‘Sure. I’ll wait here.’
The lobby was modern and spacious. He took a seat on the far side, next to two portholes in the wall that looked in on a large aquarium with a reef and tropical fish. For a while, he looked out at the businessmen and well-heeled tourists who occupied a handful of the other tables in the lobby. When he tired of looking at them, he turned to the coral reef behind the two portholes.
He’d been staring at it for a few minutes, studying the movements of the fish, before he realized it wasn’t one large aquarium but two separate tanks next to each other, the sides of each mirrored to produce an appearance of continuity.
Right now a large silver fish with yellow fins was looking at its own reflection, mesmerized. It was the only one of its kind in the tank but there was another in the neighboring tank, an isolation that seemed profoundly cruel.
None of these fish, no matter how sentient they might be, could have any concept of the other tank’s existence, let alone the existence of tropical oceans far away. It disturbed him, and then it disturbed him more to look around the lobby and see all these people, none of whom had even noticed it.
He’d read enough books to know why it troubled him, to recognize it as a metaphor for his own life, life in general. That made it no less disturbing, though, no less full of truth. He was left feeling restless and full of urgency, as if he’d suddenly realized that he didn’t have enough time, that with every passing minute it was becoming too late.
Yet here he was, being pulled back into the world he’d supposedly rejected, sitting in a hotel lobby in Budapest, waiting to meet Bruno Brodsky. It was like he’d thrown away the last four years, justifying Madeleine’s rejection of him in the process.
Ella had changed when she came back down. It took him a second to recognize the sarong-style skirt, the one they’d bought in Florence, the one she’d worn on the journey to Switzerland. He’d been vaguely attracted to her back then. Now he found her almost like someone with a scent of illness about her. ‘It’s a nice day; I thought we’d walk to Bruno’s.’
‘Sounds good. I could do with the walk.’ She looked over at the portholes and for a moment he thought she’d say something about them, but she looked away blankly. That was the point, he supposed—that people weren’t meant to show an interest, merely to register them as part of the relaxing ambiance. It made him want to shoot the place up.
It was a nice walk to Bruno’s, the city warm, full of light, lively. It was looking good too—moneyed, the way it always should have been. Ella seemed impressed, drinking it all in like a tourist, pointing things out to him, a glimpse of the Ella he’d encountered at the beginning of the summer, the girl who’d been lost somewhere in the intervening grief.
At one point she said, ‘Chris and I were gonna come here this summer.’
‘I know.’
‘Of course.’ She laughed and said, ‘If you’d told me then that this is how I’d finally visit Budapest! Kind of like To the Lighthouse.’
He nodded and said, ‘Virginia Woolf—boy, am I glad she’s dead.’ Ella laughed again. He liked to see her laugh. ‘It’s just along here.’
‘Oh, right.’ As he pressed the buzzer for Bruno’s apartment, she said, ‘Do you know for sure that he’s here? Perhaps he’s away.’
Lucas kept listening for a pickup at the other end but shook his head and said, ‘As far as I know he hasn’t been out of the city in twenty-five years; that’s when his wife died. He visits her grave every morning, without fail.’
‘So he’s quite old?’
Lucas took a moment to work out where she was coming from before saying, ‘No, no, she died when they were both really young—he’s only about fifty now.’
She nodded towards the intercom and said, ‘Doesn’t look like he’s in, though.’
‘No.’
‘How did she die?’
‘I don’t know. I never asked.’ He looked around, wondering which of his haunts to try first, spurred finally by the feel of the sun on his face. ‘Terrace of the cafe at the Gellert—that’s where he’ll be on a day like today.’
He started walking and she said, ‘You seem to know him pretty well.’
‘I know his routine.’ He couldn’t be sure of that anymore, though, and was beginning to think he should have done some checking before coming out here, to feel nervous of looking amateurish and out of touch.
They picked up a taxi and as soon as they got out at the Gellert, he knew he should never have doubted himself. He could already see Bruno sitting on the terrace to the left of the main entrance, talking away into his phone, doing business.