Cafe Europa Read Free Page A

said, “he did help to bring about the Spanish-American War—”
    â€œRumors, unfounded.”
    I went on, “Is that why you’re here—to help push Europe into war?”
    A mysterious smile. “They’re doing a pretty good job of it by themselves, no?”
    â€œBut what’s your reason?”
    â€œI’m a restless man, a wanderer. I put my ear to the ground and listen for the drumbeat. It just happens that a man like Hearst—a man who believes in banner headlines—hires folks like me. I’m the kind of guy who looks at the world and says: You, talk to me .” His eyes flashed. “Somebody’s gotta be a war’s Homer. Why not me?”
    â€œWhy Budapest? Why not Vienna?”
    He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, slowly, in a stage whisper, “Franz Ferdinand is very unpopular here because the Hungarians know the heir to the throne— der Thronfolger —despises them. Hungarians don’t like being yoked to Vienna. After 1867 they coerced the emperor into a dual monarchy—Austria and Hungary, but that black-and-yellow Habsburg flag rankles the good Magyar patriot. Vienna is closed in tight, folks avoiding reality, lost in dreamy Strauss waltzes and strolling the Ringstrasse under the rows of lime trees. Here—well, people talk in private, huddle in coffee houses while they sip apricot barack . Perhaps the war will begin here .”
    Winifred was shaking her head. “True, Serbia is rearing its head these days, a country still angry about the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But a small kingdom, afraid of Austria’s thrust and power?”
    â€œSerbia wants a port on the Adriatic it will never have, though a Greater Serbia demands it. That upstart kingdom will never let go of its impossible dream. Serbia will always be the world’s mosquito, insignificant, but eternally buzzing in your ear. Every so often you have to swat it.”
    I laughed out loud. “World politics in a nutshell, according to Mr. Gibbon.”
    â€œSo,” Harold continued, “I’m here to watch the world fall apart, bit by bit.”
    Suddenly, with an abrupt thrust of his arm, Harold waved across the room, snapping his fingers, and a man rushed to our table.
    â€œMr. Gibbon, sir?” The man bowed and stood too close to Harold.
    â€œDear ladies, you’ve met Vladimir Markov?”
    Winifred and I shook our heads. I’d seen the café proprietor bustling about, a quick smile on his cherubic face. The roly-poly man, eyes enlarged by thick spectacles, in his late fifties, dressed in a vaguely funereal black cutaway suit, wore an elaborate scarlet cravat bunched at his neck, an incongruous puff of dandyish color.
    He grabbed my hand, and then Winifred’s, and kissed each. The Old World Küss die Hand rankled my small-town-girl American soul. Winifred squealed, unhappy, and Mr. Markov, confused, apologized to Harold but not to us.
    â€œA pleasure,” I mumbled.
    Amused by our discomfort, Harold grinned foolishly and spoke to Markov in German—which I understood. “American women cannot be touched.” Then, surprising me, he warbled in rapid-pace Hungarian with Markov, who bowed repeatedly, answering him. “ Igen. Nem. Igen .” Yes. No. Yes. “ Nem értem.”
    I’d mastered a smattering of Hungarian, an impossible language, I’d come to realize, though I struggled with a Baedeker phrase book at night in my rooms. A runic confusion, neither Germanic nor Slavic, but after a week or so of guttural German, blunt-edged, the spontaneous flow of Magyar struck me as melodious, each word accented on the first syllable—perhaps I was wrong—but with a lyrical power that soared, ending every periodic sentence with a whiff of marrow-deep melancholy.
    Markov and Harold chatted on in Hungarian, the proprietor deferential in his repeated bowing, and both kept looking at Winifred and