Ferenc Karinthy - Metropole

But wasn’t there a side entrance to the hotel? There might be. It was possible that Tyetye entered through a door reserved for staff. He set off to find something of the sort, turning the next corner to take a tour of the building for surveillance purposes. Surely he would come across it. Yes, but it so happened that the hotel was stuck in the middle of a group of other buildings of various sizes, the roads behind it winding either side so the side streets led him away from his intended route or towards a road-up sign that forbade entrance. After a while he realised he was lost and had no idea whether he was still in the area of the hotel as he had planned or somewhere else altogether.

Then he found himself in front of the ice-rink once more, the third time that day. They were just closing it, or rather were aspiring to close it but the skaters would not leave. However those in charge shepherded them towards the stairs, however they pushed and tried to corral them with the wide brushes they used to clean the ice, the crowd swarmed back in, surging between and around them, squeezing or sneaking in somehow, crowing in triumph as they did so, covering the ice once more so the whole process had to start from scratch.

This was quite entertaining and Budai would have been happy to watch it for a while but suddenly anxiety seized him: what if, right now, while he was wasting his time here, Dede was arriving at the main entrance? He was hungry too, not having eaten anything since the morning. What had happened to the packages of food he had left on the windowsill of his room? He had forgotten those when he pushed his way in and now he felt deeply annoyed about it. Could the big family have consumed it all? Or had those ugly cats scoffed the lot?

If he went into the self-service buffet now or bought something in a shop that would mean standing in a queue again and he feared missing her. So he refrained and worked his way back in the direction from which he had come to the main entrance of the hotel. He arrived at the precise moment that the usual priestly delegation was emerging from a big black car. The doorman swept his hat off with ostentatious reverence, greeting them and bowing low as the bearded, purple-vested, gold-chained ancients entered. Budai tried mingling with them, hoping the fat nincompoop would be too absorbed in the task to notice him. But the man still spotted him, grabbed him and pushed him out: he was not to be fooled.

Was the doorman never off duty? Though now that he took a careful look at him he was not at all sure that he was the same man he had seen earlier. But even if it was someone else, he resembled the first one so closely, not only in his uniform of fur-collared coat, flat peaked cap and gold braid, but in the dull blinking of his tiny eyes, the way he squinted. There was the same puffed up, characterless, empty, buffoonish, primitive expression on his face as on the last.

A long time passed, it might have been hours, hours when nothing changed except the weather. It started raining. Budai took shelter in the awnings before the entrance. The doorman did not mind this and seemed to pay him no attention at all, but Ebede failed to appear. There was no sign of her. Was there any hope of her turning up at all now? If his guess had been correct and it was the relationship between them that had led to his eviction, his partner-in-crime was also likely to have to face the consequences! Being his lover, she might have been dismissed or disciplined in some other way. Was it possible that he would still be waiting for her this time next year?

He was almost dying of hunger by now as well as being faint with exhaustion after the stresses of the day. After all that walking he still had no clue what to do. He leaned against the wall for support. But there must be something — he roused himself — something he had not yet tried! What was it? Maybe he could distract the doorman the way children used to by pointing to something behind him or by throwing some object so that he turned away and momentarily became defenceless. But what distraction could he devise for this vast heap of lard? Lesser distractions would be useless: there was no point in throwing a pebble or a screwed-up piece of paper at him, he was too suspicious to be taken in by that…He had to make a sacrifice, to take chances, he had learned that much. There was a price to be paid for everything in this town.

With a bitter sigh he dipped into his pockets and fished out a fistful of change, and when there was relative quiet in the street and no one was passing the hotel he threw the change on the ground in front of the doorman. It was done with an easy sweep of his arm and executed from a certain distance. He didn’t have much. The coins hit the road with a sharp chink and did not roll away in various directions. He had calculated correctly. The fat pig’s ears pricked up, he bent down and looked around curiously to see what it was. Budai had planned to use just this moment to sidle in behind him and to disappear quickly into the building.

He had all but reached the swing doors and seemed to be practically inside when a large group pressed forward from the hall towards the exit — the same door being used for both entrance and exit, a rather eccentric and incongruous feature in a hotel as busy as this. There were a lot of them, tall slender youths, some Africans among them, all in bright pink track-suits, laughing, gesticulating, chattering incomprehensibly, larking about. They looked to be sportsmen of the kind he had seen in the enormous stadium. They were packed together in a solid mass so he was unable to work his way between them, and by the time they were all outside, some twenty or twenty-five of them, the stout Cerberus was back on guard, as alert a watchdog as before.

Desperately disappointed, Budai set out to collect up the coins so he might try again but the doorman put his enormous foot down over most of them so he could recover only the lesser amount. He thought the doorman was joking but it was useless pushing at his foot or trying to shift it, useless making noises to suggest he should raise it, the man did nothing of the sort. Budai turned all his fury on the nincompoop and kicked him on the ankle as hard as he could. The doorman blew a loud whistle. Budai ran away.

Only on the next corner, once he had recovered his breath, did he reflect on why he had been so frightened. No doubt the sound of the whistle had reminded him of his adventure with the police and he had no wish to get mixed up with them again. And it was likely that, having attacked him, that idiot of a doorman would in fact have been whistling for the police. Whatever else happened now at least he had the satisfaction of having given the idiot a good kick and taken it out on him… He felt terribly sleepy and could hardly stand up, and as for his hunger it was worse than ever. The trouble was he did not see any way of getting back into the hotel tonight. Even if he did get back in, he couldn’t move into his room and they would not give him another one where he could lie down. That much was clear from the doorman’s behaviour. He’d end up cruising the corridors or sitting in the lobby.

His usual bistro was open and he quickly ate his way through a few sandwiches. And now? What should he do? Where should he go? So far he had at least enjoyed a degree of comfort, a tolerable bolthole where he could lay his head, hide, bathe, rest and gather his thoughts. But what was he to do without any of his possessions, with most of his remaining money under the doorman’s heel? Where could he stay? Should he, by some chance, stumble across another hotel — though he had no idea just then where he might find one — he would not be allowed in without his passport and other documents. And Gyegye? How would he find Egyegye again?

It was still raining. Little by little his hat, coat and shoes were being drenched through. Being near the metro entrance he instinctively slip-slopped his way towards it to seek shelter. It was the route he took when he was working as a casual labourer at the market. Down on the platform he took the usual train out of habit, too weak and numb to think of anything else.