Cafe Europa

by Ed Ifkovic

  “How ignominious, really,” I said archly. “In some circles there’s a name for that.”

  He was getting hot under the collar. “You don’t understand the peculiar rhythms of old European life. Life isn’t flash-in-the-pan footlights here. Folks venerate legendary performers who blazed their way on stages thirty years back. Some old-timers remember them fondly. Their days of rollicking youth and…and dance hall intrigue and beer hall sensation. Europeans have long memories. Americans forget yesterday’s news.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Gibbon. What is the basis of your veneration?”

  He leaned in, confidential. “Frankly, she misread my attention last night, my idle interest, my…” A shrug of his shoulders.

  “Flirtation? Please, Mr. Gibbon, we witnessed your primitive courtship ritual.”

  “You know, she carries with her a reputation for being a celebrated and great”—he swallowed and looked away, a mooncalf glow in his eyes—”romantic.”

  “Ah, the power of euphemisms,” I blurted out.

  A bittersweet smile. “She surprised me…warm and tender and—and, well, downright lovely. She took me by surprise.”

  Her fingers tapping the table, Winifred was frowning. “Enough of this cheap revelation, sir. Now, foolishly, you’re trying to convince us that this sad tryst of yours was done in the name of journalistic investigation.”

  “Well, yes. Tidbits about life in Vienna and the royal court. Did you know that there’s a ghost in Franz Josef’s Hofburg—Die weisse Frau—the white woman, who mourns and cries and…Franz Ferdinand hates Wagner and Jews and frowns on liver and boiled beef…and Queen Elisabeth encouraged her husband’s affair with Kathi Stratt…and the account of Cassandra’s murder in the German-language Neues Pester Journal here in Budapest made no mention at all of the count and the planned marriage…none. None! Did you know that? I had to rush to my rooms this morning to jot it all down.”

  “Trivial, such hogwash. Do you think America wants this scandal as headline?” I asked.

  “I know so. Hearst demands it. Ordinary Americans are hungry for these royal tidbits. Democracy only gets a person so far when it comes to excitement. But you know, it somehow all ties in with my larger purpose in Budapest—my chronicle of the end of empire. The coming of the horrible war.”

  “How so?”

  “The count was part of the Military Chancery, ineffectual though he is, probably a wooden figurehead much mocked by his underlings. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Anyway, he still has a role to play in the game of war.”

  “What does that have to do with his attempt to marry an American heiress? Surely you’re not suggesting that Cassandra Blaine is connected to the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”

  That gave him pause. “Only that such a marriage suggests how weakened the aristocracy has become—how desperate. It suggests a crack in the surface of things.”

  “Quite the stretch, Mr. Gibbon.”

  Winifred was watching him closely. “You know you’re a weasel, Mr. Gibbon.”

  He laughed loudly, delighted. “You’re not the first person to call me that.”

  “Then perhaps you should listen to those souls. Mend your ways.”

  Brushing her comments away, he went on, excited. “You know, I can even expand these juicy articles into a best-selling book, something thrown together before my major opus, my Decline and Fall. Let me see—The Count and the American Heiress. Nice title, no? I can see the movie now. D. W. Griffith will direct it. Mary Pickford as Cassandra. Me—as myself.”

  “Mr. Gibbon and the Goddess,” I suggested.

  “Hearst wants me to get all the gossip.”

  I laughed out loud. “Hence an all-night rendezvous with the dissolute beer hall singer.”

  “Exactly.” He reached into his back pocket and took out a crumpled edition of the New York Examiner. With a flourish, he pointed to the bold headline. “My scoop. My words, but the Chief wrote the headline himself.”

  An incendiary headline: “Franz Josef Ignores Murder of American Heiress.”

  “How does he—you—know that?”

  He grinned. “Let’s just assume Hearst knows everything.” Harold jumped up and pushed back his chair. “I have work to do.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Zsuzsa told me that one of the porters, leaving work late that night and stopping to smoke a cigarette out on the terrace, swears he heard two men whispering behind a wall. Drunken whispers, he thought. He heard only two words: ‘This time.’ In German.” Harold’s brow furled. “Or something like that. Or he thought it was German. And then, as he lingered on the quay before heading home, watching a boat chug up the river, he saw a big man wrapped in a cape, a hat pulled down over his face, stagger away, drunk, bumping into a railing. A man who turned his head away as he passed by.”

  I was interested. “At what time?”

  “He leaves the hotel at ten. So, early—long before the murder.”

  “That could mean nothing,” Winifred said.

  “Or everything,” I commented. “Harold, did the porter tell this to Baron Meyerhold?”

  Harold grinned. “No one tells that scary man anything. To talk to him is to invite questions about your own soul. Meyerhold will persecute the innocent simply for the pleasure of it.”

  “Then…”

  “But he did tell Inspector Horváth, who’s a Magyar and a member of the Royal Police. The Hungarians work with Meyerhold, but with reservations. They don’t trust him. Which is why the case won’t be solved early—or at all. No Hungarian willingly steps into the path of the dreaded Baron Meyerhold.”

  “Obviously the Hungarians are a people with exquisite and perfect judgment.”

  Harold laughed and backed off. “Do you hear the clock ticking? The empire is listening to the death knell.” He jerked his head back and forth. “Tick tock tick tock. Listen. Ain’t it beautiful? My ticket to fame. Franz Josef is writhing with dysentery or some other royal virus, days to live, gasp gasp gasp. Is that the ghost of my dead son Rudi? Who walks there? And Franz Ferdinand is scheduled to go to Sarajevo on St. Vitas Day, a Serbian holiday, to review Austrian Army field exercises. Appointment with the grim reaper. An empire with an insatiable desire for death. For Franz Josef’s eightieth birthday, you know, Serbian dailies praised would-be assassins outright in editorials bordered in thick black, and insisted every Serbian has a duty to go to war with the ‘monster’ Austria. Happy birthday, old man.” Harold stomped his foot. “What a great time to be in Europe!” He bowed, retrieved his feathered slough cap he’d placed on a chair, and sailed out of the café.

  Winifred narrowed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—it’s Zsuzsa I feel sorry for now. She’s been hauled into that messy spider’s web.”

  Vladimir Markov was standing some ten feet from us, shifting from one foot to the other, nervous, arms folded behind his back, his head dipped into his neck like a wary bird.

  “Mr. Markov, is there a problem?”

  The man hurried over to us but looked quickly toward the lobby. “A minute of your time, dear ladies. But I feel I am being…how do you say it?…indiscreet. It’s forbidden for the staff to engage the guests in my problems.”

  “Heavens, no, Mr. Markov,” I said. “Please sit. Perhaps you offer some relief to the balderdash we’ve just sat through.”

  “Ah, Mr. Gibbon.” He lowered his voice, again glancing toward the departed Harold. “A fine, fine man, no?”

  “The best.” Winifred blurted out the words. “Hearst’s finest.”

  Again I invited him to sit with us, but he shook his head. “Of course not. So inappropriate. My employment, you see. My place here. I feel…”

  “Please, tell us.”

  “You are the good friends of Mr. Gibbon, yes?”

  “No.” Winifred exploded. “A fellow American, a subspecies usually kept in the fa
mily attic.”

  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.