I do simultaneous interpretation, he said aloud, and paused, to see if someone had heard him, but no one had at all, and so he couldn’t count on getting help, whereas he was in desperate need of help, of immediate rescue, instant intervention, urgent angelic miracle working, oh well, of course, how could he have imagined that his announcement, in the Hungarian language, and in Shanghai, would be of any help, yes, that would be a tough one to explain, but to explain anything in his situation would have been a chore, I do simultaneous interpretation, he repeated therefore, while to the best of his ability he kept his head—that is the skull where the pain originated—completely still as he pronounced these words, his whole body went completely rigid, that was how he managed to contain the pain up there, trying to keep this pain from growing any more intense, for this was an intense pain that kept getting more and more so, it was getting so intense, so powerful, that it simply blinded him, and somehow it had become detached, an alien, he refused to acknowledge that it was his, because this pain, this infernal pain, inexpressible in words, could not be acknowledged, it was such torture, and descended on him so swiftly, it struck him like lightning, or to put it more accurately, he was suddenly aware that here he sat stone cold sober, here, somewhere, in a location impossible to identify for the time being, all around him the roar, rumble, thunder of traffic that was insane, everywhere, overhead, down below, on the left and on the right, yes, that horrific din simply everywhere, and here he was sitting right in the middle of it, but where this here was he had not the faintest idea; blinded, he could not see, and for that matter he could not hear, for the din he was hearing was just as powerful, and was increasing at the same rate as the pain inside his skull, so that he heard nothing, thus he was deaf as well as blind, and now he could only imagine saying who he was but could not actually say it, for he had become dumb as well, in order that the pain should not increase, the question was of course: could anything that hurt so bad that it was unbearable manage to hurt even more, the answer was yes it could, he concluded, and something throbbed mightily beyond this pain, therefore he just sat there, keeping still, his pose unchanged, here, somewhere, all around him, that roaring, rumbling, thundering, and there was nothing else to do but remain like this, doing nothing, saying nothing, not moving, not thinking about where he was and what was going on, yes, especially not thinking, not even about why he was quite sober now, hadn’t he been dead drunk, drunk as a skunk, yes he had been extremely drunk, but stop remembering, he admonished himself frantically, for obviously to remember was to move, and his only chance now was to renounce all movement, to come to a full stop, so that this pain would lessen inside his head, no speaking, no hearing, no thinking, no remembering, no, not even any hoping, for to hope was also to move, and even that could jog this completely paralyzed state he tried to maintain, coming to a full stop, so that the pain should diminish, should subside, and this strict discipline had its effect, albeit after an immeasurable length of time, after the passage of days? nights? and more days? and more nights? all of a sudden, pow, it began to subside, diminish, and it stopped, and the moment arrived when, after days and nights, nights and days—he was able to open his eye only a slit, at first only a slit, but it was enough for him to establish that he had never sat in the place where he was sitting, and perhaps no one had ever sat there before, for he immediately realized that he was sitting in the middle of expressways curving every which way, or to put it more accurately, expressways arching in various directions, he was surrounded by expressways, no mistaking it, the image seen through the slit told him: expressways overhead, expressways down below, expressways to the left and finally expressways to the right as well, naturally his first thought was that he was not well, and the next thought was that not only he but this whole thing around him was not well, elevated expressways on many levels, who ever heard of such a thing, in this manner he shrank for a while from the recognition, reluctant to acknowledge it, because as a simultaneous interpreter he possessed certain areas of specialization, one of these being traffic and transport systems, and since he was a simultaneous interpreter with a specialty in traffic and transport systems he had a good hunch by now about where he found himself except that he refused to believe it, for after all there was no way he could be here; he shook his head metaphorically, for of course he couldn’t actually shake his head on account of the pain, no human being could possibly be in the place where he now was, notwithstanding the fact that he could see the famous pillar down below with the dragons winding around it, oh no, he thought now, oh no, I am inside Nine Dragon Crossing, but how can I possibly be inside it, that is the question, Nine Dragon Crossing, or as the locals say, Jialongzhu Jiaoji, is not something a human being can be inside of, and the moment arrived when that slit became a full view, because by now he dared to open one eye, the pain persisted with a dulled reign inside his head, dulled, so that he thought the hope that might now rekindle in him would not be entirely unfounded, and he peeked out through this one eye, for he had opened only his left one, he opened it wide, or one might have said that the eye simply popped wide open, for he was not hallucinating, he was indeed inside Nine Dragon Crossing, or as the locals said Jialonzhu Jiaoji, he was deep inside it, with his back leaning against the railing of some sort of pedestrian bridge, as if someone had propped him up against it, who could have done that, he hadn’t the faintest idea, in any case here he was, propped up, because this what do you call it, pedestrian bridge, had a plexiglass railing, a waist-high plastic siding along its full length, obviously to prevent one from toppling and falling among the cars screaming by, to prevent you from toppling, he repeated, and now his other eye popped open most boldly, for this was the moment when he realized that he was high up, that this pedestrian bridge as its name indicated was a real bridge that rose in the air above ground level and was not merely bridging over something but in fact conducted the pedestrian at various levels of elevation among the expressways that ran up above and down below, running this way and that, was this a sane thing to do?! he asked himself, no it was not, he answered, so that after all—and here he lowered his glance to look in front of his feet—then I must be crazy, this is how it had to end, I got royally drunk, perfectamente drunk, so drunk that I ended up here, in this madness, I am imprisoned inside this madness, for it was obvious that he was a prisoner, he was unable to budge, and now it was not that the courage to move was lacking, for after all that pain in his upper atmospheric region had considerably abated, he still lacked the energy, he was weary, so weary that even this eyeballing had exhausted him—the way he had first opened the left eye a tiny slit, then fully, and then the other eye too to look around—but of course this hadn’t involved moving his head, no, at first he had cautiously rotated only his eyeballs, without moving his head, it took a while before he dared to do that, and then he did, and it was a success, the pain did not increase, it stayed at the same dull level, then he once again opened both eyes, to take in once again where he was, and he spoke, and this time he did not say who he was, but instead said, I am stone cold sober, my head is clear, I am able to think, I can see and hear, but I wish I could not see and hear, because now that I can see what I see and hear what I hear I can also think about where I am, and that is impossible, it is not possible that I am inside Nine Dragon Crossing, and it is quite another matter that the well-known pillar upon which Nine Dragon Crossing symbolically and not so symbolically rests, stands there down below in plain view, nonetheless it cannot be that I am sitting inside Nine Dragon Crossing, or as the locals refer to it, Jialonzhu Jiaoji, for a person cannot sit inside Nine Dragon Crossing, one may drive through it in a car, and that’s it, this is an intersection after all, a world-famous hub, a so-called metropolitan divided highway intersection, this much he could recall at a pinch from the specialist vocabulary he carried in his head, and a person could not climb inside such a metropolitan highway whatchamacallit, especially not so that he ends up with his back propped up against the plexiglass siding of a pedestr
ian footbridge, and he is half toppled over and therefore leaning on his left hand to keep from sliding any more, no, not this way nor any other way, this is absurd, I’m probably not insane, he reassured himself, but only hallucinating, it is not unusual when one gets as drunk as I did, which was perfectamente, as Malcolm Lowry says in Under the Volcano, and I can remember walking on the Huaihai, and I can clearly recall the Madang Lu, and the Yan’an, oh yes, the last image flashed up for him, he saw a man, his shirt soaked in vomit, his cotton pants soaked in vomit, light summer leather shoes soaked in vomit, and that was himself, and now he was here, sliding downward inside Nine Dragon Crossing, for that left arm, that left, was getting weaker, it could no longer support this body, that shirt soaked in vomit, those pants soaked in vomit, and those light summer leather shoes soaked in vomit, he would slide all the way down, he realized, and he slid down and instantly fell asleep as if hit over the head, when in fact he was simply tired, horribly and inconceivably tired, right here in the middle of Nine Dragon Crossing.
The World Goes On Page 10
