It was right.
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"About the ... paying?"
The soft-voiced Hungarian standing before me, to his left a front door that looked that like it had been attacked by an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson the night before, didn't quite know the course he should take. "Who is this guy?" his eyes said in the universal language of facial expressions. "Why in the world would he have broken in like an animal when he could have just turned the key and walked in like a civilized human being??"
I could tell Erik was a little unsure of how to approach this strange American, a guest of a new roomate Erik still didn't even really know, in what was the second or third time he had ever laid eyes on me. "Scared" isn't the right word to describe how he was conducting himself. Nor is "timid" what I'm searching for. "On guard," perhaps. Cautious.
"I mean, I'll definitely pay for my share of it," I said in a much more take-charge tone of voice, the frustration and anger with this guy I didn't even know still not having subsided all the way from its peak the night before, when I had come home to find myself locked out, with nobody home. "But I left this window here unlocked for a reason: The doorknob was already broken off on the outside, and there was no way to get in, besides reaching through these bars and turning the knob from the inside. It wasn't like leaving the window open was unsafe or anything -- that's why I assumed you wouldn't have locked it before you left. So yeah, I broke in, but you would have had to do the exact same thing, had you come home before me."
Part of me was hoping that, at some point in the middle of this long explanation of why I had done what I had done, it would all make sense to Erik, and he would realize that his gaffe had been the root cause of the entire problem. In my head, the logic was clear: The doorknob had fallen off a day earlier, when I was the only person in the flat. Erik had come home while I was out. He had seen that the window connected to the door was open. And though the jail cell-type bars in front of the hinged window pane ensured that a keyless breaking-and-entering couldn't go down, he had simply -- and absent-mindedly -- locked it before leaving for the night, out of pure habit.
But Erik's eyes ... they were still sending out the same signals: "This guy is crazy. What the hell is he yapping about? I am at a loss ..."
"Yes, but it is no problem still, to get in with the keys," he said, not sure how such an obvious fact could have eluded me.
Yeah, right, I thought. There was no way. I had spent more time trying that route than David Carr had spent lying on his back that afternoon against the Eagles. It hadn't worked. My keys were useless without the benefit of a doorknob to actually open the door.
I explained all of this with gusto. And even though I wasn't happy about it, I assured him that I would still pay for at least half of it. But I left the flat that afternoon still mad that I was being expected to do even that much. After all, there had been a problem which required an ugly solution, one that involved a destructive use of force, and I had been the one that had actually done something about it. Now I was being asked to pay reparations.
Typical European-American divide...
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"Ehhh, I see what you have done to the door," the third roomate, Andrés, said when I got back that afternoon, and it was just the two of us in the kitchen.
Great. Let's start back up the merry-go-round.
"I don't understand why Erik would have locked the window," I tried to explain, hoping this new character would see where I was coming from.
With all the patience I would expect out of a university psychology student, Andrés listened to my entire case, not trying one time to interrupt my "If it don't fit, you must acquit" attempt to shirk the burden of paying for 100 percent of the damage. When I was finished completely, he spoke.
"Let me see your keys."
That's when I started to get an uneasy feeling in my stomach that maybe I had been wrong, after all. "Please God, don't let him open this door..."
I dug into my pocket, below the mountain of Hungarian forint coins that had been building up for over a week in my light blue Patagonia shorts, and pulled out a set of four.
Five seconds after I had tossed them to Andrés, and four seconds after he had locked himself out under the scrutinizing glaze of the American guest praying for him to fail, he was back inside.
"See, it's easy," he said. "All you have to do is pull it."
I paused for about two seconds.
"I feel like a complete idiot. Holy s**t I am stupid. I'll pay for the whole thing."
A bitter pill, my friends. A bitter pill.
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It was only this table to allowed me to get in once I had fully decided that I was officially screwed, that I was locked out, and that no one was letting me in. I tried ringing the doorbell -- a million times. I tried pushing on the door and banging on it, hoping the reverberations would magically break the resolve of the lock that just wouldn't budge. I tried going back outside and climbing onto the ledge outside of Erik's room, then banging on his window.
No one was home. The door wasn't opening. I didn't know if anyone would even be home for the next three days. There was only one option afforded me.
Use the lip of this wrought-iron table leg to lever my way in.
I have to admit, it was pretty liberating, feeling the splintering of that wood as I used my raw power to break down the structure standing resolutely between me and my nice, soft bed. It took a while -- maybe ten, fifteen minutes in all -- but I got in. The whole time, I kept expecting the Budapest police to come rushing in, seeing as I'm sure the entire apartment complex woke up the next morning and, over breakfast in the confines of their own flats, talked about how dangerous the neighborhood was becoming, with someone so brazenly breaking into the flat downstairs without any fear that the noise may tip off the neighbors.
It remains to be seen whether or not I "technically" lost money on this deal, since I won't receive an invoice for the damages until the door gets fixed, long after I begin my trip through the Balkans, which begins tomorrow when I arrive in Split, Croatia. After all, human beings have been able to rationalize since Genesis was In the beginning...
The situation is clear: I slept at Attila's place -- free of charge, with access to a washing machine, fully-stocked kitchen and a WiFi signal from his window sill -- for nine nights; but I also broke their front door, and now I have to pay for it. Let's get out the calculator.
The average place of a hostel, per night: $20. Multiply that by nine. $180. The cost of using Internet for the same amount of time: $10. $190. Surely, I saved at least ten bucks on being able to cook meals here, because if you're eating sandwiches full time, then you're more likely to cave more often and go to a kebab shop. $200.
Two-hundred dollars. That's the line which will judge whether this little fiasco cost me or whether I can just pretend it never happened. The only thing saving me here is that I paid for zero nights of accomodation my entire time in Budapest; otherwise, I'd be feeling pretty distressed.
I am lucky that Erik and Andrés are as forgiving and understanding as they are; not only did they not throw me out of a Budapest flat for the second time in less than two weeks, but we actually became pretty good friends after I assured them of my contrition and my intention to pay. They're actually letting me leave the flat with a big I.O.U. tab that they trust will be honored. And it will. After all, I'd like to be able to come back to Budapest one day, and I don't need a bounty placed on my head.
Goddamn things that require the use of my hands. I hate keys.
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