Untranslated

It is a somewhat magic thing, when all the words you hear, see, are just so much noise. Everything can wash over you like music and you drift, nothing familiar for your mind to catch and grab on, and it is -- for me -- something soothing and peaceful. When you don't have to find any sort of meaning -- when you couldn't if you tried -- then language becomes something else entirely. Bigger and smaller and infinite, tone and rhythm and inflection, color. I cannot -- with the one exception of stops announced on the Metro, when I know what I am listening for -- tell where one word ends and the next begins, just long endless streams of unbroken conversation, running into each other, gathering force, flowing into a deep and mysterious pool of hidden meanings.

It is dark when I arrive, and cold, and I walk down crumbling and magnificent streets (more magnificent because of it, beautiful and gritty and confused). Sit in a room beneath heavy glittering chandeliers and eat cake, drink sweet coffee. (And the cakes almost always end up surprising -- the texture something unexpected, rich and light and strange and delicious all at once). And I walk, and walk -- thinking, often, just a bit further and then I will go back -- but I keep going, not stopping. Come to the river and watch the lights scattering across the surface, shine out from deep within; cross the bridge (all cold metal, cold concrete, brightest lit-up lamps). It is much later (tired, cold, smiling) when I find my way back to the hotel, into a hot bath, into the wide white bed.

Moments bleed together -- the Metro employee who smiles and nods me through, although I did not punch my ticket in the machine in front of him, when I point across the metal barrier and say I came in the wrong way, first (and I am sure he did not understand the words, but the meaning was clear enough). Drinking hot spiced wine from a paper cup, unstable, while outside, walking. Sitting in the back of a small ornate and dim-lit church, eyes closed, listening to voices singing words I do not understand (and so -- voices, singing, nothing else). Coffee and cake and coffee and cake, again and again. The sweet woman selling antique jewelry at the enormous flea market outside of town (the farther from the city the bus went, the more snow still covering the ground, turning slowly grey) who spoke no English and loved the pin I wear on the lapel of my coat -- she called over two other ladies, and they all touched it and chattered in smiling, enthusiastic Hungarian, until, after several minutes, she beamed widely straight into mz eyes and worked her mouth around the words (slow, deliberate), VERY. NICE. UNIQUE. And of the four words in Hungarian I could (shakily) say, one of them is Thank You, and my saying it (also slow, deliberate) made her laugh delightedly. She touched the ends of my hair with her fingertips, nodding at me. ALSO. UNIQUE. And we laughed, and then I said goodbye and walked away.

And it is cold, cold, freezing -- my fingers stiff each time I take my hands out of my pockets (I think of you, then -- your always-so-cold hands, my warm skin).

I eat Indian food, spiced to make my nose run, in a dark and smokey dining room, stay at the table long after I have finished, drinking tea, reading a book, and halfway-listening to the tableful of girls somewhere behind me -- the only others in the restaurant -- talk quietly in Italian.

Another evening -- and the public baths are noisy and crowded. Drift for an hour, two, in the warmest of the outdoor pools, the night air colder than cold anytime I stand all the way up and let it touch my shoulders. Sit on the steps, water up to my chin, and watch a knot of laughing old men play chess, standing chest-deep in the pool. (And oh, I want to embrace them all, kiss their faces, run my hands across their broad or bony or hairy backs -- and there is no clear way to explain this constant urge to touch, to hold, not connected to desire or sex or hunger, but just...to touch. Contact, with nothing more behind it or around it. My fingertips tingle with the impulse, still, for hours.)

On the last day, I go across the river to the other side of the city, eat crepes rich with sour cream and salty cheese. Walk up steep hills and too many stairs, the wind cold against my face. Stand in the darkness of churches, all candles and stained glass glow. Wander the stone maze of stairs and archways, like a castle, and go into a coffeeshop to sit and wrap my hands around something warm. Once inside, I realize it is a much nicer place than it appeared from outside -- sparkling chandeliers, heavy with crystal, and white-gloved waiters in tuxedos -- and I sit alone in the empty upstairs dining room with the panoramic view, drinking my cofee, feeling mildly conspicuous. (But, when I am finished and ask for the bill, the handsome man in his tuxedo jacket and pristine white gloves walks me around the whole of the room, to look out all the windows, and lets me out onto the balcony, and I see that it has suddenly begun to snow.) Later -- soon -- the snow falls in earnest; the wind blows it in thick wet stinging kisses against my cheeks. I walk through it, for a time, then duck into a warm and croweded cafe and drink tea, eat chestnut cake, and watch the swirls of white outside the windows. And in the morning, through the windows of the train, the ground is white and expansive, and the glass it cold and smooth against my forehead.