Somehow everything was different this morning, not only in the lift but down in the lobby too. He couldn’t tell at first in what way, what made the difference and why, it was simply something he sensed. The place was just as crowded as before, or pretty well as crowded, but there was less aggression in the air, the movement in the great hall seemed lazier and slower somehow, not quite so frantic, more patient perhaps. Later he noticed that the souvenir shop was closed, its glass cases empty, its front locked away behind metal shutters. The newsagent was closed too, sealed behind a metal grille, and the long bank of exchange counters that used to be busy was now being attended by no more than two or three women, the rest closed. It occurred to him that he had left home on Friday and that he had spent two night here so this must be Sunday and that here too it must be a holiday. It was only at the reception desk that the queues were still the same length as before and he took new fright at their sheer extent, but he waited all the same and handed in his key. Box 921 was still empty but he had stopped expecting to find anything there and would have been surprised if there was something. The exchange counters being empty, he decided to seize the opportunity and try one of the three women who were clearly left to deal with whatever business might come their way on a Sunday. He went over and waited by one of them but she paid him no attention so he knocked on the desk. She ignored that too so he knocked louder until she finally came over. He tried talking to her in various languages but she stared him with such incomprehension and contempt she had clearly taken him for the village idiot. He took out his notebook, drew a train as best as he could, then, underneath it, an aeroplane, and even extended his arms to imitate an aircraft, trying every possible way to convey what he was looking for and where he wanted to get to. The woman was middle-aged, somewhat yellow in complexion and wore her hair in a bun. She answered in a surprisingly sharp manner, apparently angered and offended, with a stream of incomprehensible but clearly rude words that Budai took to mean: ‘what a nuisance, what cheek, one can’t get a bit of peace even on a Sunday’, though it was possible she meant something completely different. He saw it was useless trying to explain so he took the bold step of pulling the largest denomination banknote from his pocket and putting it down on the counter in front of the woman. She carried on grumbling but took the note and went away with it so there was no harm in hoping that she might, after all, help. She quickly returned and subjected him to another annoyed tirade while giving him a few notes and a bit of change — exchanging the large denomination note for some smaller ones — then turned on her heel and left him there.
Even the crowds in the street seemed a little less pushy. The road traffic was no less dense but was moving in a more relaxed way. He worked his way over to the kerbside and waved energetically at passing taxis. But there weren’t many of them and when they did appear they were already occupied, often full to overflowing, some by nine or ten people, men, women, children, old ladies all together. And those few that were empty were proceeding without the available sign showing or in a lane far away from the kerb so it was impossible for them to pull over against the dense traffic. Finally he saw a taxi approach slowly right in front of him, one that was empty and available, but however he shouted and waved, even putting a foot out into the road, the driver did not stop but looked right through him and might even have run him over had he not smartly jumped out of the way. By the time he recovered the taxi was almost lost in the distance… So he fought his way back to the hotel entrance and addressed the fat, fur-collared doorman in various languages, using a range of gestures, attempting to convey the fact that he needed a taxi or a taxi rank, adding that surely there must be one in the vicinity, obstinately, determinedly repeating the word that meant the same everywhere:
‘Taxi! Taxi… taxi? ’
The man blinked at him stupidly, continuing to salute him, tipping his gold-braided hat and looking at him with those tiny eyes in his fat face before politely opening the swing door for him. When Budai leaned closer and shouted what he wanted practically into his face, the doorman merely muttered:
‘Kiripudu labadaparatchara… patarashara…’
Then he saluted once more and pushed the door open again as if he were no more than a robot able to choose between only two options. In the meantime others were pushing their way into the hotel, bumping into them as they jostled at the door. Budai didn’t want to block the way any longer and was worried in case his temper got the better of him and he actually punched the idiot, so he returned to the kerbside. He had no better luck trying to wave down a taxi and had begun to wonder whether the red flash at the side of those grey cars actually meant that they were taxis. He had all but given up when one at which he had made only a vague, uncertain gesture, suddenly stopped right in front of him. The driver leaned out and asked him something with his mouth full, something to the effect as to where he would like to go, thought Budai. He quickly tried to explain, making flapping motions with his arm to indicate a plane, then imitating the pistons of a railway engine, even adding the characteristic choo-choo sound. The driver laughed and shook his head, though whether that was because he didn’t understand or because he had no intention of taking him to those places was not clear. Meanwhile other vehicles were stuck behind him impatiently sounding horns, revving engines, creating ever more of a bottleneck. The next lane was so busy they could not get round the stationery vehicle. Frightened that he would lose this opportunity, Budai brought out a large banknote and waved it in front to him. The tone of the driver’s reply was that he had been ordered elsewhere, or that he was at the end of his shift and was on his way to the garage. But all the while the never-ending traffic behind him was growing ever louder, ever more impatient, the horns of the jammed cars blaring furiously, so the taxi driver eventually turned the key and put his foot down on the gas. In his despair Budai drew out another note and pushed it through the window but the taxi was moving by now in the dense traffic so the money was swept from his hands into the cab where it remained and there was no way of getting it back.
For a minute or two Budai stood stock still, quite paralysed by his latest failure, though maybe it was not a failure, and what he took to be a whole chain of misfortunes was simply the rule here, for someone like him at least, someone who did not know the language. But eventually he pulled himself together and decided that one should be able to find a station even without a taxi. He was only sorry to have lost his money, those two notes of whose value he could not be certain though, on the basis of what he had learned so far, it would not be negligible.
Most of the shops were shut, even the groceries, but the metro was as busy as ever. By the time he got to the steps in the round little traffic island he had worked out how he might achieve his goal. He pushed his way over to the large map again, it being the only fixed point of certainty he had so far been able to cling to. Here he only had to identify his position and could then move forward. He looked for intersections between lines, those circled stations that appeared more important, since in every major city the metro service was directly connected to the main railway routes. He reasoned that the names of metro stations at the main terminals might comprise two or more words, and that one or other of the stations might be like the Paris terminals, Gare de l’Est, Gare du Nord, Gare de Lyon, and so forth. He was constantly jostled as he stood there, often being shoved right away from the map but time and again he steered his way back. With great difficulty he located a few of these two-and-more-word stations, the last word of which was the same, or pretty nearly the same in every case, the difference probably being merely grammatical. He made note of a number of them, copying the unfamiliar characters. The first and nearest of them was on the yellow line.