László Garaczi

Ambaradan

On the Literaturexpress 2000

 

... A rusty iron pole, weeds pushing through the tiles, the gravel burning-hot in the still shining sun. Boarded-up windows; someone's overturned a leaky pail on the fence-post. A rotted railway-tie without tracks runs beside us, smoldering circles by the embankment. The last telephone pole, a scrubby little wood full of messy trees. A rough concrete ramp, a forest ranger standing in a door looks behind him, waist twisted. Clearings in the woods.
The blue smoke of our railway engine.
We slow down, the scenery diminishes pace: staring teenagers by the crossing barrier. Then we lunge forward again; the ladder leaned to a house is twice as big as the house itself. A motionless cow-head in the high grass. The marshy woods flash out from between the boxcars of the train roaring by in the opposite direction; the draft blows the curtains into the middle of the compartment: great, red tongues of flame.
A messy, deserted slope, a vacant lot in the middle. A small vegetable garden, a locked cargo container. Concrete circles built onto the poles, the cables stretch out over them. Tiny plots of land, two hunched-up figures in front of a shack tear the grass from the ground. An empty dirt road, then a paved road; the lake is like a giant fish-scale. White plastic sacks in the courtyard of a factory, a windowless, yellow building: a square-shaped pyramid with three aluminum pipes bent backwards stick out from the top. A green bus, the No. 17 local. A truck lot, an endless stone wall fills the entire scene; the sky and the ground disappear. A highway, a petrol station with flags, white stripes on the pavement. This is no longer a forest, it's a park. A traffic light, stop signs, streetlights, advertisement space, a construction site. A black Ford rolls out of an underground parking lot. A boy sits on the sidewalk and watches the train. Guards in front of a warehouse. Graffiti, tenements, parking lots. Tracks in the scenery.

The palace guard presents arms and turning towards us, performs his salutation. The president is late, we drift towards the buffet tables. The sun is shining, the rain is falling. The president arrives and asks the question: is there need for writers in this day and age at all. We stand around in the pebbled yard, then walk out in front of the palace to watch the guards diligently presenting arms to salute everyone coming and going. The question is, where is the border of the invisible circle inside of which they must carry out their greeting ritual. I slide my foot in and out of the circle, moving them faster and faster, until one of them decides he's had enough. He points his rifle at me, then turns away, standing at rigid attention.
Yet another speech, now it's a top railroad official. After every sentence the phalanx of writers presses one step closer to the buffet table, like the wall before a free kick. He says something to the effect that the railroad and literature have always "gone hand-in-hand". Once, on a given route, it was possible to read a 600-page book, but since the development of the railway, today, on that same route, one can only read a 300-page book, and soon there'll only be time for 150 pages or even less on this same route.
Don't look at the sandwiches while the speech lasts. The hungry writer.
I study the technique of clapping with a glass in your hand: you have to slap the top of your hand, it doesn't make any sound, but from a distance it looks like you're clapping.
Finally we can eat; if we continue like this, by the end of the trip we'll have plundered an eight-mile long buffet table. Who eats first, which nations, and how they chew. The hungry writer. I saw hundreds of hungry writers across Europe. One of them exclaims angrily: this is not caviar, this does not deserve the name caviar! He's the one who invents the word: ambaradan, since then, this is how we always greet each other: ambaradan, meaning disorder, chaos. He bought a digital thermometer (he buys something wherever we go), and then left it at the MickeyD's, and when he went back to retrieve it, the glass of a shop window blew up next to him. He must be a talented writer.
I spit my gum in a glass and slide it under the couch. I'm sitting near the wall on a chair, so I don't get swept away by the crowd. From a sharp angle I stare at a painting covering the entire wall, the edges of dinner-jackets brush against the petrified oil.
Too many people, too much info, hyper-stimulus and impression-shock. Who are these people, why are they speaking incomprehensible languages, and why am I sitting here, what is my duty, and is it possible that at this very moment I am actually somewhere entirely different?
Group photo: let's wave to Europe. We've regressed into a group of tourists. We ought to dye our hair green. It's like the army: they load us onto trucks, and we have to work in various fields. I'm going home tomorrow for sure this time, repeats a colleague next to me.
On the way back to the hotel I check out the MickeyD's: the swept-up shards are still there; in the meantime, they've hurriedly replaced the glass in the window. Maybe it fell from the sky, a shop window dropped from the sky? Just like when there was a rumour that astronauts saw a piano in space, but they didn't dare tell anyone.
Some religious ceremony: a glaring neon cross hangs above the water from a huge crane, mass held on the pier, priests scurry for holy water.
What's scarier: a hundred writers or a hundred priests?
Our glass hotel is a large, bright wave between two stone columns.
But we're not going home yet: an exclusive garden party, the black tips of bushes stick out of the silky mist, the never-ending sundown on the horizon. We sit around a fire, ashes settle in our hair, burying us. The film crew sleeps, reclining in their huge padded coats. A woman by the table: sitting, smiling, smoking, silent.
T. goes inside to breast-feed, P. dumps the remaining wood onto the fire from a basin. This is the kind of drunken state when I strain to be funny, but it doesn't work. The next day: a wet towel under my head, if the water gets cold, I turn the tap on with my foot. I must not move quickly, something's broken in my brain. Ambaradan...

... Why are there no muscles in the legs of Marshall Zhukov's bronze horse? And if the horse has testicles, where is its penis, and why is the tail flying behind it if the horse is standing? The latter may possibly be explained by the tempestuous head wind.
Our miniscule room can be divided into smell-zones, a five-pointed star outside our window, beside it a striped dome, a yellow crane to the right of it. Fuzzy clouds, sifting rain. A tear drops onto her plate as the young translator eats greasy French fries. I try to console her by remarking that Raskolnikov lived somewhere near here.
We awake to banging on the door, looking like a wild duck a woman is standing there: "Frühstück, schneller, program!" "Gud mórning," I answer. "Schneller! Schneller!" she yells, playfully threatening me.
We toast to the undying friendship of the railroad and literature, we toast to the peace between nations, the Slavic roots of the Hungarian language, and since the past cannot be erased, we toast and hold a moment of silence for the memory of fallen heroes. They are overbearingly friendly, banging my back, hugging us, groping L., and kissing each other on the lips. The boss laughs heartily when after the umptieth toast of unknown subject we can't seem to turn our vodka glasses bottoms up anymore. We have to sing the Katiusha, we start to sing the Hungarian version in retort, but when we get to the part about the piano and the Russian soldiers fucking the lame grandmother, we stop short, realizing that our Slovak colleague-who has already fondled practically everyone and whose mentality does not stray far from the pan-Slavic ideal-speaks Hungarian, but it's too late to stop.
The train arrivals and departures in this city depend entirely on us, explains the railroad president menacingly, so we'd better get acquainted with the idea that if they say so, this train of ours will only leave tomorrow, or the day after, or never. He's a big side of cantenkerous bacon, proposes a last toast, waves the interpreter to silence and focuses his hypnotic gaze on us, the two Hungarians, yes, we are the only ones left who have to be convinced of something, we are the last pillars of obstinance, who refuse to succumb, even though it would be so easy, and why don't we do it, it would cost us nothing, mourning a little for those poor war heros. Suddenly he stands up, on which everyone scrambles up after him, this is how we continue, with glasses raised high. He slowly steps towards us, tears trickle from his eyes, I think he's forgiven us, and without further ado, attempts to smooch the Hungarian translator girl. Then he turns to me, looks me over and says: yong boi.
Applause. A group photo.
It's four-fifteen, our train has probably left, and I'm smashed.
The sad smile of the railroad president's wife as she stands on the platform: this is how we live.
At the end of the car stands a leathery-faced old man in uniform, a gun at his waist, a whip in his boot.
"These people are indestructible," says someone next to me.

A sparrow hops along the table, then lifts itself into the air, a great, yellow beam in its beak. It flies away among the trees. One minute later it's back on the edge of the table, blinking innocently towards the bag. The pigeons, ten times the size, are stupid, unable to lift the piece of French fry. Sparrow-pigeon: one-nil. Anti-sparrow-shaped fries? It probably wouldn't sell, just like colourless cola.

A round table discussion, moderated by actor-king-with-goatee, he sits us on the stage, there's no air, and he doesn't give us water because "the stage is a sacral space". I'm a little pessimistic about the statement that Europe's mutual language is poetry; that's all I've got to add to the discussion, now I'm home free. Cipolla comments on the remarks, and soon it turns out that Europe's centre at the moment is America, and this is a big problem. I'm a bit sick of this intellectual whining about satanic America. We must use Europe's spiritual tradition as a buttress, a few others suggest gravely, but exactly what that might be remains unexplained.
We were also told at the discussion that God created the Russian language. This creation, the Russian language, is now being threatened by English, this low-down weapon of American imperialism. This English is no longer the language of Shakespeare, but the language of business, unfit for poetic self-expression, destroying imagination, exploitation coded within it. I think about how we luckily survived the forty years of compulsory Russian (which was naturally still Pushkin's Russian and not the Russian of the occupation), because it seems that it did not inflict irreversible destruction on the Hungarian language.
I also think about how Europe is refined, sophisticated, self-reflexive, with a little loss of self-esteem, like an old man who can't understand the young, and finds their actions primitive, naďve, and aggressive. The "young": America. I wonder why does Europe react so heatedly to this challenge? Maybe because it is in need of fresh blood, dynamism. Europe knows that tradition is the history of organically integrated, outside forces, but still, it is afraid of this knowledge. Why?...