Cafe Europa

by Ed Ifkovic

  “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, reappea
red, 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.

  Chicago. Pulse and throb and roar and scream.

  A man and woman brushed past Harold, knocking him to the side. Harold immediately lunged after the man, grappled with him, and adroitly extracted his own wallet from the man’s inside vest pocket. The man was bigger than Harold, but not ready for the spontaneous reaction, as Harold pummeled him, spinning him around, cursing him. A kick to the kneecap. The couple fled and Harold, triumphant, held up his wallet as though it were a trophy.

  “I’ve been in Budapest a long time,” he announced. “I’m nobody’s fool.”

  A midget, round and bald, with a falsetto laugh, set balls of twine on fire and hurled them into the air, laughing darkly as they bounced off the pavement. A band of tough boys, all in shiny black trousers, loose peasant shirts and slough boy caps tight over their boyish curls, threw pebbles and coins at him, aiming for his head. He bowed and caught a fiery ball with his outstretched hand as he lunged for the meager pittance.

  Chicago.

  I’d had enough, this ill-considered romp as a voyeur, “Let’s leave,” I insisted.

  Harold, his face aglow, was restless as we walked back to the hotel. He darted ahead, hung back, bellowed, sang, grumbled, disappeared. The two artists watched him closely, and I noticed Bertalan Pór smiling. Lajos Tihanyi, however, looked frightened of Harold.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” Winifred said to them as we stood on the quay in front of the Árpád. I shook my head.

  “You did not enjoy yourself,” Bertalan Pór said slowly. “I am sorry.”

  But I spoke up. “Actually, I did. Although I’m enjoying it more now that we are standing in front of the hotel and there is no one hurling fireballs over my head.”

  Harold was a hundred yards away, walking back to us.

  As I stepped toward the hotel, I heard him cry out, a wounded animal bellow that made us spin around toward him. To my horror Harold was crumpled on the sidewalk, his body twisted with his knees pulled up to his chest, his head flat on the pavement. Two men stood over him, shadowy silhouettes in the dim light, one of them fiercely kicking him in the side. Harold rolled away, screamed, and covered his head with his hands. One of the men swiftly kicked Harold’s head.

  I was screaming as Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi ran toward them, but the two men, alerted, dashed away and rounded a corner. Bravely, Pór gave chase, pausing barely a second by the writhing Harold and then disappearing into the next street. Lajos Tihanyi was kneeling by Harold, his hand resting on Harold’s shoulder. Winifred and I, both moving like reluctant sleepwalkers, shuffled toward Harold who was now sitting up on the sidewalk, both hands holding a bruised and bloody head. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Harold, what?” I asked, but he stared vacantly at us. Then, as though losing power over his body, he sank back to the sidewalk, his legs stretching out before him, his shoulders flat on the ground, his head lolled to one side.

  ”Are you all right?” Winifred whispered. “Say something.”

  At that moment Bertalan Pór returned, panting, out of breath, and he spoke in a raspy voice. “Gone, both of them. Hooligans.”

  Lajos Tihanyi was frantic, heaving and making a gurgling sound. His friend watched him closely.

  “Austrian officers,” Bertalan Pór told us.

  “What?” From me, rattled.

  He pointed to his own jacket. “One man was wearing an old regiment jacket. I recognized it.”

  Harold was muttering something as he tried to sit up.

  “Don’t move,” Bertalan Pór told him. “We will get help.”

  “Warned me. Cursed me in German. Leave Budapest now. Mind my own business.”

  He struggled to stand and Bertalan Pór helped him. “Then they weren’t just bandits,” I announced.

  Harold was shaking his head. A smear of blood over his left eye, a clump of dirt on his chin. A deep gouge on his neck, dark blood staining his shirt.

  Suddenly a smile covered his features. “The murder.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “The murder.” His bruised fingers touched the wetness on his forehead. “Or my remarks about Franz Josef. The end of the empire.” A puzzled look on his face. “Or both. I’m an enemy of the empire.”

  “We need to get you to the hospital.” Bertalan Pór tucked his arm under Harold’s shoulder. But the injured man shrugged him off, lumbering ahead, wobbly, headed into the hotel. The two Hungarians looked at each other, confused, but both stepped behind Harold, almost touching him, as though to catch him should he topple. Harold moved slowly, dragging his feet, but he never stopped chattering. This conspiracy, that one, this intrigue, this news story, that sensational headline. The hated military stalking him. All nonsense, of course. Bertalan Pór signaled to Winifred to rush ahead into the hotel to call for help.

  “Hospital,” he whispered.

  As we neared the entrance of the hotel, a porter rushed out, stumbling after Winifred. We were a motley crew—Harold staggering, Lajos Tihanyi’s head bobbing up and down, Bertalan Pór’s face set in a stern steely look—and my expression one of utter alarm.

  “Help is coming,” Winifred announced.

  Behind the porter stood some men who’d been lounging in the lobby, one with a cigar bobbing in his mouth. Another still held a newspaper, folded back. Among them was Jonathan Wolf, who stood back at first, but then moved forward, offering his arm to the teetering Harold.

  �
�Tell me what happened,” he said to me as he reached for Harold’s arm.

  Eyes dreamy now, his speech slurred and lazy, Harold managed to open his eyes to face Wolf. A stark look of recognition. With a trembling hand, he pointed at the man. “Don’t you come near me. How do I know they weren’t acting under your orders?” With that, he passed out, slipping out of Bertalan Pór’s tenuous hold and crumpling up on the steps.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Early the next evening I sat alone at a table on the terrace. Winifred had spent most of the day in her rooms, ill with a headache and insisting she’d never recover from last night’s ill-advised romp through the nether regions of tenderloin Budapest, an unfortunate evening capped off with the brutal assault on the gadfly journalist.

  “I’ll lie in bed with chocolate and cherries and a cold compress on my head.” She winked at me. “This is all your fault, Edna dear.” But she smiled. “At my age I should only be in the street with a placard for suffrage…in the company of hundreds of other women. That’s dangerous enough.” She jokingly pointed a finger at me. “You will always be a woman who steps lively into dangerous territory, Edna.”

  “Thank God,” I’d countered.

  “I hope you never regret those words.”

  So I sat alone and grieved and considered…and thought of Harold…and of Cassandra. But my thoughts kept drifting back to Jonathan Wolf. He was a piece of a puzzle that wouldn’t come together. He was like a low-hanging sun in a tropical sky—always there, a brilliant ball of red fire whenever you turned your head.

  Idly, I sipped coffee, dipped a spoon into a bowl of coffee ice cream, though I’d lingered so long at the table the dessert had melted. I tried to focus on the newspaper, the London Times, but the black-and-white print blurred, swam before my eyes. The headlines alarmed me. So much of the world was focused on the region where I now sat with coffee and ice cream: the futile and desperate balance between the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov dynasties, each one seemingly hell-bent on its own destruction. Emperor and King, Kaiser, and Tsar. Anachronisms, all of them. Imperial and royal monarchies, failed. Puffery and ego and ceremonial braid. Kaiserliche und Königliche Monarchie. The newspaper shorthand: K.u.k. Cluck cluck cluck. Barnyard chatter.