Cafe Europa (26 page)

Outside in the buzzing, frantic streets, we heard the news.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, had been assassinated as they climbed into an automobile in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

The French president, a nephew of Franz Josef, had business to deal with. The next day the newspapers were filled with the horrible accounts of the doomed couple, shot to death by a nineteen-year-old Bosnian Serbian, an anarchist named Gavrilo Princip, rumored to be a part of the feared Black Hand. Other young men—boys really, though fanatical—were apprehended, some trying to kill themselves but failing. Cringing, I thought of György—Bogdan Prpić—stabbing poor Cassandra in that midnight garden and then, in disguise, shooting Harold Gibbon. Harold was right, of course. For days Paris squirmed and debated and argued and lamented the fortunes of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Franz Josef, that old man I recalled unfondly from his painting on the dumbwaiter, said, “Is nothing spared me?” He issued an impossible burr-under-the-saddle ultimatum to Serbia, because it was assumed Serbia orchestrated the heinous deed.

That was all we talked of, my mother and our friends and—everyone we met. But not me, I hasten to note. The day's cruel headlines—those grim photographs of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie—plunged me back into Budapest. Into the Café Europa. The heir apparent's last words to his wife: “Take care of the children, Sophie.” A photograph of the skinny, wiry Princip wrestled to the ground, screaming defiantly, “Long Live Serbia.”

I was tired of Europe now, and changed my plans. I was tired of shopping on the Rue de Rivoli or on the Rue St. Honoré. Silly baubles to carry back home. A few weeks later, the end of July, we sailed on the North German Lloyd ship mysteriously named the
George Washington
. Exhilerated, happily striding onto the outflung gangplank, I was ready for home now—Chicago and New York, my short stories, a novel maybe. A smooth voyage, with German efficiency and regard. Yes, ma'am,
Das is Gut
. More infernal kissing of the hand. But then, as evening approached, alarms sounded, waiters dropped dishes, cabin attendants disappeared, and someone knocked on our door and demanded we go on deck immediately. Lights dimmed, portholes closed, cigarettes forbidden on deck. Nervous, I bustled about, found myself packed in with a crowd of frightened voyagers.

War had been declared.

Germany was at war.

Franz Josef had ordered an attack on Serbia, which precipitated a wide-scale conflagration. England, France, Russia. Allies, sides taken. Germany's Kaiser declaring war. A French traveler kept screaming, “
La monarchie dèclare la guerre á la Serbie.
” The German steward begged her to be quiet.

The ship slipped through the frigid Atlantic waters while we were told to spend the night on deck.

A French gunboat was in pursuit of the
George Washington
.

Crying, moaning, groaning, silence, as we huddled there. The night was cold and misty, a drizzle, nothing but the slap and hiss of waves below us. Hunkered down with slickers and great coats, hats pulled over damp cold faces, we stared out into the dark foggy night. I waited for the first blast, the cannon roar, the ball of fire rolling across the hull, the ship tilting toward our deaths. Involuntarily, I flashed to the image of the
Titanic
disaster two years back, and shivered.

Perhaps I slept for a few minutes, though sleep it hardly was. My mother wept and I had to turn away from her hold. In my fitful dream I was back in Budapest. In Tihanyi's paint-spattered atelier. In the Café Europa listening to Zsuzsa wail her songs. Endre Molnár with that moustache and deep-set eyes, one eye enticingly lazy. And the bodies of Cassandra Blaine and Harold Gibbon, the first causalities of the world war Harold predicted. Archduke Franz Ferdinand might be the public face of this new and awful war, but not to me—two innocent Americans presaged that horror. A boy named György—named Bogdan. Bogdan—Endre told me it meant “Given by God.”

Horrible.

In the morning, exhausted, we crawled into our beds as the ship slid through calmer waters, headed to America. America! Later I found myself on deck, wrapped in a blanket, my face covered with a scarf, staring back toward Europe. Gone, all of it, I told myself. That crusty old world of the dying empire. The haughty nobility in their decorated gold carriages pulling up in front of Gerbeaud's, the red carpet stretched out ceremoniously. Gone. The courtly manners, the exquisite protocol, the aristocratic snobbery, the dark world of privilege and dismissal. Gone, all of it. What would be left after the war? Europe picking itself up from debris and chaos and slaughter. Gone.
Küss die Hand
. The bowing. Gone. Would there be an Endre or Bertalan or Lajos left to remember? Gone, the world of Victoria and Franz Josef and Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Gone.

Count Frederic von Erhlich.

Gone.

I turned to face what I imagined to be America. The sun was rising. I was going home. I thought of John Donne's line: “O my America my new found land.” Home! No one would kiss my hand, but the cabbie in New York would snidely call out, “Hey, lady, you in or out? Make up your mind.” That made me smile. No bowing, but the hot dog vender on the corner of Michigan Avenue would drop cigarette ashes on the grilled wiener as he spread relish on it. The counter girl at Woolworth's would ask me, “How's tricks?” A fistfight would erupt at Wrigley Park over a baseball call. “Nuts! Attaboy!” A run of lovely American lingo. “B'gosh. Oh yeah? Get lost! Hey fella. So's your old man. Hey, wisenheimer, pipe down!” It was the heartbeat of the pavement, the lively pulse humming from a landscape that stretched on and on. America! From the Atlantic to the Pacific.

I was going home.

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