Cafe Europa (5 page)

Chapter Four

Winifred and I strolled past the outdoor tables at Tabán, a tiny eatery on the Corso, steps up from the murky waters of the Danube. We'd been walking along the embankment, behind the wrought-iron railings, watching the sun glinting on the Buda hills. A serene June day, the air rich with the intoxicating aroma of baking bread from an unseen kitchen. A whiff of sulfur from the mineral baths across the river. A short distance away, the Hotel Árpád caught the midday sunshine, and its terra-cotta marble façade gleamed like an old earthenware pot. Earlier a light drizzling rain had fallen, and the landscape still glistened with beads of wetness. Idly, we watched Vladimir Markov throw open the expansive doors onto the terrace, and two waiters cleaned the slate-top tables and chairs, opened the huge striped umbrellas. When Markov clapped his hands, satisfied, the waiters left the terrace. Within seconds a man sat down at one of the tables and opened a newspaper. It was István Nagy, I realized, the poet we'd seen before, his face lost in the newspaper. A waiter poured coffee for him.

Someone called out to us in English. “Hello.”

Seated in the shadows at Tabán, nearly hidden by an umbrella, Harold was waving frantically to us. A bottle of water and a carafe of coffee rested at his elbow.

“Hello, Mr. Gibbon,” I answered.

He was sitting with someone whose back was to us, but at that moment the man turned, following Harold's greeting, and I stared into the face of Endre Molnár. A cigarette bobbed in the corner of his mouth. Slouching in his seat, he appeared more relaxed than he did last night when he'd locked eyes with Cassandra. Now, a halo of cigarette smoke over his head, one arm draped over the back of a chair, his head tilted to the side, he looked comfortable, lazy. He smiled at us, almost bashfully, the corners of his mouth giving his bronzed cheeks boyish dimples. His huge moustache twisted like a disturbed caterpillar. I found myself contrasting him to the dour, stolid Count Frederic, and I understood to my soul Cassandra's dilemma.

“Join us. Please.” From Harold. Endre nodded, though I noted hesitation in his eyes.

“I'd rather not,” Winifred whispered to me.

But I was already headed toward their table.

Endre Molnár stood and bowed to us, and looked ready—eager?—to kiss our hands. Instead, stepping around the table, I slid into a chair. Harold, of course, was talking nonstop. He signaled to a waiter. Endre, sitting back, smiled indulgently, eyes slatted as he watched Harold rattle on. A sidelong glance at Winifred and me, conspiratorial, I thought—and amused.

Endre was a beautiful man. His long lanky body moved with the grace of a man comfortable with himself. A sudden turn of his head, the languid shifting of a raised shoulder, a finger tapping his knee—a man who understood that women enjoyed looking at him. That shock of brilliant black hair, so dramatically swept back from his forehead, that elegant Roman nose over a wide fleshy mouth. The way he slowly sat up, arching his back like a roused cat, spreading his long arms across the table, one hand absently reaching for a glass. The eyes held you, mesmerized. An Hungarian matinee idol, I thought, an intrepid horseman of the windswept plains.

Suddenly I realized what especially compelled: the lined, dark face was flawed—one eye was lazy, slightly closed, so that you were caught unawares. The exquisite Ming vase with a hairline crack that made you cherish it. I found myself staring, rudely, unabashedly, into that face. I couldn't help it. That lazy eye gave his glance a raw intimacy, a sensual—almost feminine—softness that warred with the ruddy Wild West moustachioed countenance. I wanted to reach out to touch that face.

Of course, I didn't.

Of course not.

I only wanted to.

Winifred was staring at me curiously. She'd glanced at Endre, dismissed him, and was content to glare unhappily at the rattling, chattering Harold.

For a few seconds the two men spoke in Hungarian. Harold's version was admittedly halting and scattered—Endre winced once or twice, though he found it amusing—but then Endre spoke in English, a precise British schoolboy English. “Mr. Gibbon is a fascinating man, yes?”

“Your English, sir, is…”

Harold broke in. “The result of being a student at Oxford.”

“Of course,” Winifred said.

“He tells me I talk like an American cowboy,” Harold laughed. “A
csikós
, a horseman.”

“Mr. Gibbon,” Endre said directly to me, shaking his head at Harold, “wants me to tell him the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Finis Austriae
.”

“What?” I asked, startled.

Harold made a face. “I've known Endre here for nearly a year—a friend, I'd call him. We seek each other out for late-night romps to the wine cellars in the Buda hills. He thinks my idea of the coming war is faulty. But I need to quote him in my reports—in researching my unwritten book. He's a witness to the twilight of the gods. To tell you the truth, as a scion of the Zsolnay porcelain fortune down in Pécs, gold spilling out of his pockets”—he flicked his finger toward a smiling Endre—“drinks on him, of course, well, he understands the heart of the troubled economics of this land.”

Endre shrugged. “Ah, yes, the
Götterdämmerung
so beloved of the decadent writers. My friend Harold Gibbon wants me to condemn our Emperor and King Franz Josef to oblivion.”

Harold whispered loudly, “Endre is a proud Hungarian, a passionate Magyar. The moribund world of Vienna”—Harold pointed down the Danube—“is over, dead, weakened. Anemic. Franz Josef and his outdated army of horse regiments in an age of rat-a-tat machine guns. Lovely Budapest waits and waits for its moment in the sun. Remember that rebellion squashed in 1848. It's been one thousand years since Árpád crossed into this land. The Habsburgs stole the land from oppressive Turkey, and then
they
oppressed. Franz Ferdinand speaks of the Hungarians as traitors. The Austrian army orders its Hungarian recruits around—in German.” Endre held up his hand but Harold rushed his words. “No, no, it is true, dear Endre Molnár. You know what I say about Vienna is true.”

Endre looked embarrassed and lapsed into silence. Oblivious, Harold prattled on.

“Mr. Molnár,” I began, “why do you put up with this impudent American?”

His eyes widened as he broke into a hearty laugh. “Are all Americans like my friend Harold?”

“Lord, no,” said Winifred.

“Mr. Gibbon is a special breed,” I noted, nodding my head at Harold, who was beaming. “Everyone's business is his own.”

Endre smiled affectionately at Harold, shaking his head slowly. “But Americans—do they ask such…such personal questions?”

“Like what?” I asked.

Endre's deep-red color suggested he regretted what he'd just asked.

Harold blustered, “I was asking him about last night at the café—when he walked in and saw Cassandra Blaine sitting there.”

Endre sucked in his cheeks, unhappy.

“Mr. Gibbon, please…” I said.

A waiter approached the table but Endre waved him away.

“Hey, just curious, no? I mean, Cassandra's behavior…” Harold shrugged his shoulders.

“She is a confused girl,” Endre whispered. “I don't think…”

“She laughs too much, she cries a lot. She makes scenes in public. She teases you still, Endre. Last week, crossing paths with her and that…that hideous Mrs. Pelham, when you and I were having dinner in City Park, well, she…It's clear that she's thinking of you.”

Endre looked serious, his voice dropping. “Dear Cassandra must marry Count Frederic.”

Harold sat back. “Oh, I wonder about that. I see how she looks at you. Even last night.”

Endre impatiently tapped an index finger on the table. “A woman must listen to her mother.”

I interrupted. “Well, not always.”

“Really, Edna,” said Winifred, frowning.

“My mother is determined to keep me…unmarried.”

Endre looked puzzled. “But why?”

“You haven't met my mother.”

Immediately I regretted my remarks. An image of my long-suffering mother assailed me—probably at that moment discussing her errant daughter with the cousins in Berlin. I squirmed, uncomfortable.

Harold continued, “Hey, you forget that I watched the whole drama unfold. Cecelia Blaine frowned on you even
before
she decided she wanted her daughter to be a countess. Don't you remember how she shunned you last fall?”

Endre stood up, towering over us and said with an edge to his voice and a thin, forced smile, “We were talking about the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”

Harold wouldn't stop. “Hey, Count Frederic von Erhlich is a part of this sick empire. He's just as much a prig as his stiff cousin Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to a corpse. A collector of instruments of torture, a man who seeks out palm readers for advice, a man who hates books.”

Endre sighed and looked toward passersby on the quay. “It is not wise to talk ill of Franz Ferdinand.”

Harold looked around him. “But all the Hungarians do—in whispers. Dual Monarchy, my foot. Slavery.”

Endre took a step away from the table, his voice ragged. “Cassandra will marry Count Frederic and her mother will dance at court balls.”

“Fat chance. Even Franz Ferdinand's wife Sophie ain't royal enough to be received before Franz Josef. Franz Ferdinand has to enter a room
alone
. The countess'll be at a ball but not in the palace—not with Cassandra, the American princess.”

“That is because she is not…” He paused, a finger touching his moustache. “Never mind.” He stepped away. “My friend Harold, again you invite me for coffee and I end up running away from you.”

Winifred smirked, “Not an uncommon reaction to the man.”

Endre Molnár bowed to the waist, formally, nodded at Winifred and me, winked mischievously at Harold, and left.

“Harold,” I said, “must you alienate the people in whose country you're a guest?”

Harold grinned. “I understand Endre Molnár, my dear. Like other Hungarians, he is a radical at heart. He's waiting for the war. They wait for Franz Josef to die. No one yells, ‘
Éljen a király!
Long live the king!' unless ordered to do so. The fact that Cassandra will marry that fussy, pretentious Count Frederic—that pasteboard royal mask—only makes folks like Endre
more
radical. Sit with him late at night with a couple bottles of Bull's Blood wine from Eger, and he'll tell you his soul.”

“I don't have time for such revelations,” I said.

He snickered. “Well, I wasn't inviting you, my dear. Men have province where…” His voice trailed off.

“And so it goes,” Winifred concluded.

But Harold ignored her.“I only got a few minutes before I gotta head to the telegraph office on Andrássy. The
New York Journal
needs my column.”

I recalled meeting him at the 1912 Republican Convention in Chicago. He interviewed everyone, even me. “Edna Ferber just walked in…she's wearing pearls. ‘Are those pearls real, Miss Ferber?' ‘Yes,' she says. ‘Of course, I paid $1.29 for them at Montgomery Ward…'” That paragraph followed by a revelatory quotation from Teddy Roosevelt about his newly formed Progressive Party. A satiric barb aimed at William Howard Taft. A smorgasbord of the sublime and the ridiculous.

So, perhaps, Harold Gibbon might be Hearst's most inventive reporter.

Preparing to depart, he couldn't resist a farcical account of his battles with the creaky dumbwaiter in his room on the second floor of the hotel. I'd already had my own battles with that contraption. In the ancient rooms everything worked…sporadically. Sometimes the telephone would—most times it didn't. “I called down to the kitchen for tea,” Harold said, “and they send it up by the dumbwaiter. A bell rings. I open the door. The tea goes up half a floor, spills, the bell rings again, the tea comes back, most of it spilled.”

“Well, I gave up,” I admitted. “I feel I'm in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in this hotel.”

He wasn't through. “I open the panel door and I hear someone in the kitchen complaining about me wanting tea so late at night. I hear Markov telling György he's an ass, just like everyone in Markov's wife's family, and he's not supposed to stare at the pretty girls with his tongue wagging out of his mouth. I missed most of it because it's a dialectical Hungarian or something, but György says he will marry a pretty girl someday and…”

“What is the point of this?” Winifred interrupted.

But I was laughing. “As I said, I gave up. I called down for coffee with whipped cream—ordered it in perfect German—and a strange voice says
‘Ja ja ja, mein Herr'
and I scream, ‘Herr?' and the voice says, ‘
Ja ja
.' I gave up. Then the bell rings and I open the door to find a tea biscuit on a tray. When I was first shown the room, the bellboy kept pointing at a garish painting of Franz Josef, eye level and out of place, the emperor an old balding man, and I kept saying, ‘Thank you, thank you.' Finally, to show me, he unlatched the panel holding the painting and opened up the dumbwaiter.”

Hurt, Winifred defended the hotel. “Franz Josef's redundant painting aside, the old rooms have…a coziness to them.”

Harold grimaced. “When the war comes, those paintings of Franz Josef that seem to be in every room—mine shows him as a young man on horseback, which I believe he never was—will be gone. Burned in a pyre of celebration.”

“And my cup of coffee will still be going to the wrong floor.”

Harold waved his typed sheets at us. “I'm off. America awaits my words.” He performed a little dance step, looking like a vaudevillian, and bowed.

Winifred grunted. “Edna,” she said before he was out of earshot, “you find him amusing?”