Metropole (28 page)

Sirens suddenly started wailing from various directions. Ambulances? Fire services? The police? Hearing the sound, the entire crush began to break up, running off this way and that, filling up the surrounding streets again. The section in which Budai was trapped made for the wide gates of the great buttressed castle nearby, gates normally reserved for cars, and flowed through. Whichever way they went, shops brought down their shutters. Traffic was at a standstill, buses and cars parking at the side of the road, the passengers spilling from them to join the ranks of those who had been part of the procession. Bells were ringing in the distance and a horn was constantly sounding, the kind of horn that normally brings an end to a day’s work at a factory.

He found himself at the building site with the skyscraper, the one whose floors he had so often counted, but he had no time for that now. The construction workers had in any case started to leave the building as soon as the remnants of the procession came into view. They were descending by lift and ladder. Cranes and all other machinery stopped working: the high steel frame, the walls, the platforms emptied. Everyone engaged on the building joined the mass below, coming just as they were, in paint-stained overalls, with paper hats on their heads and so the wave of humanity swelled and grew. What was this? A general strike?

Posters still fresh and wet on the walls bore messages with huge letters. Groups read and debated in front of them. The human flood swallowed them too and was soon joined by residents of the wayside houses and the hordes emerging from the steps of the metro with its yellow barriers. In the meantime someone was rasping something through a microphone, the voice cracking and babbling as if it were trying to communicate urgent instructions. It met with a hostile reaction. The protesters grumbled, cried out in hoarse voices, turned disorderly and started pushing and shoving. Another stream joined them at the next crossroads. There were bottlenecks and vortices, lines got mixed up, people cut across each other, trod each other down in the confusion. And still the amplified voice crackled on.

Budai’s heart leapt for a moment: he thought he saw Epepe on the other side of the road. It was a second or two, no more, perhaps less than that. Her blonde, blue-uniformed figure stood blindingly clear of the crowd, Or was it simply the blonde hair, the blue uniform and the familiar build that made him think it was her? Was it someone else? No sooner had she appeared than she was gone and however Budai struggled to reach her, he couldn’t see her anymore, nor anyone who looked the least bit like her, though it was perfectly possible that those on her side of the road had been shoved aside.

The failure did not crush him. He had not given up hope that he might catch sight of her again in the crowd despite its arbitrary turns and shifts. Hope spurred him to action, encouraging him to take real part in whatever was going on here, to go where the others went, to do as they did, to share their fates, adopt their causes, to fight tooth and nail with them.

He tried to grasp and learn the songs they were singing. Most of the time it was a stirring rapid march, one he had heard before so not just the melody but even the words had stuck in his memory, that is in as far as he could make it out. It sounded something like:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé

Bügyüti nyemelága

Petyitye!

The last word tended to come out snappish and short accompanied by either fury or laughter. They song was defiantly repeated as if to threaten or annoy, as though the singing of it had long been forbidden. There was a very thin young man with an abundance of hair who kept it going: if others stopped singing it he would start it up time and again, conducting them with his long arms until everyone near him took it up. It became intoxicating after a while: people were drunk on their own voices as though they felt – and Budai felt it too – that they were accomplishing something important by singing it. This happy confidence bubbled through them like the fizz in soda: together, they felt, they could overcome anything: nothing could stop them, they were all-conquering heroes. And this led them into ever wilder excesses of joy. They embraced strangers, they kissed each other, they danced and clapped and shouted: they seemed to float on its energy.

Next to Budai a silver-clad girl with golden-brown skin and a head of woolly black hair was beating a drum. She must have been part of the procession when it was at its orderly stage, one among many girls in silver who only later melted into the crowd. She can’t have been much more than fifteen but she beat her drum tirelessly, her face transfigured by a passionate enthusiasm, so much so that she was almost beside herself, the whites of her eyes prominent, her gaze fixed somewhere above. Budai could not help thinking that though still a child she would have no hesitation in offering up her life if it became necessary.

A little way down the road they were building barricades. They had taken up the paving stones and gathered furniture from the nearby houses, continuing to bring out sideboards and pianos, also building a small hill of sand and pebbles as wide and high as they could on top of which they fixed a flag.

A line of uniformed men with guns were waiting in riot order on the next corner, blocking the side-street, their uniforms consisting of those ubiquitous canvas overalls and tunics. The crowd recoiled but a bunch of young women started teasing them. They approached ever closer, clapping and dancing, however much the officer in command yelled at them, taking no notice of him but pinning flowers in the young men’s berets and when they raised their guns, planting one in the barrel too. This encouraged others to come forward, offering them cigarettes, embracing them from front and from rear, slapping their shoulders, shaking their hands and smiling, loudly explaining the state of affairs to them. Within a couple of minutes of this display of friendship the soldiers had been unarmed. The side street that had been blocked off now lay open and the crowd swept down it, carrying Budai with them. Soldiers who a few moments ago were barring their way joined them now, men in tunics marching along, laughing and singing with the rest. Here and there you could see a member of the crowd carrying one of the official rifles.

Reaching a narrow street, they merged with a boisterous crowd already there. A large anonymous grey building looked down on them, all the windows of its four storeys full of curious faces. There was a great deal of coming and going in the smaller houses opposite. The whole street felt like an ants’ nest. Budai tried to push his way through and saw that the gates of the grey building were locked, its great iron doors barred and reinforced with bolts and straps. A tank sat in front of it, blocking the entrance with its weight of metal.

It wasn’t clear to him quite what was happening so, following a hunch, he walked into one of the houses opposite and though the gateway, the stairs and internal corridors were already packed with people no-one asked him where he was going. He reached the top floor without any difficulty and went through an open door into a flat facing the street front. There were a number of people already in the various rooms. Clearly they could not all be living here, in fact the tenants themselves might be elsewhere. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down on the seething masses as waves and counter-waves of them flowed to and fro. He also took the opportunity of observing the neighbouring houses and assumed they were as packed as this one was.

Opposite him in one of the first-floor windows of the grey building people were setting up a loudspeaker to address the street. The crowd below watched this suspiciously, a little quieter now than before, every so often shouting something in mock encouragement. A buzz and crackle signalled that the loudspeaker had been switched on. The set started to whistle and fizz. Once the interference was gone, a female voice was heard gabbling something very fast, followed by a few seconds heavy with silence, followed by the striking of a gong. Then a deeper, more resonant male voice addressed the crowd in ceremonial fashion:

‘
Tchetchencho ...
’

But the very first word roused a chorus of disapproval, whistles, boos, and general grumbling. Even the slim black girl leaning on the balcony railings next to him shook her fist in anger. The voice repeated slightly less certainly:

‘
Tchetchencho ...
’

This roused such an explosion of elemental rage the speaker couldn’t go on. A brick sailed over the street. It must have been thrown from the very house Budai himself was occupying. It only succeeded in hitting the wall of the grey building where it shattered and fell to the ground. The second struck the window-frame, the third hit the loudspeaker full on. The loudspeaker fell silent. The people gathered in the windows of the grey building vanished: the onlookers drew back. In front of the gate the tank started up, its turret swung around, the barrel extending menacingly from the closed metal box. The people in the street moved aside but not very far, remaining close to the tank, chanting slogans at its invisible crew, raising their arms in oaths of allegiance. Then they sang their anthem again:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé ...

In the meanwhile others continued to throw bricks so that eventually Budai felt anxious enough to leave the building. On his way out he came across great piles of bricks in the yard that served as an ammunition store for the besiegers who had formed a human chain to convey the bricks to the front line.

Just as he reached the gate a few trucks appeared at the end of the street full of uniformed men. They advanced together blowing their horns, forcing their way through the crowd that was not at all keen to let them through. A tall, muscular man leapt on top of the leading truck – he must have been an officer though he wore the same uniform as the others, without insignia. He spoke sharply, clearly, in a voice that could be heard a long way off, a voice used to command that rose over the shouting and yelling. He spoke briefly in a clipped military tone, his gestures decisive and harsh, waving his arms: he was probably calling on the mob to disperse. But he was shouted down by the impatient and ever more hostile crowd and soon enough a brick was flying in his direction too. Though the brick passed within inches of him, the officer showed no fear. He cast a contemptuous eye in the direction from which the brick had come and swung from the truck in a manner that implied impending danger.

Uniformed men leapt off the truck and formed a cordon to cover the whole width of the street. They started to press the crowd back but there weren’t very many of them and their combined physical force was nowhere near enough, not even after repeated efforts. Then they tried using the fire hose, aiming jets right and left. Those in front who were struck directly crept back into the ranks, drenched and dripping, but one well-aimed brick struck the hand of the soldier holding the hose and broke the hose in the process.

Next the soldiers started lobbing smoke bombs. This was more effective: the crowd did begin to break up and were forced back, then had to run away to avoid the white billowing puffballs. The smoke did not reach Budai but he was caught up with everyone rushing this way and that. Some turned down the crossroads directly behind them. Budai followed, then skipped over a nearby park fence and scampered down to the next corner.

As he stopped to get his breath he spotted a half-lowered set of awnings under which a lot of others were ducking and vanishing. He joined them to see what was going on. There were steps leading down into a kind of cellar lit only by naked light-bulbs, the place lukewarm and smelling faintly of hemp. It must have been the storeroom of a rope and canvas shop as there were rows of folded sacks beside the lime-washed walls with great rolls of canvas and rope piled over them from floor to ceiling. Other shelves were packed with balls of string and straps. And then there was the crowd, a great mix of men, women and youths. Budai could not decide at first what they were doing here: could they be examining the rope?

A smaller alcove opened to the left and people were crowding into it. He had to stand on tiptoe to see what was happening. A tall, jaundiced-looking, droopy-moustached man in a leather jacket was distributing machineguns from a box, exchanging a few words with whoever was next in line, then shaking hands before handing the gun over. Some people were wearing uniforms, those of the kind he already knew: conductors, boys and girls in green waterproofs, a lot of common canvas tunics. There was even a fireman among them. Others were wearing various forms of combat gear, a mixture of the civilian and the camouflaged military, as well as boots, felt waistcoats, earth-coloured raincoats, shoulder straps and ammunition belts as well as fur hats or peaked police caps. There were even a few in striped prison outfits, convicts with shorn hair, of the sort who had been in the procession in the morning. Could they have been part of the parade or were they just protesters in fancy dress? And if they really were prisoners, what had they been imprisoned for? Were they criminals or political enemies? And how, in any case, did they manage to get free?

Budai seemed to have stumbled on one of the cells of the group in command of the district, possibly the whole city. The continual coming-and-going bore witness to that. Later people brought drinks too, some of them rolling a small barrel down the steps. It was received with cheers and whoops of joy. The barrel was immediately seized, a hole sprung and the contents emptied into jugs and bottles. He was invited to take a swig from the flask that was doing the rounds: it wasn’t the sweet-sickly swill that was measured from taps in the bars but a genuine, strong, head-splitting brandy.