Alan Furst: Kingdom of Shadows

A doughy roll, folded over itself, with walnuts and raisins. The lightly sugared crust was still warm from the oven.

“And so?”

“Like the Cafe Ruszwurm. Better.”

For that lie, a gracious nod from the baroness. Below the table, many dogs. “You must wait, darlings,” the baroness said. Her smile was tolerant, infinitely kind. Morath had once visited at midmorning and counted twenty pieces of buttered toast on the baroness’s breakfast tray.

“I was in Budapest last week,” she said.

“How was it?”

“Tense, I should say. Underneath all the usual commotion. I saw your mother and sister.”

“How are they?”

“In good health. Teresa’s oldest girl may go to school in Switzerland.”

“Maybe for the best.”

“Maybe. They send you their love. You will write to them.”

“I will.”

“Your mother told me that Eva Zameny has left her husband.” She and Morath had, long ago, been engaged to marry.

“I am sorry.”

The baroness’s expression indicated she wasn’t. “For the best. Her husband was a hound. And he gambled terribly.”

A bell-the kind worked by pulling a cord-rang in the house. “That will be your uncle.”

There were other guests. The women in hats with veils, bolero jackets, and the black and white polka-dot dresses that were popular in springtime. Former citizens of the Dual Monarchy, the guests spoke the Austrian dialect with High German flourishes, Hungarian, and French, shifting effortlessly between languages when only a very particular expression would say what they meant. The men were well barbered and used good cologne. Two of them wore decorations, one a black and gold ribbon beneath a medal marked K.u.K.- Kaiser und Koniglich, meaning “Imperial and Regal,” the Dual Monarchy; the other awarded for service in the Russo-Polish war of 1920. A refined group, very courteous, it was hard to tell who was rich and who wasn’t.

Morath and Polanyi stood by a large boxwood at a corner of the garden wall, holding their cups and saucers.

“Christ, I’d like a drink,” Polanyi said.

“We can go somewhere, after this.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I have cocktails with the Finns, dinner with the Venezuelan foreign minister, Flores, up in the sixteenth.”

Morath nodded, sympathetic.

“No, not Flores.” Polanyi compressed his lips, annoyed at the lapse. “Montemayor, I should’ve said. Flores is, pfft.”

“Any news of home?”

“It’s what you passed along to me, when you came back from Antwerp. And worse.”

“Another Austria?”

“Not the same way, certainly. We are not ‘Ein volk,’ one people. But the pressure is growing- be our allies, or else. ” He sighed, shook his head. “Now comes the real nightmare, Nicholas, the one where you see the monster but you can’t run away, you’re frozen in place. I think, more and more, that these people, this German aggression, will finish us, sooner or later. The Austrians pulled us into war in 1914-perhaps some day somebody will tell me precisely why we had to do all that. And now, it begins again. In the next day or so, the newspapers will announce that Hungary has come out in favor of the Anschluss. In return, Hitler will guarantee our borders. Quid pro quo, very tidy.”

“You believe it?”

“No.” He took a sip of tea. “I’ll amend that. To ‘maybe.’ Hitler is intimidated by Horthy, because Horthy is everything Hitler always wanted to be. Old nobility, aide-de-camp to Franz Josef, war hero, polo player, married into the cream of society. And they both paint. In fact, Horthy has now lasted longer than any other leader in Europe. That has to count for something, Nicholas, right?”

Polanyi’s face showed exactly what it counted for.

“So the current unrest … will be dealt with?”

“Not easily, and maybe not at all. We’re facing insurrection. Conservatives out, fascists in, liberals au poteau. ” The phrase from 1789-to the guillotine.

Morath was surprised. In Budapest, when the Arrow Cross men dressed up in their uniforms and strutted about the city, the police forced them to strip and sent them home in their underwear. “What about the police? The army?”

“Uncertain.”

“Then what?”

“If Daranyi means to stay in as premier, he’ll have to give them something. Or there will be blood in the streets. So, at the moment, we find ourselves negotiating. And we will be forced, among other things, to do favors.”

“For who?”

“Important people.”

Morath felt it coming. Polanyi, no doubt, meant him to feel it. He set his cup and saucer on a table, reached in his pocket, took a cigarette from a tortoiseshell case and lit it with a silver lighter.

The last nights of April, but no sign of spring. The weather blew hard across the Metro staircase, wind and rain and fog with a taste of factory smoke. Morath held his overcoat closed and walked next to the buildings. Down a dark street, down another, then a sharp left and a blinking blue neon sign, Balalaika. The Cossack doorman, with sheepskin vest and fierce mustache, peered out from the shelter of the doorway, in his hand a black umbrella in the final hours of life on a windy night.

The doorman growled good evening, Russian accent thick and melodramatic. “Welcome, sir, to Balalaika, the show is now just starting.”

Inside, thick air; cigarettes glowed in the darkness. Red plush walls and a stunning hatcheck girl. Morath gave her a generous tip and kept his coat. Here, too, they wore their decorations. The maitre d’, six and a half feet tall with a sash and high boots, had a bronze medal pinned to his blouse, earned in service as mercenary and palace guardsman to King Zog of Albania.

Morath went to the bar and sat at the far end. From there he caught a glimpse of the stage. The Gypsy trio was sawing away in sentimental agonies, a dancer in sheer pantaloons and halter showed, in the blue klieg lights, just exactly what her faithless lover was giving up, while her partner stood to one side, hands clasped in fruitless longing, a red lightbulb in his pants going on and off in time to the music.

The barman came over, Morath ordered a Polish vodka, and, when it arrived, offered the barman a cigarette and lit it for him. He was a short, compact man with narrow eyes deeply lined at the corners, from laughing, maybe, or squinting into the distance. Beneath his red jacket he wore a shirt washed so often it was the pastel of an unknown color.

“Are you Boris?” Morath said.

“Now and then.”

“Well, Boris, I have a friend …” A little cloud of irony hung over the phrase and the barman smiled appreciatively. “He was in trouble, he came to you for help.”

“When was that?”

“Last year, around this time. His girlfriend needed a doctor.”

The barman shrugged. A thousand customers, a thousand stories. “I can’t say I remember.”

Morath understood, a bad memory was a good idea. “Now, it’s another friend. A different kind of problem.”

“Yes?”

“A passport problem.”

The barman used his rag to wipe down the zinc surface, then paused, and had a good look at Morath. “Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Budapest.”

“Emigre?”

“Not really. I came here after the war. I’m in business here.”

“You were in the war?”

“Yes.”

“Where was that?”

“Galicia. Up into Volhynia for a time …”

“Then back to Galicia.” The barman was laughing as he finished Morath’s sentence. “Oh yes,” he said, “ that shithouse.”

“You were there?”

“Mm. Likely we shot at each other. Then, fall of ‘17, my regiment took a walk. Same again?”