legible. Even the actress on the front looked faintly familiar: she was in a striped swimsuit standing on the steps of the Hullámfürdő, the pool with the artificial wave machine; the actress blonde, slender, raising her free left hand high into the air. This was such an unexpected s
hock that he had no sooner registered it than the man holding it, an elderly, grey, bespectacled figure in a worn green overcoat, had already passed him and was now behind him. He didn’t know what to do, had no idea what to say, but shouted out as loud as he could in Hungarian:

  ‘Kérem szépen ... izé, maga, ott!’ (Excuse me! ... I beg your pardon, er, you there!)

  But the escalator was so loud, so squeaky and grinding, the whole place so full of commuters, the hall so echoey that the man in the overcoat couldn’t have heard him. Terrified that he would lose him, Budai screamed out once more:

  ‘Halló, ide nézzen.’ (Hello! Look this way!)

  The man addressed turned round, his expression astonished, as if hearing a voice from another world. He reached uncertainly towards him in the distance perhaps only to convince himself that it was no illusion:

  ‘Hát uraságod is ...?’ (And you, dear sir, are you also ... ?)

  The rest was lost in the surrounding noise and faded in the increasing distance between them. Budai tried to turn round and follow him but the escalators were moving rather fast and were packed with people, a number of them actually rushing downwards, hurrying for trains: there was no chance – not the space or the time – of him reaching the man in the overcoat. Desperately he cried to the ever-retreating patch of green in the crowd.

  ‘Várjon meg a ...’ (Wait for me at ... )

  But where the best place to wait in the metro actually was he could not think. He should at least have asked for the man’s address before they swept past each other, or he could have given his. True, he didn’t know the name of his hotel, nor even the street where it happened to be. In the meantime the stranger had completely disappeared in the metro traffic.