“It is tomorrow,” Melanie said. Her words sounded perfectly formed in her mind, yet she could feel her tongue slurring them. She needed to go home, get some sleep. She should’ve been in bed hours ago. She had a big day tomorrow. Which was today.
She and Nanette were American expatriates drunk on youth, overpriced Dutch vodka, and some sour substance they mistook for personal freedom. Eve and Adam’s served as a second home, or perhaps third, a kind of base camp for their various recreations throughout the city. It was located on the ground floor of a bullet-hole-riddled apartment building next to the Danube, on the Pest side. Because the dimmed lights made it difficult to see from one end of the bar to the other (“Atmospheric!” one guidebook said, alongside a photo Nanette had taken) and offered a view of the Danube (“Scenic!”), Jimmy charged whatever he wanted for watered-down Guinness and packs of broken Chio Chips. He played up his campy luck-o’-the-Irish brogue when tourists arrived with stacks of newly changed forints. It was Monopoly money to them. As Budapest’s only authentic Irish pub, Eve and Adam’s ranked among the city’s most tourist-infested and expensive bars, but it was definitely convenient. They lived just half a block down Katona József Street, up a mountain of stone stairs.
The cold air penetrated what few clothes Mel had on even before the lock clicked behind them and the round Guinness sign blinked off. Her hair, a thick, Ride of the Valkyries—blonde curtain, covered her whole back and was long enough to wear like a scarf, but even that couldn’t keep her warm. The bar’s exit was built into the corner of the block and faced southwest toward the southern tip of the island and the brightly lit Margit Bridge. The Buda Hills sat dark and dormant across the river. Living so close to the pub, neither of them had bothered to wear a jacket, though Nan did have a camera bag slung over her shoulder. Break-ins were a regular fact of life in Hungary, and the petty crime in Budapest was outrageous; she kept her most expensive and irreplaceable equipment with her at all times, and even there it wasn’t always safe from the Gypsies on the metro. A few of her lenses, from Germany or maybe Scandinavia, were worth more than their respective cameras. Melanie should have been equally protective of her violin, which she bought in Austria from the same venerable firm that supplied instruments to the Vienna Philharmonic.
Instead of heading home, and to sleep, Nanette dragged Mel by the hand through the park at Jászai Mari Square and to the körút. There was no traffic at this time of night. They followed the tracks of the 4/6 tram, which during the day careened down the center of the four-lane road. At the middle of the bridge, a small observation deck hung over the water. Sometimes, when the weather was warmer, packs of drunken expats stood up there and revealed various parts of their anatomies or even peed on the tour boats passing below. A small pilot light of vodka in Melanie’s belly emanated a pale glow that she felt all the way up in her face. They shivered and hugged each other for warmth, and Nanette tried without luck to light a cigarette. She got angry and threw her lighter into the dark of the river. Melanie had grown more or less accustomed to Nanette’s outbursts. Their affection had recently grown somewhat less reciprocal than it once was.
A tanker passed lazily beneath them. The loud, mechanical drone precluded any chance of conversation. The ship was dark, though, making it appear like an apparition, an abandoned ghost schooner making its way slowly down to the Black Sea under its own steerage. The streetlights from the bridge fell onto the boat like candle wax. In an hour or so, the city would shut off all the lamps along the Danube, even at the parliament building and on the Chain Bridge. Mel attributed her fascination with the ship to the advanced state of her intoxication. She tried not to think about tomorrow’s concert. Today’s. When she focused too clearly on it, another warm wave of nausea tipped her off balance. She shivered again and held Nanette tighter. The vessel disappeared downriver, and in the absence of external noise she realized that most of the banging she heard had originated inside her own skull. This kind of intoxication, brought about by one vodka tonic after another, each intended to push her thoughts of the concert further away, carried with it a sickly, syrupy tinge. The queasiness was already starting to scratch its way up out of her stomach. She wouldn’t necessarily be ill, but there was something crude about vodka’s effects in comparison to, for example, the warmth of a nice burgundy or the gentle gravity of a Valium pilfered long ago from her mother’s medicine cabinet. She stared down at the water.
There existed any number of mythologies concerning the Danube, many of which had floated downstream from Vienna — which, since the death of Webern, she felt safe to regard as the least musical of all the so-called “musical cities”—and were evidenced in such novelty hits as “Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald” and “An der schönen blauen Donau.” One legend had it that the Danube only appeared blue to those who were in love. The river, called the Duna in Hungarian, defined and redefined Budapest every day, making it two distinct yet parallel cities divided by a shared mythos. Buda, on the right bank, was a land of large hills, grassy valleys, and vast stretches of dense forest. She and Nanette lived at the inner edge of Pest, the city’s — the entire nation’s — congested, urban core.
“Baby,” Nanette said through chattering teeth, “I’m afraid that one of these nights the Creature from the Blue Danube is going to climb up here and drag you away.”
“I hope it’s tonight,” Melanie said.
“Rrraawwrrr,” Nanette growled, and broke free of Melanie’s grip in order to swat at her with large amphibian hands. Melanie ran, hollering for dear life, chased in monster-like slow motion by Nan’s extended arms and curling claws. She arrived panting at their building, but Nanette had the keys so she cowered at the doorway, waiting. When the creature finally approached, its mouth opening and closing like a fish’s, Melanie put her hands to her frozen cheeks and let out a wide-eyed Hollywood-starlet scream. The sound reverberated down the street and bounced between the tall buildings. They cried with laughter as Nan fumbled with the lock. Melanie felt giddy and nauseous.
Their fin de siècle tenement filled the city block opposite Eve and Adam’s. The proximity and height of the building across the street ensured their flat was in total and perpetual darkness even during the sunniest days of summer. A huge Coca-Cola advertisement perched atop their roof like a crown, visible all the way from the top of the hills. They could see the runoff light reflected in the other building’s windows. When they threw parties, they simply told people to go to the Coke Building and look for their buzzer. Holes like the craters of Mars still pockmarked the façade where, in February 1945, it absorbed a significant quantity of German and Russian bullets while those two armies fought for control of the city. Nan finally unlocked the huge metal door and filled the entranceway with the same red light.
The elevator was broken again, or was still broken, so they hiked up the stairs to the third floor, which would have been the sixth floor in any other nation in the world, considering they needed to climb up six flights of stairs to get there. Their laughter and footsteps resounded through the inner courtyard, which was surrounded on all sides by landings that led to the apartments. Climbing the stairs never proved any easier drunk. Nanette had grown accustomed to dragging her camera bag to the top of everything from cathedral steeples to the rooftops of the prefab commie-condo high-rises of Békásmegyer, but each step required more and more effort of Melanie. She envied Nanette’s athletic frame, but not enough to accompany her to the gym every night or for the occasional run around the island. Practicing her violin sometimes six hours a day, plus full rehearsals with the opera orchestra a few afternoons each week, took up way too much of her time for that. Every spring she swore to lose fifteen pounds, but obsession with her artistic growth, or her perceived lack of artistic growth, had so far prevented her from flattening her stomach. She felt distinctly fat all the time, especially in comparison to her sexy roommate.