He stubs out his cigarette in one of the sand-filled ashtrays and takes the elevator up to the fifth floor.
He and Norbi are sharing a room.
Most of the prostitutes in Kuwait are from Southeast Asia.
At supper on Thursday word goes around that they’ll be flying out tonight. They pack their stuff and wait in the lobby, still half-expecting to be told that it was a false alarm. That has already happened twice.
Buses arrive, though.
There’s a murmur of excitement when they see them through the front of the hotel. These two white buses with nothing on them to identify whose they are.
For quite a long time after that nothing happens. The buses just wait there, with their Pakistani drivers smoking next to them.
Then finally the major arrives and they board the buses, which set off through the mild, quiet streets of the city.
Facing them from the front, holding on to two seats to maintain his balance, the major says that they’re on their way to Ali Al Salem.
They won’t be flying home, though.
He tells them that they’ll be flying to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
“From there there’ll be transport to Tata. I’m sorry, lads,” he says over their disappointed voices. “At least we’re going home tonight.”
There’s some problem with the plane, though.
It doesn’t leave until the next morning.
They spend the night lying on the floor at Ali Al Salem, using their packs as pillows.
There’s a table with sandwiches wrapped in plastic, baskets of Mars and Snickers bars, glass bottles of soft drinks, and tokens for the coffee machine.
There’s also a cigarette machine.
Using his last Kuwaiti coins, with their Arabic writing and pictures of sailboats, he buys a few packs to take home.
It’s already midmorning when they walk across the asphalt to the plane. The plane is painted pale gray and like the buses doesn’t have any markings on it to show whose it is.
It’s an American plane, though. They know that.
For one thing, there are Americans on it too.
They mostly arrive in the morning, the Americans, looking like they’ve had a proper night’s sleep. They’re noisy and high-spirited.
“Where you guys from?” one of them asks.
“Hungary,” István says.
“Oh yeah?” the American says.
“Yeah,” István says.
With their heavy packs they walk across the asphalt to the waiting plane.
It’s slightly cloudy. When the sunshine filters through it’s soft. If the weather here was always like this it would be okay.
They leave their packs on the asphalt to be loaded and walk up the metal steps.
There isn’t allocated seating. It’s a free-for-all. He sits with Norbi and Balázs, and they talk about the night out they’re planning to have when they get home. It’s something they’ve been planning for a long time now, something they’ve sort of promised themselves—this massive night out, their first night home.
He sleeps on the plane.
He wakes up and looks around.
Everything seems exactly the same as it did when he fell asleep.
Most of the others are sleeping too.
From somewhere there’s the sound of music leaking out of headphones.
More than half of the window blinds are pulled down, including the one next to him. He lifts it a little. Strong light pushes in so that it’s painful and he slides the blind down again. It’s impossible to tell from the quality of the light what time of day it is, wherever they are. It is day, though, and not night, even though it feels like it should be night.
They’re waiting at the American air base in Germany. The Americans who were on the plane with them have disappeared. It’s just them, the Hungarians, about a hundred of them, waiting under fluorescent lighting with darkness outside the windows. There aren’t enough seats for everyone. Some people are sitting on the floor. The officers went off somewhere as soon as they arrived. They come back later with a cart with sandwiches on it. The officers don’t eat from the cart themselves, they seem to have eaten already. The men mob the cart, though. They’re very hungry, there wasn’t any food on the plane. While they eat, the major tells them that the buses will be there in about two hours. “They’re on their way from Tata as I speak,” he says, and there’s an ironic cheer.
István, Norbi, and Balázs are sitting on the floor with their sandwiches. They’re talking again about the night out they’re planning. “We need to get some speed or coke or both,” István says.
“Yeah,” Norbi says.
“Do you know anyone?” István asks.
“At Tata?”
“Yeah,” István says.
“Not really,” Norbi says.
“You?” István asks Balázs.
Balázs, eating, shakes his head.
The walk from the building to the buses waiting in the darkness outside, their engines shedding a strong smell of diesel, is the first time that he has felt real cold in over a year.
It’s quite a pleasant feeling, the clean sting of it on his face, the unfamiliar sight of his own breath.
The light inside the bus is dim orange, almost brown.
He takes a window seat a few rows back from the toilet, and balls up his jacket to use as a pillow.
He wakes from a shallow sleep to find himself looking at a European landscape. Churches with onion domes. Wet green fields. It’s weird to be back here.
When the buses arrive at Tata, about four hours later, they disperse to their allocated rooms. István dumps his pack and then sits on the toilet, and after that has a shower and a shave. He has this meeting with the colonel. He puts on his dress uniform, after ironing the shirt with the communal iron in the room at the end of the corridor.
“You managed to get some sleep?” the colonel asks him.
“Yes, sir,” István says.
“We hoped to get you boys back here last night,” the colonel says.
István’s eyes are focused on a point beyond the colonel’s shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” he says.
Behind the colonel is a window, beads of rain partially obscuring a view of the car park.
“So you’ve decided not to do another five years?” the colonel asks.
“No, sir,” István says.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re a brave man,” the colonel says, looking at a paper on his desk.
“Thank you, sir.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“There are support programs that you can take advantage of,” the colonel says. “I suggest you do so.”
“Yes, sir,” István says.
His five-year enlistment contract doesn’t actually expire until the end of January, but he’s owed enough leave to mean that this is basically it.
“Good luck,” the colonel says. “With whatever you do do.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And please remember that until the end of next month you’re still a member of the armed forces.”
István keeps his eyes fixed on the point beyond the colonel’s shoulder. “Yes, sir.”
“Conduct yourself accordingly.”
“Yes, sir.”
After leaving the colonel’s office, he makes his way to the men’s room on the first floor.
The private is already there when he arrives. They spoke on the phone earlier.
They go into one of the stalls and the private takes out the stuff. They asked around as soon as they arrived that morning and his name was the one that was mentioned most often. He sells István a few wraps of speed.
“Have you got any coke?” István asks him.
“No,” the private says. “Not now.”
“Okay,” István says.
Norbi’s brother has an apartment in Budapest. They arrive there in the middle of the afternoon, after taking the train from Tata, and then the metro. Norbi has a key to the apartment. His brother isn’t there. He works in England or somewhere. “What does he actually do?” István asks.