“What’s Thailand like?” I asked. “Hm? I didn’t hear you.” “Never mind,” I said, because I didn’t actually care what Thailand was like.
Dance songs turned out to consist of one sentence repeated over and over. For example: “I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain.”
Short aggressive men kept dancing up close to Lakshmi, who had found a way to incorporate rejection into her dancing, rolling her eyes and tossing her hair and angling her lovely shoulders away. Less frequently, one of the men would try to dance with me. I would nod in a businesslike manner and then turn away as if I had remembered something important I had to do. It went on and on, the dancing. I kept wondering why we had to do it, and for how much longer.
I had never actually listened to a Discman before. There was a faint hissing sound, and then some boys were yelling in Hungarian with perfect clarity. They were right there, yelling in your ear.
“Are you sure you won’t be frightened when you wake up?” Margit asked. “Oh, no,” I said. I was frightened when I woke up.
At a table near the door, two students were slumped over their books, either asleep or murdered. In a corner, a girl was staring at a stack of flash cards with incredible ferocity, as if she were going to eat them.
Helen, the fiction editor, was petite and cute, with a down-to-earth manner. I could see she wanted me to like her, and I did like her. Without knowing how to demonstrate it through any speech act, I towered over her mutely, trying to project goodwill.
In the afternoon, I got on a random tram to see where it went.
Once a week, we had a conversation class with an actual Russian person, Irina Nikolaevna, who had been a drama teacher in Petersburg when it was still Leningrad. She always came running in a minute or two late, talking nonstop in Russian in a lively and emotional way. Everyone reacted differently to being spoken to in a language they didn’t understand. Katya got quiet and scared. Ivan leaned forward with an amused expression. Grisha narrowed his eyes and nodded in a manner suggesting the dawn of comprehension. Boris, a bearded doctoral student, rifled guiltily through his notes like someone having a nightmare that he was already supposed to speak Russian. Only Svetlana understood almost everything, because Serbo-Croatian was so similar.
I won four pounds of cashews in a raffle. For a couple of days I skipped lunch and dinner and just ate cashews.
At the Army Navy Store I found a pair of unisex lace-up shoes manufactured in Poland out of what looked like waterlogged cardboard. Very heavy, with bulbous toes and plastic stacked heels, they were without question the ugliest shoes I had ever seen, but they were cheap and they fit.
The ferry back to Budapest was full of reveling women in their fifties. Elbows linked, they danced, stomped, sang, and coughed. In the bar, they banged bottles against the counter. The few men in their party were slumped at the tables, heads buried in their arms. Only two were sitting upright, addressing a salami of durable appearance with a pocketknife.
He said funny, surprising, and charming things, all of which distressed me deeply.
The teacher, Barbara, a graduate student from East Germany—she specifically said “East Germany”—told us about Russian names and patronymics.
I turned off the computer and went to Copley Square with Ralph, to help him buy suspenders.
I had a slab of German chocolate cake the size of a child’s tombstone.
They were giving out free samples of Campari. I tried one. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to drink something that tasted like that.
When I got to the dorm, someone was being carried off on a stretcher. It was Hannah. “Hey, Selin!” she called, waving. “Isn’t this funny?” “Please lie down,” a paramedic said.
The Red Line went in two directions: Alewife and Braintree. Such names were unheard of in New Jersey, where everything was called Ridgefield, Glen Ridge, Ridgewood, or Woodbridge.
Passing the women’s perfume, cosmetics, handbags, and sunglasses, we took an escalator down to the men’s department. The men’s department made no sense, the way nothing seemed designed to surprise or delight you, and everything looked the same. How could anyone choose between so many gray jackets?
was surprised when she asked if I had a boyfriend. I thought it was clear that I wasn’t someone who had boyfriends.
Girl Scouts had gotten into the cafeteria. I hadn’t seen a child in months.
The jazz club was in a basement. The saxophonist was doubled over, face contorted, gasping between phrases. The sounds seemed to come from outside of life. You felt not just sorry, but also afraid.
Every weekend, Lakshmi went out with him and his friends to clubs or raves—institutions I couldn’t begin to imagine, architecturally or in any other way—where
The church interior smelled unmistakably of church interior.
Everything was covered in sour cream. “EAT,” Mrs. Nagy said, in both Hungarian and Russian, gazing into my eyes. “EAT.”
The car was too crowded for us to talk. We just stood there clinging to the ceiling bar, swaying in our stupid shoes.
I had never been to or thought about California.
“I think I’m going to buy it,” Owen decided. “Do you want to split the cost? One of us can read it here in Budapest, and the other can take it to the village and leave it there as a gift.” I didn’t want to read the book, not in Budapest and not in a village, but I didn’t want to seem snotty so I said okay and paid for half of it. It wasn’t expensive. It was, however, big, and Owen didn’t have a bag, so I ended up carrying it all day.
It wasn’t that I was a child exactly, but I didn’t really have a history as anything else. At
The second train was more crowded, and smelled of the human condition.
Margit said that Mrs. Nagy said that I should talk to Zoltán in English, because he knew no English at all, only German. That didn’t strike me as such a great reason to talk to him in English. “She
I was an American teenager, the world’s least interesting and dignified kind of person, brought there by my mother.
After class I was walking to the art building, staring at my shoes, wondering if I could lose them somehow, when I heard a voice behind me. “Sonya!” It was Ivan, extending a floppy blue slipper. “You dropped it.” I realized it was one of my new ski gloves. “Oh, no,” I said. “It means I’m already trying to lose them.” “You’re trying? Is it difficult?” “I have to do it subconsciously,” I explained. “Aha,” he said. “Sorry I interfered with your plan.” “That’s okay. I’ll lose them later when you’re not around.”
The person in front of me reclined his chair until he was lying in my lap. I felt almost tenderly toward him. Time passed. A flight attendant asked if we wanted the American or the Pakistani meal. I asked for the Pakistani meal. “There isn’t any,” said the attendant. “Here’s an American meal.” I opened the foil lid and looked at the American meal. I couldn’t tell what it was.
In my heart, I knew that Whorf was right. I knew I thought differently in Turkish and in English—not because thought and language were the same, but because different languages forced you to think about different things.
“Now,” said Margit, when Gyula had poured the whiskey. “Tell us all about yourself.” “But I have,” I said. “You already know everything about me.” “Now you will tell us the long version,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “We have so much time. We have all night.” It made such a strong impression on me when she said that. Just for a moment, as if in a flash of lightning, I seemed to glimpse some unseen vista stretching out before me and opening in all directions before it went dark again.
When we came in, two women put down their sheet and walked us through the museum, one leading the way with an electric lantern and switching on the lights, the other trailing behind and switching them back off again.
Angela was on a special midterm study schedule that involved having a really loud alarm clock going off every twenty minutes. She didn’t go to bed until four-thirty, and even then the alarms kept going, she just slept through them.
“I don’t think I should shake your hand,” I said. “I have this cold.” Then I had a violent fit of sneezing. The professor looked startled, but recovered quickly. “Gesundheit,” he said urbanely.
I had studied Spanish in high school because my father, a leftist, said it was important to know the language of the working classes.
I didn’t want to be the kind of person who lost her appetite over some guy, so I ate a few chickpeas. Then I thought, why should I be the kind of person who eats when she isn’t hungry, just to prove some kind of point? I put down my fork.
A nurse said something that was almost definitely supposed to be my name.
Ivan presented me with a tiny book called Just Enough HUNGARIAN. The cover illustration showed three women or dolls, with long skirts and no feet, balancing beakers of red wine on their heads. Ivan started the car and backed out of the space, his arm across the back of my seat. I leafed through the phrase book. If a Martian read it, the Martian would probably decide to avoid Hungary. “I’d like something for (snake bites, dog bites, burns, sore gums, bee stings). I’d like some (antiseptic, gauze, bandages, inhalant). It’s a (sharp pain, dull ache, nagging pain). I feel (sick, dizzy, weak, feverish). I have (a heart condition, rheumatism, hemorrhoids). It hurts. It hurts a lot. The pain occurs (every day, every hour, every half hour, every quarter of an hour). It hurts all the time. I’m ill. My child is ill. It’s urgent. It’s serious. “The toilet is blocked. The gas is leaking. The boiler is not working. I have a toothache. I have broken my dentures. I have lost (my contact lenses, a filling, my bag, my car keys, my car, everything). Someone has stolen (my car, my passport, my money, my tickets, my wallet, everything). I’ve had an accident. I’ve run out of gas. My car has broken down. My car won’t start. My car is (one kilometer away, three kilometers away). I have (a puncture, a broken windscreen). I think the problem is here. “Don’t hang up. There’s a delay. I’m sorry I’m late. I don’t understand you. I think this is wrong. No, not that. That’s enough, thank you. I won’t take it, thank you. Please stop.” “Oh, thanks!” I remembered to say. “I hope it’s useful,” Ivan said. “I looked at a lot of books and this was the best one. It doesn’t tell you a lot of useless grammar and the pronunciation guide is really good.” I looked at the pronunciation guide. “Meg-kairem, hodj vaagh-yoh le aw feyait aish aw for-kaat,” it said.
Things changed somehow, and I was on the floor, eye-to-eye with some boots and a foil wrapper containing a mollusk of chewed-up gum. My Walkman lay nearby—the door of the cassette player had opened, and the wheels were turning. A few other passengers had also fallen, as had a paper bag of oranges. The shuttle had rear-ended a Mercedes. The driver of the Mercedes got out of his car and came to the window to yell at the shuttle driver. The shuttle driver got out of the shuttle, to yell better.
Walking through security was like dying—the way you had to say goodbye to everyone, the way you became just your name on a paper and gave up your money and your watch and your shoes.
Patches of overgrown grass resembled a comb-over on the head of a bald person who didn’t want to see reality.
It was a mystery to me how Svetlana generated so many opinions. Any piece of information seemed to produce an opinion on contact.
“How is Eunice?” asked Peter, who had a way of fiercely enunciating people’s names, as if correcting a mispronunciation.
I reread the last sentence I had written in my paper. It wasn’t very clear. How could I capitalize on this unclearness to make my paper longer? “In other words,” I typed.
“This is Selin, who I told you about,” he told her. “What?” she said. “Selin,” he repeated, “this is Selin.” “Nice to meet you,” I said, extending my hand. “Oh!” she said. I briefly held a small, cold, unenthusiastic object.
I turned off the computer and went to Copley Plaza with Ralph, to help him buy suspenders.
“Cool bike,” said the boy. “Thanks.” “Yamaha?” “Suzuki.” It said SUZUKI right on the tank.
For the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of anything I particularly wanted to study or to do. I still had the old idea of being a writer, but that was being, not doing. It didn’t say what you were supposed to do.
The whole week was depressing. I spent nine hours of it shivering, wrapped in the Gogolian coat, through a nine-hour documentary about the Holocaust. At some point I thought I had grown a lump in my thigh, but it turned out to be a tangerine—it had fallen through a hole in the pocket and ended up trapped in the lining.
The mall had a Japanese stationery store, where I bought a new spiral notebook. It had the most supple and creamy paper, and a pink cover decorated with a maroon anthropomorphic bean. The bean had one hand on its hip, and was waving with the other hand. It was a marvelous notebook.
I found myself alone for the first time in days. Remembering that they had said I could eat whatever I wanted, I cut a big slice of apple cake and ate it while reading Dracula. It felt amazing to eat anything without having to listen, nod, smile, or do anything with my eyebrows.
“Now we run,” she said, and took off for the hills. “Run, Selin,” she yelled. Despite her sturdy build, she could run really fast. We ran and ran, through increasingly suburban streets, arriving in the end at Gyula’s parents’ house. Gyula’s mother came out with a weary expression and gave us cake. Ten minutes later, Margit came with the car to get us. It turned out that Nóra’s tendency to run to her grandparents’ house was well-known. It was because of the cake.
I finished Dracula, and started The Magic Mountain. I found a lot to relate to in The Magic Mountain, particularly how they ate breakfast twice a day. Sometimes, after a whole day of eating, I would rush upstairs and devour a few squares of the chocolate I had brought from Paris to give as gifts.
It was almost exam period, and right after that we would have to evacuate the dorms. Each day was hotter than the one before. Nobody had enough cardboard boxes. Some people acted as if it were really easy to get boxes for free and only an idiot would pay for boxes. I only found one free box. Fruit flies were living in the box.
In the train station, people were drinking coffee and reading newspapers. I felt glad to see that life was going on—actual life, where people were working and staying awake and trying to accomplish things, which was the point of coffee.
“Take this,” she said, and gave me half a Valium. My mother herself had taken half a Valium on the plane from New York a few days earlier, and had subsequently lost her passport and entered the country in some way that she said it
As usual, I didn’t have anything to wear.
In the cafeteria line I took a knife and fork. Ivan handed me another knife and another fork. I stared at the two knives and two forks. At the salad bar, Ivan put lettuce and tomatoes in a bowl and topped them with dressing. I also put some things in a bowl but at the end it wasn’t a salad, it was just a lot of random things in a bowl. At the soda fountain, Diet Coke seethed over my wrist.
I said bye first, to be brave. I still thought bravery would be somehow rewarded.
“One thing I don’t get about you,” Ivan said, “is to what extent you feel American or Turkish. How is it for you when you’re in Turkey? Do you feel different?” “I feel like a kid.”
It turned out that Ralph had really specific and detailed thoughts about women’s clothes. “You could buy that and start carrying a straw bag,” he said of some kind of a tunic.
Rózsa and I sat in the mustard-colored living room, where four incredibly loud clocks each told a different time. Crashing noises came from the kitchen. “Piri is cooking,” Rózsa said in a voice heavy with significance. “Should we help?” “No. Piri does not know how to cook. And she puts medicines in the food.” “Medicines?” Rózsa checked her dictionary. “Laxatives,” she said. “She puts laxatives in the food.” “Why?” She consulted the dictionary again. “Because she believes that everyone has a constipation.”
“Ralph!” I exclaimed, realizing that he was this guy I knew, Ralph.
Gábor sat next to me, stared into my face, and made a sneezelike, four-syllable utterance. I wondered for a moment if it was about the shoes. But when he said it again, I realized it was “Hi, how are you?” in Hungarian.
“Nobody really knows why it’s called the Fisherman’s Bastion,” Andrea said at the Fisherman’s Bastion.
The film professor had an even worse cold than I did. It felt magical, like a gift. We met in a basement room full of flickering blue screens. I told him about my mother, and we both sneezed continually.
“This is Owen,” I said. “He’s in Peter’s program.” “Ivan,” said Ivan. The two of them clapped hands in a masculine, almost angry way.
The shower was marvelous—forceful and almost unbearably hot. “The water’s really hot,” Dawn said.
It was somebody called Jared calling to ask whether I would consider voting him onto some committee I had never heard of. “I hear you,” I said, and hung up.
The final assignment for Constructed Worlds was to construct a world.
