Kiosks

I am arriving from Budapest. At the end of the four-lane road, after a second’s hesitation, I slow down, then leisurely, in one smooth movement, turn onto the old road to Abony. A long curve to the left, then a gentle downward movement of the ankle, and the backrest presses softly against my back.

It has been a crowded day: in classrooms, outside office doors, amid smoke-belching, blaring traffic, but most of all in here, inside my head, among deliberations, efforts and attempts at appeasement. The tyres—my elongated limbs—and the force compressed into the body of the engine propel me forward with reassuring certainty, while the flat landscape at dusk flows through me like the taste of a peach on an afternoon turning cool. There is no doubt that the new bypass is faster, but the old road is far friendlier.

Szolnok greets me with its customary languor. Without haste I drive through the half-deserted town. At the corner of Szapáry, a small group of young people. I slow down and turn towards the Tisza.

One can arrive at a place only after the place has already come to visit him.

In the main square of Senta, exactly where the street of the post office, embracing from the side the stately mass of the Town Hall, flows into the square, there stands a kiosk. It faces the square, its back turned to anyone approaching from the street. It stands there like a grave and seasoned expedition leader who, the first to glimpse an ancient sanctuary veiled in morning mist in a newly revealed clearing, signals the others to stop, enjoining both caution and reverence upon those following behind. Its aluminium body, like cool knightly armour, radiates strength and composure. This place matters greatly to me: Posta Street bustling beneath its dense foliage, the square opening into sunlight with its park, Aunt Valika’s hairdressing salon, but above all the kiosk, standing there unwaveringly, with the flags of magazine covers and the insignia of tobacco labels, as though it had guarded this important place from time immemorial, solemnly and with reverence.

It is a May morning. I am coming from the Turkish pastry shop, wearing corduroy trousers and a light pullover, swinging a bag and a shopping bag in my left hand, a generous helping of ice cream in my right. From time to time I spread my arms slightly and, using the bag as a kind of counterweight, spin lightly around my own axis with a little chassé step. As I mentioned, a pleasant May day is in the making. I have recently turned eight.

My past begins precisely where it ends.

Novska, Ivanić-Grad, Dugo Selo, Sesvete. It is evening, an evening still in motion, and then early morning, somewhere before dawn; always dark. Beside the tracks, suburban lights, sparse in places and then thickening again, sway past, and again and again comes that familiar shiver of anticipation. The concourse of Zagreb railway station is the nave of a temple for those in transit. The dim glow of the ticket-counter altar, an umbral haze around it; towards the vault, pale manganese violet, with islands of Naples yellow lamps within it, high, far above. Now railway uniforms in deep ultramarine; higher up, a muted oxide red—what could it be? I lean forward and squint. Perhaps an ornament on a cap. And meanwhile, from somewhere behind, as though from beyond time and space, music imperceptibly slips into my concentration. A cavalcade of sounds that have always been there is suddenly transformed, as if by magic, into a living, breathing organism. In the lower register, a deep rumble, the pedal point of distant shunting. In the middle register, voices flowing into one another, a massive Babylonian teratoma from which interjections occasionally shoot out, while rasping Balkan syllables fall back, echoing onto the floor: ÁJOVÁMO! DRZSBRE! IZTRSZTA? ÁJMEMENI JOOJ! Above them, the ingratiating voice of a female pop singer accompanied by synthesizer, the tinkling of a gaming machine, and street noise filtering in: a muffled chorus of horns. The rhythmic pattern is a multilayered ostinato of resonant footsteps gathering momentum and then thinning away, divided into measures by slamming doors and squeaking swing doors. And somewhere, the bending note of a distant train whistle.

Behold, the liturgy.

The symphony of my heroic journeys at the dawn of manhood.

But now onwards, out of the waiting halls, out of the building and beneath the open sky, where a breeze is blowing and sleet drizzles onto my head, and the light of the street lamps is always Naples yellow. Ahead of me, some distance away, where Tomislav Square meets Grgur Ninski, beneath the cobweb crowns of the avenue of trees, the outline of the baker’s pavilion emerges from the fog, and beside it the familiar kiosk. I set off. The smell of freshly baked burek reaches me—breakfasts on the bank of the Tisza in sun-drenched stillness, breathless panting after feverish games of tag and jokes told with mouths full until dusk. Cars hiss across the slushy road towards Knez Branimir. After a few steps my shoes sink into the slush, and when I look up, a young man is standing in front of the kiosk. He is buying pipe tobacco. He has no bag, but he has just arrived; I know it. He pays, slips the pouch of tobacco into the pocket of his thick herringbone wool overcoat, while somewhere, a few blocks away, the smell of fresh coffee settles onto the poison-green carpet of a living room. The young man starts to leave, then suddenly changes his mind, steps back and asks for a fresh newspaper. Then he turns, and for the blink of an eye our gazes merge. Behind him, the kiosk rises like the façade of a lost ancient Egyptian temple in the fog-soaked Naples yellow lamplight. He may be twenty-two. Soft footsteps cross the scent of coffee on the carpet. The young man now exchanges a fleeting glance with the woman on a magazine cover, then crosses the road and heads towards Strossmayer Square. I follow him with my eyes until his figure dissolves into the dimness framed by the avenue of trees. The herringbone overcoat once belonged to his grandfather.

The passage of experiences through a human life begins with those of world-shattering importance and disappears with those contemplated in tranquillity.

Coming down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, as usual he began, at the landing above the first floor, to consider which direction he should take once he stepped out through the gate. He had left in a hurry and had not yet decided which means of transport to use. By now he had lived for seven years in this rented studio flat on Margit Boulevard, filling its shabby room with an abundance of experience; yet the time had also been short enough for him, whenever he entered, to be permeated in a single blink by the breath of the most turbulent years of his life so far: faces and gestures, words—those spoken and those never uttered—touches that had been passionate or softly yielding, but never violent, because there had been no need for violence here, in this place.

Then came the endless conversations and endless sleeping in bathtubs and endless mountains of wine bottles and sleeping on floors and waking on one’s feet with red eyes before the bathroom mirror. One by one, old friends and new emerge, taking shape from the walls and the furniture: those who lived here and those who came only once, those fleeing other people’s wars and those seeking battles of their own, witnesses to a blood-soaked, filthy-beautiful period, a time when bravado nestled up against courage and caution embraced cowardice. There are adversaries too, held dear simply because they had been here, and there are those held dear because they never were. A worn piano chord, the smell of drying oil paint, cool white shaving foam. And above all, colour: the greyish-brown of the room as it breaks into a thousand breath-fine shades upon the blade of light piercing in beside the blackout curtain.

And now, having reached the bottom, he stood there in the entrance hall he knew to the point of tedium and wondered for one fleeting moment whether, a week from now, when the terms of his lease required him to move out, the inhabitants of his room would follow him to other places or, sending him on his way alone at nearly thirty, would enter the service of the new tenant. His heart seemed to tighten a little, but he brushed the thought aside and, after a second’s consideration, set off towards Mechwart Square. There was no doubt that the other way, towards the tram stop at Széna Square, was shorter, but this walk was far more pleasant. He thought he would buy a newspaper at the corner of Keleti Károly Street, if for no other reason than to greet the good old kiosk that for so long had been the faithful lackey of his sober or drunken homecomings. He was rummaging in his jacket pocket for change when, as he approached, he saw me leaning against the kiosk. Our eyes met as I stepped aside to let him reach the serving window. In a subdued voice he asked for a newspaper and paid, then hesitated for a brief moment, as though wondering whether to glance at me again. Then suddenly he turned on his heel, tucked the newspaper, rolled into a cylinder, beneath his arm and hurried towards the tram that was just pulling in. I watched the tram for a long time as it receded, thinking that I too had once had hair that thick.

Wherever I am awaited, I am at home even on the way.

I step through the door of the bank and struggle with the papers fluttering in my hands in the charming May breeze. Once I have secured them more or less safely, I look around and trot across to the other side of Szapáry Street, where my car is parked. A dear acquaintance coming towards me waves; I wave back with a smile, and as I do, an evening from a few months ago comes to mind: I am at a ball, surrounded by curious onlookers, rapidly sketching charcoal portraits on paper. Elegant, cheerful people, fine wines and friendly banter; then a few words caught behind my back, God knows from whose mouth:

“I like him. Do you think he feels at home here?”

“Listen. He came here, and the town took him in. What more do you need?”

I open the car door and suddenly remember that I have not bought a newspaper. I toss the papers onto the seat and walk over to the kiosk on the corner of Szapáry. I am just about to pay when, looking past the display window crowded with magazines and behind the kiosk, I see a little boy approaching from the direction of the post office. In one hand he carries a bag, in the other a large helping of ice cream. He comes dancing, skipping along, and when our eyes meet, he suddenly spins around his own axis, runs to the street corner, turns, and disappears, still skipping towards the bank of the Tisza, into the sunlight of the May morning.

I am forty-three years old, and the kiosk has arrived in Szolnok.