BUDAPEST–As we walked back to the Hotel Victor Hugo the wind began to pick up, blowing over the flat plains of Pest. Dark clouds scudded across the sky, turning the golden light to a shade of oxidized lead. We rested a few hours in room 610 and lightening flashed, illuminating the darkened room in bursts of electric blue. The flashes were accompanied by long, sustained thunder, a sound I had not heard all winter up in the northlands. When we went downstairs, to go out seeking dinner, the rain was falling. The lobby was dark and the old man behind the counter sat in cloud of smoke and a pool of light from an old desk lamp. The streets, slick and dark looked more like I had imagined, a place for grim deals in the back of Ladas and Trabants, where quick bad endings happen in rain pooled alleys, a place for upturned trench-coat collars…
But at the counter Lena asked the old man if there was an umbrella we could borrow. He smiled and rummaged around for a bit and came out with a huge, two-person affair, bright red and emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo. It kept the rain of no doubt but detracted from my espionage fantasies.
We walked down the slick, black streets, through pools of orange lamp-light, to the neighborhood restaurant we had found the night before. Inside it was warm and bright, all wood and stone and brick with heavy plank tables filled with eaters and drinkers and laughter. The night before I had eaten a deep-fried filet stuffed with Camembert and Lena had had goulash. She stuck with her regimen of goulash and I opted for the cutlet, Parisian style. We both had cold Drehers and we laughed and talked and planned.
When we walked back to the Victor Hugo the rain had stopped and the streets were full of smells; plants and the river, the old buildings and their must, flowers in new bloom and the indefinable scent of a new place with its essence released by nighttime rain.
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