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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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To the Breakfast Club

and the bricklayers

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Acknowledgements

Train Can’t Bring Me Home was an unusual writing experience, in that so many people contributed and provided analysis of the novel as it was being composed, myself included.

Whereas most writers choose to compose a novel under the strictest secrecy until at least a first draft is ready for critical analysis, Train was initially drafted as part of an independent study module for my English Literature degree at Birmingham City University in 1993. It wasn’t the first novel I’d written. I was a mature student who’d spent the ten years between school and university working McJobs and writing five novels in my spare time, so I was happy to try something new and see if writing a novel under such rigorous academic scrutiny was possible.

The module was supervised by Dominic Head, an expert on modernism and the author of several studies on modern literature. This meant analysing my own work whilst simultaneously writing it — a schizophrenic experience that should be inimical to the very act of creativity and guaranteed to frighten away any muse that cared to drop by, let alone when the novel itself was following the rigid structure of James Joyce’s Ulysses, of which it attempts to be a postmodern pastiche.

I managed to lasso other courses I was taking in my final year into the project, so most of my tutors became involved in it: Peter Stockwell’s Reader Reception module allowed me to use the Par Avion chapter as an experiment on fellow students Bronwyn George and Csaba Farkas (who isBarnabás in the novel and had come to BCU on the same student exchange that had first taken me to Debrecen the previous year). Tim Parnell’s Sceptical Narrative course deepened my understanding of the philosophical link between Beckett, Calvino, Kundera and Sterne, which was invaluable when writing the Crazy Spring and Exit Author Weeping chapters and gave me the opportunity to test out Par Avion on a live audience. It was also a brilliant stroke of luck that Derek Littlewood and Eamon Grant were offering a module on Joyce and Beckett the same year, and Derek’s course on the Fantastic shaped the writing of the Eternal Night and Bloody Mary chapters and provided a creative environment in which to write a series of stories continuing the adventures of Dylan and Erzsi which may one day appear under the title of An Angel Flew Away Above Us. Thanks to the support of all those tutors, and Head of Department Phil Smallwood, I managed to bend the majority of my final year of study towards the composition of a single novel.

The bulk of the novel was written and a critical essay on it submitted as my final dissertation in 1994, whereupon I threw a few boxes full of clothes and books into the boot of Csaba’s Mitsubishi and we drove back to Debrecen where I fully intended to live out the rest of my life. I worked on completing Train over the next year using the computers of the English-American Institute of Kossuth Lajos University, where I was now teaching a course on James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The collaborative aspect of the composition continued. The novel was discussed openly with the many friends who had agreed to be characters in the novel and had even chosen their own names, provided memories, experiences, even diary entries, and answered constant questions on their lives and their language. The muse didn’t seem to mind at all, and it was completed on Sunday 28 May, 1995, my first anniversary of emigrating to Hungary.

I was already submitting samples to publishers and the responses were depressingly similar: very good but annoyingly clever and unmarketable. It did garner the greatest rejection letter I’d ever received, though: Liz Calder at Victor Gollancz called it very impressive, clever, brilliant even - but too erudite for us to find a mass market…’ I was perversely cheered by this and instantly regarded it as my very first publishable novel (the five that preceded it will never see the light of day). So it feels very liberating to finally publish it in 2011 where it can find the market, mass or not, that it deserves.

A great debt of gratitude is owed to Csaba Farkas, Fruzsina Szabo, Edit Végvári, Réka Görömbei, Tamás Benyei, Nóra Séllei, Zsuzsa Molnár, Agnes Balogh, Dan Price and Kim Willcocks, who all contributed and commented on numerous drafts of this story over many years, and of course the person who first introduced me to the wonders of Ulysses during that first crazy spring semester in Debrecen, Professor Donald E. Morse.

PART ONE

Quaternity

First you must select the opening of your choice for this novel from the three following options:

1. I found her first letter in the snow-topped mailbox on the fence last night; her off-white envelope covered in Burne-Jones blue maidens, telling me she’d cried briefly when I’d gone (when I'd ridden away in the taxi, thinking how strong she’d been). I walked out again, pumping ten and twenty forint pieces into the battered old call box outside the Poroszlay supermarket. She wanted to know if it was good here and what the town was like but all I wanted to say was I love you and I miss you. I walked back through the snow, feeling the ache in my throat I felt on the first night here. I've been here a week and already written four letters and made four phone calls.

2. Rory O’Cypher, weary of the torpidity of a Bachelor of Arts degree (with Honours) concurrent in the English city of his residence, upon a compunction, rare to one of his indecision, found himself committed to a semester-long exchange, which resulted in him agreeing to study in the Hungarian city of Debrecen, being the second city of that landlocked Central European country, 30 kilometres from the Romanian border, 100 kilometres from the Ukrainian, and 200 kilometres from Budapest itself.

3. Falteringly, the student came to the top of the stairwell, breathing hard, halting and glancing back down the stairs behind him. There were two doors there. He checked the number on the slip of paper in his hand. It was an apartment, like the others in the block.

The problem is that beginnings are so difficult. It’s because they don’t really exist. There are no real beginnings. But here he is, nevertheless: Rory. He begins. He finds himself born, standing outside a door on the fourth floor of an apartment block in a Hungarian city, a piece of paper in his hand.

Address was right. Yes. This was it. Brushed snow from his shoulders. Deep breath. Pushed bell. Rattle not chime. Four flights silent below. Trabants slithering past on Egyetem Sugárút below, the blackbrown sludge heaped in the gutters below. Weary traveller has trudged to sanctuary breathing grey clouds. Footsteps down the hallway. The door tugged inward. Would it be the one who spoke English?

Plump blonde in thick sweater, short hair.

He told her his name. A further sentence, unsounded, trailed off in his mind: a Hungarian sentence that he didn’t know the Hungarian for. He stood there: embarrassed mute.

—Ah yes, she said. Come inside. Wait in here, please.

She indicated the room to the left of the hallway. Bright apartment. Narrow L-shaped room that contained a washing machine, a stool and a young woman working at a desk in the shorter part, with a bed covered in plaid blankets along the longer part, which connected to the office beyond it, where his English speaking lifeline had disappeared. He sat on the stool — he rests, he has travelled — and watched the other woman working. Little Jack Horner. She had long auburn hair draping over her shoulders, a navy blue jacket with shoulder pads. It exposed her delicate wrists. Trousers with tights underneath. A young beauty. She smiled to him and then returned to her work. A woman’s voice called through to her from the office, something in Hungarian. He didn’t understand. The young beauty smiled and glanced at him.

A key rattled in the front door and a third woman entered the apartment. She was older, mid-forties, and wore brighter clothes than the other two — dayglo woollies, gold necklace, legwarmers. She flashed by the doorway, handbag under arm, caught a glimpse of him. He turned away. Then suddenly she was on him, leaning over him, talking rapidly he didn’t know what but with a smile like she’d found him under the Christmas tree. The Young Beauty smiled to herself at whatever it was the older woman was saying. Delighted mother brooding someone else’s baby. Her own too old. Older women always fawned over him; it must have been his face. Merry widow. She left him and headed for the office he hadn’t seen yet, chattering to the other woman in the same tone.

—You can sit on the bed if you like.

Her voice calling through. This was strange. Merry Widow delighted at Little Jack Horner.

—I’m okay, he said.

He stayed on the stool, folding unfolding the note, scribbled address. The Young Beauty worked on, her back to him. After ten minutes the Interpreter came and took him to the office at the end of the corridor. The Merry Widow was at her own desk eating an apple, smiling. He sat opposite The Interpreter. His lifeline.

—You don’t speak any Hungarian then? she asked.

I don’t speak any Hungarian now, he thought.

—No, I’m afraid not.

He shrugged. She seemed to be wondering why. Wasn’t it obvious? Because he was English.

—And you are from the university? Are you a lecturer?

—No. Student.

—And you will need this apartment by tonight?

—No, no. I already have an apartment, but I need one for myself. I share with a student, but it’s only one room.

—And you need it for tonight?

—No, he said. There’s no rush really. I want it later, after Easter because my… wife comes then to visit.

Why had he said wife? Because it was politically incorrect to say girlfriend and he thought they wouldn’t understand partner.

The Merry Widow said something to him in Hungarian. He looked to the Interpreter. She looked back at him as if she expected him to understand.

—I’m sorry, what did she say?

—She said we can get an apartment for tonight for you without problem.

Big problem.

—Well, I couldn’t move in straight away. You see, I have an arrangement with a Hungarian student. We’ve swapped accommodation. He’s now in England. But he’s paying my rent here. I’m paying his rent in England.

The Interpreter continued to look at him with glazed eyes.

—So… as you can see. I have to get in touch with him first to find out how much rent he’s prepared to pay…

His voice trailed off unconvincingly. The Interpreter still gazed through him.

—So, I couldn’t give you a definite decision if you showed me apartments now. You see?

Her gaze didn’t change. He had to explain to her again. She listened calmly, gave no expression, and then translated to the Merry Widow. The numbness of his face was thawing now. Every building seemed to be tropical inside. The Interpreter did some more paperwork. The Merry Widow’s eyes gleamed at him. She wanted to take him home and put him on her mantelpiece.

The room had been arranged for him at the last minute by the student now in England, at some point between his last exam and catching the plane. Bungalow, shared bedroom. Wallpaper a dull yellow, swirling shapes like Munch’s waves of air, sonorous vibrations of a frozen scream. Flatmate a young computing student called György who played computer games most afternoons and snored loudly. Every night the race to fall asleep before him. Then the sound of an outboard motor being tugged at repeatedly but never starting. Groaning in his narrow bed, wishing the motor would start and György’s bed would sail off into the night. All other times very polite and generous. Cakes, fruit and eggs from his mother in Kecskémet and a few English phrases shared. Once, homemade wine, cloudyyellow from a misty glass, poured like syrup from a used 7 Up bottle.

—You find it cold here?

He was surprised. Her first pleasantry, said with her head still bowed over the paperwork.

—Yes, he said. But we have bad winter’s in England too.

—Our summer’s are hot, she said. The town becomes brighter soon, with the spring. You are learning Hungarian here?

—No, English.

She looked up.

—You come to Debrecen to learn English? Why is this?

—It was really so that a Hungarian student here could go to my university.

—And you are not learning Hungarian here? she asked.

—Er, no. I’m hoping to pick some up. I’m here till June.

She continued writing, then she talked again with the Merry Widow. They debated something for a few minutes. How long had he been there? Longer than he’d planned. Give them your details and don’t be rushed into anything. The Irish poet, Bob, who’d come last week. Taken him for lunch in the university canteen and talked for an hour or more. The poet had managed to get his life story out of him. There is such a thing as culture shock, he’d said. But it passes. Bob had used him as an example of uncertain national identity in the seminar that followed: Polish father never met; English mother with an Irish name.

—We can show you an apartment now, she said. It is close. On Egyetem sugárút.

She was putting her coat on and so was the Merry Widow. He rose and zipped up his thick black jacket. They filed out and the Young Beauty came with them, draping a scarf round her neck and putting her thin wrists into her pockets. Merry Widow chatting excitedly, the Interpreter locking up the office. An outing. Down the flights of stairs past residents’ front doors, their names on brass or plastic plates, the whole stairwell bright from the huge windowfront.

Cold air a knifeblade to his badly shaven cheek. The street grey, late afternoon, wind hoarse and sharp, they trudged down the ice cobbled pavement along the row of apartment blocks. The face of the university should have been just visible far down the boulevard, but it had been spirited away, lost in mist. The Merry Widow was skipping and chattering gaily. She linked her arm in his, joking in Hungarian. All he could do was smile. Free air. He could run away from them now. But something held him; he was powerless. They entered an apartment block a hundred yards away and rang a bell on the first floor.

—This belongs to a professor from the university, said the Interpreter.

A woman in her late fifties answered, greyblonde hair thinning, spectacles dangling on heaving breast. They greeted each other warmly and stepped inside. The carpets talked to him when he entered, telling him all about the people who’d lived there before. The woman showed them round the apartment. A coffeebrown huddle of rooms; shabby, frayed, muted by the years. One living room with two of the usual bedsofas, a kitchen with a connecting box room as another bedroom.

Play a game. Look around at these people in this town, especially the older generation, and wonder which ones were involved in the old regime. Look hard at one person and picture them as a Stalinist bureaucrat now keeping their head down; then picture them as a former dissident who doesn’t need to look over their shoulder any more. They could all be either; it works both ways. They could all even be neither. Walk the corridors of the university and imagine what it felt like then, how different the air must have been that everyone breathed. Stroll the streets and imagine that ineluctable feeling of being observed, a quotidian oppression. Rory plays this game a lot. He’s been reading too many European novels. He’s been watching too many Cold War TV dramas. Eventually he will look around and just see people.

After the tour they sat in the living room. There was a lot of Hungarian talk. He sat and looked expectant.

—She is a Physics professor, said the Interpreter. So do you like it?

—It’s… okay, yes, but I couldn’t make a decision now.

—She says you can move in straight away.

He explained again the complications with his exchange student. The Interpreter translated to the Professor and the Merry Widow, who were sat together on one of the bedsofas. They seemed like old friends. The Young Beauty was on a wooden chair by the window which gave the only light as the afternoon dimmed. After more conversation the Merry Widow asked him a question. He looked to the Interpreter. She said nothing.

—I don’t understand what she said, he said.

—She asks how long before you know?

He explained he had to write to England asking how much rent his exchange student was willing to pay, and then await the reply. Five days each way.

—The post takes three days, she said.

They talked again and it seemed the Young Beauty was the subject, though she herself said nothing.

—She has been wanting to rent this apartment, said the Interpreter. She is looking for a place and she likes this one, but she needs someone to share the rent. This place is for two people.

He was surprised she was keen on the place. Couldn’t imagine her living in it. But what was going on? He saw himself, alone in this tired, dark room, waiting for her, his lover, to come to him, and the Young Beauty alone in the box room; the polite smiles in the kitchen; disturbing her in the bathroom. He mentioned again that there was no rush because he didn’t urgently need a place till Easter when his ‘wife’ was coming. He was in suspended animation without her. Slowly consumed by forgetfulness. Only ideas and sensations touched him. She would come and warm him through. At night he put on headphones and listened to Van Morrison speaking in tongues singing the love that loves to love the love that loves that… Aching pain in him that wasn’t yet the fear of loss.

The Merry Widow seemed to realise something and looked amused. She said something about the Young Beauty and about him. The Young Beauty blushed. The Interpreter kept asking him the same questions, prompted by the Merry Widow, and he kept giving her the same answers. He was through the looking glass.

Then the Merry Widow and the professor chatted cosily for a long time. It seemed to be the talk of a mother and daughter, discussing old times and family news. The other three watched them, only two of them understanding. The room grew slowly dimmer. He was uncertain of the time. Late afternoon. Getting dark. Why didn’t he leave the place?

—Could you not telephone England for this information?

—There’s no telephone there, he said.

When it seemed they could go no further with the questions they rose and left the professor with warm farewells, returning to the office. There was more paperwork. He would leave his details and they would suggest apartments when he knew his limit. The Young Beauty had returned to her desk in the L-shaped room.

Two young American men entered the office in woolly hats and puffa jackets. He watched them as they spoke Hungarian in Bible Belt accents. Students? Businessmen? Clean cut looks. Marine Corps cum Methodist. Been here before. Know the staff well.

—Their Hungarian is good, said the Interpreter to him.

What was it he’d heard? University gossip. Visiting American lecturer having an affair with eighteen year old Hungarian student. One of these? They did their business quickly and left, without speaking to him.

—Things have changed very much here in the last few years, she said. Before the changes we never had unemployment. Now it’s very big. It is a surprise to us.

The comment had come from nowhere. He’d never yet heard anyone talk of the new life without reservations. He finished the paperwork and there was nothing more. He said goodbye to them. The Merry Widow shook his hand and made another joke he didn’t understand.

—You should learn Hungarian, said the Interpreter.

His face was aching with the smiling. He stepped out into the fresh air, blinking like one unbewitched, his frosted breath in a cloud around his face.

Cukrászda

German tourists sat in the kávéház of the Aranybika Hotel, warm and dim, the brownorange cloisters perfumed by dark coffee vapours, the central heating fat in the air. Incubator. The cold town was busy beyond the french windows, through tall net curtains, misty Debrecen alive with heavy clad figures breathing silver, vibrant network of pedestrians out on Piac utca.

The trams whirred into Kossuth tér, collected and ejected passengers by the traffic lights under the Nagytemplom (Great Church) waited, buzzed their warnings, then whirred off either north up Piac utca heading for the university, or south down Piac utca towards the railway station. The one tram route through the town made the outline of a poppy; long stem from the station up Piac utca which became Péterfia út which became Simonyi út and then bloomed out into the bulb that contained a part of the Nagyerdö (Great Forest) still bare of leaves and clothed only with snow, passing the university and then heading back to the town down the long stem.

Hum of voices in the kávéház, gentle percussion of cups and saucers. A dull song was crooning far off, heard clearer by the people passing on the street, piped out to them.

Rory, the student, entered and shook snow from his black jacket and trousers, standing in the entrance space where the multicoloured confectionery glistened behind the glass counter. He made sure he’d been seen by one of the waiting staff and then strode down the dim corridor formed by the cloister screens checking all to the left because they looked out onto the street. The final cloister had one table free with a man sitting at the other table. He hung his coat up on the brass hook in the corner of the wooden partition and sat down with a copy of Ulysses. The other man had his back to him. Young, broad, or maybe just the thick sweater, mid-thirties, tall, dark. He opened the book and read a few lines before a woman in a white shirt and a black skirt came. The other man rose, picking up his raincoat, and the woman took his money for the coffee he’d had. She turned to the student and he found his request tumbling out of his mouth.

—Egy kávét, kérek szépen.

It surprised him, to hear himself speak a phrase so fluently. The woman walked away with his order. The other man turned and said:

—Ah, you speak English.

Rory didn’t know how to answer for a moment. How had he known? The accent?

—I am English, he said.

American. Sharply dressed, quite cool, touch of grey in otherwise dark hair, eyes passive but shrewd. The book then?

—Do you mind if I join you for a few minutes? I have to make an important business call soon and I’m just hanging on.

The man held out his hand and Rory shook it.

—My name’s Jean, I’m from Quebec.

Canadian. Two English speakers in the same foreign town. We talk to people we’d never notice usually. This language binds us together. Rory introduced himself. Jean sat down and crossed his legs.

—England, huh? What are you doing out here? You have a girlfriend here or something?

Jean took out a pack of Marlboro and flicked the base with a finger. A cigarette unjammed itself and protruded. He held the box out to Rory. It was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

—Studying what? English? Long way to come.

Rory smiled and accepted the lighter flame held out to him. Sucked on the cigarette cross-eyed watching tip glow. Sat back, blew out. Blue out. Town blue beyond the nets.

—It was an exchange. So a Hungarian could go to England. We’re not very good with languages in Britain.

—The British do have a reputation for being pretty monolingual, Jean smiled. I’m lucky. I’m French Canadian, so I grew up bilingual. I have a business that I’m setting up over here. Leatherwear.

He showed him the crest inside his overcoat, smiled modestly.

—We have a recession at home and this is an interesting new market.

They come, snouts scent blood in the air, scamper off heads high leave behind shriveled carcasses sucked dry, eating newfoundland inch by inch, hyenas’ chuckling bloodfur chops, excreting it out behind them.

The woman returned with a short, fat coffee cup and saucer, gleaming white, steaming black. Rory was having problems with the coffee he made at home. It wasn’t a blend of anything. Each time, he ended up with a mugful of teeming atoms, some brown, some white, swirling thickly together and not mixing. It always looked like a fractal demo. It was Chaos coffee. He’d begun to suspect he was buying the wrong type of milk altogether. Perhaps it was some other kind of milk. He couldn’t tell. And he couldn’t ask.

—So it’s a good market here?

—Yeah, answered Jean. It’s pretty stable. There’s growth here. I’m optimistic. Always been the best economy of the former Eastern Bloc. Think it’ll get better. Better than at home, anyway.

Hungary had been the happiest barrack. Now only some were laughing. The reluctant interpreter working at the apartment-locating agency had looked through him, thought him full of the wrong assumptions. He’d been frightened before coming, that he’d meet a nation genuflecting to the free market. So many he met gently reminding him it’s not like it’s written. Take us by the hand, lead us to economic miracle land.

—Maybe we can do some good over here, said Jean. They have no experience of business here, even on a basic level, it was banned. We can help them to start a free market; teach them how to make money. After all, it’s not a crime. The Hungarians here need some guidance to give them the edge, except the Jews, I suppose. After all, he laughed, they’ve always kept in practice. It’s like this whole place has just been left behind by History.

Moves towards one great goal: Pogrom Incorporated. I wait here, frozen, waiting for it to begin, waiting for the shouting in the streets.

Jean tapped his forefinger on his cigarette over the ashtray.

—Strange, when you think of it. How it all changed so quickly. Seemed like it’d be closed to us forever. Now we’re here. Quite a thing: that wall coming down.

Phyrric. Pawn ticket tickertape rain on Europe blown fierce wind thickening the air. Will those shouts be ones of hope? Barricades announce the beginning of history.

—Have you seen much of Hungary?

—Yeah, I’ve seen a little bit, said Jean. Been out to a few towns. Hoped to see some of the other countries while I was here. But I think I’ll avoid the southern border. Serbia looks pretty nasty.

The student sighed, screwed his face up.

—The fighting’s down south, so I’ve heard. You can visit the towns in the north and they’re just normal. You wouldn’t know.

Jean shrugged.

—Really? That’s interesting.

He smiled slightly.

—Think I’ll still let slip though.

Jean tapped out another Marlboro from his packet. Rory took one. What was it Lloyd the visiting drama student had showed him? There are three Ks on every packet, formed by the red triangles. It says Orobl Jew, if you look at it upside down. Brown leaves burning in the south.

—We have something similar at home, said Jean. There are separatists who want an independent Quebec, but I don’t agree with them. Makes no sense.

Rory shrugged and breathed in thickblack espresso. If you put your hot cigarette in hot coffee why does it still go out? Búfés round the campus. Little medicine cups of espresso, vanilla tasting. Rocket fuel rush to the heart.

—So do you have a girlfriend here?

—No. She’s back in England. But she’ll be coming over to visit me, probably at Easter time.

—I have a girlfriend here, said Jean. She’s a Hungarian. Lives in Miskolc.

—So you’re going to be here for a while? smiled Rory. I seem to have met a lot of English and American men who’ve stayed on because of Hungarian women. Quite a migration taking place.

—Is that right, said Jean, smiling slightly.

The American lecturer with the funny trousers, used up rockabilly refugee in black, puts cigarettes out on his tattooed arm, or acts like he might, with the student what’s her name again Erzsi. What was it Ákos who’s read every book in the world said about a yank lecturer now gone had serious hopes of selling mono hifi for big bucks, students asked if it’d take their ceedees which means fuck off try Romania.

—You know, said Rory. I was told by one of the Hungarians I’ve met here that Ceaucescu used to believe that the Hungarian government trained young Hungarian women to seduce foreigners — anyone with any kind of influence — so they could spread anti-Romanian propaganda.

—Is that true? Strange.

Jean unfolded his legs and stood putting overcoat over arm.

—Well, I have to go make my call now. It’s been nice talking to you. Good luck with your studies.

They shook hands and Jean strolled away leaving him alone in the cloister. He lit a Helikon and stared at the nets with his pen poised.

His initial fear, confided to her from the outset, that she was all Joyce and he was all Beckett had a deeper significance than he realised. Her words flooded her being with the mystery of language but, for himself, words were increasingly hollow and he suspected himself dumb in the void. She believed in that word and he didn’t, but she gave him the belief like a lifeline to pull him from the void. But now, in this city where he didn’t speak the language, where he was increasingly dumb, two thousand miles from home, he was sinking back into the murky void, with that word becoming an abstract and all expression seeming absurd, falling into silence with no more lifelines to grasp.

Trams whirred by. Late. The crows drifted across the city sky again, the same each day just before darkness, blackening the sky with wings and cries. Means snow to come. What was it? In that poem by Lawrence. Weaving a something between day and night. I should go home. Sonic boom over the city. Every afternoon. Some kind of fighter plane? Heading south maybe. I should go home. Pasta slosh with powdered mushroom soup awaits. Own recipe. The first evening in town, going out alone to the nearest restaurant and, baffled by the menu, ordering at random. Two little brains in breadcrumbs. Creamy and tasting just like mushroom soup, but left on the plate. The student canteen, a week later, picking up what looked like a stew with mushrooms in it. Eating it for a while, reading at the same time, then noticing the little mushrooms came in pairs, connected by a length of gristle. Bollocks. Spitting onto the plate and pushing it away.

I should go home. Her kisses on his face had faded, a distance in her voice in both letters and on the phone. To survive these months. Homeless. ‘Home’ will come to me on a plane, stay a fortnight then leave me homeless again. Come to me. Make me whole. Come. Come to me…

Par Avion

I have discovered something, and I will share it with you. It comes to my mind as I sit on this tram that is full of warm sunshine, watching a young and beautiful woman rise from her seat and, just for a moment, for a single moment, stretch her young body, becoming still at the peak of her languorous stretch.

I have discovered that the buying of books is a pleasure entirely divorced from that of reading them, as is the receipt of letters. This is of great universe expanding air exploding sea halting importance. Or not. I’m uncertain. I know that my bookcase, back in my home town, was treated as something of a gallery. I found myself many times standing gazing at it, sometimes taking a clean paperback, still shiny and possessing that addictive pristine smell, holding it in my hands, examining it, flicking carefully through the pages, perhaps even reading a few lines.

This has little to do with the buying of books, admittedly, except in the way it echoes my behaviour, and perhaps yours, in any bookshop; so it is perhaps then the possession of books that is a pleasure entirely divorced from the reading of them. With the ownership of a book a mystical absorption of the knowledge therein is implied. By possessing the book I feel I have already read it. Which is a matter of deep concern here, so many miles from home, in a foreign city, with just a small pile of books on my desk in the room I share with György. I can’t be nearly so intelligent under these circumstances, as you may imagine, whatever situation you yourself are in as you read this. Perhaps you are surrounded by books, perhaps you are not. Maybe you are browsing through this book from the thousands of others in the bookshop around you. Maybe you have bought it and it sits on your bookshelf, and you are still browsing through it with a vague hope you may one day find the time to read it from cover to cover. Whatever, the theosophists purport the existence of hereditary ancestral memory located at the pineal gland, which means no one needs to buy books because everything that’s ever been written, uttered or thought is inside us already; infinity within a nut shell, or like the explosion of tiny bubbles left in the middle of György’s honey jar this morning sitting on the linoleum tablecloth, fat and heavy, with a small frozen constellation suspended in the still honey, created by the yellow thread of honey he let slip back into the jar from his knife.

This reminds me of those times when the Trabants leave an evocative haze behind as they pull away from the kerb. In that single instant, a moment unmeasureable because it is neither moment nor instant but untime, I am in the instantaneous now, smelling not the exhaust fumes from the Trabant but that from the ice cream vans of my childhood. And in that same unmoment of notime I taste also the ice cream with the tongue of not the twenty-two year old man I am but the small child I was then and am now again and I am free. But in the actual moment that follows the unmoment I experience the distance between that child and the man I am now, and this is followed by the reflection that the smell of the fumes of the ice cream vans has become interwoven with the taste of the ice cream itself, and then for a few seconds I feel a deep regret that it is no longer possible to taste ice cream like that any more, and then I just feel a deep sense of regret for I don’t know what.

But it was letters I wanted to talk about, not books or honey or ice cream.

The receipt of letters is a pleasure entirely divorced from that of reading them. What was, at home, a harmless preoccupation with mail has sharpened in this city on the edge of Europe, perhaps merely because of the sense of isolation, not just from my friends and family and lover, but also from the world. I have no idea what is happening in the world because it is difficult to get an English language newspaper here and deciphering the Hungarian press is beyond me. Because of this isolation my harmless preoccupation has sharpened into a slight obsession. I long for the visit of the postman, checking the postbox on the fence every morning before I leave for the university, and again if I return in the afternoon just in case the postman was late in the morning. I also open the postbox door if I go out in the evening in case the English student I came over with, who is living in a different apartment, has had any mail for me and has popped it into the postbox perched on the green fence whilst passing by. This is more likely than one might think because, due to my wanting to change my apartment for a place of my own, I have given everyone the address of my fellow student and told them not to send any more mail to György’s place. It was my fellow student who handed me the letter that arrived this morning. I know there is absolutely no point in my checking my postbox now but I do so anyway, because my letters instructing people not to write to me at György’s place may have been lost by my friends, in which case they will have to rely on the scrap of notepaper they still possess with György’s address written on it, or the letter may never have reached them and they are still waiting to get round to writing me here at György’s address. So I check the postbox, even when it is midnight and I’m taking a walk to the telephone box by the supermarket on Poroszlay út to phone my lover with the collection of small change I’ve gathered. I check the postbox on the way out. Then I can’t resist checking it again on the way back in. After which I will enter the bungalow and walk into the room I share with György, my eyes falling instantly on my desk, which is where György always puts letters for me that have been delivered by my fellow exchange student in my absence. In fact, the only time he will ever use the postbox is when he has rung the bell persistently, standing out on the pavement because of the locked gate, and decided neither György nor myself are at home.

Once I have a letter in my hand, usually from my lover, I read it eagerly but distractedly. I realise I am not taking in much of what is being expressed to me. The act of reading seems more important than the cognisance of the matter. Yet re-readings have a hollowness to them. The letter seems stale despite its ability to surprise me with lines not read properly the first time.

As now, I sit on the tram as it rattles round the city wearing headphones, hearing the sound of a piano quartet, with a manila envelope in my breast pocket, having this morning inserted a small knife into the ungummed gap under the fold and slit the envelope open neatly, pushing back the temptation to do the same with my index finger and leave the envelope ragged despite the eagerness to read the enclosed letter, and then having locked myself in the toilet and read the letter twice through whilst performing the habitual morning evacuation, and now, just thirty minutes later, I have no memory of what is written there — this letter which I have longed for, received with celebration, and read with eagerness twice this morning.

The Quatuor pour le fin du temps (or at least the slow movements from it) rolls gently on like a sluggish river in my ears, a soundtrack to my tram ride through this city on a cold but thawing winter morning that no one else can hear, though the whole city seems to be influenced by it as if this were a film shown in the cinema that I myself am watching — that is, watching myself as if outside myself — aware of the movements I make as I sit here as if from the vantage point of a camera placed alternately on various positions on the tram, for close-ups, mid and full shots, and outside, say, on the pavement as the tram, with me prominent, flashes by, or tracking alongside in a vehicle of some sort so that myself and the tram are still and it is the city that seems to be moving.

The recording of Messiaen is so good I can hear the violinist breathing; a deep breath through the nose before each strained note he has to play (indeed, one of these breaths occurs just as the young and beautiful woman, on whom my eyes have fallen, reaches the limit of her stretch and holds herself there not wanting to release herself) and my awareness of these breaths has increased with subsequent listens to the point where the breaths have become an integral part of the music, and then this has developed into a situation where the music has become the breaths and the notes from the instruments are distractions from the sound of one man breathing.

So as you can see, there is no satisfaction in this, because as soon as the letter I desire is received I almost immediately begin to long for the next one. It may be possible to go back to the letter that arrived this morning, which sits tightly in my breast pocket as I ride this tram, and I obviously intend to do that or I wouldn’t be taking it around with me for the day (unless that were merely to feel a closeness to my lover so far away, it existing as a token of her), but in truth a letter read is like a story told: the second taste is not as fulfilling, even if I have already forgotten its content. If this were so I would desire no more letters, because I could rely on the small wad of neatly opened envelopes that sit at this very moment in the drawer of my desk, unlocked, because I know György’s knowledge of English is not up to deciphering any love letters of mine. But they lie there for the most part unreread.

So as you can see, it is not so much the receipt of letters that is the pleasure, because the receipt of the letter is merely a moment of subdued triumph, existing within a specific moment, but the feeling I wish to locate is found in a longing for a letter, the perpetual desire that is never fully assuaged and can be found in no single moment.

The tram smells of potato skins. I see a red spaniel on the pavement for a single frozen instant, reared and straining on hind legs, leash tight, chasing the metal dragon. It is frozen there forever, and later, when the tram takes me back along the same route, I will be surprised not to find it still there in the same position. Though, of course, I will still always see it there.

This longing is so bad that it has broken the confines of the home I share with György and has run out onto the streets. I cannot help thinking that other letters are for me. When a green postal van passes me in the street, bearing its familiar bugle insignia, my footsteps slow down, I follow it with my eyes to see if it is coming to a stop and perhaps about to deliver to the small side street I live on, which is just around the corner. Or, if I am not so close to home, I have a thought that they perhaps have an urgent parcel to deliver to me and have been rushing around the streets of Debrecen trying to trace my movements, following confirmations of sightings by other students who recognise me even if they don’t know me. I will linger for a few moments, wondering if I should approach the van and tell them my name, or whether I should just make myself conspicuous enough for them to notice me and take the credit for having discovered me themselves. Much the same thing occurs when I see a postman in the street. I know he must have a letter for me and he’s delivering it to the wrong house. Indeed he must have been doing this for some time already because none of my friends have yet written to me either at György’s or at my fellow student’s. For some reason the postman is giving my mail to a neighbour, who doesn’t know what to make of it, seeing that dozens of English people have suddenly started writing to him in a language he doesn’t understand.

The same thing happens whenever I see anyone in the street reading a letter, or holding one of those blue air mail envelopes with the red and blue striped border. I have to restrain myself from trying to get a closer look to see if I can recognise the handwriting. Just now, as I stood waiting for the tram at the university stop with a large group of other people, I saw a young woman holding a parcel and had to grit my teeth, grip my fists white and resist the overwhelming desire to snatch the parcel — my parcel — from her and run into the forest just opposite the tram stop, no doubt pursued by a mob of dismayed and outraged Hungarians.

But I know, of course, that the parcel will not bear my name but probably the name of an Hungarian with family name first and first name second. (Actually, what do they call it? Family name is fine, but what of the other? You can’t call it a Christian name these days. Forename? Prénom? When it comes after the ‘surname’? Perhaps aprésnom.)

In the month I’ve been here, the word ‘certainty’ has fallen from my vocabulary. How can I be certain in a country whose borders are so nebulous? The Great Hungarian Plain carries on well into Romania, as does a huge population of Hungarian people in cities, towns and villages that have Romanian names on the maps but Hungarian names in the mouth. Which part of Romania is really Hungary? Which part of Yugoslavia? Where is the real country? The borders are so uncertain. My biggest worry is that when I go to Budapest I will walk down to the river, open my eyes, and the Danube won’t be blue.

And where does this word come from: Danube? This water is born German and flows by the name of Donau, emerging from the depths of the Black Forest oozing north-east to Czechoslovakia which is now the Czech Republic, or at least for that part of it which was once Bohemia. But the Donau seems to change its mind and shuns the Bohemian part of Czechoslovakia which is now the Czech Republic by slowly veering east at the Bavarian city of Regensborg sometimes called Ratisbon, it rolls down and its waters metamorphose into Austrian waters though obviously its klanguage does not change since it still goes by the name of Donau uncertainly hithering and thithering across the north of the country for three hundred and fifty two kilometres, its tributaries draining most of its chosen nation as it slides through Wien which is called Vienna by some and Bécs by others then decides to take up citizenship of SlovakosCzechia which is now the Slovakian Republic, contemptuously casting off its German and calling itself Dunaj, paying its respects to the capital of Bratislava which the Hungarians call Pozsony, then seeming to have second thoughts, for it drifts south-east with a certain curiosity towards Magyarország which is sometimes called Hungary, and then undergoes a startling schizophrenia as the water lapping the northern bank clings devoutly to its Slovakian identity while the water that constitutes the rest of the river takes up Hungarian nationality and renames itself Duna, thus flowing on for many kilometres mostly-Hungarian partly-Slovakian until its countless teeming water molecules opt for outright Hungarian nationality and veer abruptly, uncharacteristically, southwards, cutting the country in half, the hills of Transdanubia to the west and the Great Plain to the east, swirling on right through this country and then relinquishing almost entirely its four hundred and seventeen kilometres of Hungarian citizenship and pounding into the teeming uncertainty of Yugoslavian identity where, for some time, half of the river clings on to the last remnants of Hungarian identity as manifested in the autonomous province of Vojvodina and half sides with Croatia which some call the Horváth then, rushing east again through Belgrade, the waters of the Croatian side switch allegiance to Serbia proclaiming itself the Dunav before the water molecules of the Vojvodinian side metamorphose their national identity each one becoming Romanian and deciding unanimously on the name Dunârea, until the Serbian water opts for Bulgarian nationality, the uncertain river rolling on and on, half-Bulgarian half-Romanian with an uncertain mass of molecules in the middle switching sides constantly until a sudden and unexpected lurch northwards wins over the Bulgarian water and the river Dunârea flows on seemingly intent on crossing the border into the present, once or future Soviet half of Moldavia, as opposed to the half of Moldavia that remains or remained Romanian (where the water flows on but the stones remain) but the river again rushes sharply east and then the Dunârea literally

m e l t s

into the Delta depositing seventy million tons of alluvium

every year, disintegrating into a marble pattern of branches

and streams that shatter the land, the difference between

land and water becoming uncertain in a mass of unmappable

everchanging islands that

disintegrate into the Black Sea,

the river ending its two thousand eight hundred and fifty kilometre course,

from Black Forest

to Black Sea,

and seeming blue only to those who are in love.

The young woman lets her body release from its languorous stretch. The tram is filled with warm sunshine. Something is released inside me also.

An old gypsy couple trudging down Piac utca (which some call Market Street). Ragged brown and weighed down carrying guilt of the world eternally wandering endless through cities of fire. The ice was melting off the roof this morning. Morning sun. György consulted a few books and then said smiling

—It is now spring.

This has happened four times already. The streets take a new shape, but still the snow returns.

PART TWO

The Most Beautiful Girl in Town

Easily, the first thing he’d noticed about her was her smell. He’d wondered if it was her period, or maybe the sweat from her thick woollen tights. He was on the floor in the hallway at the party talking to her and the guy he thought she was with, Barnabás, the tall, suave, wild haired guy who was from an Indian family, or maybe he wasn’t, he’d never asked him, but he thought there’s probably Hungarian Indians just like there’s British Indians, and he was noticing this earthy fragrance from her. When she walked past him later he took in a deep nosebreath to get it harder and wondered if anyone had noticed. It was ripe and seductive and he wanted to bury his face in it.

She had Italian good looks, rounded face, full lips, brunette bobbed, and was shorter than him, with eyes that were sometimes brown and sometimes green. She spoke English with what sounded like a French accent: with chocolate on her tongue.

He should be running back to San Francisco, but he was here sitting in her apartment on a morning off, alone because she’d rushed off for a lecture, and he had a headache and his limbs were trembling and there was powder in his kidney and he needed the little bit of cheap Russian vodka that was left in the bottle and he could hear it singing to him but he was too scared to try it just yet, and he was wondering, how come they hadn’t fucked yet? And what was he doing getting involved with an eighteen year old student, when he was married and when he was here representing the prestige of his San Franciscan college? Forgetting, that was what. Screw the college back home. He had come out here to get away from their bullshit, and from his wife, and from the bars of Sunset (even though the bars of Sunset had been an attempt to get away from the bullshit of his university and his wife). So he had come to teach American literature at a Hungarian university, and haunt the bars of Debrecen, and end up in bed with a Hungarian girl.

It was a nice place she had. New and clean and he could still smell the paint. The builders were still throwing up the block next door. This whole side of the street had these postmodern buildings that were brightly coloured and had little turrets and features borrowed from other styles like Gothic, Secession and Art Deco, and they were facing a row of concrete shoeboxes from the sixties. The street seemed to typify the face-off between modernism and postmodernism. If he ever had to give a lecture on the subject to these Hungarian students he would just take them for a walk and tell them to look at Erzsi’s street. It was strange, though, that he was kind of growing fond of those old modernist buildings across the street. He was beginning to see them as the original architects must have seen them. All you had to do was stand and look at them for a few minutes and you saw through the shoebox disguise. It slipped away and they looked suddenly beautiful and daring. The apartment the university had given him was fine, just a little dated. Not exactly cobwebs in the fridge, but it had this used feel. What was it the English kid, Lloyd, had said about Erzsi? Her parents made a little money, gave her her own place. They were up there on the next floor. She had walked out this morning giggling, looking down on him in her bed.

—Don’t worry about my parents coming in to here. Just tell to them you are my teacher!

It was eight a.m. and she would be starting her seminar. His mouth was dry. The vodka was singing almost as sweetly as her. She was a nymph in a tree, singing to him, all the time smiling, laughing. He fumbled for a Kent, the first cigarette of the day, and put his Zippo flame to it. It shot straight to his head and his gut. He breathed deeply, carefully, felt his arms still trembling, but the nausea subsided. Some mornings he just wanted to end it.

That first party he’d seen her was a quiet one. He’d retreated to the kitchen for a smoke and saw her come in. She’d left her shoes in the hallway and walked past, looking in as she headed for the room where the young things were dancing. He waited for her. He was talking to someone in there, or listening to someone. The usual kitchen philosophy you got at house parties. She lasted about three minutes, then wandered in and got herself a drink. Short plaid skirt, black jersey, black tights. He looked her up and down and didn’t care who noticed. She was engrossed in pouring a drink but listening to the talk. She pushed back her hair and tucked it behind her right ear, the one that was shaped different. Pixie ear. And even though they’d been aware of each other all night, he still hadn’t known then he wanted to fuck her.

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