Prague by Arthur Phillips

angry on me," said Laszlo, flicking ash into a bedside glass of water. "I just am wanting to say that in these languages—"
     
    "I'm not angry."
     
    "Fine, okay, you not angry. But look. In English you say, 'Hey, man, what time it is?' Right? So where did you learn Megtudnd mondani mennyi az ido?"
     
    The scorn surprised Mark. He had learned it from a Hungarian textbook. Didn't it mean What time is it?
     
    "No. It means, 'Excuse me for bothering you, very high up sir, I am nothing, you are a big important person, we are from different classes, I am like an animal. I am guilty to bother you and you are ashameful to talk to me, but I am too poor to own a watch and too scared to go into store to look at a clock, I am dirt, but can you please, please, be good and tell me what time is it and then maybe spit on me if you like, since I am only a little faggot to you?' " Laszlo took one last drag, then dropped the butt into the water glass, where it made the sound of fading expectations.
     
    "I said all that, actually? Hungarian is awfully efficient."
     
    "Man, what time it is? Mennyi az ido? That's it. Simple."
     
    Mark rose from the bed and walked to the bookshelf to find his textbook and notes. "But what about being polite?"
     
    The naked Hungarian lay on his back, looking at the ceiling. "What I say was polite. But yours, yours was like British shit. We are not British, man. We have chance to be new now, with the Communist shit finished. What will be us now? We start from nothing, so why be British? These are rare chance now, you know?"
     
    The intellectual point—the idea of developing a new culture based on free elections—struck Mark as laughably ahistorical, but, relieved at least that the nude man was interested in subjects like this, Mark grasped at the chance for connection. "You can't make new people, Laszlo. You still speak the same language. Besides, it was only the government. You still have your culture and the country and the buildings and people's habits." Mark disappeared into the kitchen and struck a match to light the stove, an Old World necessity he found beautiful and comforting. He put on a kettle and called into the next room, offering tea.
     
    Laszlo sat cross-legged on the bed and rolled another cigarette, then put
     
    n i n u n
     
    on his briefs and rose to examine Mark's shelves. He turned his head sideways to read the spines. The authors' names nearly all ended with Ph.D. and M.Phil. The covers were colorless and the titles bisected with colons: The Devil You Know: State, Society, and Angst in Berlin, 1899-1901. Mapless, Flapless, and Hapless: Early Popular Images of Aviation. Mistakenly Thought: A Compendium of Discredited Science. You Had to Be There: Approaches to Humor, 1415-1914. Piqued in Darien: Expressions of Emotion in WASP Culture, 1973-1979, by Lisa R. Pruth, M.Phil.
     
    Mark returned to his bedroom holding two cups of tea. He found Laszlo wearing underwear. Two lamps were now on, and the foreigner was messing up the order of Mark's books. The curtains were still open, and Mark was at a loss as to what to do first. Put on his own underwear? Close the curtains? Protect his belongings? He felt himself suddenly sweating, and his chest and stomach hurt. He sloshed the tea on the TV table, grabbed his own underwear and jeans, tugged them on hurriedly, and sat in the apartment's only chair.
     
    "Hey, relax, man," said Laszlo without looking up from the title page of You Had to Be There. "You read all these books?" Laszlo asked in the present tense. Mark thought the stranger's voice carried some scorn or doubt. Only later would he wonder if it had just been the untranslatable intonations of a foreigner, the inevitable cross-cultural misunderstandings lurking in tones and glances and assumptions.
     
    'All of most of them, most of the rest of them." Mark's stock answer spilled out of his mouth in one sullen, toneless word—allofmostofthemmostoftherestof-them—and he watched it fall