Metropole Read Online Free PDF

in the distance. Having set out, he found himself caught up in the stream of people heading towards another set of escalators and was swept along by them willy-nilly though he had no desire to travel anywhere, not in this city at any rate. But it was impossible to turn round against the wide flow of a regiment in full battle order, still less to prevent its forward momentum, only at the cost of individual hand-to-hand combat employing knees and fists, and so he fought his way to the edges and broke through to where some others were proceeding in the counter-direction, thereby somewhat easing the forward pressure.
    The metro map was behind a pane of glass and gave a diagrammatic sketch of the underground network with various colours to signify individual lines and to indicate various stations and interchanges, the lines dense and generally concentric or radiating as they crossed over or flowed into each other. There was a kind of keyboard underneath, with, it seemed, a button for each station: when people pressed one of them a line was suddenly illuminated. He waited his turn, for here too there was a considerable crowd, then pressed a few buttons at random. There were clearly a number of routes directly leading here, while others required two or three changes, but since the topological map showed only the relationship between the various metro stations and nothing of the streets and squares above, he found it impossible to locate anything, For even if he had been able to read the names of the stations he wouldn’t have been able to tell where they were in relation to all the other unfamiliar places in this vast stone-deaf vacancy. The station he was currently at was indicated by a red circle that was rather more smeared than the others because of the great number of fingers tracing routes from it. He was, of course, as incapable of reading the name as he had been of reading anything else and could only make out that the station was located near the bottom left hand corner of the map at the intersection of one of the radiating and one of the concentric lines, and that it seemed to be roughly halfway between the inner city and the outskirts; in other words that he was in one of the south-westerly suburbs. That was if he could safely assume that north was at the top, and so forth.
    He went back out into the street: a little further off they were building a skyscraper higher than any he had so far seen. Craning his neck, Budai counted sixty-four floors so far, but there were clearly more to come. An enormous number of people were working on the steel framework and half-completed walls, swarming like ants over the scaffolding, the structure practically black with them, ascending and descending on pulleys that also carried materials, prefabricated components and enormous panels – the proportions of the building inspiring not so much admiration as fear, as if the lot could at any moment collapse around his head and bury him for ever ... But his purpose was not to stand and stare. He went into the nearest grocery and waited patiently like the other customers. And though they did not understand him here either, he refused to shift or give way until they had measured out for him whatever he pointed at. He then had to stand in another queue to receive his cold meat, his butter, cheese and bread, and then in another for some roast fish he fancied. Having only been given a receipt for this he had to stand in line at the till once more. He paid, not knowing how much he had given, put away the change, then stood at the food counter again. The whole process took half an hour.
    It was the fat doorman with his gold-braided cap on duty at the hotel again: Budai wondered when the man slept. He received his key the same way by writing down the number 921, carefully storing the piece of paper in his top pocket. He noted which of the lifts was being operated by the blonde attendant – it was the middle one – and he joined that queue. The girl