Budapest Bus by Night

Zary Fekete

“In spite of the knives, I still prefer driving at night.”

Gabor said this as the bus crested the top of Gellert Hill. The full panorama of the city opened up below, and a carpet of city lights unfurled. A silent plane took off from the airport twenty miles away on the far side of town. The Danube stretched from far up north on my left to its southern exit from the city on my right. It was a clear night and everything was sharp. I felt as though I was looking at an illustrated map of the city, each tiny street illuminated as though with yellow and orange Christmas lights. The river water acted as a mirror and the Hungarian Parliament building was doubled in its wavery reflection.

I suddenly realized what my friend just said. I looked at him.

“What do you mean ‘knives’?”

He pulled into the next stop and pressed a button. The front door just next to where I was standing opened, and a couple of German tourists got on. They showed their passes to my friend. He nodded, and they moved toward the back, snapping pictures on their phones of the city below.

“Often on the weekends there will be someone with a knife,” he said. “It usually happens after 2AM when the bars close. If there are no knives by four, I know I’m good for the rest of my shift.”

I glanced at my watch. It was just after midnight. I was only planning to ride with my friend for about another hour before returning home to bed. When Gabor invited me to join him on his nightly bus route, I had agreed, mostly out of curiosity but also in response to the reason he gave for the invite. “It gets lonely,” he told me. “There will be no inspectors at night. I’m technically not allowed to talk to anyone when I’m driving, but the rules are pretty relaxed after hours.”

He pressed the button again, and the door closed. A moment later the bus trundled onward, winding through the narrow residential streets of the hill. Although I had lived in Budapest for over half of my life, the city seemed quaint and exotic to my American eyes. After spending ten years of my childhood here, I went back to the US for university before finally returning after graduation to work as a teacher in the Hungarian school system. Those college years away transformed the city in my mind from a familiar childhood haunt to an ancient monument filled with unique historical avenues to explore and discover. I had to remind myself that this was Gabor’s hometown, the only place he had ever lived, as casual to him as the small country town back in Minnesota was to my parents.

I looked at Gabor’s profile. His 250-pound frame was tucked behind the bus steering wheel, and every move he made was done firmly with the practiced muscle-memory of someone who had driven this route hundreds of times before. Looking at him I try to picture the skinny boy I met back in the third grade when both of us were elementary school mates together.

We were still fast friends even though our histories were completely different. I moved to Hungary as a third culture kid in 1979. My missionary parents enrolled me in the local school so I could learn the language. The school was already Gabor’s second. His parents didn’t like how his first and second grade teachers treated him, so they transferred schools. “I still couldn’t read well,” he told me. It was an astonishingly frank admission for a Hungarian student. In spite of its relatively small size Hungary boasted a history of remarkable poetry and a large number of scientific prize winners. Even though Hungarian is a difficult language (the first or second most difficult on earth depending on who you ask) Hungarian students grow up learning to recite verses by heart and were routinely quizzed on the themes of whatever opera their class attended during the latest school field trip. By the time Gabor and I were in the fifth grade we had already seen three operas and two ballets with our classmates, all performed on the other side of the Danube in the Hungarian Opera House.

The next bus stop came into view, and Gabor signaled to pull in. There was no one waiting to get on, but an elderly Hungarian woman pressed the signaling button to exit. The door hissed open, and she got off, walking slowly toward a small apartment building just beyond the bus stop.

“Do you like this route?” I asked.

Gabor nodded. “It’s peaceful. I used to drive on the crosstown bus, but I hated it. At least once a night somebody threw up. Once it happened three times. The vomit was sloshing around my shoes.” He chuckled and cranked the wheel, navigating a sharp turn. “Also, this route reminds me of the past. Remember when we would go sledding here?”

I nodded. “Did you always want to do this kind of work?”

“No,” he said. “But there wasn’t much else for me. I never finished high school. After my time in the army, the country was just getting used to the changes from the old socialist system to the free market. I had no skills, but I could drive a big vehicle. Plus, this job is stable. I’ll have a pension. That’s rare nowadays.”

He pulled into the last stop on the route and switched off the engine. “We have ten minutes before I have to drive back down. Care for a coffee?” I followed him into the small breakroom of the station.

Later that night, after I returned home, I lay in bed, lost in thought. Gabor was part of a stillfunctioning older Hungary; that of bus drivers and stone masons, people on the edges of modern Hungarian society with simple jobs that kept the country going. Hard workers all.

Published in Issue No. 2, Vox Novum, November 1st, 2024.

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete