He glanced up and spotted the delegation of exotic hierarchs he had seen that first morning, that motley crew of bearded, brilliantly dark-skinned, caftan-and-chain-wearing elders in high fur caps, who were once more proceeding in silent and dignified manner past respectful crowds that opened before them. Nothing they wore hinted at what part of the world they came from or indeed which religion they represented.
He took a short walk in the street, passing the fat doorman who always greeted him by raising his hand to his cap. He only went as far as the skyscraper-in-construction to see how far they had got. They were still working away at great pace, armies of builders swarming over the structure, welders sparkling, mobile platforms rising and sinking under floodlights. It was odd that the building had only grown by an extra floor since he had last seen it and counted the floors — they had got to seventy — though he had been here longer.
There was just as much bustle at night as at any other time. People were constantly pouring in and out of the metro, great ranks of exhausted workers, their faces puffy with sleep, heading towards industrial estates on the outskirts to their dawn occupations. Others were merely dawdling, drifting along aimlessly, bumping into each other on corners or in squares, getting involved in arguments, discussing sporting events or waiting for the morning papers. There were syrupy alcoholic drinks on sale, the kind that had made him drunk before. He would have welcomed a little alcohol, the tipsy light-headedness it offered, the lack of responsibility it conferred, but he stood by his resolution and was thrifty with his money, what remained of it.
Far in the distance he noticed the same neon lights alternating between red and blue. What might they be advertising? From a basement room nearby there rose something he had thus far missed: the sound of drums and music, waves of general noise. Out of curiosity he looked in. It was a large room, a kind of dance hall packed to the rafters, though owing to the smoke, the racket and the crowds that filled every nook and cranny, he couldn’t make out where the floor was. People were dancing between the tables, at the bar, by the wall and on the steps leading down. Of course it was mainly the young wearing the brightly fashionable or ostentatiously ragged universal uniform of youth. It wasn’t just boys dancing with girls, but girls with girls and boys with boys too. They weren’t really in pairs: it was more everyone with everyone, all higgledy-piggledy yet each alone, each an island unto himself or herself in the general movement. The sexes were hard to distinguish in any case, many of the boys sporting long feminine hairstyles, a lot of the girls in trousers. Apart from that, it seemed the whole world was there, each part of it, every human race represented by someone, all mixed up topsy-turvy, tugging and shrugging, kicking up heels, waving arms to the rhythm of the music.
There was no trace of musicians though: it must have been a record-player or some similar equipment. It was unbearably loud, non-stop, one piece exactly like another, consisting entirely of beat with practically no trace of melody, the whole thing broken, syncopated, aggressive, shameless, rhythmic. But it was the volume above all that hurt Budai, his head almost exploding with it: he couldn’t understand how people could bear the constant pounding.
He was about to leave when there was a kind of disturbance or panic by the far wall. At first he couldn’t tell what precisely it was, it was just that the movement was different, no longer to the rhythm of the music. After a few seconds he realised the cause of it: a fight had broken out, and, as the space cleared, he could see it was between blacks and whites. He had no idea what it was about and could only guess, for no very good reason, that the slim, straw-blonde girl who appeared for a moment between the groups of brawlers, the one with the indifferent, mocking expression on her face, had something to do with it.
By the time Budai noticed it it was practically over, the groups having been separated from each other. Officials appeared as if from nowhere, uniformed men wearing those ubiquitous brown boiler suits. They blew whistles and formed a line that served as a living barrier between the two camps. Despite this, the groups continued threatening each other with unchecked fury, trying to break the line, pulling faces and screaming. Budai was curious as to what they were saying, it might well help him in his quest for understanding. As far as he could make out under the music — for that had gone on uninterrupted — the imprecations and challenges consisted of raising one’s fists and shouting something like:
‘Gyurumba!… Ugyurumbungya!’
This could mean any number of things, like: Filth! Dickhead! Bastard! You just wait! Come on then! I’ll smash your face in! Oh yeh?! All the same, Budai noted them down in his book phonetically along with the range of possible meanings.
At that point one of the white youths, a thickset young man in a pullover, reached across the line of boiler-suited figures and before anyone could stop him smashed a bottle in the face of a lanky black boy. There was a shattering sound — was it the bottle breaking or bones? The man who had been hit swayed about with dark red blood running down his dark face. The security men — or whatever they were — blew their whistles excitedly and tried to press forward to separate the combatants. But now, on the other side of the barrier, one of the other black boys snapped his flick-knife open, ducked under the linked hands of the guards and, lightning-quick, stabbed the man in the pullover. The man who had been stabbed looked around with a foolish, startled expression, wondering what had happened. He pressed his palm to his waist where the blade had penetrated and slowly, very slowly, fell forward and doubled up with the same blank stare of incredulity that this should have happened to him of all people. His body soon grew still in his companions’ arms, the look on his face unchanged.
A siren started outside: it would have been police or the ambulance. The girl’s blonde hair floated briefly through the mêlée, then the police burst in, their feet drumming on the stairs, using rubber truncheons to clear the way. Budai had no desire to resume his acquaintance with them. He sneaked away as best he could. However disturbing the scene had been he had not forgotten that his chief business was with Epépé. He didn’t want to be away too long since she might be back on the lifts by now. He headed back to the hotel.
She was not there so he tried the telephone in his room again. He had a few numbers now that generally answered at night and he could even recognise one or two of the voices. It was a strange, dreamlike experience conversing with someone without being able to understand a word of the language. He rang them time and again. He was nourishing a hope that the voice at the end of the line might eventually give his own number as people often did when they had been misdialled. In actual fact, of course, it was impossible to sort the mumble and jabber from the information he was seeking and yet, despite the pointlessness of the exercise, he enjoyed saying hello, asking questions, listening to the person at the other end, knowing that he too was being listened to and imagining what kind of person it was… Interestingly enough there were some people who didn’t put the phone down for a while, who, despite knowing there was no sense in carrying on the conversation, nevertheless entered the spirit of this absurd game — perverts of some sort possibly. Or maybe they were simply bored with nothing better to do.