Arriving back at the hotel, he found Bebébe in the lift. She immediately noticed his swollen face and looked at him as if to say he should not get out but continue up to the eighteenth floor. Once up there Budai tried to convey to her that he had had a tooth pulled and even opened his mouth to show her where. In examining it Vevede had to come so close that her blonde hair tickled his chin and he could feel the girl’s skin and breath; later he tried to recall whether it mattered who started stroking whose face first, who kissed who, and whether it was she who first offered up her face and lips. Budai’s mouth was still swollen and numb with the anaesthetic or perhaps it was his cut gum that was in the way. In any case he felt awkward and lumpen, hardly capable of sensation, and he might have been a little dizzy too since all this passed in a kind of fog. Meanwhile the lift buzzer started ringing so they had to go down and once it started to crowd up everything that had passed upstairs seemed distant and unreal.
But this did nothing to solve his financial problem. He had to find work, anything, to earn some money. But how and where would he find work? Who could direct him to an employer? After all, he had failed to elicit much simpler information from local people. Ironically, the longer he stayed here the less he found himself able to ask people things. There was nothing he could do about that, however often he had vowed to change: reticence and withdrawal were necessary forms of self-preservation in the face of so many failures and disappointments. He was becoming ever more confused and detached in his dealings with others, ever less willing to accost people in the street or anywhere else and when he did try to make contact he became almost speechless. It was as if he was frozen. Maybe that is how it had to be. Maybe that was the only way his personality, his constitution could deal with the situation.
Then he remembered that first Sunday when he passed the market and somebody shouted at him as if inviting him to work. It was the driver of the truck who wanted help unloading vegetables, so he found the cheapest items among his clothes, the more worn of his two pairs of shoes, those that had been practically walked to pieces on his various excursions, and the pullover that he had carried in his briefcase. He put them on and set out.
It took him some time to find the open market. He got out at the same underground station as before but had twice crossed the enormous square before realising that, this being a weekday, there were no stalls or booths, no folding tables set out with goods, that the square had in fact been swept clean and that in the centre stood a statue of a wounded soldier wielding a rifle. Might it have been a war memorial? The outdoor market, it seemed, was only here on Sundays or other public holidays. On the other hand, the covered market-hall at the far end with its glazed and barred stalls was busier than ever. A great army of customers poured in through the front while the big ramp at the side was busy with cranes, conveyor belts and people loading and unloading goods. There were casual labourers everywhere swarming around trucks that were parked nose to tail, ragged figures carrying bales, ice and boxes into the building.
It was easy mingling with them. They seemed to be working in improvised gangs on this or that load. All you had to do was to watch where the next laden truck arrived, get over there, offer your back and someone would immediately give you a sack to carry. His sack seemed likely to contain potatoes or onions, nothing particularly heavy. He followed the others inside with it and threw it onto a great pile of sacks like the rest, then returned for another sack. No-one asked him for any ID or other paperwork and, having addressed one or two questions to him that he couldn’t answer, they assumed he couldn’t speak the language and took hardly any more notice of him. There was not much for them to say in any case: his task was obvious and needed no explaining. Nor did the other temporary porters bother with him, being busy with their own affairs. Quite possibly they were strangers to each other too.
Budai was not scared of physical work. When he was a student on a grant he would occasionally take such jobs when short of money, doing all-night stints at Les Halles in Paris or at Covent Garden in London. His constitution was still strong and healthy and he found himself enjoying the effort and exercise. The only thing he didn’t like was the sacks making his hands and pullover dirty. It took roughly an hour and a half to finish unloading the consignment at which point the driver paid them by pressing a single piece of lowest denomination paper money into their palms. Later he was set to carrying sides of pork, frozen goods, icy and damp to the touch, his back cold, his palms greasy and sweaty. Then it was passing the load from a truck, handing down cages of fat angora rabbits, the kind he had seen in the hotel room whose door he had opened. He earned altogether eight notes in the day plus a little change. He felt a pleasant tiredness and a certain pride too that here he was, making a living with his two bare hands. But at the same time he could hardly wait to get back to the hotel bathroom and a nice hot shower.
From then on each time he went to the market, whatever time of day, he almost always found some work of this kind. No-one ever asked him who he was. When he worked in the evening or at night he noticed that those who had packed up did not go far but entered the liquor store next door. Others simply lay down where they were among the bales, sleeping on empty sacks or in one of the larger crates in some quiet corner. They must have been tramps and homeless people, their clothes filthy and neglected, their whole appearance uncared for. This was the company he was now reduced to.
One time, heading home on the metro, he was just descending the long escalators with the host of those arriving streaming past him on the way up when he suddenly spotted a man holding a Hungarian magazine. It was no mistake! There he was holding a copy of Szinházi Élet, an old theatre and stage weekly, its title clearly legible. Even the actress on the front looked faintly familiar: she was in a striped swimsuit standing on the steps of the Hullámfürdő, the pool with the artificial wave machine; the actress blonde, slender, raising her free left hand high into the air. This was such an unexpected shock that he had no sooner registered it than the man holding it, an elderly, grey, bespectacled figure in a worn green overcoat, had already passed him and was now behind him. He didn’t know what to do, had no idea what to say, but shouted out as loud as he could in Hungarian:
‘Kérem szépen… izé, maga, ott!’ (Excuse me!… I beg your pardon, er, you there!)
But the escalator was so loud, so squeaky and grinding, the whole place so full of commuters, the hall so echoey that the man in the overcoat couldn’t have heard him. Terrified that he would lose him, Budai screamed out once more:
‘Halló, ide nézzen.’ (Hello! Look this way!)
The man addressed turned round, his expression astonished, as if hearing a voice from another world. He reached uncertainly towards him in the distance perhaps only to convince himself that it was no illusion:
‘Hát uraságod is…?’ (And you, dear sir, are you also…?)