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place out from him."
     
    "He's subletting a rent-control deal or something?"
     
    "Excuse me what?"
     
    John called Charles Gabor at his office for help, and early that evening— having followed his map to Andrassy, formerly Nepkoztarsasag, formerly Sztalin, formerly Andrassy—the two of them sat on the pullout sofa bed in a very old man's room, sipping pear brandy from paper cups. John complained that Charles's suit would inflate the old man's asking price. Charles, whose venture-capital firm had bought him a lush bungalow in the Buda hills, told him to stop whining.
     
    Dezso Szabo wore a sleeveless T-shirt, baggy checked pants, and plastic flip-flops stamped liberally with the logo of a German sporting goods company. He was extraordinarily thin; his parts fell together and splayed apart like the last few straws in the jar on a hot dog stand. His gray hair stood up, then fell to each side, a field of wheat parting for inspection. He knew two words of English (New, York) and a smattering of German.
     
    The three men sat, silent as rain filled the air with a staticky buzz. Through the French windows opening onto a balcony, John could see dark branches waving over the wash of Andrassy's white streetlights. The yellow chair under Szabo, a wooden wardrobe, an alcove kitchen, a bedside table with a small green lamp, and a cheap metal cart straining under a new and enormous television with a complex cable hookup completed the furnishings.
     
    Licking brandy from his papery lips, Szabo emitted a few words in the deep monotone of the Hungarian male. Much closed-mouth lip motion ensued, an adjustment of dentures or a savoring of pear brandy that John found unpleasant to watch and hear. Charles responded concisely in the same low voice. The Hungarian continued, brief outbursts on each side. John expected a translation, but none came. His eyes lagged behind the words, back and forth between the two incomprehensible men: Gabor still stiffly creased and pleated and gelled, Szabo a loose and spindly sack of wrinkled flesh, his stiff fingers pinching and scraping at a dry and hairy nose.
     
    "Igen... igen... igen... jo." Charles was nodding, rhythmically repeating
     
    "yes" and "good" as Szabo tookmonologous command. "Igen. Igen. Jo. Jo. Igen." Charles kept his eyes on Szabo but leaned toward John, as if preparing at any moment to interpret. He raised a finger to Szabo, nodding quickly, asking for a pause, but the old man would not or could not (at any rate did not) stop speaking. "Igen." Charles kept trying. "He says he's lived here for thirty-eight years... igen ... jo. He says ... igen... nem ... igen." And finally Charles sat up straight again and the old man rumbled on without a break.
     
    After some time, John decided that whatever was being discussed must not pertain to him. The noise droned on behind him, and he opened the French windows to the balcony, three stories above Andrassy lit. The rain drowned out the one-sided conversation.
     
    The balcony was a stone square large enough to hold two or three standing people, and even in the rain it provided a wondrous view: Andrassy stretched itself from Deak Square, on the left, toward Heroes' Square, invisible in the distance to the right. The balcony's floor was cracked in a map of meandering rivers, demarcating flakes, and slabs of concrete loose enough to lift. It seemed evident that eventually the balcony would collapse under its own, or someone else's, weight. The building's exterior walls bore decades-old scars and bullet holes. On the building across the street, the new ANDRASSY UT plaque shone silvery-white above the faded, dust- and rain-streaked NEPKOZTARSASAG UT plaque, still legible despite the bright red X of paint that covered it from corner to corner.
     
    John imagined himself leaning back on a chair on this balcony, his legs crossed and propped up on the rusty curves of its iron rail, the setting sun gilding the city's most cosmopolitan boulevard. He saw a