Budapest Nights

Budapest by night photo by tfabas.

We were crazy during those drunken Hungarian nights, dancing in the garden, spilling wine on the hydrangeas and lilac and paprika. The entire village sat up in bed and listened to the wailing of us two boys at the moon, our chanting and singing, until the village peacekeepers made their way out the ravaged garden. A fight ensued. I'm not sure how I landed here. Mom, please get me out of this foreign jail. Through the barred window in the twilight of morning, I watch the gypsy girls scurry from the dockyards to the mule-drawn carts where their fathers wait for them, palms turned upwards, waiting for money. I watch the rats crawl from piers and back into the warehouses. I've scratched my name into the stone to ascertain my existence here, that it was not just a drunken morning hangover dream and please come get me.

What a wicked night I'd spent in a shaman’s delirium, on the edge of the Danube on a bridge that ended halfway across the water. I watch ghosts stagger out of the burning oasis of Budapest. The screams of specters still fill my nights, when I cower in bed in a cold sweat and strangling sheets, recoiling from the whirl of shadows on the wall. I had been deserted by my friend; the last I had seen him, he was lurking in the corner of a café, his gaunt face half hidden behind a fichus tree; then floating in the canal, bloated and smiling. The last I'd seen of Artaud, before he could whisper his instructions to me, was riding on the handlebars of a young girl as she pedaled oblivious down Vaci Street. By reading his purple lips I could catch his voice in my mind and the encrypted meaning of his words. They went something like this . . .