Cafe Europa Read Free Page B

me.
    â€œHe offers you wine,” Harold finally said. “For the beautiful women.”
    Winifred grumbled. “Then he’d best wait until they arrive.”
    Markov addressed us in choppy English. “This is home”—he waved chubby fingers around the room—“to the American and British visitor to our lovely Budapest.” He snapped his fingers and an old waiter in a white linen jacket brought a bottle of Tokay and three glasses.
    A slender boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, in dark pants and florid red cravat, stood nearby and waited, a pitcher of water cradled against his chest. Markov nodded. “György, come.” The boy moved closer. “My wife’s nephew, from Russia like me, but new here. And green as spring lettuce.” He chuckled. “He has never seen Americans before he arrives a week ago. He stares with open mouth.”
    â€œWe don’t bite,” I noted, smiling at the skinny boy with the prominent Adam’s apple and colicky black hair a little too greased and polished. He bowed at me, tipping the pitcher so that the water spilled onto the marble floor and worn oriental carpets. Markov berated him quietly and then apologized—again to Harold—and the boy stepped back, scratching his neck nervously.
    Harold chatted in Russian now—another surprise—and burst out laughing. “Markov says little György is fascinated by Cassandra Blaine, the American girl with the golden hair. The laughing girl, he calls her.”
    Rudely, we all turned to glance at Cassandra, who was dipping a spoon into some chocolate ice-cream confection, and György, realizing we’d learned of his infatuation, turned scarlet and spilled more water. Lips pursed, Markov pointed to the kitchen door. The boy scurried away.
    Markov spoke to Harold. “Too sad, my situation. A favor to the wife. You know how that is.” He winked. “A peasant boy, used to cows and sheep and digging winter potatoes. The necktie—she is a noose on a young boy.” He shrugged his shoulders, backed away, headed to check a large copper tea samovar on a sideboard.
    â€œA good sort,” Harold told us as he watched Markov pour tea. “A diplomat. He smiles at everything. You ask him about Franz Josef and Serbia or Albania, anything political, and he smiles and bows and backs away. He’s Russian, so you never know what he’s really thinking.”
    Winifred spoke up, a trace of pique in her tone. “Are you interviewing everyone for your own Decline and Fall of the Austrian Empire , Mr. Gibbon?”
    He smiled and winked at her, improperly. “Well, anyone who’ll talk to me. The landed gentry rule Hungary, even over the nobles. But the workers are the ones who’ll tell you the true story. The unvarnished truth. The vendors in the flower market. The attendants in the mineral baths up on Mount Gellért. Newsboys hawking papers. The Gypsies in their camps. The Jewish storekeepers, the café owners, the grubbing artists.”
    â€œJews?” I asked.
    â€œYou’re in Judapest, ma’am. That’s what the current mayor calls it.”
    I said, my voice hollow, “My sad father’s home.”
    â€œYeah, well, it isn’t the aristocracy that’s got the rhythm of this city, let me tell you. It’s the old lady who wanders into the gulyás restaurant peddling her violets from Matra mountaintops. She understands that war’s coming. The Gypsy violinist with his czigany music and rat-tail cigars. The Serbian men in scarlet capes and sashes.”
    â€œYet you linger here , Mr. Gibbon. In this café. With us.” I pointed to the expansive French doors, open now to the flagstone terrace spanning the quay that dipped down toward the Chain Bridge and the Danube.
    â€œCafé life, Miss Ferber. Look around you.” He pointed to a man with a high flat forehead under slick wavy hair smoking a cigarette in