Life Is a Dream, page 14
‘We have wonderful “lights” today. I’ve already had some.’ Thus spake Mr Mozel to Mr Sortiment, while the latter was toying with thoughts of a spa in Bohemia next summer, for the sake of his health.
‘ “Lights”?’ Sortiment echoed, terrified.
The head waiter’s answer was lip-smacking, solicitous, full of promise: ‘Oh yes. Sour lights. Served today for our best customers.’ He spoke, and clicked his tongue.
The editor cast a glance in the chimney sweep’s direction. The latter was in the act of sopping up the last remnants of gravy on his plate by means of a piece of bread stuck on the point of his pocketknife, sweeping the last drops on to his spoon.
‘Oh well, let it be, I’ll have the “lights”,’ said Mr Sortiment with a touch of listlessness. Then he added, with a flicker of animation: ‘One must have a bite for brunch, after all.’
‘And a mug of Kobanya beer, freshly tapped, to go with it?’ suggested Mr Mozel, and gave the table a few slaps with the napkin he carried under his arm, as one who is most gratified by the results thus far.
The sleepy waiter now reappeared with a basket of croissants and Kaiser rolls. The dyspeptic editor found himself deliberating with the utmost care which Kaiser roll was most fully baked, done to a russet shade. Furthermore, he cast a glance at the salt rolls – even though his doctor had proscribed salty food – before settling on a Kaiser roll extracted from the middle of the heap using the finger with the green signet ring, the finger he deemed cleanest.
But here came Mr Mozel already, with the promised delicacy, smiling at the editor from a distance as if he were the bearer of glad tidings. In one hand he held the plate of sour lungs swimming in brown gravy that was surely the product of the finest beef ribs or pork chops. The dumplings were made with pig’s liver and vegetables, so that their cannonball hardness would not upset even the most sensitive of stomachs. Slices of lemon, split at the ends, were affixed to the edge of the plate, and there were three of them, one more than the chimney sweep’s portion (which the latter instantly noted).
‘I brought you the last portion we had,’ confided Mr Mozel. ‘The best-cooked pieces, from the bottom of the pot. Even though the Father Superior of the Franciscans had just sent a message asking for a portion of sour lungs to be put aside for him …’
He served the plate of food as if it were some miracle-working drug for Mr Sortiment, followed by the glass of beer held in his other hand, luminous in the late autumn sunshine glinting on Franciscans Place. The glass of beer, golden, fragrant with the scent of hops, and adorned by a paper collar, would have made even a dying man reach out for it – while our Sortiment tried to keep the thought of death as far away as possible, if only for the sole reason that his weekly had to appear on Sunday … The editor stirred the gravy with his fork and strove to find some pleasant prospect to occupy his thoughts, other than devious writers of short stories or uninhibited canines on the street corner.
So his thoughts turned to his youth, when, coming from an Uplands village, he had arrived in Budapest as starved as a runaway wolf pup. With only small change in his pockets he had ordered sour lungs in an arcaded, smoky Inner City tavern where the patrons were far more corpulent than he was – as if the tavern-keeper’s ambition had been to gather every man of some girth in the city in order to exhibit them as living testimonials to his tavern. The gentlemen who sat there had beefy necks, buffalo statures, and all looked like butchers. They kept casting envious glances at each other’s plates, just as the chimney sweep did at his plate now …Those old-time tavern patrons’ necks bulged like blood sausages above the backs of their collars and their bald pates sweated profusely from the spicy food laced with paprika, pepper and garlic, while their faces assumed the colour of earthenware pots glowing red, left too long on the kitchen stove. They paused in their feeding only long enough to wipe away with a moistened napkin the remnants of spilled soup and sauce from their vest or jacket. For only the most experienced among them had the presence of mind to tie a napkin around his neck before plunging into the comestibles, the way a barber ties on a sheet before a shave. After the editor had recalled these old-time tavern guests with their enormous appetites, he looked around the room to see if he could find a patron eating in that appetizing manner of old, and whose example would make him forget all of his dyspepsia as well as his accursed editorial existence.
His glance at last found one patron who resembled those former tavern customers, but alas, this man had not ordered sour lungs, but a platter of boiled beef, for by now the hands of the clock had progressed past eleven.
Who was this man who had ordered boiled beef?
Sortiment, who knew just about everyone in the Inner City, realized he was looking at the shoemaker from Parisi Street, the man whose chief interest in the calendar was keeping track of the national holidays. Naturally, the shoemaker held the country’s first king, St Stephen, in highest esteem, for on St Stephen’s Day every gentleman worth his salt dressed in his best, including appropriate footwear. (This shoemaker also kept tabs on the anniversary day of Franz Josef’s coronation, although as regards boots, this day could not vie with St Stephen’s Day.) The Parisi Street shoemaker looked like a guild master, tall, with a twisted salt-and-pepper moustache, and a bearing that was always solemn, as if taking the measure of some baron’s foot (by means of little paper ribbons). He liked to rub his hands together, as if preparing to hold the hand of one of his titled customers. This shoemaker took it for granted (he barely nodded his head) when the sleepy waiter served him a portion of beef so enormous that Sortiment at once regretted becoming angry at the rumpled fellow whose exterior made him unsuitable for service anywhere but in the cellar of the Seven Owls. And in any case the sour lungs he had pre-empted from the Father Superior of the Franciscans did not turn out to his liking, and his conscience was troubled about whether he had done the right thing. The dumplings were especially hard to swallow, and he feared they would prove difficult to digest. He might have nightmares about the Sunday News never again appearing in his lifetime.
Therefore he directed all of his attention at the Parisi Street shoemaker consuming his meal, and inwardly cursed the chimney sweep who was on his way out, toothpick in mouth, reaching for his hat and many-pleated coat.
For here was truly a splendid portion of beef. Gourmands dream of such cuts of beef when they arrive past their usual lunchtime at the tavern they frequent, only to see the boiled beef crossed out on the menu as if exiled forever by the waiter’s pencil. And so Mr Sortiment’s covetous eyes (eyes that at times betrayed his true nature) kept reexamining that colossal slab of meat, which must have been cooked to a state of utmost tenderness in the kitchen that morning. That cut of beef may have included a part that patrons of taverns liked to call an ‘end piece’, while the enormous bone that crowned this prize portion of meat testified that the Parisi Street shoemaker’s was truly a regal helping of beef, no doubt due to favouritism on the cook’s part. (The maker of footwear obviously must have bribed her with a pair of slippers.) Sortiment envisioned the steaming hunks of meat, fatty parts and even bits of tallow that hung so appetizingly from that bone, all going into his own mouth. And his carious teeth craved the rich fare, although his doctor had advised him against fatty foods.
The shoemaker, you had to hand it to him, really knew how to deal with such regal spoils, so rarely attainable for the restaurant goer. First of all he made sure to tie a napkin around his neck. Next he lined up the salt and pepper shakers and even the mustard jar within easy reach, even though it was unlikely he would need the latter, given the plate of horseradish in vinegar served up, alongside the beef, by the sleepy waiter. The shoemaker certainly did not spare the salt. He used it liberally over the bits of vegetables that partially covered the meat, paying especial attention to the slices of potatoes, carrots, celeries and Savoy cabbage that came with the soup, always a favourite of cobblers who work sitting on three-legged stools. He salted the meat and turned it over to inspect it from the bottom with hungry eyes, as if he were checking out some female from head to toe. And he even salted the horseradish.
Hmm, reflected Sortiment, pushing away his half-consumed dish. This shoemaker is a bigger rascal than I would have believed …
Whereupon the shoemaker, grabbing the fork in his left hand, stabbed it into the meat so that the juice spurted, and started to slice it up into small pieces with his knife. By then Mr Sortiment had made up his mind. He was only waiting for the shoemaker to taste the beef, to decide by the expression on the man’s face … But unexpectedly the shoemaker seized a spoon and dipped it into the broth remaining in the bowl. He slurped the hot broth which obviously must have burned his mouth; none the less he went at it again and again (after seasoning it with a pinch of paprika), all the while shutting his eyes in pleasure or pain…This clinched the matter for Mr Sortiment, who suddenly recalled a bachelor friend of his, a retired judge, who liked to lean on his umbrella and speak slightingly of the world, his philosophy being that only what we eat is truly ours. Mr Sortiment was convinced that the judge would approve his next act …
‘Mozel,’ he began in a deliberate drawl, when he saw the waiter shaking his head in concern over the half-finished plate, ‘tell me, Mozel, might there be in your kitchen some bone about the size of a child’s fist with a few bits of meat left on it?’
‘But of course!’ replied Mozel, his face brightening. ‘And if there isn’t, we’ll see if we can make one.’
The editor gestured to explain: ‘You know, it shouldn’t be too big, just a nice little titbit that will still leave room for lunch.’
Mozel nodded, and directed his legs enveloped in loosely fitting trousers (which he must have pressed every night) towards the kitchen. Meanwhile Mr Sortiment kept an eye on the Parisi Street shoemaker. That individual was now dipping the tip of his knife into the horseradish in vinegar, and, removing a small heap from the abundant supply, placed it on a pre-selected mouthful of meat – part fatty, part sinewy – then balancing the meat on knife and fork, shovelled it into his mouth. A single, but all the more satisfied, movement of the jaw followed, as if a millstone had shifted inside the mouth, and the knife was already heading towards the horseradish, while the left hand broke off a piece of bread and held it in readiness over the table.
And now here came Mozel with a meaty bone resting on a double platter. Hmm, the shoemaker’s was a finer piece, obviously he had ordered first, thought the editor, eyeing the meat that was lined by a feathery, thin layer of fat …
‘Who is your butcher?’ he inquired absent-mindedly.
‘Dubovetz, on Lipot Street.’
… Before the editor launched into the appropriate rituals preceding the consumption of his beef, he cast a sudden glance at Mozel, who stood on his left, in a pose of almost worshipful attention. ‘Now what?’ inquired Sortiment, withdrawing the knife that was on its way towards the salt cellar. ‘Are you having second thoughts about bringing me this particular piece from the kitchen?’
Mozel gave off a tremendous sigh: ‘If my father were alive and came to have brunch at the Seven Owls, I couldn’t have given him a better portion. But the poor old man cannot be with us, because he rests in the cemetery in Vac, since a scoundrel named Kupriczky persuaded him to use his talents for the production of counterfeit five-forint bills …You see, my father had been assistant photographer to Professor Ellinger …’
‘Well, how did the bills turn out?’ asked the editor, sucking his teeth.
‘They only managed to produce a single five-forint bill before the police apprehended them, and the judge sentenced my father to ten years – for one lousy fiver, such as big spenders who have had one too many sometimes use to light their cigars with. A single fiver!’ Mr Mozel added after a pause and involuntarily reached under the tail of his coat to rattle the change purse concealed there.
The editor, too, envisioned a five-forint bill, with its depiction of nude mythological figures wielding spades, hoes and rakes in a green field. These were the bills the editor used to pay for poems and stories – he kept the money at home in a desk drawer, the banknotes neatly folded between the pages of a cookbook written by Aunt Rezi. And oh yes, Ligetsarki had wheedled from him two of those bills as an advance for a story that was still ‘forthcoming’ … This thought soured the editor’s mood once again, so that he began to notice that the meat was rather stringy, in other words, not the real thing, certainly nothing like the shoemaker’s – who was just at that moment reaching the stage in his meal where he started to round up the leftover pieces on his plate and from the bowl, fishing with his spoon in the remaining broth for bits of vegetables that he steered with a piece of bread, and capturing slivers of meat on his knife, to be advanced towards his slurping, opened mouth. Yes, they say it is precisely these last mouthfuls that nourish a man. – Ah, how splendid that helping of beef must have been, when even its wreckage was consumed with such passion!
‘Surely one five-forint bill is not worth ten years,’ murmured the editor without much conviction, for his vanity was flattered by the head waiter lingering near his table while there were other guests in the establishment.
Mr. Mozel responded: ‘Actually the ten years wouldn’t have been so bad. Anyway the old man did no more than three, before he died of consumption. But he left behind a girl, a stepdaughter with whom neither my wife nor myself can seem to do anything. She’s in her twentieth year and she’s already worked as a milliner, seamstress, tobacconist … But she just wants to be another Mariska Simli. She’s crazy, I tell you, totally crazy.’
‘Mariska Simli?’ snorted the editor.
‘You know,’ Mr Mozel said in a conciliatory tone, ‘the poetess who tours the country dressed in a priest’s cassock. And a top hat over her hair which is cut as short as a man’s. You wouldn’t believe how one crazy woman is able to drive another one just as crazy. Betty, ever since she ran across Mariska Simli, spends all day writing poems, and is dying to meet Mr Sortiment …’
Although Mr Sortiment was listening to the head waiter’s words with great attention and the appropriate ironic smile, suddenly his attention turned elsewhere … to an occurrence that seemed extraordinary. The Parisi Street shoemaker came up with something that, for the moment, outdid all the Mariska Simlis of this world. For the shoemaker discovered that the bone remaining on his plate actually consisted of two pieces, similar to one’s elbow, bound together by muscles and ligaments. He grabbed the bone with both hands and, after considerable exertion, broke it in two, whereupon, sweeping knife, fork and spoon away from his side, he started to gnaw on the bone in such a spectacular manner that even a dying man would have hung around long enough to see the shoemaker finish picking that bone clean. You had to hand it to him, he was really grinding away with his teeth while pulling, tugging, sucking and picking at it with his fingernails – so that Mr Sortiment lost all his appetite for meat, and he, too, wanted a bone now, even though he no longer had the same faith in his teeth as once upon a time …
Indeed, fate decreed that on this late autumn day the editor Sortiment should have his bone, convinced as he was that this would assuage his dyspeptic stomach. It so happened that the puny corset-maker on Franciscans Place – whose shop window containing wax figures and other sights compelled passing women to stop – this corset-maker had come forth from his store that was full of whalebones, straps, hooks and fasteners, all of which served to make the women of Budapest as svelte, if that was possible, as Queen Elisabeth herself.
This corset-maker now entered the taproom of the Seven Owls, and made an extraordinary request of the head waiter, Mr Mozel, who hurried to greet him: ‘Last night I dreamed I was eating a marrowbone with toasted little slices of Kaiser roll and a tomato salad. Would your kitchen by any chance have a marrowbone for me?’
Mr Sortiment’s eyes bulged at the temerity of this man who left his prosperous business where ladies were trying on all kinds of corsets, in order to eat a marrowbone at a tavern … Even the Parisi Street shoemaker seemed to pause in his gnawing on the bone, although that sort of thing is not easy to leave off. But Mr Mozel the head waiter was not the least bit amazed. He cheerfully carried his rotund belly, decorated by a watch chain with a commemorative coin, in the direction of the kitchen, as if a long-awaited guest had just arrived. And in a trice he was already back, holding a steaming dish more beautiful than a cookbook illustration, and with the proud smile of a lucky prospector who had struck gold, placed it in front of the sickly corset-maker. Why can’t he dish out his Betty to that corset-maker? was the disgruntled thought passing through Mr Sortiment’s brain.
But the head waiter stayed by the corset-maker’s side, awaiting the forthcoming ritual. The corset-maker used his knife to trim the meat remnants from his marrowbone and, having applied paprika, salt and pepper to them, one after another he shovelled them into his mouth, all the while keeping his eyes on the bone, as if it might run away from him. Tilting his head left and right he peeked into the ends of the marrowbone, as if spying something delightful through a keyhole. Look at the grin on that fellow’s face, thought Sortiment with surprising agitation, and pushed away his dish, plate and eating utensils, as if suddenly mad at the world.
