Extraordinary Renditions Read Online Free PDF Page A

as Notre Dame or the British parliament building, which was to say that it appeared simultaneously majestic and artificial, more a sculpture than a building that might be occupied. He could not comprehend the immensity of the detail; it was too much to look at, and he discovered that it could best be seen only peripherally, from the corner of his eye, in small chunks that, were they placed together, would dizzy him even further. “Frozen music,” as Goethe called architecture, was not quite the correct term. Music
represented
—it could be about something; architecture just
was,
and this building was even more so. The distinction embarrassed Harkályi in some way. He did not want to look at it; it was too beautiful, a monument to itself alone.
    A flat transport ship appeared from beneath the Margit Bridge ahead of him, and he stopped to watch it pass. The sound of the engines was incredible, like an entire factory dedicated to the production of ball-peen hammers and garbage-can lids. It was lovely, really. Only a single, faint lightbulb illuminated the cabin, making the vessel all but invisible. The noise conquered everything around it, the city and its entire history; when it receded, he heard one of the parliament guards yelling at him. The young man approached, his machine gun drawn, and Harkályi pictured his own swollen body floating downstream, in the wake of this ship, to the grave of his grandparents. He did not understand what the soldier said, but interpreted the message, delivered by the angry motion of the gun’s barrel, and continued his walk upstream, more briskly this time. Half-expecting the sound of gunfire, he did not turn around.
    Past the parliament building, an electric tram line followed the bank of the river. From the platform, a sidewalk continued to the Margit Bridge. On it, above his head, two underdressed ladies noisily made their wayback toward Pest. They were on the körút, the very same road on which his hotel was located, only a few blocks away. He crossed through a small park situated under the base of the bridge, up a ramp to the road. The women had disappeared, mere ghosts. Sleep will not come tonight, he knew, not restful sleep at any rate, so instead he awaited the next passing taxi, which would take him to Dohány Street, to the synagogue.
7.
    The synagogue was on fire. The realization descended upon him slowly, like an illness. The streets were emptied, the windows of the nearby apartments darkened. He assumed at first that the smoke rising from the triangular roof, between the Moorish domes, emanated from a chimney. He pictured a servant inside polishing the silver, mopping the floors, perhaps a zealous rabbinical student pouring through the library for the single arcane utterance, marginalized to some forgotten, dust-strewn alcove, that will help him make sense of his life, still so very young. Even when the first yellow flames danced into view, they appeared as an apparition, a flashback to the final days of his childhood in Budapest. Only the sound roused him: a violent crack like the report of a Luger aimed just centimeters above his head.
    His shock—and it was shock now, not precisely fear just yet—found expression in a throaty scream, one unburdened by the demands of meaning. It was the sound, not entirely foreign to Harkályi, of pure terror. The noise carried through the expanse of buildings, down Dohány Street.
    He did not know the Hungarian word for fire, so he yelled, “Fire!”
    No reaction came from the blank wall of concrete and glass opposite the synagogue. It was the largest in Europe and occupied a parcel of land on which Herzl himself once lived. Flames climbed higher, fueled by the fierce March wind, and they chewed up a tile roof that one would not have expected to burn so readily.
    Harkályi shuffled to the doorways across the street, pressed all of the intercom buttons at once, producing a melody of electronic burps and bleeps. “Fire!” he yelled.