Metropole (30 page)

But the gap behind the gates was quickly filled by ranks of men in tunics, the same tunics as worn by many in the crowd – or might there be some difference in the head-to-toe uniform that only Budai hadn’t noticed? Those who had swarmed in noticed the automatics and machineguns and stopped in their tracks for a moment. Budai was not right at the front but close enough to take a brief survey of the terrain. From inside the building a hoarse, choking voice was screaming above them, almost certainly giving a last warning. But even if they wanted to heed the message there was no way back since ever more people were arriving behind them, pressing them forward: there was no option but to rush the defending lines ...

A volley of gunfire. Cries, protests, chaos. Commands screeched, almost sung out. A second volley, practically next to Budai’s ears. There was no stopping now. People forced their way in. There could be no resistance as they pushed forward, treading over the wounded and dead, over those with guns, over everything and everyone. Another wave of the living collapsed following the third volley; the blond boy was next to Budai, drenched and impassioned, fighting his way through the mêlée of bodies, clutching his revolver, waving his companions on with his left arm, his voice loud, lost in the general noise of the struggle so that only by the movement of his mouth could you tell he was calling. Budai followed him in a red haze, a kind of dream in which he was no longer afraid of anything, an ecstasy of movement in which the only aim was to get through. The twisted, ape-faced girl at his side grabbed at his shoulder and fell but he was no longer concerned with that: he was driving and ploughing on, wrestling down machinegunners, hitting out, screaming with the rest in a voice so strange he had never heard anything like it issuing from his own mouth.

Suddenly there was a great lurch forward and they found themselves inside the narrow little paved courtyard. They had broken through the line of defence. As Budai looked back, the gate was completely filled by a dark mass of insurgents: their numbers were overwhelming. There was no defence left now, it had quite vanished and the victorious crowd was roaming here and there through the building, intoxicated with its own triumph. A staircase led up from the corner of the yard. Budai ran up the first and then the second floor with others, excited and curious to see what they would find when they arrived at the top. But there were only hallways, doors, rooms and office furniture. The mob was everywhere, kicking things over, shoving things aside, searching through desks, throwing books and files here and there so that paper covered the whole floor. People ran round wildly, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, the armed and the unarmed. Some of them were wounded and wore bandages. Budai couldn’t tell insider from outsider, nor had he any idea what purpose the building served and why it was necessary to occupy it.

Some people were dragging a man down the corridor. They were led by two men with automatics with many following behind, all of them, including anyone else they passed, trying to get to the captive, to kick him, hit him and beat him down, screaming at him with hatred on their faces, so that even the armed men could not defend him. The captive was a tall man of military bearing, his boiler-suit uniform practically torn off him, his face and his shirt completely covered in blood, his arm raised to his eyes to ward off further blows. A thin girl, who looked like an angel with her long blonde hair, cleverly slipped through the ring around the man and spat directly in his face.

Others had been captured too and were also being hauled down towards the main gate. One woman was being pulled along by her hair. People were tugging and tearing at it. She fought and struggled using her nails and teeth but was soon forced to her knees. She protested and wept, spreading out her hands, begging for mercy. They tore off her skirt, then her pink knickers too so she was forced to slide along on her naked rump as they dragged her all the way down the stairs.

Budai was caught in the whirl and found himself back at the gate. There were terrible scenes of accusation and vengeance. One after the other individuals were brought down and given over to the lynch mob, most of the victims already badly beaten, hardly able to support themselves, others half-dead. What Budai couldn’t understand was how they were identified in the general chaos. Many of them were wearing canvas tunics but a lot of the accusers were in similar outfits. It bothered him. What was the difference between them? Civilians were being brought to judgment too, more women, then another group of uniformed men. There must have been an element of pure chance in the selection, the product of a moment of fury or a sudden urge in sheer blind mass hysteria.

It was as though the combatants themselves had changed: he couldn’t see anyone he had fought with. On the other hand, there were ever more mysterious, suspicious-looking figures, some of them demagogues of the first order. Take that dissolute, bearded man with the pockmarked face who looked strangely familiar: he was halfway through directing the hanging of one of the prisoners. The unfortunate victim had little if any life in him but they stripped him half-bare all the same, pulled off his boots, tied his ankles together and hanged him just like that, upside down from the lamppost in front of the gate with everyone cheering, cursing and laughing.

A few armed men tried to resist. You could see that they did not approve and wanted to cut the corpse down. A student who looked saner than the rest tried to dissuade those around him from more killing and used his own body to defend two middle-aged black women who looked as though they might be cleaners. He had little success. The furious mob shouted him down and the bearded, pockmarked man turned on him, pushed him aside and shouted:

‘
Durundj!
’

Now Budai remembered who the pockmarked figure was: it was his cellmate at the police station, the failed opera singer, the man with whom he could not get a word in edgeways, or if it not him then someone very like him. He was a proper guttersnipe this hangman-in-chief, clearly enjoying the atrocities, waving a metal bar around, bringing it down on a captive soldier’s head. As the soldier collapsed, the man leapt on him, knelt across his chest and stabbed him several times in the neck and in the balls too while the other was still kicking. Then they brought petrol, poured it over him and set it alight so the body blackened as it smoked, giving off the smell of roasting flesh. Nor was this the last of their terrible deeds.

In the meantime the young blond man in the green tracksuit top appeared running out of the building with four or five companions as if he had been told what was going on outside. As soon as he appeared the bloodthirsty crowd hesitated. It wasn’t clear whether that was because they regarded him as their leader or because his sheer presence commanded respect ... He hurried over to a group of prisoners who looked resigned to their fate, pushed the gathering mob out of the way and kicked the bearded man on the backside so he fell on his face. Everyone laughed. He picked out the uniformed ones among the prisoners and arranged them in a row with a few sharp words of command. Slowly and reluctantly they obeyed him. He sent them to stand by the wall. The crowd drew back and fell silent.

About a dozen captives were lined up, tensely waiting. Most of them were already wounded, their arms in slings, their heads and brows swathed in bandages. A middle-aged, greying man who cut an elegant figure even in his torn tunic was being supported by the man next to him. He was smoking quite calmly and watching the roused mob without any sign of fear. The blond boy mustered them with a glance of his blue-grey eyes, his lips clamped tight, expressionless. He spoke softly to them and they all raised their hands. Once they had done so he took a machinegun from one of his companions, fiddled with it, examined it and even took a look down the barrel while the uniformed prisoners stood with their hands in the air. There was no fear on their faces, simply a look of incomprehension or confusion as if they didn’t quite know the best way to behave in the given situation. One of them blew his nose without lowering the other arm.

The blond boy stood sideways on to them and shot from the hip. He fired a long round right and left, scything through them. They fell on top of each other, some stiff, others still moving their limbs, even rising a little. The grey-haired man took one more drag of his cigarette, flicked it away and only then did he sit down on the pavement with a glance that looked sleepy, faintly bored, as if he had acted voluntarily, even setting his arms on the ground so he could rest his head on them. On the far side of the line two people were still moaning and groaning. The boy in the green tracksuit top, lightly blinking, fired another round that way. Then all movement ceased.

Budai saw three more rounds of executions that morning. He did not even flinch at the third. He could bear to look on; he had developed his immunity. If there were a God, he thought wearily, he would ask that his heart should never grow cold to pity.

He was tired and hungry. He drifted through the crowded streets where tumultuous waves of people pulsed and swayed, their ranks, if anything, even denser then before, all excited by the prospect of what might happen next. Small knots of them were gathering together in debate, collecting around ad hoc speakers. There were aeroplanes humming above and beyond that a constant slow, deep rumble of a city under siege. From time to time trucks would speed by full of armed men. Here and there people were singing and whenever someone came by with the latest news he was immediately surrounded and questioned. The walls too were plastered with announcements, not only printed posters but hand-written messages. Ever more were going up.

Further on, one neighbourhood lay utterly in ruins, all the buildings collapsed and shot to pieces, the street piled high with rubble. One or two fragments were still smoking: there must have been a fierce battle here. A lot of people were clearly moving on, carrying bundles and packets. Families suddenly homeless were pulling carts with bits of salvaged furniture and other miscellaneous possessions. A ragged, long-haired figure stood in the middle of the road, bearded like a prophet, his mad eyes turning this way and that as he flung his arms about and cried the same phrase over and over again like a curse:

‘
Tohoré! Muharé! Tohoré! Muharé!
’

Budai felt sick without quite knowing what was wrong with him. It was partly nausea. There was a nervous feeling in his stomach that he put down to hunger, but even after he had managed to grab a bite – a cheap corn and flour mush he bought at a stand – the nausea persisted.

In the afternoon it started to rain. It was a heavy spring shower. The distant rumbling suddenly grew louder and closer too, ever more frightening. A peculiar restlessness took hold of people: they were running this way and that, keeping close to the walls, sheltering in doorways and abandoned shops, searching for cover as the growl became a threatening roar. Crowds were mumbling and muttering together, some women weeping and screaming in terror. A little further on people were unfurling an enormous black and red flag bearing the symbol of a bird. They stretched it between two windows so it was flat against the wall. Together with a few other pedestrians, Budai took shelter in a china shop on the corner and watched events through the broken window, waiting to see what would happen.

New formations of troops arrived in armoured cars and tanks, on motorcycles, heavily armed detachments. Their uniforms were different from the ones he had seen before: a pale, off-white drill. They wore camouflaged helmets. Two tanks stopped directly in front of the shop and uniformed men stuck their heads out, pointing and shouting to each other – the language they spoke was as strange to Budai as the rest had been.

The upshot of the brief discussion was that they aimed the bigger guns at the large flag and fired. Immediately a cloud of smoke and dust swirled up and most of the wall collapsed. The next shot so shook the building that plates, trays, vases and glasses in the china shop tumbled to the ground and smashed.

Budai ran on, his heart almost giving way. The shower had become a downpour and within a few minutes he was soaked through. He was somewhere he had not been before, a working-class district, he supposed, an estate with enormous, bare tenements, ugly, awkward masses with countless tiny windows, the buildings arranged round a cobbled, oval-shaped open space. Further motorised detachments were rumbling through the streets behind him but even in the rain the open space was full of people. It was only after a while he noticed that the crowd was exclusively female, old and young women, matrons and girls, many with umbrellas. There were at least ten occasions when he thought he saw Bebé among them.

The soldiers arrived and the women surrounded them all talking together, making broad gestures. The soldiers made no answer, staring ahead with stony gazes, their expressions unfathomable as the rain beat on their helmets. Budai couldn’t tell whether they were silent because they spoke a different language and did not understand the women or because they were forbidden to answer. Eventually the women broke into the familiar anthem:

Tchetety top debette

Etek glö tchri fefé

Bügyüti nyemelága

Petyitye!

Having pronounced the last word like a challenge, they cried out bitterly and attacked the white-uniformed men who even now did not react. But the crowd had been changing: ever more men had joined it. They appeared to be doing no more than drifting towards the armed cars out of sheer curiosity but Budai saw that some carried guns under their coats. As their numbers grew, they exchanged significant glances. The women meanwhile were carefully drawing back as if this had all been arranged, part of a strategy.