Metropole (29 page)

Another group arrived at the same time as the barrel, among them a strange, bent-looking girl with a machine gun. Her posture was so bad she might have been genuinely crippled. Her neck was short, her brow low, her face flat and simian. She looked almost simple, her eyes shining with a peculiar light that looked as though she might be suffering from cataracts. She did not drink with the rest, nor did she speak or laugh, she just examined everything, sniffing around, in constant, slow, soft, mysterious motion, checking everybody with a sly look, as if she were seeking someone in particular or waiting for someone to arrive. Perhaps she felt that her hour had arrived now she had a rifle on her back. Where did they get her from?

Just as everyone was drinking and having a good time a blond young man entered, at first almost unnoticed. Silence settled around him: slowly all conversations stopped. He simply stood on the steps, without moving or saying a word until his eyes got used to the dim light. He might have been about twenty-five, with thin pale lips, his eyes were icy grey. He was wearing a tattered cap, stout boots and a dirty green tracksuit top with a gun belt. He rested his right hand on his holster. When everyone had fallen completely silent he descended a few steps and still without saying a word knocked the flask from the hand of a boy who was just about to drink from it. The brandy spilled on the floor. When the boy made a grab for his flask the newcomer slapped him across the face.

Strangely enough, the boy he had hit looked to be the stronger of the two and he too had a gun but he did not think to strike back or even defend himself. Nor did anyone else so much as mutter. The people in the alcove drew back and even the monkey-faced girl stood stock still ... The blond youth tightened his belt a notch and said something to break the sudden silence. He spoke very quietly in a flat, passionless voice, breaking the words up so clearly that for once even Budai could almost make out what he was saying. It was something like this:

‘
Deperety glut ugyurumba?
’ He looked round questioningly. People did not look at him, in fact most of them lowered their eyes. ‘
Bezhetcsh alaulp atipatityapp? Atipatityapp?
’ The man with the droopy moustache and jaundiced face who was dispensing machineguns wanted to say something but the blond shut him up and calmly dismissed him. ‘
Je durunty ...’

He spoke for two or three minutes in the same flat tone while everyone listened intently, standing in a circle round him, hardly breathing. He ended on a question, though even then his voice hardly rose.

‘
Eleégye kurupundu dibádi? ... Dibádi, aka tereshe mutyu lolo dibádi?
’

‘
Dibádi! Dibádi!
’ they all roared back at him in high spirits.

No-one bothered with the drinks anymore. They swarmed into the street. Tanks happened to be passing at that moment, rumbling by, deafeningly loud. The turrets were open, uniformed men looking out of them. Those who had issued from the cellar store quickly surrounded the tanks and mounted them, led by the blond youth in the green track-suit top. There was a replay of the earlier scene: much debate with the civilians explaining matters with wide sweeping gestures. The uniformed troops were visibly confused by the sudden onslaught. The tanks came to a halt, the helmeted figures clambered out. One, who first removed his headphones, presumably the commanding officer, raised his arms for silence and asked something. He received a hundred replies, hats being waved everywhere, in response to which he ducked back down into the tank. After a short interval he stuck his head out again and simply said:

‘
Bugyurim.
’

The crowd burst into cries of joy, cheering and welcoming him. Someone produced a flag, the one Budai had seen before, with red and black stripes, and to more loud cheers fixed it on the leading tank. The tanks then set off again, rumbling on, now laden with troops and civilians all heading in one direction, back towards the grey building. Soon enough they reached the end house. There it had grown dense again: it seemed that attempts to clear the area had not been entirely successful or that others had since come along to join them. The windows of this building too were crammed with onlookers, once again a mixture of troops and civilians, much like outside. Budai tried to stay close to the blond youth and keep his green tracksuit top in sight. The bent-backed girl with the machine gun and idiot eyes seemed to be following Budai, sticking close to him, constantly pattering along behind him.

Now there were shots, a few stray volleys and some longer rounds. It was hard to tell from where Budai was whether it started from inside or outside the building. Perhaps there had been a few warning shots from within and the besiegers had replied with a show of force. Or it might have been the other way round. But it hardly mattered who started it. There were so many guns in the street and the mood was so tense that something was bound to happen. People might have been shooting from the roofs too. The rattling of guns was soon underscored by another deeper, more compact bass noise that sounded like thunder. It must have been the tanks firing. One section of the grey wall fell away and collapsed into the street, leaving a great gaping hole.

Automatic fire opened up from inside the building, spraying the street. Panic broke out. The crowd broke up again and people fled in terror, everyone seeking shelter wherever it could be found, in nearby doorways, behind advertising pillars, by parked cars, by dustbins or simply lying flat on their stomachs by the walls of locked shops. As the roadway cleared a good number remained lying on the ground, motionless or waving and crying out in pain, some rising and reeling about in search of shelter. A wounded woman was weeping and pleading for someone to help her but then another round of automatic fire from the floor above them swept across the street.

The small group Budai had joined sought cover by the blackened pillars of a ruined house. His whole body was shaking with a mixture of fury, frustration and helpless desire for vengeance. Hatred rose in his throat like a fist. He cursed and swore at the hidden enemy along with the rest, calling them ‘murderers, bloody murderers’. But after the next volley he felt so frightened he took to his heels, scrambling past the sooty, angular walls of the ruin, desperately looking for a way, any way, out. He needed to get as far as he could, somewhere he could no longer even hear the sound of gunfire.

It seemed an earlier catastrophe had overtaken the house. The ruins suggested that it was not simply fire, for the blackened plaster bore traces of bullet holes and shell fragments. It might have been destroyed by bombs, by heavy artillery and hand-to-hand combat, and only after that set on fire. But what was the occasion of the catastrophe? What had happened? Was it a siege? A war? A revolution? And who were the combatants? Who fought whom and why?

He had discovered a way out. There were just a few stairs he needed to run up and at the top there was an open corridor that surely led to freedom. But someone called him and snatched at his coat. It was the blond youth and when Budai turned around in fear the youth beckoned him with his finger. Budai stopped in his tracks, not knowing what to do, not understanding where he should go and why. The boy extended his hand, offering him a revolver and now that both of them were still, pressed it into Budai’s hand. He suddenly felt ashamed: that icy-grey gaze could clearly see straight through him. He would have liked to explain himself but how, and in any case there was no time. So he merely weighed the revolver in his palm and nodded in confusion as if to say, very well, I am with you.

They stole through the ruins as far as the first crossroads that ran to one side of the grey house to the left of the main elevation. On the opposite side there rose a modern, light-coloured round building like a tower and they ran into it. Inside, a spiral ramp some four or five metres in diameter led up to plateaus on various levels, each packed with ten to twelve cars. It was a multi-storey car park, a light construction into which many cars could fit, though currently there was no-one going in or out. There was a large mass of men there too, armed, like themselves. The battle had spread over the whole district. They were firing from windows using the barriers to the ramp, the parked cars, or anything else they could find as cover.

Budai and the youth made their way up the inner edge of the spiral ramp a little back from the firing positions, then up an extra set of stairs. Gunmen had set themselves up there too as best they could. There were ammunitions dumps, relays, notices written in various hands, arrows pointing out directions, even some first-aid stations in the corners for the wounded. The youth in the green tracksuit top briefly consulted with various individuals, then directed them to the top, floor and beyond that into the roof, vaulted with a series of wave-like forms, from which opened a series of what might have been tiny, circular air vents overlooking the street. From here, they could shoot down at the roof of the building opposite.

The silent ape-faced girl immediately took up one of the positions and began firing.

Also in their company were the young man who had earlier been slapped across the face and the man with the leather jacket and droopy moustache. Just as familiar was the fireman in his red helmet and one of the convicts. This little improvised group was joined by a few uniformed troops in tunics who had transferred their loyalty and some nine or ten civilians with rifles or machineguns who had attached themselves to the cause somewhere along the way. There was another woman there too, a stout, older black woman who was unarmed, her face wreathed in an enormous permanent happy smile. There was no argument about who was the leader, it was the blond young man in the green tracksuit top. He directed operations with a confidence that exuded authority and gave each one of them their specific tasks.

They spent the whole afternoon and evening up in the roof firing at the grey building opposite. Having had no experience of such things Budai was shown how to use and recharge his revolver. Most of the time he was firing bullets blindly with no great sense of purpose. The enemy had in any case withdrawn from the windows on the far side, reappearing only for the odd second to take better aim but still kept up a constant exchange. The chances were that there were a great many of them too, and probably just as mixed a company as was to be found on this side – it was not a battle between ethnic groups.

So many other things happened that evening it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. They fired and rested and fired again from different vents. Food was brought, a cauldron of soup a little like goulash, slightly sweet, with herbs and bits of meat. There were also loaves of black bread that normally served as military rations. Later, one of their number, a young man in a raincoat, was wounded and suddenly fell back, his face gone pale. He made no noise but you could see from his tight lips and desperate looks that he was in pain. He was taken away on a stretcher.

Budai managed to sleep for a couple of hours. They had created a temporary resting place out of bits of polystyrene in a corner of the loft. The crazy girl seemed to be close to him as he slept, at least from time to time. She did not address him – no one ever heard her speak, she might have been genuinely dumb – she just fixed him with a blank look that was plainly insolent, leaning on her elbow next to him, never without her machinegun. What did she want from him? She made Budai nervous even when he was half-asleep: he felt tense and anxious not knowing why she was there. How come they had been thrown together like this? What had he to do with a half-wit of the underclass? Later it seemed she was holding him in her arms, embracing him closely with a shameless sexual pleasure though he was all the time as aware of the foul smell of her perspiration as of the battle going on outside. He was also frightened of the severe youth in the green tracksuit top. What would he do if he caught them in this dim corner? It was of course possible that he was imagining all this, that it was an illusion based on acute anxiety. Later still an enormous explosion shook the loft, perhaps a bomb or a grenade – or was that hallucination too?

The evidence suggested it was no hallucination for when they left the multi-storey car park at first light of dawn and looked back, they could see that the wall had gaping holes in it and that the cars parked there had been more or less shot to pieces. The grey building opposite was in a still worse condition with what might have been tank damage: a wide crack ran across the elevation and one corner had collapsed right up to the fourth floor. There were a lot fresh scars and holes.

The little group found its way back to the front gate of the grey building. That obviously had been the chief point of the attack. The burnt-out turret of the tank that had been guarding it was lying on its side and the tracks of the vehicle had become detached, half twisted off. The most daring attackers now used it as cover, firing from behind it, then put their weights to the great mass of steel and with an enormous effort and loud cries pushed it ahead of them for use as a battering ram, thinking to break down the gate which was barred and bolted but shot full of holes now and therefore buttressed on the inside with sandbags, struts and beams.

It did not give easily: they had to shove the great armoured tank against it ten or fifteen times with constant encouragement and a deal of shouting. The thick iron doors kept bowing and bending but they always sprang back. Then the assailants started throwing grenades at it so the whole thing creaked and shrieked and was covered in smoke until finally they succeeded in loosening it from its hinges. Once the grenade smoke had cleared, they tried another push and the gate gave, the whole lot simply falling away. The crowd pressed through with cries of triumph, those behind pushing and encouraging those ahead, hoping for an unobstructed route into the building.