Cafe Europa

by Ed Ifkovic

  Winifred was nodding her head. “Keep in mind I heard her the night before. With Mrs. Pelham, the two returning to their rooms at the end of my hallway. Cassandra was laughing loudly at some foolish joke. She sounded happy. Not a care in the world. The usual frivolous Cassandra.” She frowned. “Oblivious of the noise she was making in a late-night hallway.”

  “So,” I concluded, “something happened to her. But what? The next day in the café she was moody, sad, confused. By afternoon she was afraid. By midnight she was dead.”

  “Bad news?” From Bertalan Pór.

  “What happened overnight? In her rooms. A visitor? Something Mrs. Pelham said—or did. We really don’t know much about Mrs. Pelham.”

  “Or early the next morning as she readied for breakfast. It didn’t have to be overnight.” Winifred bit her lip. “Someone she met—or saw—as she left her rooms.”

  “But she was with Mrs. Pelham.”

  “So what?” I said. “The horrible woman slept in the same suite. No one could enter without her knowing.”

  “But Cassandra was famous for slipping out. Probably when Mrs. Pelham closed her own door and slept.”

  “So we have no way of knowing,” Ivan said.

  “It comes back to Zsuzsa,” I said.

  “Zsuzsa,” Ivan echoed. “And not the most reliable witness to events.”

  I sat up. “What about István Nagy? The poet. He’s a curious character in this mix of things.”

  Everyone shifted uncomfortably. Bertalan Pór blurted out, “What? That failed poet?”

  “He knows something,” I announced. But in saying that, I paused. “I don’t know why I said that. Only that my conversation with him lingers with me—I feel he told me something that fits into this puzzle.”

  “What?” From Winifred, frantic.

  I struggled to remember. “I can’t get it yet. It’s a piece that eludes me.”

  “And Endre Molnár?” Ivan asked.

  “What about him?” I countered.

  “You answer a question with a question, Miss Ferber. That’s very American.”

  I shrugged. “There is no question, sir. At least about this. Endre Molnár is not capable of murder.”

  “But he knew both the victims. He was intending to marry one. He befriended the other. Of everyone involved, he was closest to both victims. Think about that.”

  “No matter,” I insisted. “He was in love with one and loyal to the other. That says something about the man.”

  “Love rejected and a friendship betrayed are common reasons for murder. It’s the stuff of books, no?”

  “You test me, sir.” But I smiled at Ivan. “But there are just some things I know in my soul.”

  Bertalan Pór was nodding. I realized that Lajos Tihanyi had left the easel and my unfinished portrait and was standing near us. A clicking noise escaped his throat as he pointed to the stacks of drawings, and his friend acknowledged his gesture.

  “Take the drawings, Miss Ferber, his and mine, the ones from the Café Europa, and look at them in the quiet of your rooms. Perhaps your eye can see something no one else can.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Both men gathered the drawings and tucked the huge pile into an overstuffed black cardboard portfolio. Bertalan tapped it. “I will leave it at the hotel for you.” He held the bulky package in the air and grinned. “Perhaps this heavy package is weighty with meaning. Maybe the name of the killer is in here.”

  Lajos Tihanyi mouthed something at me but I didn’t understand. Helpless, he looked to his friend, who was smiling. “Remember Lajos’ words to you some time ago.” He winked conspiratorially at his friend. “‘I see what you hear.’ Words to remember.”

  What had Tihanyi seen as all of us huddled at the table and discussed the murders? He’d stood at the easel, jabbing at the painting with a thick brush coated with blue paint. When I rose to leave, I stood before the canvas. He’d stabbed at the lines, exaggerated the colors, gave my eyes a determined, stark look. A woman with a purpose, and not necessarily a healthy one. He saw me looking at the canvas and sheepishly moved in front of it, blocking my view. Then, to my surprise, he took another brush, dragged it across the palette, and smeared long streaks of thick white paint across the portrait, crisscrossing it, obliterating it.

  I cried out.

  Bertalan Pór touched my elbow. “All that means is that he now has a new vision of you.”

  “What? Erased from life?”

  He laughed. “No, a woman powered by imagination.”

  ***

  After an early supper with Winifred, I sat at the desk in my rooms, the drawings spread out before me. So intense was my perusal, so focused my gaze, that I began to drift into a stupor. There was simply too much to consider, drawing after drawing, both artists rendering the ebb and flow of café life.

  People—Mrs. Pelham, István Nagy, Zsuzsa, Zsuzsa’s rotund patron, scurrying waiters, the desk clerk popping in for a coffee, Harold Gibbon, Winifred Moss, Jonathan Wolf now rechristened Ivan Farkas, Endre Molnár. Suddenly I wondered what poor Harold would have thought of Wolf’s redefinition of himself. Thrilled, doubtless, with a cable sent back to Hearst at a dizzying speed.

  Pictures of me—plenty of me. Too much of me. Vain though I might be, my redundant image rattled me after a while.

  Dozens of people I’d never seen before, sketched briefly but effectively, a few dramatic lines capturing a mood or gesture or sensation. Brilliant, all of them.

  And the objects: the damask curtains that moved with breezes off the Danube, the way the huge chandeliers overhead gleamed, the crowded tables, the bamboo racks of newspapers, clouds of blue-gray cigarette smoke, the bar with glasses and bottles. A world contained here, and tantalizingly revealed.

  It struck me all of a sudden, as I moved slowly from one to the other, that these were isolated frames from some D. W. Griffith movie, the reiterated click click click of a camera capturing persons moving and talking. In one series a waiter could be seen staring out of the kitchen door and then stopping at a table as he moved into the room, then approaching another table, and finally bowing at the entrance to the terrace as he greeted a guest. An anonymous man, dressed in a uniform, doing his job. Step by step. Charlie Chaplin jerkily sauntering across the floor.

  The lights flickered and I cringed. The desk clerk had assured me the problem with the electricity had been repaired, and I’d have no more nights plunged into darkness. Of course, I didn’t believe him. Hotel clerks the whole world over were practiced in the fine art of kneejerk lying. But the lights stayed on, and I lay in bed, eyes closed, reassured by the lamp on the nightstand. Franz Josef stared back at me, unfriendly. The man never looked happy. All that garish braid and colorful decoration—the moustache tipped up at the edges. The grand old tyrant with the evil eye and the archaic brain. What hack painter had been commissioned to paint that redundant visage on canvas after canvas, unaware that his pedestrian hand would ruin the nights of the hotel’s guests?

  Finally, I switched off the lamp and reviewed the drawings in my head. But suddenly, ruminating about that imperial painter and court factotum, my mind inadvertently riveted to the salon poet, István Nagy, another court functionary. István Nagy, always watching what happened in the Café Europa, not trusting the people around him, a spy in the house who was looking at all the wrong people, his facile judgment at the ready, there, always there, always.

  And in that moment I knew.

  Chapter Twenty

  János Szabó, Zsuzsa’s portly patron, the old wheezing man with the gold-tipped cane and the Turkish cigarette smoked in a long ceramic holder, decided to celebrate Zsuzsa’s twenty-fifth anniversary as a singer and actress. He’d first seen her perform at the Vienna Music Hall in June of 1889, Zsuzsa as the pretty maiden enchanting before an applauding Viennese crowd with Gypsy folk songs. He was there, he
insisted, and she’d brought him to tears. Drunk with her fresh beauty and her songbird’s trill, he’d sent her blue violets and Belgian chocolates the next night. She’d touched his cheek affectionately. He was a younger man then, of course, a Hungarian vintner doing business in Vienna, and her plaintive, melancholic ballads brought him back to his father’s village a few kilometers from Lake Balaton.

  To honor his beloved Zsuzsa he would have her perform, and he would let the champagne flow. A tribute, he said. He abandoned his corner table and chose to sit in front of the small platform where the old violinist was playing softly. Szabó’s face was beet-red and shiny, his brow sweaty, and he told everyone who walked in what a magical night it would be.

  Zsuzsa Kós walked in on the arm of Ivan Farkas, wide-eyed, blinking furiously. Behind her, Endre Molnár appeared. Ivan glanced back and nodded at him. Zsuzsa missed a step and Ivan balanced her, leaning into her, whispering something as he led her to Szabó’s table. The old man struggled to rise to bow and kiss her hand but finally settled for a bowing of his head. Ivan and Endre then joined our table. Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi walked in, startled by the crowd, but I motioned them over. Earlier I’d hired one of the red-capped messengers who hustled around Budapest to deliver a note to Bertalan Pór, an invitation to join me at the Café Europa that evening. I wanted both artists with me because I had a plan.

  István Nagy sat at his usual table and looked up when Zsuzsa walked in, but his eyes locked on Ivan Farkas. When he realized that the clean-shaven man was Jonathan Wolf, he half-rose from his chair, then sat back quickly, his face tight. Frowning, he surveyed the room and caught my eye. He shuddered, a response I didn’t appreciate. I was hardly his nightmare. Although perhaps I was—would be.

  Mrs. Pelham came into the café on the arm of the same Russian she’d accompanied before, but this time a young girl was with them, a raven-haired child of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, dressed in a canary-yellow gingham pinafore with yellow ribbons in her hair. Only her eyes betrayed her dislike of her new keeper—they flashed and turned away. But her father acted oblivious, joking with a stony Mrs. Pelham and snapping his fingers the moment he sat down, yelling to Vladimir Markov in Russian that he demanded slivovitz for himself and sherry for Mrs. Pelham. Markov nodded at a waiter who hurried into the kitchen.

  Ivan whispered to me, “After our talk this morning, Miss Ferber, I spoke with Inspector Horváth.”

  “And?”

  “He’s following up on what Zsuzsa told me.”

  Winifred was curious. “What’s going on?”

  I ignored her, looking back into Ivan’s face. “Zsuzsa doesn’t understand what happened?”

  He shook his head. “She simply told me everything she could remember, but she can’t understand the pieces.”

  “I thought so.”

  Ivan raised a finger and the waiter rushed over. “I gather we’re supposed to be drinking champagne,” he told us, “but I prefer some good old Hungarian brandy.”

  I agreed. “Champagne, to me, is ginger ale with an attitude.”

  He laughed and gave an order to the waiter. “Champagne makes me foolish.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve done a foolish thing in your life, sir.”

  Amused, he pointed a finger at me. “I bet people say that about you.”

  “I hope they do.”

  Markov hovered nearby, pleased. “János Szabó plans an expensive night at the Café Europa.”

  “So people are coming back after the murders?” I asked.

  The word bothered him, and he glanced across the tables, fearful that my words would drive customers out the door. He shrugged. “A little. New guests to the hotel wander in. Tourists ask me about boat excursions down the Danube, to the baths. It’s a relief, I have to tell you. New news takes the place of old news.” He leaned in, confidentially frowning. “The owners tell us not to answer the guests’ questions about the murders. If questioned, we must discuss the beautiful weather.”

  “Bad for business?” Winifred commented.

  Markov stepped back. “And here I am doing that very thing, something forbidden. With my family gone from Budapest—a letter from my wife says György has fallen in love with a village girl—I talk to the walls.” He bowed. “My apologies.”

  “Life moves on,” I said. “A cliché that rings horribly true.”

  Endre looked downcast, his head dipped into his chest, and I sensed he’d begun his evening drinking at another café. His eyes gleamed, his speech slightly slurred. His face sagged, there were deep lines around his eyes, and he’d failed to groom that handlebar moustache with his usual fierce attention.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  Twisting his head to the side, he gave me a weak smile. “A long, sleepless night, Miss Ferber. Every hour I stood at my window and stared into the quiet street. I nod off, but wake suddenly, dreaming of Harold Gibbon. I can hear his voice.” He swallowed. “You know, that excited, nervous voice of his. I keep expecting him to point a finger and lecture me.”

  “About what?”

  “About the end of things.”

  “Meaning?”

  Quietly, he pointed to a small table by the entrance, shielded by some potted plants, lost in shadows. There, to my amazement, sat Inspector Horváth, not in his official uniform, but in a black cutaway suit, very formal, a careful black cravat at his neck, a summer boater resting on the chair next to him. With him sat a beautiful woman in a rose-colored silk gown, brilliant rhinestone hair combs in her pompadour. Her hand rested lovingly on Horváth’s arm. While I watched, Horváth said something to her that made her laugh.

  “So? A husband and wife in the café for the evening.”

  “He is here to arrest me.”

  I jumped. “Mr. Molnár, no. You have an imagination. He is a friend of yours, no? Even…even police can spend the evening in cafés, no?” I smiled. “I’m sure his wife demands it.”

  He glanced back at Inspector Horváth who was talking softly with the woman.

  Ivan spoke sharply to Endre. “True, a police officer is never away from his job. He has no choice.” Then, laughter in his voice, he added, “Even when he has a beautiful distraction at his side.”

  Shaking his head vigorously, Endre eyed me. “Look, Miss Ferber. I’ve heard rumors. I am to be taken away.”

  “Baron Meyerhold?” I asked.

  “I understand he’s somewhere in the building.” From Ivan.

  “But why?”

  No one said anything. Lajos Tihanyi, brushing up against Bertalan Pór, jotted something on his pad. Then, surprising me, he leaned forward and touched Endre’s forearm, tightened his grip, his eyes filled with compassion. Pór spoke for him. “You are not a killer.” A wink at me. “My friend says he believes Miss Ferber is always right.”

  I nodded at him. “I love a man who has the right attitude.”

  “Or one who so easily surrenders to you,” Ivan added.

  Suddenly, the violinist dramatically concluded his song with a flourish, yelling in Hungarian. A party of patrons roared approval. Markov smiled. “Ah, this is the moment old Szabó weeps for.”

  Zsuzsa stood up. For a second she looked disoriented, her head flicking back as she acknowledged the scattered ripple of applause. She squinted as if the light blinded her, her eyes out of focus. Panicked, she sucked in her breath. Laughter from a back table—a young girl flirting with her boyfriend. Zsuzsa glanced back at them, bit her lower lip nervously. Perhaps she thought folks were mocking her, so used was she to believing that. Perhaps she thought others would laugh—or heckle. But as she stepped onto the tiny platform, turning to nod at the old violinist, she looked scared. She whispered something that elicited a smile from the violinist. He whispered something back, and I could see her face change. At that moment, looking out at the people gathered at the tables, she smiled.


  It became a rare and unexpected moment. Zsuzsa shimmered. She glowed, radiant. Under the shadowy light you didn’t see the tears in the ill-fitting gown, nor care about the plumpness of her arms or waist or neck. Or, for that matter, the messiness of that beehive golden hair. What happened, I supposed, was one of those precious times in which the world catches fire. The planets shift, the moon circles the sun, and the earth trembles beneath your feet. Exaggeration perhaps, I freely admit, but Zsuzsa embraced the moment as though, indeed, she were that young, untutored peasant girl with the Gypsy soul who sang her heart out on that Viennese stage.

  The room got eerily quiet, save for the muffled sobbing of the old man at his nearby table.

  Zsuzsa began slowly, softly, almost afraid of her voice, but then she built, triumphant, and though her voice was raspy, whiskey-soaked, and phrases were botched or missed, though she hummed lines she once knew, it didn’t matter. Zsuzsa understood to her soul that she was shining.

  I held my breath, listening. Yes, it made no sense to me, the lilting, rolling Hungarian cadences, but it didn’t matter. She sang as a woman possessed, in thrall. Yes, perhaps a little maddened because at one point, stopping, she threw back her head and screamed, some campfire howl that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

  Endre, near me, gasped.

  Winifred clutched her throat.

  Only Ivan Farkas, mesmerized, stared straight ahead, the look on his face a mixture of wonder and surprise, but also question.

  She roared through the song, hesitated, and then sang the same song again, confusing the violinist who’d stopped playing. She went on and on, without music, her voice a dark wail sweeping down from the mountains and across the cold Hungarian plains.

  Sweating, swaying, laughing a little too crazily, she ended with a whimper, her face awash in tears, and she stood there until the violinist extended a hand and led her to Szabó’s table.

  It was, frankly, a performance that stunned and silenced the room. She glanced around as though waiting for thunder and lightning. None came. She sobbed then, big sloppy tears. But the silence didn’t last. Rhythmically, slowly, an old man clapped, then another joined in, then others roared, louder, harder, until the noise swelled. The crowd stamped feet, whistled, went wild. Someone, delirious, smashed a wine glass against a wall.