Cafe Europa (14 page)

That confused him and he didn't know what to say, his brow wrinkling. But I smiled. “Ignore my friend. She's being funny. Or trying to be.”

“The kitchen…it is all frantic and…workers bumping into things…dropping plates and…”

“And this is Harold Gibbon's fault?”

He nodded hurriedly. “Perhaps you can talk to him. Tell him to stay out.”

“Lord, what's he up to?” Winifred asked.

“For him, it is like the sad murder happens just now. He rushes in, runs around, asking everybody questions. Many don't speak English, of course. He tries German, Hungarian, Croatian, Russian. Everything. ‘What do you know? Tell me. Tell me. Do you see Zsuzsa Kós in the afternoon the girl dies? What about this…this Mr. Wolf, the American who looks at everyone? The scary man with the beard.' He asks what words Miss Blaine said to the staff, anything, everything, scraps of conversation. ‘Tell me now. Did she say—Good morning? Good night. Hello. Mean, happy, bad, good?' It is craziness. And so no work gets done. They stay away. The dishwasher quits. Everything is upside down now. I am at my wit's end, dear ladies.”

“I don't think we have any power over that man,” Winifred said.

I softened my voice. “I'll speak to him, Mr. Markov. But he is a stubborn man. A reporter, and a driven one.”

“Thank you.” He bowed. Then, an afterthought. “A dangerous man.”

That startled me. “Why, for heaven's sake?”

“He accuses the cook. Ivo Merlac. A young man, a foolish man who drinks too much and fights in the streets, but a man who minds his own business. My best baker.” He smiled. “The best doughnuts. Powdered. You know—delicious. But when Mr. Gibbon runs through the kitchen, banging his way like a drunk himself, well, he sees poor Ivo sitting and reading a newspaper. A Serbian newspaper.
Trgovinski Glasnik
. So common in Budapest, of course. So many Serbians here—he
knows
that. The man comes from Mostar. An honest Muslim, that man, though not religious. A drinker. He thinks nothing of the…politics, believe me. When Mr. Gibbon he spots the newspaper, he yells at him. He yells about politics and murder and Bosnia and…war…and…”

“Good heavens.” I glanced at Winifred.

“He has scared everybody in there.” He pointed back to the kitchen.

“Ignore him,” Winifred advised.

Markov shook his head. “But that is impossible. The man is like…like a mosquito buzzing around the head all night and you can never swat it.”

“Try.” From Winifred, her mouth in a sardonic line.

“Tell me about this Ivo Merlac,” I asked.

“Because of Mr. Gibbon, the Royal Police stand in my kitchen. Mr. Gibbon he talks to somebody. They come here. This Ivo is a man who scatters his crowns on drink.” His voice dipped to a whisper. “He plays cards and spends his time with the lost girls on Magyar Street. Yet he calls himself a Muslim. It's not my business. Really. But Mr. Gibbon follows him around, talking in German, in Russian, in what he thinks is Serbian. ‘Where were you that night? Where were you when the Croatian house painter assassinated Baron Ivo Skerletz?' A stupid question, yes. Ivo stared, frightened. What does Ivo know of Croatian killers? But Baron Meyerhold tells me Ivo was in jail the night the girl was murdered. So it cannot be Ivo. I ask Mr. Gibbon, ‘What reason has Ivo to kill her?' ‘He's a drunk,' he says. ‘Serbians kill everyone.' He says Ivo follows her to the garden. She runs, he stabs. But Ivo is in jail. Still, Mr. Gibbon comes back again.”

“Pay him no mind,” I advised.

Markov shrugged. “Then he starts to talk of the coming war. ‘What war?' I say to him. No one wants war. This”—he waved his hand around the room—“will be no more. Politics is…is for people with money. The landowners. The rest of us…huh! Nothing! But he scares everyone. Franz Josef will declare war on Serbia. Serbia will fight Austria. My country Russia will join Serbia. Germany will jump in on the side of Austria. Everybody. Alliances. England. France. Italy. This or that. The whole world upside down. He makes us dizzy. So my wife starts to cry, scared out of her mind. ‘We are Russians in Hungary,' she tells me. ‘We will be the enemy.' So my wife…she leaves two days ago, headed home to her village. She believes Mr. Gibbon—and is scared.”

“Will you stay?”

“This is my life, good ladies. I love Budapest. This is my home for so many years. I returned to Russia to find a wife, but I rushed back here. My home. Mr. Gibbon…he makes everybody run. Two workers leave yesterday, take the train to Moravia. There will be no war. Serbia is…how you call it…the braggart. Huff and puff.”

“Your nephew György, the handsome boy…” I began.

He rolled his eyes. “The clumsy oaf. A boy unable to learn. He tags after my wife, packs his clothes in a bundle on a stick like a Gypsy in the fields, and goes back home with her. He is afraid they will take him into the Austrian army. I am left with no family here. No one.” He smiled. “György, though a simpleton, was my wife's blood, and so my family. Gone.”

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Markov.”

“If war comes, I will be a prisoner.”

A group of young women, dressed in summer frocks and giggling about a boat ride down the Danube, interrupted us, and Mr. Markov straightened, sucked in his breath.

“Don't listen to Mr. Gibbon,” Winifred said. “He is hoping for a war because it's the story he is writing.”

“But that makes no sense.”

“He thinks if he talks enough about the coming war, his words will make it happen.”

Astonishment in his eyes. “He has that kind of power in America, that man?”

I smiled. “Well, he thinks he does.”

Markov edged away, moving toward the young women who were taking off their summer bonnets. A smile on his face, a gentle bow, gracious. He looked back at us, then stepped toward us. “I come to Budapest as a young man because I find a postcard in a market stall in Kiev. The bridges, the river, the lights on the Buda hills. A postcard. Magic, all of it.” He frowned. “But I discover no city is really a postcard, though it always will charm you. Let me tell you something. Budapest is the lovely woman who likes to whisper in your ear.”

Chapter Twelve

“Twilight of the gods.” Harold paid no attention to Winifred and my admonishments. “Hey, I'm just doing my job.” Ten o'clock at night, late for me, the quay bright with halo-like streetlights, Castle Hill behind us sparkling with illumination. A cool breeze drifted off the river. We were sitting on a bench over the Danube, the hotel behind us, and Harold waved his arm back to the hotel. “Markov, like so many others, refuses to hear the war drums beating.”

“Nevertheless,” I repeated myself for the umpteenth time, “you're bothering the workers at the hotel. Leave people alone.”

“They have a story to tell. And now that I'm exploring the Cassandra Blaine murder, it's imperative…”

“It's imperative,” Winifred broke in, “that you conduct yourself with civility.”

He grinned with a shrug. “I never learned how.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“Mr. Gibbon. Harold.” The line between formal address and casual friendship had begun to blur days ago. “Nevertheless…”

Harold was finished with the topic. He peered up the quay. “Where are those two infernal Hungarians you ladies have chosen to befriend?”

“Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi are lovely young men…”

“Who draw those odd paintings. All the portraits look like paint-smeared freaks in a sideshow.”

“Admittedly, not my taste,” I went on. “However, they are sweet men.”

“One of them can't talk or hear. How much fun is that?” He clicked his tongue. “Men aren't sweet, Miss Ferber. Women are.”

I caught his eye. “You should know, dear Mr. Gibbon.”

Winifred grumbled. “Sometimes the inability to talk or to hear can be a blessing.”

Harold guffawed. “I'm starting to like you, Miss Moss. You ain't the tough soul you insist you are.”

“I actually do
like
people, Mr. Gibbon.”

He laughed louder. “There you go again.“

The two Hungarians emerged from the shadows, Bertalan Pór calling my name and apologizing for being late.

Winifred wasn't too happy with this evening's excursion, though she'd come to like the two artists—because, in fact, they
were
artists. The night's adventure was Bertalan Pór's idea, this questionable ramble into the dark Budapest night, his insistence that no one could understand the rhythms of the old city without soaking in the intense life of the cafés and night streets.

“Budapest comes alive after dark,” he told us. “No one sleeps.” I gathered that he and his artist friends—names that meant nothing to me, like Béla Czobel and Róbert Berény and Odön Márffy—spent nights awake, crawling through the café life. At two in the morning the artists met at Japan, a coffee house on Andrássy near the Elizabeth Ring, smoking cigarettes, sipping wine, playing cards on the raspberry-colored marble tables.

But, he said, there was a different world in the city that was taboo, a neighborhood no tourist ever visited.

Winifred nodded at that statement. “Probably with good reason.”

Of course, Winifred balked, finding the idea suspect—and dangerous.

“We will take you there,” Bertalan Pór said. “You will understand something else about this city. The heartbeat.”

I was intrigued, the old reporter in me beckoning.

“We'll be killed,” Winifred told me.

I didn't answer.

Of course, as we lingered in the lobby of the Árpád, I contrived last-minute entreaties to a reluctant Winifred—she was carrying a flimsy summer parasol and didn't appreciate my glib comparison to the fierce Mrs. Pelham, a woman probably fast asleep at that hour in some small room at the back of the hotel.

“Hey, I know the districts,” Harold informed us. “The late night cafés. The real seedy night spots where the girls dance the Maxixe and ragtime. Even Chicago.”

“Chicago?” I asked.

“No, Csikago. A down-on-your-luck working-class neighborhood in the Eighth District, pickpockets everywhere, schemers, shifty-eyed souls, where the miscreants congregate. It's called that because folks think of the American Chicago—they picture a tumble-up city, bursting the seams, ramshackle tenements, hastily thrown up, grubbing Slovaks and Bohemians and Gypsies slaughtering cows in their backyards.”

“Yes,” I said grimly, “it sounds like my old neighborhood back in Chicago.”

Which was why he insisted he accompany the four of us. Bizarrely, Winifred seemed relieved at his presence, as though another body, even squirrelly little Harold Gibbon, would guarantee her safety in the dark, uncharted streets.

So we wandered. The two artists maneuvered us down Andrássy, a wide, lively street paved with hard wooden blocks to soften the
clop clop clop
of horse traffic. We turned a corner and stopped before a storefront window. An artists' supply store, canvases and brushes and palates decorating the dusty window.

But there was also one gigantic painting framed in a gold gild, prominently displayed. Bertalan Pór pointed at it. “Mine.” In English. Then, glancing at Lajos Tihanyi, he smiled. “Mine.” A swelling of pride in his voice, and Tihanyi chuckled. An unlighted display, unfortunately, but light from the streetlamp helped me to see a huge canvas of dour figures, their clothing executed with brilliant if muted color—melancholy blues and reds. “My family,” he announced. “A picture much talked of a couple years ago.” He pointed to the leaning figures who looked vaguely ethereal—and unhappy, the mother with arms folded over her chest. Doubtless they were unwitting models for the bizarre and strange son of the household.

“And they're still talking to you?” Harold asked.

Tihanyi had been facing Harold and read his lips. Frowning, he turned away, breathed in, the muscles his neck bulging. A hiss escaped his throat. He stomped his foot on the pavement.

Bertalan tapped him on the shoulder. “You need to understand the American humor,” he said in careful English.

Tihanyi shook his head, unhappy.

“Harold has no humor,” Winifred told him.

“It's lovely,” Harold went on, looking at Pór. “A Sunday album portrait.”

Bertalan Pór looked at me. “And the American sarcasm.”

“Yes,” I sighed, “we're good at that, especially when we're insulting our hosts.”

Bertalan Pór laughed and began walking away.

For nearly two hours we strolled by the cafés that seemed to populate every corner of the city. We skirted into a packed coffee house called Orpheum, pushed our way through the sweating, chattering crowd.

A church clock tolled midnight. “A midnight city,” Bertalan Pór said to us, and I flashed to Cassandra Blaine in that midnight garden. Yes, Budapest flowered at night, the vibrant cafés bursting until dawn, but Cassandra had been alone outside the hotel—with the person who took her life.

Bertalan Pór secured a table in a corner.

Harold spent much of the time flitting among the tables, restless, his eyes dancing. He knew so many people, nodding to this one, chatting with that one. Backslapping, joking, whooping it up, buying drinks to toast whole tables of folks. “
Egészségedre
!” he screamed over and over. “To your health!” A man in a scarlet cape sent over a small tumbler of some drink, and Harold grinned widely. “It must be drunk without pausing, all of it.” And he did so, dramatically upending the glass and downing the whiskey. He shivered and roared, and the crowd laughed. A few applauded. Of course, he stood and bowed.

While we sat in the coffee house, he disappeared for a while, roaming the streets, seeking adventure. He'd dart out and then back in, sliding into a seat at our table, sputter something in Hungarian to the artists, then speaking to Winifred and me in English. “You wouldn't understand. You have to be Hungarian.”

“And you are?” I countered.

Tipsy, swinging his arms in the air, he announced, “Living in the shadow of an oppressive empire, you must be the oppressed people you are with. Today it's the Hungarians. I am a Hungarian. And proudly.”

Winifred shook her head and he winked at her.

“Really, Mr. Gibbon. Such conduct would
not
be permitted in America. You do not wink at women.”

“Hey, it ain't permitted here. They got more rules on proper conduct here than in that wild frontier we affectionately call America.”

“Midnight,” Bertalan Pór intoned again. “Time for the season in hell.”

His words made Winifred jump. “Edna, I think…”

I didn't answer.

“We promised you Chicago.”

Of course, Chicago to me was Lake Michigan, Lincoln Park, Maxwell Street's Jewish bazaar, my grandparents' old home on Calumet, sumptuous Sunday dinner with savory pot roast and parsley-speckled potatoes. An afternoon stroll on Michigan Avenue with a beau. A baseball game at Wrigley Field.

Harold sang out. “The real Budapest.”

We wandered through smelly backwater streets, lit by sputtering gas and torches. Fires roared in rusted woodstoves inside alleyways, the stink of old wood burning. A few cafés with gaslight and candles had open doors, hucksters in front pointing us in. Factory workers with cigarettes and pails huddled on narrow lanes. A broken-down peasant cart rumbled by, the horse in tattered rope harnesses strapped to a crooked shaft.

A nightmarish scene out of Hogarth, this Eighth District, this make-believe Chicago. At midnight, at one a.m., probably even at four a.m. and at breaking dawn as the milk wagons lumbered over cobblestone, the gloomy streets and dark alleys were packed. Vagabonds ambled by with burlap bags slung over shoulders. A slatternly woman crouched in a corner, a toothless grin, her straggly hair bunched up under a bonnet, a lit fire in a barrel throwing ghastly shadows over her shrunken face as she offered gnarled apples from her lap. The sickening scent of burnt coffee wafted from an open doorway.

Harold was like an errant boy on holiday, skirting around plodding horses and carts, bumping into people, disappearing, popping back up at our elbows, grinning. I watched him rush pell-mell up a street, turn a corner, out of sight. Then he reappeared, letting out an Indian whoop. No heads turned, and that surprised me. He rushed back to us.

“I have a favorite Gypsy café up ahead. Come on.”

He skipped ahead.

A band of dandyish lads, bedecked in ascots. tight black trousers, and high red leather boots, hissed at an old man pulling a horse into an alley. Loud, shrill prostitutes, their satin bonnets ablaze with red and gold ribbons, winked and smiled and invited. One girl, perhaps fourteen, maybe fifteen, circled the handsome Bertalan Pór, whispering sweetness to him and sneering at Winifred and me. Another leaned into Lajos Tihanyi, touched his cheek, and he seemed ready to follow her to the ends of the earth.

Bertalan Pór whispered to us, “My Lajos has a weakness for pretty girls.”

Winifred shook her head, disgusted by it all. But not I—I sneered back at the cheerful girls, savoring all of this. I came from the real Chicago and had been a reporter in beer-sodden Milwaukee. Ladies of the midnight road were no match for my brutal gaze. The girls snarled, slid away.

“There are streets in London,” Winifred began, but got no further. A chubby man in a winter cap, a gash across his face, begged her for a crown, holding out a grubby hand. She yelped and pushed past him.

Bertalan Pór watched us nervously, and then whispered, “Perhaps this is not…”

I held up my hand. “No matter, sir. We are fine.”

Of course, Winifred wasn't. She nudged me. Go now. Leave. Now. Now. Edna, really.

Harold circled us, disappeared, reappeared, led us to the café he favored. Inside we sat and listened to a fat Gypsy violinist with wild, long black hair, a sunburnt man who thrilled with his nimble playing. I found myself tapping my feet. Harold poured wine for us.

At one point Harold left us again, dashing out, and Bertalan Pór asked me about him. “Ignore him,” I said.

“It is hard to ignore the family cat that eats the grass that makes it dizzy.”

I laughed. “Yes, Harold, the frenzied house cat.”

A swarthy man with a brilliant black moustache, his puffy white shirt and crimson bandanna pulled low over his forehead, struggled to address us in German. He'd read our palms. Glorious fortunes, he hinted. His wide smile that revealed a blackened front tooth.

Harold returned, his pockets filled with honey walnut rolls, freshly baked, intoxicating, sweet. He handed one to each of us. I sipped wine and nibbled on the bread. Heavenly. Light and sugary and crusty, a sinful confection.

“Let's go.” Harold said.

For a few minutes Bertalan Pór and Harold argued with the tavern keeper about the charges. Exorbitant, Pór yelled. Watered-down swill at double the price. Everyone yelled back and forth until, both sides relaxing, an amount was agreed upon, the requisite coins handed over, and we left. Behind us the barkeep's wife hurled curses at us.

I heard one word distinctly: “Americans.”
Ameericuns.

A filthy child, a girl perhaps five, lay on a piece of cardboard, hand outstretched, begging. Nearby her mother, a Gypsy in rags, pleaded with us, pointing to the child. “Dying, dying, my little girl. Dying.” In German. She offered nostrums to cure whatever ailed us.

A man slithered alongside Bertalan Pór and offered obscene French photograph cards, fanned quickly in front of his face.

Somewhere, unseen, from a high open window, the sound of a Gypsy violin, mournful and lovely. A girlish laugh broke at the end. An old Gypsy woman pushed though us, making me jump. Behind her trailed a young boy with dark and brooding eyes, his long hair tied with a loose string at the back, an earring in his ear, a boy maybe seven, maybe eight, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, the red tip glowing in the dark.

“Chicago,” Bertalan Pór whispered again.

Lajos Tihanyi watched everything closely, his face gleaming, his hands twitching. His eyes blinked wildly, like a Kodak snapping photographs, doubtless pictures he'd depict on canvas later that night in his studio.