I can scrape from the bottom of a tin can the tidbits of Budapest thrown in unthinkingly, or left behind from more important memories. Socialism, a river surely, Hitler's war, a colorless downtown map excerpted in a book on Hungarian. Alone, the scraps are useless and - at the point when I first touch down in the dry cold of early January - meaningless.
Once on the ground and in a car, at least then I am no longer confronted by a blank wall. It gives way to this new city, whose gray outskirts glide anonymously by. The trash heap, the fading rust-colored field, the road that descends from a freeway into an exit - I see them, it can't be denied. But they mean only slightly more than the scraps I brought with me. I see them with blinders and therefore with unrecognized disappointment. What are they to me? Everything exists in isolation, at risk of drifting into amnesia because pegged to nothing.
Look at the cobblestones! In one square meter, three different arrangements compete for space: uneven, taupe and black stones run up against a border of uniform rocks, separating them from maroon stones that smile in rows of half-circles. Look at the Parliament! Think: what decadence to line a government building with gold and gems. And to forgo Doric pillars for Gothic, burgundy-topped arches and spires. Read advertisements for ABBA's world tour or a mascara that works miracles or the Tavasz Fesztivál in spring. These posters wrap around thick, concrete columns that stretch four meters tall and dot the city. Beware subway guards who in their heavy leather jackets and navy blue caps demand six thousand forints (thirty dollars) as fine for an unpunched ticket. Get a receipt before they pocket the gift. Ignore gypsies who crouch along the Chain Bridge, reaching out for alms or covering their heads as if salaaming.
All of it feels as good as ignored. What good is to notice if I will forget? How to remember if I don't understand? It is the curse of those who think visually to understand nothing until the mind bestows on it an illustration. In the earlier weeks, my blinders left me wandering lost around Budapest, seeing directly in front and unable to complete the image with a turn of the head. I admired the beauty of secession buildings and trees that turned white and pink, but with a vague and perpetual discomfort of a void where context should be.
Only after staring incessantly at the map given all visitors, navigating streets independently, and connecting cartographic renderings to geographic realities, do I shed the blinkers. It seems I must reach a threshold, and from there, a city takes shape. Now the bazilika of Szent István is more beautiful than its prodigious teal dome flanked by towers and buttressed by a pediment of saints. Now it is east of the Danube, south of Margaret Island, southwest of Heroes' Square. There is beauty, too, in the grocery store inside the mall. From there I can turn left to get to the train station that doubles as a flea market, turn right to climb the hills of Buda, or walk home, straight ahead. Everything is anchored to everything else. No longer are they shadows on cavernous walls, but true forms that fall into place when I stroll through the districts, fly overhead, or close my eyes. What I see is an overcrowded city of two cities, bisected by the Danube, connected by five bridges. Here is the synagogue, there is the island, here is the National Gallery, there is the City Park. What I see is that Budapest is real.
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Listening to: Roma Di Luna
Reading: Tony Judt, Postwar
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