Metropole

Horsemen arrived at a stately clip-clop, hussars in mourning-black boots and collars followed by throbbing motorcycles with sidecars, their riders in one-piece cycling gear (once more Budai pondered what organisation they might be part of). And trucks full of infants bawling in reedy voices and waving flags. The trucks were drawing an enormous cylindrical object painted grey that must have been almost forty metres long at the sight of which the crowd stirred and rumbled, though Budai could only guess what it was: a bomb, a torpedo, a rocket, a spaceship? Then more musicians, this time playing xylophones and instruments that looked like vibraphones, mobile choirs grown hoarse, giving their all. Then a solitary, rather overweight, middle-aged woman in a brilliant yellow dress and a wide floral hat who was received with applause and general muttering to which she responded by smiling at everyone, this way and that. Nurses clad in white pushed wheelchairs laden with the paralysed and crippled. Other disabled people hobbled past on sticks and frames. There were even a few carried on stretchers.

There were clearly a lot of organisations involved: sportsmen, cyclists, weightlifters with bulging muscles, acrobats, clowns, masked figures, though the latter can have formed only a minor part of the revelry and were probably marching on other main routes too… The most astonishing and most populous group in the parade was composed of prisoners in the regulation stripes, their wrists handcuffed together, their heads bowed. They were escorted by rows of guards on either side wearing brown canvas one-piece uniforms like the motorcyclists before them. This peculiar procession of prisoners did not seem to want to come to an end. Ranks of women followed the men wearing similar outfits, then came children, even tiny ones, eight- to ten- year old boys and girls, all in the same prison dress, also handcuffed. Could they too have been taken from jail? Children? And where were they going? Or was it all a masquerade, a game, possibly a protest or demonstration. But against what? The guards were armed but seemed to be enjoying themselves, laughing, relaxed and waving at the crowd who waved back.

A distant humming signalled the arrival of the next attraction. Birds rose and wheeled above the road. It was a long time before it became clear what was it was. There was a large truck with some cages on it piled very high and as the vehicle proceeded ever more cages were opened to allow birds to fly out. They were not pigeons, more like starlings, their wings whirring as they circled in dense flocks, chattering, whistling, crying out in joy at being able to fly free again. They settled on telegraph wires, screeching loudly, then, suddenly roused, would take off once more into the vast blue sky. This was the most popular show, everyone whooping as they passed, and Budai too watched them, enchanted, his spirits rising with them, waiting to see what would come next.

But the nature of the procession changed at this point. Four solemn and bearded old men, wearing dark suits, marched past at funereal pace, slow and full of dignity followed by a noisy but loose group of what must have been ordinary if colourfully dressed people, happy, it seemed, to be led by the town elders. Spectators began to filter in among them, blending with the procession, swelling it into a flood. Budai too was swept along though he would willingly have joined them anyway.

Ever swelling, ever moving under its own weight and momentum, the crowd pressed through the street without a visible head or tail as if no-one knew quite where they were going or why. Here and there a flag or banner emerged above them. There was some chanting of slogans too, with people forming improvised choruses, singing a variety of songs all at the same time. A brown-skinned, gypsy-looking man in a sweater marched beside Budai, bellowing through a paper trumpet, his voice occasionally rising harshly above the general babble. A little further off a group of women and girls were screaming with laughter and teasing everyone. They tried to involve him too. One of them kept tickling his neck, giggling away with her brightly coloured plume of feathers. Now and then a wave of anger passed through the ranks like a gust of wind.

This endless torrent of confusion eventually fetched up in a large circular open space that must have been filling up from other directions too since it was already almost full. There was a fountain at the centre with a stone elephant that was supposed to spout water from its trunk. It seemed familiar from his earlier walks though the fountain wasn’t working now. A young, flowing-haired man had climbed between its tusks onto the base of the statue and was busily gesticulating. He wore a black shirt buttoned up to the collar and was haranguing the crowd. Judging from the rhythmic movements of his arms and a genuine euphony in his words he seemed to be reciting verse. The massed crowd watched him, gently shifting and arranging itself, some voices shouting back at him in agreement, others repeating the refrain or chorus of the poem along with the performer. That is if Budai had properly understood what was happening. The youth in the black shirt was ever more caught up with his performance. He shook his fist in the air, he raised his finger to heaven and closed his eyes. When he finished people applauded and cheered him as he leapt off the pedestal.

No sooner had he vacated it than someone else was helped up into his place, a frail, elderly, white-moustached man with thinning grey hair. He was visibly trembling, his legs hardly supporting him. It took two people to anchor him and his voice too trembled with passion. His prominent cheekbones and his broad bulging brow were flushed as he quietly stuttered something from a sheet of paper. The square had fallen silent as they heard him out, deeply moved. The old man was visibly delighted by the respect they afforded him, and it was only when he took a break and looked up that the crowd broke into loud, indignant agreement. He must have been specifically chosen to read out a series of declarations or demands. The excitement of doing so had exhausted him to the degree that his voice almost failed at times and he could hardly bring himself to whisper but kept coughing into his handkerchief, his face bright red, so that eventually he had to be helped down and led away.

It was the waist-coated, bowler-hatted black man in the chequered jacket that climbed up next. He spoke no more then six or seven words, then pulled a mocking face, slapping the elephant’s trunk as he did so. What he said must have been amusing and clever because it was greeted with a great deal of laughter. They didn’t want him to get off. He kept bowing and pulling faces, thanking the crowd for their appreciation. Even Budai was laughing: the whole thing was so funny he simply couldn’t help it.

The next speaker was a soft, smooth-faced figure in glasses. No sooner had he started than he was greeted with whistles and cries of fury. He waited till they calmed down a little, then continued. He must have been giving some kind of explanation and though he was mocked and shouted down time and again he rode the crowd’s disapproval, pleading with them to at least hear him out. The more it went on the more he seemed to be begging and promising things and the more angry the crowd grew. They cursed him, waved fists at him, warning him to leave off, even throwing empty bottles at him. His voice was drowned out in the noise. Budai too was indignant, fed up with the idiot’s smooth line of argument and was shouting as loud as he could with the rest.

‘Get down! Enough! What do you want! Go on, scram, kick him out!’

Eventually he was dragged from the pedestal and chased away by some youths. He should be glad to escape a good beating!

Other speakers appeared, among them the big woman in the bright yellow dress whom he had noticed in the procession. She was carrying a basket on her arm from which she distributed badges and cockades. People greedily grabbed them, practically fought each other for them. Budai was standing too far off to get one. The only thing he understood in all this was that the badges reminded him of certain ladybirds, the black ones with red spots or the red ones with black spots. The woman pinned one on her own breast and the crowd once again cheered and grew merry, crying loud huzzahs and drumming their feet on the pavement. And they fell to singing again, all of them together.

Then a priest ascended the pedestal in full cape and mitre, very like the one he had seen in the church with the dome. He unfurled a flag, one with red and black stripes, the same colours as on the badges and cockades, bearing the central motif of a bird with outstretched wings — might it have been a starling? — the flag so enormous, so wide, that he was unable to extend it himself without the help of two ministrants in surplices. The priest said a brief prayer, then was passed a censer that he swung in the direction of the flag, letting it swing to and fro, enveloping the flag in thick white smoke that might have symbolised a blessing or a consecration… The crowd was overcome with veneration, many were deeply moved. Some people were in tears and those who could get near enough kissed the edge of the flag while others fell to their knees in worship or threw themselves to the ground in front of it.

Sirens suddenly started wailing from various directions. Ambulances? Fire services? The police? Hearing the sound, the entire crush began to break up, running off this way and that, filling up the surrounding streets again. The section in which Budai was trapped made for the wide gates of the great buttressed castle nearby, gates normally reserved for cars, and flowed through. Whichever way they went, shops brought down their shutters. Traffic was at a standstill, buses and cars parking at the side of the road, the passengers spilling from them to join the ranks of those who had been part of the procession. Bells were ringing in the distance and a horn was constantly sounding, the kind of horn that normally brings an end to a day’s work at a factory.

He found himself at the building site with the skyscraper, the one whose floors he had so often counted, but he had no time for that now. The construction workers had in any case started to leave the building as soon as the remnants of the procession came into view. They were descending by lift and ladder. Cranes and all other machinery stopped working: the high steel frame, the walls, the platforms emptied. Everyone engaged on the building joined the mass below, coming just as they were, in paint-stained overalls, with paper hats on their heads and so the wave of humanity swelled and grew. What was this? A general strike?

Posters still fresh and wet on the walls bore messages with huge letters. Groups read and debated in front of them. The human flood swallowed them too and was soon joined by residents of the wayside houses and the hordes emerging from the steps of the metro with its yellow barriers. In the meantime someone was rasping something through a microphone, the voice cracking and babbling as if it were trying to communicate urgent instructions. It met with a hostile reaction. The protesters grumbled, cried out in hoarse voices, turned disorderly and started pushing and shoving. Another stream joined them at the next crossroads. There were bottlenecks and vortices, lines got mixed up, people cut across each other, trod each other down in the confusion. And still the amplified voice crackled on.

Budai’s heart leapt for a moment: he thought he saw Epepe on the other side of the road. It was a second or two, no more, perhaps less than that. Her blonde, blue-uniformed figure stood blindingly clear of the crowd, Or was it simply the blonde hair, the blue uniform and the familiar build that made him think it was her? Was it someone else? No sooner had she appeared than she was gone and however Budai struggled to reach her, he couldn’t see her anymore, nor anyone who looked the least bit like her, though it was perfectly possible that those on her side of the road had been shoved aside.

The failure did not crush him. He had not given up hope that he might catch sight of her again in the crowd despite its arbitrary turns and shifts. Hope spurred him to action, encouraging him to take real part in whatever was going on here, to go where the others went, to do as they did, to share their fates, adopt their causes, to fight tooth and nail with them.

He tried to grasp and learn the songs they were singing. Most of the time it was a stirring rapid march, one he had heard before so not just the melody but even the words had stuck in his memory, that is in as far as he could make it out. It sounded something like:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé

Bügyüti nyemelága

Petyitye!

The last word tended to come out snappish and short accompanied by either fury or laughter. They song was defiantly repeated as if to threaten or annoy, as though the singing of it had long been forbidden. There was a very thin young man with an abundance of hair who kept it going: if others stopped singing it he would start it up time and again, conducting them with his long arms until everyone near him took it up. It became intoxicating after a while: people were drunk on their own voices as though they felt — and Budai felt it too — that they were accomplishing something important by singing it. This happy confidence bubbled through them like the fizz in soda: together, they felt, they could overcome anything: nothing could stop them, they were all-conquering heroes. And this led them into ever wilder excesses of joy. They embraced strangers, they kissed each other, they danced and clapped and shouted: they seemed to float on its energy.

Next to Budai a silver-clad girl with golden-brown skin and a head of woolly black hair was beating a drum. She must have been part of the procession when it was at its orderly stage, one among many girls in silver who only later melted into the crowd. She can’t have been much more than fifteen but she beat her drum tirelessly, her face transfigured by a passionate enthusiasm, so much so that she was almost beside herself, the whites of her eyes prominent, her gaze fixed somewhere above. Budai could not help thinking that though still a child she would have no hesitation in offering up her life if it became necessary.

A little way down the road they were building barricades. They had taken up the paving stones and gathered furniture from the nearby houses, continuing to bring out sideboards and pianos, also building a small hill of sand and pebbles as wide and high as they could on top of which they fixed a flag.

A line of uniformed men with guns were waiting in riot order on the next corner, blocking the side-street, their uniforms consisting of those ubiquitous canvas overalls and tunics. The crowd recoiled but a bunch of young women started teasing them. They approached ever closer, clapping and dancing, however much the officer in command yelled at them, taking no notice of him but pinning flowers in the young men’s berets and when they raised their guns, planting one in the barrel too. This encouraged others to come forward, offering them cigarettes, embracing them from front and from rear, slapping their shoulders, shaking their hands and smiling, loudly explaining the state of affairs to them. Within a couple of minutes of this display of friendship the soldiers had been unarmed. The side street that had been blocked off now lay open and the crowd swept down it, carrying Budai with them. Soldiers who a few moments ago were barring their way joined them now, men in tunics marching along, laughing and singing with the rest. Here and there you could see a member of the crowd carrying one of the official rifles.

Reaching a narrow street, they merged with a boisterous crowd already there. A large anonymous grey building looked down on them, all the windows of its four storeys full of curious faces. There was a great deal of coming and going in the smaller houses opposite. The whole street felt like an ants’ nest. Budai tried to push his way through and saw that the gates of the grey building were locked, its great iron doors barred and reinforced with bolts and straps. A tank sat in front of it, blocking the entrance with its weight of metal.

It wasn’t clear to him quite what was happening so, following a hunch, he walked into one of the houses opposite and though the gateway, the stairs and internal corridors were already packed with people no-one asked him where he was going. He reached the top floor without any difficulty and went through an open door into a flat facing the street front. There were a number of people already in the various rooms. Clearly they could not all be living here, in fact the tenants themselves might be elsewhere. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down on the seething masses as waves and counter-waves of them flowed to and fro. He also took the opportunity of observing the neighbouring houses and assumed they were as packed as this one was.

Opposite him in one of the first-floor windows of the grey building people were setting up a loudspeaker to address the street. The crowd below watched this suspiciously, a little quieter now than before, every so often shouting something in mock encouragement. A buzz and crackle signalled that the loudspeaker had been switched on. The set started to whistle and fizz. Once the interference was gone, a female voice was heard gabbling something very fast, followed by a few seconds heavy with silence, followed by the striking of a gong. Then a deeper, more resonant male voice addressed the crowd in ceremonial fashion:

‘Tchetchencho…’

But the very first word roused a chorus of disapproval, whistles, boos, and general grumbling. Even the slim black girl leaning on the balcony railings next to him shook her fist in anger. The voice repeated slightly less certainly:

‘Tchetchencho…’

This roused such an explosion of elemental rage the speaker couldn’t go on. A brick sailed over the street. It must have been thrown from the very house Budai himself was occupying. It only succeeded in hitting the wall of the grey building where it shattered and fell to the ground. The second struck the window-frame, the third hit the loudspeaker full on. The loudspeaker fell silent. The people gathered in the windows of the grey building vanished: the onlookers drew back. In front of the gate the tank started up, its turret swung around, the barrel extending menacingly from the closed metal box. The people in the street moved aside but not very far, remaining close to the tank, chanting slogans at its invisible crew, raising their arms in oaths of allegiance. Then they sang their anthem again:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé…

In the meanwhile others continued to throw bricks so that eventually Budai felt anxious enough to leave the building. On his way out he came across great piles of bricks in the yard that served as an ammunition store for the besiegers who had formed a human chain to convey the bricks to the front line.

Just as he reached the gate a few trucks appeared at the end of the street full of uniformed men. They advanced together blowing their horns, forcing their way through the crowd that was not at all keen to let them through. A tall, muscular man leapt on top of the leading truck — he must have been an officer though he wore the same uniform as the others, without insignia. He spoke sharply, clearly, in a voice that could be heard a long way off, a voice used to command that rose over the shouting and yelling. He spoke briefly in a clipped military tone, his gestures decisive and harsh, waving his arms: he was probably calling on the mob to disperse. But he was shouted down by the impatient and ever more hostile crowd and soon enough a brick was flying in his direction too. Though the brick passed within inches of him, the officer showed no fear. He cast a contemptuous eye in the direction from which the brick had come and swung from the truck in a manner that implied impending danger.

Uniformed men leapt off the truck and formed a cordon to cover the whole width of the street. They started to press the crowd back but there weren’t very many of them and their combined physical force was nowhere near enough, not even after repeated efforts. Then they tried using the fire hose, aiming jets right and left. Those in front who were struck directly crept back into the ranks, drenched and dripping, but one well-aimed brick struck the hand of the soldier holding the hose and broke the hose in the process.

Next the soldiers started lobbing smoke bombs. This was more effective: the crowd did begin to break up and were forced back, then had to run away to avoid the white billowing puffballs. The smoke did not reach Budai but he was caught up with everyone rushing this way and that. Some turned down the crossroads directly behind them. Budai followed, then skipped over a nearby park fence and scampered down to the next corner.

As he stopped to get his breath he spotted a half-lowered set of awnings under which a lot of others were ducking and vanishing. He joined them to see what was going on. There were steps leading down into a kind of cellar lit only by naked light-bulbs, the place lukewarm and smelling faintly of hemp. It must have been the storeroom of a rope and canvas shop as there were rows of folded sacks beside the lime-washed walls with great rolls of canvas and rope piled over them from floor to ceiling. Other shelves were packed with balls of string and straps. And then there was the crowd, a great mix of men, women and youths. Budai could not decide at first what they were doing here: could they be examining the rope?

A smaller alcove opened to the left and people were crowding into it. He had to stand on tiptoe to see what was happening. A tall, jaundiced-looking, droopy-moustached man in a leather jacket was distributing machineguns from a box, exchanging a few words with whoever was next in line, then shaking hands before handing the gun over. Some people were wearing uniforms, those of the kind he already knew: conductors, boys and girls in green waterproofs, a lot of common canvas tunics. There was even a fireman among them. Others were wearing various forms of combat gear, a mixture of the civilian and the camouflaged military, as well as boots, felt waistcoats, earth-coloured raincoats, shoulder straps and ammunition belts as well as fur hats or peaked police caps. There were even a few in striped prison outfits, convicts with shorn hair, of the sort who had been in the procession in the morning. Could they have been part of the parade or were they just protesters in fancy dress? And if they really were prisoners, what had they been imprisoned for? Were they criminals or political enemies? And how, in any case, did they manage to get free?

Budai seemed to have stumbled on one of the cells of the group in command of the district, possibly the whole city. The continual coming-and-going bore witness to that. Later people brought drinks too, some of them rolling a small barrel down the steps. It was received with cheers and whoops of joy. The barrel was immediately seized, a hole sprung and the contents emptied into jugs and bottles. He was invited to take a swig from the flask that was doing the rounds: it wasn’t the sweet-sickly swill that was measured from taps in the bars but a genuine, strong, head-splitting brandy.

Another group arrived at the same time as the barrel, among them a strange, bent-looking girl with a machine gun. Her posture was so bad she might have been genuinely crippled. Her neck was short, her brow low, her face flat and simian. She looked almost simple, her eyes shining with a peculiar light that looked as though she might be suffering from cataracts. She did not drink with the rest, nor did she speak or laugh, she just examined everything, sniffing around, in constant, slow, soft, mysterious motion, checking everybody with a sly look, as if she were seeking someone in particular or waiting for someone to arrive. Perhaps she felt that her hour had arrived now she had a rifle on her back. Where did they get her from?

Just as everyone was drinking and having a good time a blond young man entered, at first almost unnoticed. Silence settled around him: slowly all conversations stopped. He simply stood on the steps, without moving or saying a word until his eyes got used to the dim light. He might have been about twenty-five, with thin pale lips, his eyes were icy grey. He was wearing a tattered cap, stout boots and a dirty green tracksuit top with a gun belt. He rested his right hand on his holster. When everyone had fallen completely silent he descended a few steps and still without saying a word knocked the flask from the hand of a boy who was just about to drink from it. The brandy spilled on the floor. When the boy made a grab for his flask the newcomer slapped him across the face.

Strangely enough, the boy he had hit looked to be the stronger of the two and he too had a gun but he did not think to strike back or even defend himself. Nor did anyone else so much as mutter. The people in the alcove drew back and even the monkey-faced girl stood stock still… The blond youth tightened his belt a notch and said something to break the sudden silence. He spoke very quietly in a flat, passionless voice, breaking the words up so clearly that for once even Budai could almost make out what he was saying. It was something like this:

‘Deperety glut ugyurumba?’ He looked round questioningly. People did not look at him, in fact most of them lowered their eyes. ‘Bezhetcsh alaulp atipatityapp? Atipatityapp?’ The man with the droopy moustache and jaundiced face who was dispensing machineguns wanted to say something but the blond shut him up and calmly dismissed him. ‘Je durunty…’

He spoke for two or three minutes in the same flat tone while everyone listened intently, standing in a circle round him, hardly breathing. He ended on a question, though even then his voice hardly rose.

‘Eleégye kurupundu dibádi?… Dibádi, aka tereshe mutyu lolo dibádi?’

‘Dibádi! Dibádi!’ they all roared back at him in high spirits.

No-one bothered with the drinks anymore. They swarmed into the street. Tanks happened to be passing at that moment, rumbling by, deafeningly loud. The turrets were open, uniformed men looking out of them. Those who had issued from the cellar store quickly surrounded the tanks and mounted them, led by the blond youth in the green track-suit top. There was a replay of the earlier scene: much debate with the civilians explaining matters with wide sweeping gestures. The uniformed troops were visibly confused by the sudden onslaught. The tanks came to a halt, the helmeted figures clambered out. One, who first removed his headphones, presumably the commanding officer, raised his arms for silence and asked something. He received a hundred replies, hats being waved everywhere, in response to which he ducked back down into the tank. After a short interval he stuck his head out again and simply said:

‘Bugyurim.’

The crowd burst into cries of joy, cheering and welcoming him. Someone produced a flag, the one Budai had seen before, with red and black stripes, and to more loud cheers fixed it on the leading tank. The tanks then set off again, rumbling on, now laden with troops and civilians all heading in one direction, back towards the grey building. Soon enough they reached the end house. There it had grown dense again: it seemed that attempts to clear the area had not been entirely successful or that others had since come along to join them. The windows of this building too were crammed with onlookers, once again a mixture of troops and civilians, much like outside. Budai tried to stay close to the blond youth and keep his green tracksuit top in sight. The bent-backed girl with the machine gun and idiot eyes seemed to be following Budai, sticking close to him, constantly pattering along behind him.

Now there were shots, a few stray volleys and some longer rounds. It was hard to tell from where Budai was whether it started from inside or outside the building. Perhaps there had been a few warning shots from within and the besiegers had replied with a show of force. Or it might have been the other way round. But it hardly mattered who started it. There were so many guns in the street and the mood was so tense that something was bound to happen. People might have been shooting from the roofs too. The rattling of guns was soon underscored by another deeper, more compact bass noise that sounded like thunder. It must have been the tanks firing. One section of the grey wall fell away and collapsed into the street, leaving a great gaping hole.

Automatic fire opened up from inside the building, spraying the street. Panic broke out. The crowd broke up again and people fled in terror, everyone seeking shelter wherever it could be found, in nearby doorways, behind advertising pillars, by parked cars, by dustbins or simply lying flat on their stomachs by the walls of locked shops. As the roadway cleared a good number remained lying on the ground, motionless or waving and crying out in pain, some rising and reeling about in search of shelter. A wounded woman was weeping and pleading for someone to help her but then another round of automatic fire from the floor above them swept across the street.

The small group Budai had joined sought cover by the blackened pillars of a ruined house. His whole body was shaking with a mixture of fury, frustration and helpless desire for vengeance. Hatred rose in his throat like a fist. He cursed and swore at the hidden enemy along with the rest, calling them ‘murderers, bloody murderers’. But after the next volley he felt so frightened he took to his heels, scrambling past the sooty, angular walls of the ruin, desperately looking for a way, any way, out. He needed to get as far as he could, somewhere he could no longer even hear the sound of gunfire.

It seemed an earlier catastrophe had overtaken the house. The ruins suggested that it was not simply fire, for the blackened plaster bore traces of bullet holes and shell fragments. It might have been destroyed by bombs, by heavy artillery and hand-to-hand combat, and only after that set on fire. But what was the occasion of the catastrophe? What had happened? Was it a siege? A war? A revolution? And who were the combatants? Who fought whom and why?

He had discovered a way out. There were just a few stairs he needed to run up and at the top there was an open corridor that surely led to freedom. But someone called him and snatched at his coat. It was the blond youth and when Budai turned around in fear the youth beckoned him with his finger. Budai stopped in his tracks, not knowing what to do, not understanding where he should go and why. The boy extended his hand, offering him a revolver and now that both of them were still, pressed it into Budai’s hand. He suddenly felt ashamed: that icy-grey gaze could clearly see straight through him. He would have liked to explain himself but how, and in any case there was no time. So he merely weighed the revolver in his palm and nodded in confusion as if to say, very well, I am with you.

They stole through the ruins as far as the first crossroads that ran to one side of the grey house to the left of the main elevation. On the opposite side there rose a modern, light-coloured round building like a tower and they ran into it. Inside, a spiral ramp some four or five metres in diameter led up to plateaus on various levels, each packed with ten to twelve cars. It was a multi-storey car park, a light construction into which many cars could fit, though currently there was no-one going in or out. There was a large mass of men there too, armed, like themselves. The battle had spread over the whole district. They were firing from windows using the barriers to the ramp, the parked cars, or anything else they could find as cover.

Budai and the youth made their way up the inner edge of the spiral ramp a little back from the firing positions, then up an extra set of stairs. Gunmen had set themselves up there too as best they could. There were ammunitions dumps, relays, notices written in various hands, arrows pointing out directions, even some first-aid stations in the corners for the wounded. The youth in the green tracksuit top briefly consulted with various individuals, then directed them to the top, floor and beyond that into the roof, vaulted with a series of wave-like forms, from which opened a series of what might have been tiny, circular air vents overlooking the street. From here, they could shoot down at the roof of the building opposite.

The silent ape-faced girl immediately took up one of the positions and began firing.

Also in their company were the young man who had earlier been slapped across the face and the man with the leather jacket and droopy moustache. Just as familiar was the fireman in his red helmet and one of the convicts. This little improvised group was joined by a few uniformed troops in tunics who had transferred their loyalty and some nine or ten civilians with rifles or machineguns who had attached themselves to the cause somewhere along the way. There was another woman there too, a stout, older black woman who was unarmed, her face wreathed in an enormous permanent happy smile. There was no argument about who was the leader, it was the blond young man in the green tracksuit top. He directed operations with a confidence that exuded authority and gave each one of them their specific tasks.

They spent the whole afternoon and evening up in the roof firing at the grey building opposite. Having had no experience of such things Budai was shown how to use and recharge his revolver. Most of the time he was firing bullets blindly with no great sense of purpose. The enemy had in any case withdrawn from the windows on the far side, reappearing only for the odd second to take better aim but still kept up a constant exchange. The chances were that there were a great many of them too, and probably just as mixed a company as was to be found on this side — it was not a battle between ethnic groups.

So many other things happened that evening it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. They fired and rested and fired again from different vents. Food was brought, a cauldron of soup a little like goulash, slightly sweet, with herbs and bits of meat. There were also loaves of black bread that normally served as military rations. Later, one of their number, a young man in a raincoat, was wounded and suddenly fell back, his face gone pale. He made no noise but you could see from his tight lips and desperate looks that he was in pain. He was taken away on a stretcher.

Budai managed to sleep for a couple of hours. They had created a temporary resting place out of bits of polystyrene in a corner of the loft. The crazy girl seemed to be close to him as he slept, at least from time to time. She did not address him — no one ever heard her speak, she might have been genuinely dumb — she just fixed him with a blank look that was plainly insolent, leaning on her elbow next to him, never without her machinegun. What did she want from him? She made Budai nervous even when he was half-asleep: he felt tense and anxious not knowing why she was there. How come they had been thrown together like this? What had he to do with a half-wit of the underclass? Later it seemed she was holding him in her arms, embracing him closely with a shameless sexual pleasure though he was all the time as aware of the foul smell of her perspiration as of the battle going on outside. He was also frightened of the severe youth in the green tracksuit top. What would he do if he caught them in this dim corner? It was of course possible that he was imagining all this, that it was an illusion based on acute anxiety. Later still an enormous explosion shook the loft, perhaps a bomb or a grenade — or was that hallucination too?

The evidence suggested it was no hallucination for when they left the multi-storey car park at first light of dawn and looked back, they could see that the wall had gaping holes in it and that the cars parked there had been more or less shot to pieces. The grey building opposite was in a still worse condition with what might have been tank damage: a wide crack ran across the elevation and one corner had collapsed right up to the fourth floor. There were a lot fresh scars and holes.

The little group found its way back to the front gate of the grey building. That obviously had been the chief point of the attack. The burnt-out turret of the tank that had been guarding it was lying on its side and the tracks of the vehicle had become detached, half twisted off. The most daring attackers now used it as cover, firing from behind it, then put their weights to the great mass of steel and with an enormous effort and loud cries pushed it ahead of them for use as a battering ram, thinking to break down the gate which was barred and bolted but shot full of holes now and therefore buttressed on the inside with sandbags, struts and beams.

It did not give easily: they had to shove the great armoured tank against it ten or fifteen times with constant encouragement and a deal of shouting. The thick iron doors kept bowing and bending but they always sprang back. Then the assailants started throwing grenades at it so the whole thing creaked and shrieked and was covered in smoke until finally they succeeded in loosening it from its hinges. Once the grenade smoke had cleared, they tried another push and the gate gave, the whole lot simply falling away. The crowd pressed through with cries of triumph, those behind pushing and encouraging those ahead, hoping for an unobstructed route into the building.

But the gap behind the gates was quickly filled by ranks of men in tunics, the same tunics as worn by many in the crowd — or might there be some difference in the head-to-toe uniform that only Budai hadn’t noticed? Those who had swarmed in noticed the automatics and machineguns and stopped in their tracks for a moment. Budai was not right at the front but close enough to take a brief survey of the terrain. From inside the building a hoarse, choking voice was screaming above them, almost certainly giving a last warning. But even if they wanted to heed the message there was no way back since ever more people were arriving behind them, pressing them forward: there was no option but to rush the defending lines…

A volley of gunfire. Cries, protests, chaos. Commands screeched, almost sung out. A second volley, practically next to Budai’s ears. There was no stopping now. People forced their way in. There could be no resistance as they pushed forward, treading over the wounded and dead, over those with guns, over everything and everyone. Another wave of the living collapsed following the third volley; the blond boy was next to Budai, drenched and impassioned, fighting his way through the mêlée of bodies, clutching his revolver, waving his companions on with his left arm, his voice loud, lost in the general noise of the struggle so that only by the movement of his mouth could you tell he was calling. Budai followed him in a red haze, a kind of dream in which he was no longer afraid of anything, an ecstasy of movement in which the only aim was to get through. The twisted, ape-faced girl at his side grabbed at his shoulder and fell but he was no longer concerned with that: he was driving and ploughing on, wrestling down machinegunners, hitting out, screaming with the rest in a voice so strange he had never heard anything like it issuing from his own mouth.

Suddenly there was a great lurch forward and they found themselves inside the narrow little paved courtyard. They had broken through the line of defence. As Budai looked back, the gate was completely filled by a dark mass of insurgents: their numbers were overwhelming. There was no defence left now, it had quite vanished and the victorious crowd was roaming here and there through the building, intoxicated with its own triumph. A staircase led up from the corner of the yard. Budai ran up the first and then the second floor with others, excited and curious to see what they would find when they arrived at the top. But there were only hallways, doors, rooms and office furniture. The mob was everywhere, kicking things over, shoving things aside, searching through desks, throwing books and files here and there so that paper covered the whole floor. People ran round wildly, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, the armed and the unarmed. Some of them were wounded and wore bandages. Budai couldn’t tell insider from outsider, nor had he any idea what purpose the building served and why it was necessary to occupy it.

Some people were dragging a man down the corridor. They were led by two men with automatics with many following behind, all of them, including anyone else they passed, trying to get to the captive, to kick him, hit him and beat him down, screaming at him with hatred on their faces, so that even the armed men could not defend him. The captive was a tall man of military bearing, his boiler-suit uniform practically torn off him, his face and his shirt completely covered in blood, his arm raised to his eyes to ward off further blows. A thin girl, who looked like an angel with her long blonde hair, cleverly slipped through the ring around the man and spat directly in his face.

Others had been captured too and were also being hauled down towards the main gate. One woman was being pulled along by her hair. People were tugging and tearing at it. She fought and struggled using her nails and teeth but was soon forced to her knees. She protested and wept, spreading out her hands, begging for mercy. They tore off her skirt, then her pink knickers too so she was forced to slide along on her naked rump as they dragged her all the way down the stairs.

Budai was caught in the whirl and found himself back at the gate. There were terrible scenes of accusation and vengeance. One after the other individuals were brought down and given over to the lynch mob, most of the victims already badly beaten, hardly able to support themselves, others half-dead. What Budai couldn’t understand was how they were identified in the general chaos. Many of them were wearing canvas tunics but a lot of the accusers were in similar outfits. It bothered him. What was the difference between them? Civilians were being brought to judgment too, more women, then another group of uniformed men. There must have been an element of pure chance in the selection, the product of a moment of fury or a sudden urge in sheer blind mass hysteria.

It was as though the combatants themselves had changed: he couldn’t see anyone he had fought with. On the other hand, there were ever more mysterious, suspicious-looking figures, some of them demagogues of the first order. Take that dissolute, bearded man with the pockmarked face who looked strangely familiar: he was halfway through directing the hanging of one of the prisoners. The unfortunate victim had little if any life in him but they stripped him half-bare all the same, pulled off his boots, tied his ankles together and hanged him just like that, upside down from the lamppost in front of the gate with everyone cheering, cursing and laughing.

A few armed men tried to resist. You could see that they did not approve and wanted to cut the corpse down. A student who looked saner than the rest tried to dissuade those around him from more killing and used his own body to defend two middle-aged black women who looked as though they might be cleaners. He had little success. The furious mob shouted him down and the bearded, pockmarked man turned on him, pushed him aside and shouted:

‘Durundj!’

Now Budai remembered who the pockmarked figure was: it was his cellmate at the police station, the failed opera singer, the man with whom he could not get a word in edgeways, or if it not him then someone very like him. He was a proper guttersnipe this hangman-in-chief, clearly enjoying the atrocities, waving a metal bar around, bringing it down on a captive soldier’s head. As the soldier collapsed, the man leapt on him, knelt across his chest and stabbed him several times in the neck and in the balls too while the other was still kicking. Then they brought petrol, poured it over him and set it alight so the body blackened as it smoked, giving off the smell of roasting flesh. Nor was this the last of their terrible deeds.

In the meantime the young blond man in the green tracksuit top appeared running out of the building with four or five companions as if he had been told what was going on outside. As soon as he appeared the bloodthirsty crowd hesitated. It wasn’t clear whether that was because they regarded him as their leader or because his sheer presence commanded respect… He hurried over to a group of prisoners who looked resigned to their fate, pushed the gathering mob out of the way and kicked the bearded man on the backside so he fell on his face. Everyone laughed. He picked out the uniformed ones among the prisoners and arranged them in a row with a few sharp words of command. Slowly and reluctantly they obeyed him. He sent them to stand by the wall. The crowd drew back and fell silent.

About a dozen captives were lined up, tensely waiting. Most of them were already wounded, their arms in slings, their heads and brows swathed in bandages. A middle-aged, greying man who cut an elegant figure even in his torn tunic was being supported by the man next to him. He was smoking quite calmly and watching the roused mob without any sign of fear. The blond boy mustered them with a glance of his blue-grey eyes, his lips clamped tight, expressionless. He spoke softly to them and they all raised their hands. Once they had done so he took a machinegun from one of his companions, fiddled with it, examined it and even took a look down the barrel while the uniformed prisoners stood with their hands in the air. There was no fear on their faces, simply a look of incomprehension or confusion as if they didn’t quite know the best way to behave in the given situation. One of them blew his nose without lowering the other arm.

The blond boy stood sideways on to them and shot from the hip. He fired a long round right and left, scything through them. They fell on top of each other, some stiff, others still moving their limbs, even rising a little. The grey-haired man took one more drag of his cigarette, flicked it away and only then did he sit down on the pavement with a glance that looked sleepy, faintly bored, as if he had acted voluntarily, even setting his arms on the ground so he could rest his head on them. On the far side of the line two people were still moaning and groaning. The boy in the green tracksuit top, lightly blinking, fired another round that way. Then all movement ceased.

Budai saw three more rounds of executions that morning. He did not even flinch at the third. He could bear to look on; he had developed his immunity. If there were a God, he thought wearily, he would ask that his heart should never grow cold to pity.

He was tired and hungry. He drifted through the crowded streets where tumultuous waves of people pulsed and swayed, their ranks, if anything, even denser then before, all excited by the prospect of what might happen next. Small knots of them were gathering together in debate, collecting around ad hoc speakers. There were aeroplanes humming above and beyond that a constant slow, deep rumble of a city under siege. From time to time trucks would speed by full of armed men. Here and there people were singing and whenever someone came by with the latest news he was immediately surrounded and questioned. The walls too were plastered with announcements, not only printed posters but hand-written messages. Ever more were going up.

Further on, one neighbourhood lay utterly in ruins, all the buildings collapsed and shot to pieces, the street piled high with rubble. One or two fragments were still smoking: there must have been a fierce battle here. A lot of people were clearly moving on, carrying bundles and packets. Families suddenly homeless were pulling carts with bits of salvaged furniture and other miscellaneous possessions. A ragged, long-haired figure stood in the middle of the road, bearded like a prophet, his mad eyes turning this way and that as he flung his arms about and cried the same phrase over and over again like a curse:

‘Tohoré! Muharé! Tohoré! Muharé! ’

Budai felt sick without quite knowing what was wrong with him. It was partly nausea. There was a nervous feeling in his stomach that he put down to hunger, but even after he had managed to grab a bite — a cheap corn and flour mush he bought at a stand — the nausea persisted.

In the afternoon it started to rain. It was a heavy spring shower. The distant rumbling suddenly grew louder and closer too, ever more frightening. A peculiar restlessness took hold of people: they were running this way and that, keeping close to the walls, sheltering in doorways and abandoned shops, searching for cover as the growl became a threatening roar. Crowds were mumbling and muttering together, some women weeping and screaming in terror. A little further on people were unfurling an enormous black and red flag bearing the symbol of a bird. They stretched it between two windows so it was flat against the wall. Together with a few other pedestrians, Budai took shelter in a china shop on the corner and watched events through the broken window, waiting to see what would happen.

New formations of troops arrived in armoured cars and tanks, on motorcycles, heavily armed detachments. Their uniforms were different from the ones he had seen before: a pale, off-white drill. They wore camouflaged helmets. Two tanks stopped directly in front of the shop and uniformed men stuck their heads out, pointing and shouting to each other — the language they spoke was as strange to Budai as the rest had been.

The upshot of the brief discussion was that they aimed the bigger guns at the large flag and fired. Immediately a cloud of smoke and dust swirled up and most of the wall collapsed. The next shot so shook the building that plates, trays, vases and glasses in the china shop tumbled to the ground and smashed.

Budai ran on, his heart almost giving way. The shower had become a downpour and within a few minutes he was soaked through. He was somewhere he had not been before, a working-class district, he supposed, an estate with enormous, bare tenements, ugly, awkward masses with countless tiny windows, the buildings arranged round a cobbled, oval-shaped open space. Further motorised detachments were rumbling through the streets behind him but even in the rain the open space was full of people. It was only after a while he noticed that the crowd was exclusively female, old and young women, matrons and girls, many with umbrellas. There were at least ten occasions when he thought he saw Bebé among them.

The soldiers arrived and the women surrounded them all talking together, making broad gestures. The soldiers made no answer, staring ahead with stony gazes, their expressions unfathomable as the rain beat on their helmets. Budai couldn’t tell whether they were silent because they spoke a different language and did not understand the women or because they were forbidden to answer. Eventually the women broke into the familiar anthem:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé

Bügyüti nyemelága

Petyitye!

Having pronounced the last word like a challenge, they cried out bitterly and attacked the white-uniformed men who even now did not react. But the crowd had been changing: ever more men had joined it. They appeared to be doing no more than drifting towards the armed cars out of sheer curiosity but Budai saw that some carried guns under their coats. As their numbers grew, they exchanged significant glances. The women meanwhile were carefully drawing back as if this had all been arranged, part of a strategy.

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.

He 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.