Cafe Europa

by Ed Ifkovic

  “Good for you,” I said to her. But my words startled her. Squinting, wariness in her eye corners, she looked to see if I mocked her.

  But Winifred, closely following the tread of her story, was nodding at her, and her words echoed mine. “You won your battles.”

  “What?” She was confused.

  “You triumphed,” Winifred said.

  “But look at me now.”

  “Miss Kós, it only matters that you waged a war and won. Even if the world moved on.”

  Zsuzsa didn’t follow our conversation, but grasped the tone. She smiled, her eyes wet.

  I wanted to shift the talk. “So Mrs. Blaine asked you to find a nobleman for Cassandra?”

  That puzzled her. “No, that’s not how it was.”

  “I thought…”

  “It was the other way around, really.”

  “You mean the count asked you to find a bride—an American bride?”

  She shook her head vigorously, and laughed snidely. “No, never. The count lives for horseback riding, pheasant hunting, cigars, and mountain retreats. Marriage…never in the plans. His mother, the countess. That scheming, greedy woman…she meets me here, in fact, in my rooms, private, hidden in veils, incognito as you say, and implores me…‘There is a wealthy American girl in the hotel for a year. Her rooms are down at the end of your hallway.’”

  Winifred talked to herself. “So it wasn’t Mrs. Blaine? I thought I’d heard…I mean, I thought you said…”

  Zsuzsa grinned. “I had to say that. To tell people that it was the American who asked me. I was ordered to by the countess herself. Yes, Mrs. Blaine was eager—I’d heard stories of her interest in—titles. ‘Americans are so common,’ she said to me. ‘We need royalty.’ That sort of thing. I have no connections in Vienna now—over, done with. No one would listen to me. But it was the countess who approached me first. She says. ‘Arrange it.’ She offers me a pittance, really, but promises my return to Vienna. A return to the courts and the balls and the…” A sob. “She lied, of course. She knew I was friendly with the American girl. We talked here in the café. She liked when I sang my songs. No, no. It was the dreadful countess, impoverished, needy, hungry, who sought me out.”

  I looked at Winifred. “But Mrs. Blaine agreed.”

  Zsuzsa swallowed. “Because she is the American version of the countess: position, status, the…the stares from the poor people when you get into the town car or the carriage with the lanterns. I introduced the two women to each other in a park on Margaret Island. That’s all it took. Mrs. Blaine slipped me American dollars.”

  “So that’s how it happened.” I sat back.

  Zsuzsa leaned forward, as if ready to confide a secret. “Of course, the Countess von Erhlich asked so many questions about Mrs. Blaine beforehand. What her social status is in America. What she is like, what she wears, where in America is the mansion, where is Newport, does she know the President, does she have dinner at the White House, on and on, a gossip, hungry for fabulous stories.”

  “But the count could care less?”

  She bit her lip. “No, that was interesting to me. The one time I met him—he is distant and refused to look into my face, peasant that I am—the one time he talked about Mr. Blaine, the father.”

  “What did he ask?” Winifred asked.

  “Too many questions. Money. Money. Money. Where does it come from? How much? Does he own Aetna Insurance? Money, money, money. Does he own the famous Colt Firearms in Hartford? Why is he the one they send to Budapest? When I go to America, will they understand that I am a Count?” She looked into my eyes. “He scared me. ‘Does he have a gun?’ he asked me. ‘A good hunting rifle? They make the famous Colt .45, no? I am a well-known hunter.’ I tell him—how would I know that? Why would he want to know about a gun?”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “All of it.”

  “So I make the introductions, and Cassandra begins to hate me because she hates the count. He is not a man easy to like, of course. A dreadful man, stuffed full of himself. His mother’s son. But is that my fault? She accuses me of selling her into slavery. One time I tell her that her parents are the slave dealers—they never looked at her, cold, cruel people—and she starts to cry. I tried to be friends but that couldn’t be.”

  “We saw how she behaved,” I told her.

  “She says—everyone then says—the great Zsuzsa Kós is slipping into madness…she screams over nothing…she imagines things…”

  “What did Harold say about that arrangement?”

  “He talked to me after the contract was made. Before that, he ignored me. I had no story to tell him. That’s when he saw me across the room…only then. After that, he talked to me because he wanted to get stories from me. You must know that Harold had a cold side, heartless. He could be warm and lovely, he could dance around you to make you laugh, but then he could close down his heart and turn from you.”

  “Do you think the murders of Harold and Cassandra are related?” I asked so suddenly she started.

  “Oh, no. But—but why? What makes you think so?”

  “You have to wonder, no?”

  “But how?” Winifred asked me. Her face quivered. “Harold was delving into the decline of the empire, meeting with all sorts of people, walking into dark neighborhoods, stirring up rivalries, trouble.”

  “And Cassandra was lamenting an upcoming marriage.” I sucked in my breath. “It does strike me as farfetched.” I paused. “But she was marrying into that ruling class.”

  Zsuzsa was nodding. “Harold died because he was playing with fire.” Then her eyes got wide. “I remember one of the last things he said to me. We were talking about that horrible man, that Jonathan Wolf. He said that Wolf was not the man he said he was—he needed to be watched. ‘But why?’ I asked him. And he didn’t answer me. But later he said he overheard a conversation of the American with one of the porters, both speaking in Serbian. ‘So what?’ I said to him. I speak Serbian. Many Hungarians do. There are Serbians all over. Then I remembered that I’d greeted the Serbian woman who sold violets in the café, and this Wolf yelled something in Serbian at me. When I answered him, he looked…satisfied.”

  Zsuzsa wore a perplexed expression. “I got confused by it all. Harold and this man Wolf. They don’t understand that in Hungary everyone speaks many languages. It’s not…America. There you just speak English and…and what? Apache? Cherokee? Geronimo? I don’t know. That’s what Harold told me. Was he lying?”

  I smiled. “Yes, that sums it up.”

  Zsuzsa tugged at the sleeves of her dress. Her plump upper arms had pushed against the seams, splitting the fabric in places. She pulled her shawl tighter around her body, gripping it with her fingers. “I need to go. I need to be away from here.” Her smile was sad. “You are kind women, you are. Most women refuse to sit with me.”

  “But why?”

  “They see a harlot.”

  “Good Lord,” I said.

  “I was a singer. Men loved me.” Her voice dipped, mournful. “A figure of fun.” She said in hesitant English, “A laughing stock.” A chuckle, back to German. “An American word Harold taught me. A word for my tombstone. But I tell you something. For a short time, for a couple of days, Harold made my life…fun again. Dangerous, but fun. He made me laugh. He showed me the young girl that I used to be. That springtime in Vienna. He helped me remember that. Thirty years ago. He made me stop hating myself when I looked in the mirror. He made me dance around my room like a girl ready for her first dance.” She grimaced. “Even with dear Franz Josef staring at me at eye level.”

  Winifred smiled. “I’ve thrown a blanket over that portrait. I don’t need that old man watching me sleep.”

  I rushed my words. “What do you mean by ‘dangerous’? Why was it dangerous?”

  She considered her words slowly. “Harold said knowing him was dangerous. He
said he was being followed by agents from Vienna.” A swallowed sigh. “And he was right. They assassinated him.”

  “Assassinated?”

  “No one is murdered in this part of the world. They are assassinated.”

  “Cassandra Blaine?” I asked, confused.

  She tapped her fingers on the table. “Assassinated.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We lingered in the garden of the Lake Restaurant in City Park, staring across the small table at Endre Molnár. We hadn’t seen him since Harold Gibbon’s death, and his written note insisted we meet here and not at the Hotel Árpád.

  “Such sadness for me there,” he ended his letter.

  So Winifred and I called a taxi and arrived to find him already seated in the loud, crowded restaurant, a bottle of wine before him.

  “I’ve sent notes to Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi,” he told us. “We must be together, all of us.”

  That surprised me. I had not expected him to invite the two artists, but of course, he was a frequent visitor—and agreeable model—in Tihanyi’s studio.

  The striking man looked tired, pinched lines around his mouth, his magnificent moustache a little droopy, a sad-sack look. A web of spidery lines surrounded his cloudy eyes. It was the face of a grieving man.

  Awkward silence as we stared at each other.

  “I know Harold for over a year,” he began. “He encouraged my courtship with Cassandra, though I think it amused him at first, the romance out of a children’s storybook. He was always the reporter, but he became a loyal friend. Sometimes I think I don’t understand the Americans visiting Budapest, but then there was Harold—funny, delirious, joking, deadly serious, noisy, a man to raise a toast with for any occasion. A man who remembered my name day and sent me wine and cigars.”

  Winifred said nothing, though I watched her gaze off over the heads of the crowd, her eyes lost on something in the distance. She looked stricken. Harold’s death had an impact on her I’d not anticipated. I thought she might cry now.

  Endre watched as the waiter poured each of us a glass of wine. “A lovely sweet wine from Szeged,” he told us. “A particular favorite of Harold’s.” His voice shook, broke at the end. He raised his glass for a toast, though his words were swallowed, soft. “To Harold Gibbon.”

  “To Harold.” My words caught in my throat, hollow.

  Winifred raised her glass. Still she said nothing.

  We drank in silence.

  “I was visited by someone from the American Embassy,” he said finally. “A man named Morris Jamison who took the night train from Vienna in order to talk to me.” Endre hardened his gaze. “He wasn’t very kind.”

  I swallowed, nervous. “What did he want?”

  A wistful smile. “He wanted me to confess to a murder.”

  “Cassandra?”

  “Yes. But then he mentioned Harold’s murder.”

  I fumed. “Impossible. Incredible. What in the world is going on?”

  “Within the hour he returned with Baron Meyerhold and some other men, though I was warned first by Inspector Imre Horváth who, I believe, is fearful his office is in jeopardy. Horváth has a loyalty…to me. But Baron Meyerhold stamped his feet like a frustrated child and mentioned over and over that the Americans demand an arrest soon. Demand now—his words. The killing of Harold Gibbon is scaring them. There are cables flying back and forth to Washington, to Vienna, to Budapest. Two American deaths in Budapest. Hearst himself is applying pressure, heads rolling. Hearst’s headlines scream for justice. After all, Harold was one of their reporters.”

  “Hearst must be going insane,” I said.

  He nodded. “Our newspapers copy the headlines from his papers. They quote Hearst: ‘Washington Demands Arrests.’ So says Hearst. So many people believe all of America is pounding its fists at Vienna and Budapest—the man in the street, angry. You can’t kill Americans and get away with it. Hearst is sending other reporters, we hear. That news put some fear in Baron Meyerhold’s voice.” He grinned. “A pleasure, spotting that weakness in the man. He’s a man who refuses fear in himself. I imagine he is afraid of Americans.” He caught my eye. “The world is afraid of Americans. They—how do you say it? They speak softly and carry a big stick.”

  “Ah, our Teddy Roosevelt.”

  “But most people say the Americans talk loudly.”

  I clicked my tongue. “But we’re so wonderful as companions. Genial, wouldn’t you say?”

  He twisted his head to the side. “Americans are a mystery to us. They slap our backs and shake our hands as if they wanted to snap our wrists off. They use the familiar pronoun when they address us, especially in German. They start to call you by your first name almost immediately.”

  “Not all of us.”

  He bowed. “Present company excepted.”

  I had long been tempted to call him Endre—he had a kind of American boyishness I found charming—but resisted. I understood protocol. “Yes, we Americans are peau rouge.”

  He looked puzzled. I told him, “So many people I meet think America is the Wild West. Cowboys and Indians, even in the midst of our skyscrapers. Buffalo Bill and his show traveled through Europe. Even Budapest, I understand. So Americans are—red skins.”

  “The tomahawk.” He enunciated the strange word slowly.

  “Shoot ’em up.” But I stopped joking. “Why haven’t you been arrested then?”

  He waited a bit, sipped his wine. “Well, it’s not only the Americans who question what the Austrians are doing. Inspector Horváth tells me that the count and his mother are demanding I be arrested immediately. They claim it’s an embarrassment to their name—that the fiancé of Count Frederic von Erhlich is murdered and the obvious killer—the hotheaded jilted lover, the wild Hungarian horseman—is allowed to roam the streets.”

  “You mentioned this American Jamison accusing you of Harold’s murder. Why would anyone think you killed poor Harold? That makes little sense to me.”

  “The authorities believe Harold gathered evidence that implicated me in Cassandra’s murder. That he had the proof in his pocket and I had no choice but to kill my friend.”

  “Ridiculous!” I stammered.

  He laughed. “You say that because you two are my advocates.”

  “We are that,” Winifred said emphatically.

  I nodded.

  “And I was on Castle Hill when Harold was murdered.”

  “What?” My voice rose, a little too high. “What?”

  Endre smiled at my concern. “Yes, a visit with friends. I do know people in Budapest. I live here. I was a few streets away, in fact, but headed home. I actually heard the police whistles, saw some men running.”

  “Running away from the street?”

  “No, toward what was going on. But I paid it no mind. There are brawls outside the wine bars all the time. Tired, I headed back home. I only learned of Harold’s death the next morning when a friend telephoned me.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I sat there in my chair, stunned, chilled. It just seemed impossible.”

  “So is your being accused of his murder.”

  “Anything is possible in the land where justice is arbitrary.”

  “Then why haven’t you been arrested?” I asked, my tone hot.

  “Ah, my dear ladies, another example of the arbitrariness of justice. Money—my family’s. You understand that my family is rich. And the Zsolnay name is internationally acclaimed. Lord, Franz Josef himself eats his fancy Belgian chocolates off a gold-trimmed platter from my family’s factory. Or so the rumor goes.”

  “Money talks,” Winifred said. “Some clichés are always true.”

  Endre breathed in, looked around the room suspiciously. “But only for so long. As I told you before, the lies must be carefully constructed before I am taken away. But the scheming has started. I am being watched
now.”

  I jumped, a reflex I found rather unattractive in myself. My head spun around, but all I noted was the noisy, happy crowd. No one was watching us. “What?”

  Endre grinned. “You react like a protective mother to save her little boy. I’m flattered.” With his hand resting on the table, he pointed toward the entrance, to the right of a bank of shrubbery. Subtly, or so I hoped, I shifted my head, feigning laughter, and glanced in that direction. Two men were focused on our table, both with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, both pretending an engrossing conversation.

  “How do you know?”

  “Of course, I know. The empire is so weak and afraid it fears every little crack and rumor and…indiscretion.”

  “A waste of time.”

  “Empires squeak and hiss when they die. They don’t roar.”

  “Nice idea, but intrusive nevertheless.” I paused. “Is this Jonathan Wolf a spy for Vienna?”

  The question took him by surprise. “I’ve wondered about that. Too suspicious a man, that one. But he is too…obvious to be a spy, no? It is like he is trying hard to be unnoticed. And oddly I feel as if I’ve seen him before. Yes, yes, he’s around the Café Europa too much, but of course he’s staying at the hotel. I’m around too much—and I don’t rent a room there. It is just that he looks suspicious. That, to me, is a sign he is innocent of charges.” He laughed. “I don’t know. There is nothing worse than a Hungarian who betrays his own people to Vienna.”