Friday in Budapest

June 13, 2014

Friday the 13th.  As I went about my business today, there were Four Passing Sights, or rather not Passing sights, for I was a participant in three of them. I went to the Opera to discover that the ballet I wanted to see was not there, but at some other opera house “twenty minutes” away. I decided not to bother with logistics, and wandered off. On Andressay was an ancient crippled woman. She’d probably never been more than four feet tall or so, but now she is bent in half, so that she supports herself on a stub of a cane and her face is never more then two feet off the pavement, her brown face with two tiny eyes, practically no features at all. When I saw her I was thrown out of my mind in an uncomfortable way. I had no context, no excuse, not even the beginning of an explanation. I saw she had a begging cup in her hand, so I emptied my pockets into it. She lifted her face, but there was no expression I could read. The only other gesture was to pull her babushka more firmly over her head, to hide herself better. The existential “WHY??” was welling up in my chest when I was approached by an old man in great agitation. He talked very fast, holding a handful of florins out to me. When I finally said, “I don’t understand you,” his entire being fell, shoulders, countenance, as though I had been his last hope. When I crossed into the bright sun, heading for the museum, a burly man came out of the crowd and planted himself in my way. He chattered away. I said, “I don’t understand you.” Then a miraculous thing happened. Either he had some English, or I was understanding Hungarian, for what came next was almost perfectly clear. He demanded to see identification.
“No,” I said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out some ID I was supposed to recognize, and said, “I am Police. You show me ID. You show me some document.”
“No,” I said.
“We do it here, or we go down to the station.”
“That’s not going to happen,” says I.
“One piece. One piece of ID prove you who you say you are.”
I hadn’t said who I was, and wasn’t going to. But I thought maybe there was something legitimate in the request after all, so I pulled out my platinum Am Ex, which was the closest thing to ID that I was carrying. He seemed disappointed. He said again something about “working it out at the station” and I responded, “Like I said, that is not going to happen.”
I should have said, “You go get a uniformed police officer,” but that was beyond our mutual understanding. I was pretty convinced by now he was not legitimate, though what he was I wasn’t sure. He said, “Look, we have a lot of problems with drugs. Drugs coming in. Heroin. You have money?”
“Yes I have money.”
“You let me sniff money, Just one sniff, to see drugs, then it’s all right.”
I pulled out my wallet, held it up to his nose and let him sniff. What did I know? Maybe that’s the way you do detect heroin. But in that instant I realized his next move was going to be to grab the wallet and run. I pulled it back. I shouldered him aside and said, “That’s enough. I’m going on my way. Now!”
Behind me I heard him hollering “No problem! No problem!” Had he been a real cop, I doubt that the shove would have been endured.

Less than a block away, two derelicts lay sweetly asleep in each other’s arms, directly in the shadow of a tree that seemed to have grown there for that purpose. They were watched over by two derelicts, awake and vigilant, lest harm should befall them.

Returned to the museum I found last night. It was not, unfortunately, an art museum, but one of Hungarian history, interesting, but my enjoyment was limited because I didn’t read the language. Some of the richness could yet be comprehended. Ate the best thing I’ve had in Hungary, fried goat cheese with a salad with sun dried tomatoes. The waiter said, “Excellent choice,” and so it was. Wandered around then, and came to a vast market that used to be a train station, at the end of my very street, Vaci utca. It was bafflingly huge, though one began to work out a certain order, food on the first floor, crafts on the second, leather crafts on connecting aisles upstairs. Bought embroidery from a shop on the street, at a far smaller price, and with the old mother adding a free gift of a tiny doily or cup holder. Passed Saint Michael’s, where there is a concert of Vivaldi tonight, and I am going.