The snow would not let up. The streets were full of lively, happy sounds, but the slackening traffic, muffled by the heavy snowfall, made it evident that the big holiday had already begun. There were staggering drunks on the streets, too. I walked back to my hotel, took the vodka out of the refrigerator, and put it next to the telephone. I drank and waited for her call. Later I called her, and kept calling her at ever shorter intervals. A few minutes after midnight she called me. By then she was alone.
And this is about as much as I am able, or prepared, to tell about myself.
After this accidental meeting in Moscow, I didn't see my friend for a long time. Now and then his name would crop up. Reading his pieces about alienated, anxious, and feckless young men was like eating sawdust. A little over five years had passed when a few days before Christmas I had to fly to Zurich. Since I'd be away for only two days, I left my car in the parking lot of Budapest's Ferihegy Airport. When I returned and walked out of the terminal, as usual I couldn't find my car keys. They weren't in my coat or in my pant pockets. I kept feeling for them all over. They must be in my bag, then. Or I had lost them; it wouldn't have been the first time. My possessions don't stick with me either. All I had was a small suitcase stuffed with shirts and papers, and a large shopping bag full of presents. Putting my things in a luggage cart, I began searching for the keys.
While rummaging in my suitcase, I noticed that somebody just an arm's length away from me was sitting on the concrete guardrail of the steps. I took a good look at him only after I'd found the keys in one of my socks. He sat so close I didn't even have to raise my voice.
Did you just arrive or are you leaving? I asked, as if this were the most natural thing to ask, even though I saw that something was wrong. Neither the season nor the place nor the hour was right for anybody to be sitting there. It was getting dark; in the fine, drizzling fog the streetlights had been turned on. It was unpleasantly cold and clammy. He looked up at me, but I wasn't sure he recognized me. Until he began to shake his head I had the feeling that I might have made a mistake.
Are you waiting for somebody? I asked.
He said no, he wasn't waiting for anybody.
Then what are you doing here? I asked, a little annoyed.
He again shook his head silently.
In the intervening five years he probably hadn't changed more than I. I was still surprised to see his face so narrow and dried out, his thinning and graying hair. He looked as though the last drop of moisture had been squeezed from him. He was dry and wrinkled.
I stepped closer, showed him my key, and told him I'd gladly take him into town.
He shook his head no.
What the hell did he want to do, then?
Nothing, he said.
He was sitting between two large, well-stuffed suitcases. On the handles I could make out the tags of Interflug, the East German airline. Which made it clear that he wasn't departing but had just arrived. I simply thrust my valise in his lap, grabbed his heavy suitcases, and without saying a word headed for the parking lot. By the time I found my car and put his luggage in the trunk, he was standing there with my bag. He was handing it to me while his face remained inert, frighteningly expressionless.
Yet, strangely enough, his face was more determined-looking than ever. For all its softness, almost forceful. Gone, too, was that odd ambivalence that had so surprised me at our previous meeting. A clean face, free of shadows. And yet it was as if he himself did not reside in his own face. As if he'd sent himself away on some vacation. He was dry. I can't find a better word to describe him.
My car is usually pretty messy. I had to make room, toss things on the back seat. I tried to be quick and decisive, because I had the impression that he might slip away any moment, leaving his luggage behind. Or I should say I had this impression because he remained totally impassive. He was standing there but wasn't really there.
We were already on the highway when I offered him a cigarette. He declined; I lit up.
I told him I'd take him home.
No, not there.
Where, then? I asked.
He didn't answer.
I couldn't say why, but I had to look at him. I wasn't waiting for an answer. I knew he couldn't answer because he had nothing to say. He had no place to go. And anyone without a place cannot talk about that. At regular intervals we passed under bright arc lights, and therefore after a while I had to turn again to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. He was crying. I'd never seen a crying man look like that. His face remained dry and impassive, as before. Still, drops of water were coming out of his eyes and trickling down along his nose.
I told him to come to our house. It's Christmas tomorrow. He'll spend it with us.
Oh no.
I wanted to say something simple and comforting. We might just have a white Christmas. Which sounded pretty inane, so after that I kept quiet for a long time.
I never before had the feeling, except with my children, that someone was so completely dependent on me. It was a feeling I probably wouldn't have experienced even if I had to save him from drowning or cut a noose off his neck. But he gave no indication that he intended to part with his life. The empty shell of his body was still alive. There was no need for heroic gestures. I couldn't have known what had happened to him and wasn't eager to find out. I didn't have to save him. Besides, one can sense when it's all right to ask questions and when it isn't. He was only entrusted to my care for now, and it didn't seem such an unpleasant burden. Many of his passions had burned out in him, and the void made it possible for my simple, pragmatic abilities to come to the fore.
We reached the city. I always have to cast a glance at the huge building of the Ludovika Military Academy, where my father had spent so much of his life. Then came the Polyclinic on Ullői Road, where, in a second-floor ward, my mother had died two years earlier. And right there, while driving between those two buildings, I felt an urgent need to decide just where we were going. I didn't look at him.
I said I had another idea. But for that I had to know whether he insisted on staying in the city.
No, he didn't insist on anything. But really, I shouldn't worry about it.
I should just drop him off somewhere. Anywhere. On the boulevard. He'll get on a streetcar there.
I said I wouldn't hear of it. That streetcar idea sounded rather fishy to me, anyway. But if he didn't mind staying with me for a little while longer, we could go for a ride.
He couldn't answer.
Later, however, I had the impression that something vaguely resembling a feeling drifted back into that empty shell. It got very warm in the car. Maybe it was this heat that deceived me; still, I felt my solution was wonderful, if only because it couldn't have been simpler.
My paternal grandfather was a very wealthy man. He was a mill owner, a grain merchant, and he also dabbled in real estate. The brief period of unparalleled growth and prosperity around the turn of the century seems to us almost too fabulous to be true. It was a time when great fortunes could be made almost overnight. It's all the more incredible since the economic history of Hungary, starting from the last days of the Middle Ages, has been the history of crises, depressions, and emergencies of one sort or another. Yet, we know that there was such a period because most of the schools where we study, the edifices where decisions affecting our lives are made, the hospitals we go to to be cured, and even the sewers where we empty our waste were all built around that time. Maybe not too many people like the ponderous style of these structures, but everybody appreciates their made-to-last sturdiness. During this period, not too long after the turn of the century, my grandfather had two houses built for himself: a fully winterized summer home on Swabian Hill, where Mother and I had lived until her death, and a spacious and romantic-looking two-story hunting lodge. He liked to hunt small game and chose a spot not too far from the city where he could indulge his passion. In a flat region along the Danube he could shoot ducks and coots in the tideland willows, and pheasants and rabbits in the open fields.