Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

The maître checked a plan that lay in front of him on his lectern-like desk. ‘I suppose you are with a film, sir, yes?’ he asked me. ‘Well, I am, that’s right,’ I said. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Well, sir, tonight we have BBC making Ashenden , Granada TV making Maigret , Channel 4 making a series on the European Community I think is very good. Which one, sir?’ ‘Oh, none of those,’ I said, ‘I’m here on my own.’ ‘Really it is too bad,’ said one of the Hungarian beauties, who had wandered across from the bar with her Campari soda and was now standing by my side, ‘It is not good to be all alone. If you like it and have twenty dollar I will have dinner with you.’ ‘A table for two, sir?’ asked the maître d’, looking at me with an air of deep human understanding. ‘No, thank you,’ I said, ‘Actually I quite like being on my own.’ ‘You don’t?’ cried the Hungarian beauty, ‘It is too bad to be all alone. Everyone has twenty dollar.’ ‘Well, not tonight,’ I said, ‘Tonight I have some work to do.’ ‘Oh, work to do,’ said the girl, ‘What a pity, well, tomorrow, when you have plenty dollar. You should not be alone, it is not nice. Remember, you can find me here any time.’

That night I slept very peacefully (and also entirely singly) in my bed somewhere in the middle of the great River Danube. In the morning I woke early, and looked out of my window. There were sweatsuited joggers already jogging on the tracks outside, towelled bathers already on their way to their sulphurous pleasures. Fishermen fished, birds dipped and darted, long low Russian cruiseboats slid by on the river, to-ing and fro-ing between here and the Black Sea. I picked up the telephone and dialled my number again, and this time someone answered: ‘Hollo Sandor.’ ‘I believe you can help me,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said. ‘I haven’t explained what it is yet,’ I said. ‘No, but I can help you,’ said Hollo Sandor. A little mystified, I explained that I was a British television film-maker working on the subject of Bazlo Criminale, and that I should like to consult him. ‘A film?’ he said, ‘Everyone makes a film in Budapest now. We are so cheap, of course. Now we are Paris, now we are Moscow, now we are Nice, now we are London, now we are Sydney, Australia. Never of course Budapest, I think they make films about Budapest in Prague. Very well, you like us to meet about your film?’ ‘If you can give me the time,’ I said, ‘I imagine you’re very busy.’

‘For you I find the time,’ Hollo said, ‘Let us meet at noon at the Petofi statue on the Danube prospect. He is our great poet, you know, so everyone will tell you where it is. By the way, you are on expenses?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘Then I think we will go somewhere very nice. I know all the places. I will see you at Petofi.’ I went down to the lobby for breakfast, and found there young men from several different and competing film teams, who were packing into vans and trailers the actors and extras, the clapperboards and cameras, the blondes and redheads, that even I knew were the stuff of a television shoot. I imagined our own team coming out to do the same in a few weeks or months. Our Criminale project was not at all unusual. As Hollo had said, these days everyone was shooting films in Budapest.

When I had taken breakfast, I caught the tram into Pest, and found myself walking round a city where, it was very clear, history had been changing very fast. Almost all the street names seemed to have been struck out with red lines, and new names set up either above or below. Karl Marx Square, where I got off the tram, was evidently no longer Karl Marx Square. 1 did, though, discover one more enduring monument. Here in the square was Gustave Eiffel’s splendid little West railway station, as fine as I had hoped. I had not come into it because its trains went east, into the Puszta and to Transylvanian mystery. It was probably from here that Bram Stoker’s innocent Jonathan Harker started, when he chose to take his unfortunate summer holiday in the land of Vlad the Impaler, in the book whose hundredth anniversary was due, like so much else, very shortly. What he would not have seen in those days was the new addition that had been made to the building. Tucked onto Eiffel’s station was the emporium of McDonald’s Hamburgers, a handy meat dish that might have saved Count Dracula a lot of trouble.

I turned and walked along the fine boulevard of the Lenin Ring, now no longer called the Lenin Ring, but Terez Korut. Here the stucco and balconies were pitted with bullet holes, perhaps from the war, perhaps from the Hungarian uprising; the shops below sold Sony Walkmen and Mannesmann computers, as well as stamps, marzipan, and flaky pastry. In a mahogany and marble café of perfect style, where nothing – not even the contents of the sugar bowl – seemed to have changed since the turn of the century, I sat down among lovers and old ladies in big fur hats and had good coffee and ice-cream, in a world where it seemed Marx, Lenin and their friends had never been. Then it was time to make my way down to the Petofi statue on the Danube prospect, evidently one of the few surviving statues in Eastern Europe, and wait for Sandor Hollo.

When I found him at last, he was not at all what I expected. I had imagined a small, intense philosopher, probably carrying a worn leather briefcase and engaged in abstruse thought. Instead a young man in a dashing white raincoat, blonde highlights tinted into his dark hair, passed me by three times, glancing over significantly in what I assumed was erotic invitation. Finally he walked directly over to me and held out his hand. ‘You are Franz Kay?’ he asked. ‘No, it’s Francis Jay, actually,’ I said. ‘Jay or Kay, it makes no different,’ he said, ‘Unless you are Kafka. I am to me Hollo Sandor, to you Sandor Hollo. It makes no different either. What is a name? And so you like to talk to me about your film.’ ‘I was told you could help me,’ I said. ‘I think not here,’ he said, glancing at the crowd, ‘Excuse me, but old habits die hard. In any case I know a very nice place over in Buda for your expenses. Don’t worry, I have a good car, by the way.’ ‘Fine, then, let’s go,’ I said.

‘One moment,’ he said, ‘Before we leave our excellent Petofi, one small lesson in Hungarian. Look across the river. Do you see those two hills?’ Yes, I did indeed. ‘On Gellert Hill, on the left, do you see the monument with the winged victory on the top? That is our monument of grateful thanks to the Russian soldiers who liberated us so kindly. Put up, of course, by those Russian soldiers. And now, on Castle Hill, to the right, do you also see a great white building?’ I did. ‘That is our monument of grateful thanks to the American people who sent us so much of their precious Coca-Cola,’ said Hollo, ‘Put up, of course, by those same American people. It is the Budapest Hilton. In Hungary we have learned one thing very well History is either one of these, or the other. This year we are all for the Hilton. Why not? Isn’t a bed and a minibar better than a tank? You agree?’

Hollo nodded gravely to me and led me over to his car, a shiny red BMW with racing stripes and rear spoiler, which he had parked flamboyantly right across the pavement. ‘Ultimate Driving Machine,’ he said, ‘Please get in. By the way, you can smoke in here. This is not the West, it is a free country.’ I sat in the low front seat, and Hollo scorched off, round the square and up over the Elizabeth Bridge, dodging between clanging yellow trams and slow chugging Trabants. Over on the further bank of the river, he pointed to a large decorated piece of concrete that stood among the trees. ‘Piece of the Berlin Wall,’ he said, ‘They sent it to us because we opened our borders and let out the Germans. You know here was where the great change started. The Wende , they call it, the turn. Oh, do you like to buy some, by the way? I can get you very good pieces, the real thing, there is a lot of fake wall around now. Also Russian tank-driver hats.’ We began zigzagging up the great Buda hill, around the vast restored castle. I looked at Hollo, who was changing gear joyously on every bend. ‘Are you really a teacher at the university?’ I asked.