by Ed Ifkovic
Harold was irritated. “Do you have secrets?”
“Everyone has secrets. But some are trivial and mundane. Worthless.”
“Most people’s secrets,” Harold noted. “But…”
“But obviously not mine—if I am to judge your inquisitiveness. You think that I have something to tell you.”
“Do you?”
A sardonic smile. “I provide no answers unless you ask the right questions.”
“And those questions are…”
“That’s your job, sir.”
This verbal skirmish ended as a waiter approached the table. “If we are to have this unpleasant conversation, let me offer you all some wine.” He spoke to the waiter in Hungarian. “Of course, we’ll have Tokay, the legendary grape every tourist demands. And rightly so. A favorite of mine.”
Harold was impatient to get back to the conversation. “I’m by nature a curious man.”
Wolf eyed him, but looked at me and then at Winifred. “You ladies choose to wander these lovely, ancient streets with your family pet.”
That rankled Harold. “Hey, I’m a reporter.”
He eyed Harold over the rim of the brandy he now finished. He chomped on an ice cube as the waiter returned with wine and poured it. Wolf’s voice was laced with sarcasm. “And I’m not a reporter—nor curious.” He sighed as he fingered his beard and then sipped the wine. “Ladies, please.” I sampled the wine: pungent, rich, smooth, aromatic. I smiled. “I told you you’d like it. Everyone does. Even if they don’t, they say they do.”
That bothered me. “I never lie, sir.” A charming smile. “At least about wine.” Then, watching his face, I told him, “Sir, I’ve had Tokay before.”
“Good for you then. A head start on excellence.”
“You come to Hungary often?”
My abrupt shift in conversation didn’t faze him at all. He grinned. “Are you working for Mr. Gibbon?”
I bristled. “I work for no one but myself. I’m trying to make idle conversation with a rude man who invited us to sit with him. Perhaps you should choose a topic that you approve of, sir.”
That surprised the man, who tightened his lips into a frown. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, sat back in his chair, relaxed his body. “Yes, I am being rude, Miss Ferber. My heartfelt apologies. I wasn’t raised that way.” He glanced at Harold. “It’s just that—well, some folks rattle my chains, as it were. I’m a private person.”
“I understand that exactly, sir,” I said.
“It’s actually a pleasure to meet you two ladies.” He avoided looking at Harold. “I do know your enviable reputations.”
“Apology accepted,” I told him.
He took a sip of wine and seemed to be weighing his response to me. “But you are right. We are having a pleasant conversation—or trying to. To answer your question, yes, I visit Hungary often. I’ve often vacationed at Lake Balaton. A village. Almádi, in fact. A long, beautiful lake. Vineyards. Old peasant women sell poppy seed rolls in the park or carry green earthenware jugs filled with buffalo milk. Old men in faded hussar uniforms nodding on the benches. Delightful. I have good friends in Pécs.” He reached out across the table, offering his hand to Harold, who was pouting. “Friends, sir?” Harold shook his hand.
“Edna and I have traveled to Budapest to see the sights,” Winifred told him.
“My father was born in Hungary,” I blurted out.
That intrigued him. “Really? Ferber?”
“Yes, a nearby village. A shopkeeper’s family, I gather. In some ways this is a sentimental visit for me. My father often spoke of Budapest, a city that dazzled him, a place where…” But I stopped talking. Jonathan Wolf wasn’t listening—he was watching Harold, who was eavesdropping on a conversation at a table near us.
A moment of silence, then he shifted the subject abruptly. “I’m here on business, in fact. I work for a company in Massachusetts planning some major investment in Eastern Europe. Based in Boston. Since I knew Budapest…and Prague, in fact…even the Croatian Agram…I was asked to…scout out possibilities.” He was still staring at Harold.
Something was wrong. His words rang false, though I wasn’t certain why I thought that. The breezy, casual speech had suddenly become staccato, rehearsed. A set piece delivered as a capsule biography to keep people away. Jonathan Wolf did, indeed, harbor a secret.
“And you chose the Hotel Árpád?” I asked.
He waited a bit. “For English-speaking contacts, of course. American businessmen. All Americans end up there—creatures of habit. I’ve been a guest a number of times, and each time I marvel at the decay—and danger. I ignore the intrusive image of Franz Josef staring at me as I wake in the morning.” He laughed, though no one joined him. “And a curious room service that has a mind of its own. A plate containing a piece of crispy apple strudel sailing to floors other than my own.” He shook his head back and forth. “But charming, no?”
Winifred was nodding her approval.
What I detected was a slight accent, barely suppressed under the rigorous Bostonian inflection. Jonathan Wolf, I concluded, most likely had been born in Europe.
“You were born in Boston?” I asked.
Amused, he was shaking his head. “Ah, more questions. A reporter, too?”
“Yes, indeed,” I answered, a little hotly. “A product of Sam Ryan’s afternoon Appleton Crescent, circulation under one thousand, more when disaster struck.”
“And did it strike often?”
“Not often enough. I was fired after one year.”
He waited a second. “Yes, I was raised in Boston. Boston Latin, Harvard. The full sweep of Brahmin acceptability.”
“But you’re not a Brahmin.”
He didn’t answer.
Harold was watching me, delight in his eyes. Partners, his look conveyed, in solving the mystery of the bearded man. I was still haunted by my first glimpse of Wolf as he stood in the shadowy entrance, watching Cassandra, a look not curious but—harsh, menacing.
“A hotel that was the scene of a horrible murder,” I began, goading him. “That poor American girl. Cassandra Blaine. Had you met her?”
“Of course not.” Said too quickly, and glibly. He was looking down into his half-empty glass. When he glanced up, I saw wariness in the corners of his eyes.
“So close to her marriage,” I went on, driven. Winifred squinted at me: What? What? Really, Edna. I was used to her questioning looks—often withering—and her belief that I was too forward. Rebel though she might be in the war for suffrage, she still harbored conventions about proper conduct, which I didn’t. After all, she was British. I…well, wasn’t. The Atlantic Ocean had loosened some of the rusty bolts of respectability.
“What do you think happened?” Harold asked now.
A heartbeat. “I don’t know. Gypsies, perhaps.”
“That’s an easy conclusion,” I offered.
“From what I heard, it was a robbery gone bad.” He fiddled with his pocket watch, anxious, and stared toward the sidewalk.
“I don’t believe it.” I locked eyes with him. “Cassandra was suddenly afraid of something. She told me so.”
That news shifted his interest, and he tilted his head toward me, eyes questioning. “Afraid of what?”
“I wish I knew.” I glanced at Winifred. “But it seems her presence in the Café Europa drew quite a bit of attention from folks. I recall seeing someone standing in the shadows of the doorway, his eyes riveted to her, and not too kindly.” A disingenuous smile. “A large man, bearded.”
I expected him to squirm, but he didn’t. Debonair, slick, he smiled in recognition. “Ah, you have a wonderful eye, Miss Ferber. But perhaps a passing stranger might be fascinated by a noisy, frivolous girl who enjoys making scenes in public. As an American, I tend to dislike when my compatriots feel the need to behave childishly in
foreign countries. Perhaps that stranger was simply looking at her with distaste. End of story.”
“And yet this woman was to be married to an Austrian count.”
He laughed out loud, and for too long. No one else did. Then, his tone sober, he said with marked annoyance, “Stupid, these transcontinental marriages. And with an impoverished count who thinks he has his finger on the pulse of modern Europe and its trouble spots. The age of feudalism looking up at the airplane in the sky with the wonder of a child discovering his big toe.”
“So you’re saying the count is…clueless about modern life?”
Harold warmed to the subject. “Franz Josef himself is without a clue. Here is a man who refuses to ride in an automobile—after all, it is a modern trapping, a death machine. A man surprised by rebellion in the provinces, who expects the enslaved Slav to bow before him. A man who…” Harold stopped. Jonathan’s face looked stony.
“I take it you don’t care for the Habsburgs?” he asked.
“What do you think of Franz Josef?” Harold countered.
“I really have nothing to say on the subject.”
I smiled. “So you’re not invited to the wedding that will never happen now?”
That surprised him. “I’m here on American business, Miss Ferber. I believe I already told you that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Edna,” Winifred began, “what are you getting at?”
“I believe Mr. Wolf is harboring secrets.”
“And so the conversation comes full circle,” he concluded.
No one laughed. Wolf glanced toward the street, his eye following a policeman standing by the underground stop. He pushed his plate away from him, drank the last of the wine, slapped some crowns on the table, and signaled to the waiter.
Harold hurriedly spoke up. “How long are you staying in Budapest, Mr. Wolf?”
A thin smile. “I guess the inquisition has another tiresome act.”
We waited. Harold fussed with a napkin, then waved his hand at Wolf, his fingers resting near the man’s sparkling diamond pin. “You’re very much the cosmopolite, sir.”
“A lovely word, but not really describing me. I’m a simple American businessman.”
“You’ve already established that,” Winifred said, her voice sharp, something that surprised me. Jonathan Wolf looked at her with an expression that suggested his only ally at a hostile table had drifted over to the opposing side, leaving him naked on the battlefield.
“Well, I was supposed to visit Sarajevo, but I’ve been warned against it. Too much trouble brewing there.”
Excited by the sudden introduction of politics, Harold rushed his words. “I may go there soon—if given an assignment. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is scheduled to visit there shortly. With his wife, Sophie.”
“A mistake, I would think.”
“But Bosnia is an Austrian territory now.”
“But it’s filled with angry Serbians. Anarchists who resent the encroachment of the empire on their ancient lands.”
“Ah, Serbia,” Harold rhapsodized. “Their national anthem is a hymn to lost souls.”
“Tell that to the Black Hand, those anarchists roaming the streets with bombs. With Franz Josef hostile to beleaguered Serbia, there’s bound to be trouble, no?” He sat back, folded his arms across his chest. “According to what I read in the papers.”
Harold beamed at me. “I told you so, Miss Ferber. War is coming.”
But that remark bothered Jonathan Wolf, a quizzical look in his eyes. “Austria doesn’t want war with Serbia. A colossal mistake, really. You’re convinced…”
“Of course.” Harold insisted. “But there are forces in Serbia that fund the anarchists’ movements in Bosnia. Narodna Obdrana. The Union of Death. Responsible for the coup d’etat that killed King Alexander and Queen Draga in 1903. Barbaric thugs, hunting them down like dogs and hurling their naked bodies into the street. What’s his name? A madman nicknamed Apis—the Bull, now Minister of War in King Peter Karageorgevich’s reign. Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a monster. Assassination is the name of the game for the Serbians. But it’s David and Goliath, really. Austria ruling from the Alps to the Mediterranean. Except that Austria is a lumbering giant, sickly, tired. And Serbia is a spitfire nation that will never win a war. It comes from having kings who were pig farmers who suddenly titled themselves royalty.”
“Mr. Gibbon,” I broke in,“another lecture on world politics? Do you ever rest?”
“Never.”
“Well, maybe…”
Jonathan’s face was animated. He considered Harold’s words for quite a while and didn’t look happy. “Not good for business—this war of yours. You appear to have some inside information, sir.”
“I read the papers.” He breathed in. “I also write for them. Remember Otto von Bismarck’s prophecy—‘Some damn foolish thing in the Balkans will mean war.’ There are souls in Austria itching for war. For one, Count Frederic von Erhlich, Cassandra’s intended. A foolish man.”
“Mr. Gibbon reads what Hearst says about this region,” I noted.
Jonathan Wolf laughed. “So Mr. Gibbon makes it up, and the world believes it. And then, oddly, even he believes what he just made up.”
“I’m a journalist. I write the truth.”
Jonathan stood up. “Pleasant as this is—and it actually was—I must be off.”
Harold held out a hand, touched the man’s sleeve. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation.”
Jonathan Wolf shrugged him off, his expression humorless. “I really have nothing more to say about politics. You’ve heard the extent of my knowledge, coffee house chatter available anywhere in town—what the Embassy warns business investors about. I read the London Times and the New York Times. I tend to avoid the Hearst tabloids.”
“Wise choice,” Winifred quipped.
“But…” Harold insisted.
“No.” Strong, deliberate, final. “Chitchat about politics—and the foolish game of war—well, it’s idle talk over a fine lunch. This has been fun but really…unnecessary.”
I spoke up. “Oh, perhaps you’re wrong, Mr. Wolf. Perhaps there are things being said that are truly important.”
He squinted. “That’s makes little sense, Miss Ferber.” A patronizing smile. “I trust your short stories make more sense.”
I harrumphed, a Victorian exclamation I usually resisted because I always sounded like my hectoring grandmother in Chicago. “Goodbye, Mr. Wolf.”
He placed his boater on his head, adjusted it, tugged at the lapels of his jacket, checked his necktie, and bowed away from us.
Absently, staring after Jonathan Wolf who was weaving his way through scattered strollers, Harold remarked, “I’ll get to the bottom of that man.”
“And what does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t trust him. He’s lying to us. He’s not here in Budapest on business. He’s up to no good. My nose tells me that. He follows me sometimes, you know. I spot him watching me. He was playing games with us.”
“I agree,” I added. “There’s something he’s not telling us.” I stared into Harold’s eager face. “But be careful.”
He grinned foolishly. “That’s never any fun.”
We walked back to the hotel, taking our time, enjoying City Park with its drooping willows and delicate acacia trees. Like a madcap schoolboy, Harold chased an electric trolley until he drifted back to us, out of breath but laughing.
“He’ll never grow up,” Winifred whispered to me.
“I hope not,” I answered.
At the hotel we discovered a line of black touring cars stretched out in front of the hotel. A spiffy Graf & Stift roadster was positioned in front, followed by a fleet of cars, including a small truck. Bumper to bumper, the assemblage struck me as a freight train on some track. As we watched, porters l
oaded suitcases and trunks into the cars, methodically packing back seats. The cab of the truck was piled high with boxes, all tied with red canvas ropes. Functionaries, yelling orders, bustled about, distracted, flummoxed, and annoyed. A grim-looking man in a tweed jacket and British spats stood to the side and reprimanded a porter for dropping a box.
“So Marcus and Cecilia Blaine are moving out,” Harold announced.
As we watched, two maids and a manservant dressed in uniforms lined up and then filed into one of the cars. A porter opened the doors of the imposing car at the front, and the Blaines, as though waiting for a stage cue, stepped from the hotel’s front entrance. Looking straight ahead, neither speaking, they got into the rear seat. Cecilia Blaine was dressed in black, her face hidden by a heavy black veil. Her arms had elbow-length black gloves, and she gripped a rolled parasol. Despite the heat, she wore over her shoulders an ebony Spanish shawl trimmed with fur. Marcus Blaine, in a businessman’s black suit and a formal black top hat that was more appropriate for an evening at the opera, nodded at the driver who moved the car into traffic.
The line of vehicles behind followed, a somber funeral procession that ignored crossing pedestrians and other cruising vehicles. A perpetual motion machine, that caravan, undeterred by courtesy and custom. The lead automobile almost sideswiped a shabby dog cart pulled by a team of black horses in yellow harnesses, and the driver, a thick, sunburned peasant with a long pipe in his mouth, cursed in delirious Magyar and shook his fist in the air.
Harold gave the benediction. “The American royalty headed back to America, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“And Cassandra’s body?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Headed back to America for burial in the family plot in Hartford. Cedar Hill Cemetery, where the rich are buried.”
A lump in my throat, sadness filling my heart. “Such a short, unhappy life.”
“The rich don’t cultivate happiness,” Winifred said.
“Well,” Harold told her, “of course they do. But they call it by another name. Money.”
“And her murderer walks the streets of this beautiful city,” Winifred commented.
