something I’d done thirty years ago. And I’m not even thirty. She turned her palms upward, then pulled her hair back over her shoulders. A waiter came by and asked if we wanted anything else. She ordered a cocktail and I ordered a sparkling water. I asked her, Are you disappointed that you did not become an artist? Not at all, she said. And only today do I realize that she meant Spain – some fountain in Spain – and that she was, even if she did not know it then, telling me about her mother.
At every large intersection there are glass-and-metal entrances to the underground, and the unstable serenity of the crowds moving in both directions seizes suddenly at the mouths of these structures. We could take any of them, Saskia says, but maybe we don’t want to squeeze ourselves into the same trains all these people are boarding. Manuela says, Let’s take a taxi instead. This seems like a good idea, but the taxis are all stuck in traffic, so we keep going. The street curves and descends a bit, and we enter a square. I’ve been here several times before, but I’ve come from different directions. In the middle of the square there’s an elevated section for pedestrians and picnics, with benches, and in the middle of that there is a tall pole with a large four-faced clock on top. There is a museum of engine-making that is covered in scaffolding. All the buildings to the left of the scaffolding are bright white, and all those to the right are sooty. The work moves slowly. Since I’ve arrived, not a single scaffold in the city has moved, including the one in this square, which I have come across several times. The freshly blasted stone transports you back three hundred years, and makes you think of streets full of horseshit and buckets of human excrement and the knocking sound of carriages, and, though I am of course mixing things up badly, boy pickpockets and a villain with a dog. Saskia’s phone buzzes in her bag. She lifts it out and checks it. It is either a long message, or she’s reading it many times. Her face changes. Janos, she says. What does he want? asks Manuela. Nothing. She types something back, sighs, and stuffs the phone back in her bag. She looks around. You know what? she says. I think we’re not early any more. I’m not even sure if we’re on time. How did that happen? I ask. I have no idea, she says. It took us twenty minutes to get here, and I thought it would take five. That’s because I walk slowly, I say. You
do
, says Manuela. Let’s hurry, says Saskia. She points to a little entranceway in the side of a building on the far end of the square, with a blue U outside it. We walk with quick steps across the middle of the square, across the raised platform, which has been swept clear of snow, though a thin layer has fallen since. This is the first time I’ve really hurried since I got here, though sometimes I walk fast to make myself look like a local, and I mutter things when people hold me up. I do this not out of dislike for tourists but out of love for the city. The city has, on certain streets, a tempo, and it’s important to move in step with it. But I am not really hurrying, because once I get past them, and walk a little further, I stop at a street corner and smoke a cigarette. Today I am actually hurrying. I feel exhilaration and fatigue. Here comes, perhaps, the end of a life. Forty-one years of waste. Or worse. The seconds are counting down in rapid red digits. We speed down the steps.
Some of the bigger stations are like miniature cities, but this one is just a large landing, a half-shuttered window to an unmanned ticket counter, and two escalators, one going up and the other down, and between them a stairway. We hurry down the escalator. Even though it’s a long way down, you know if a train is there or not, and now there is no train, so we slow down. The platform is a grey slab dotted with pillars, purple and pearly. The tiles are small and square, like the tiles you find in
At every large intersection there are glass-and-metal entrances to the underground, and the unstable serenity of the crowds moving in both directions seizes suddenly at the mouths of these structures. We could take any of them, Saskia says, but maybe we don’t want to squeeze ourselves into the same trains all these people are boarding. Manuela says, Let’s take a taxi instead. This seems like a good idea, but the taxis are all stuck in traffic, so we keep going. The street curves and descends a bit, and we enter a square. I’ve been here several times before, but I’ve come from different directions. In the middle of the square there’s an elevated section for pedestrians and picnics, with benches, and in the middle of that there is a tall pole with a large four-faced clock on top. There is a museum of engine-making that is covered in scaffolding. All the buildings to the left of the scaffolding are bright white, and all those to the right are sooty. The work moves slowly. Since I’ve arrived, not a single scaffold in the city has moved, including the one in this square, which I have come across several times. The freshly blasted stone transports you back three hundred years, and makes you think of streets full of horseshit and buckets of human excrement and the knocking sound of carriages, and, though I am of course mixing things up badly, boy pickpockets and a villain with a dog. Saskia’s phone buzzes in her bag. She lifts it out and checks it. It is either a long message, or she’s reading it many times. Her face changes. Janos, she says. What does he want? asks Manuela. Nothing. She types something back, sighs, and stuffs the phone back in her bag. She looks around. You know what? she says. I think we’re not early any more. I’m not even sure if we’re on time. How did that happen? I ask. I have no idea, she says. It took us twenty minutes to get here, and I thought it would take five. That’s because I walk slowly, I say. You
do
, says Manuela. Let’s hurry, says Saskia. She points to a little entranceway in the side of a building on the far end of the square, with a blue U outside it. We walk with quick steps across the middle of the square, across the raised platform, which has been swept clear of snow, though a thin layer has fallen since. This is the first time I’ve really hurried since I got here, though sometimes I walk fast to make myself look like a local, and I mutter things when people hold me up. I do this not out of dislike for tourists but out of love for the city. The city has, on certain streets, a tempo, and it’s important to move in step with it. But I am not really hurrying, because once I get past them, and walk a little further, I stop at a street corner and smoke a cigarette. Today I am actually hurrying. I feel exhilaration and fatigue. Here comes, perhaps, the end of a life. Forty-one years of waste. Or worse. The seconds are counting down in rapid red digits. We speed down the steps.
Some of the bigger stations are like miniature cities, but this one is just a large landing, a half-shuttered window to an unmanned ticket counter, and two escalators, one going up and the other down, and between them a stairway. We hurry down the escalator. Even though it’s a long way down, you know if a train is there or not, and now there is no train, so we slow down. The platform is a grey slab dotted with pillars, purple and pearly. The tiles are small and square, like the tiles you find in
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