Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

The smell coming from her white blouse was quite strong whenever she held me to her breast, saying I was her little son.

That poor thing lost everything, and I mean everything she had, except for that rabbit-fur coat, she’d whisper excitedly while we waited for a snack to be prepared for a guest on the third floor. The collar of that coat is pretty shabby too, look at it. You won’t believe this, but this woman, careful, she’s looking at us, every Easter she and her husband used to spend two weeks here, on the first floor.

They’d take no place else, in the same suite used by Cardinal Pacelli and by the Prince of Wales.

We thought that the man who at the same time was staying in room 11 was her lover, but it turned out that he too was her husband. That’s right, you heard me. There wasn’t another woman in the whole world as cunning as this one. Believe me. Now, of course, she’s drinking like a fish and has to hold on to a railing when she moves. She had to take the interior staircase up to her second husband, who’d wait for her there. Look how she’s wound up. Still, when you look at her today, you see the wife of General Pechl, yes, to this day, but she’s also the widow of Major Bertolini. Today, nobody wants her. When people found out about it, it was all covered up very nicely, even though they published news of the bigamy in the papers.

This husband of hers sent the major to the front line so he’d be killed and there’d be peace and quiet at last. He was right to do it.

You can take their supper for them, that slut.

If her other husband hadn’t done what he did, she’d have rotted in jail.

Put a little lettuce on the bottom, Danika, it looks so pitiful like this.

You can believe me, there’s no justice in the world. But now, it doesn’t matter any more, no point blaming her. The Lord Jesus or the Virgin Mary, if they wanted to, would forgive even someone like her.

I shouldn’t bother my head about their problems. I’d better stop talking about it altogether.

The beggars were given not leftovers exactly but prepared food that guests had not accepted and the waiters, having no alternative, had returned to the kitchen virtually untouched.

You can’t imagine how much I know.

If guests didn’t ask to have the food they’d rejected packed for them, then it was packed for these wretches, but just as carefully as if they were guests. The directress saw to it that this was done properly. Spoiled food was not allowed in any of the packages, at worst only something that would not hold over for the following day.

They owed this not only to notions of Christian charity but also to the hotel’s good name. And the directress would have done it exactly the same way even if her reward had been only the recipients’ gratitude, but, of course, one should have faith in providence.

In the short lulls between the rushing waves of service to the guests, the cooks tossed these choice leftovers onto trays lined with wax paper, nimbly arranged the food to make it look attractive, and then covered the trays with more wax paper. Later scullery maids packed this untouched food not in decorative wrapping paper bearing the hotel’s logo, as they would have done for a guest, but in newspaper, and then handed the parcels out through the barred window.

Not to just anybody.

When they came at night, appearing for a moment with their broken shadows in the slanted beam of light behind the window bars, they had to bend down low to get the packages, which were simply handed out, one after the other. Nobody knew what his or her package might contain.

Maybe even a whole cake.

The packages disappeared into satchels, threadbare leather bags, and no matter how great the directress’s mercy and satisfaction, the recipients carried them as a burning sign of their shame. All the other food that guests left on their plates was thrown into the pig swill. The staff was forbidden to lick, nibble, or try to eat anything on the sly; tasting was the sole privilege of the chef de cuisine, and they could take nothing home. The directress’s view was that generosity had no place in this because to allow any filching would only make the staff greedier.

If you capriciously permitted something today, tomorrow they’d take everything and be insolent about it; the day after tomorrow they’d filch your eyes out of their sockets.

The scullery maids, among whom were the beginners called handy girls because they prepared things to be within reach of their superiors, separated what would be thrown in the liquid pig swill, such as water in which noodles had been boiled, from solid leftovers, within which they further separated out the bones. The dishwashers were supposed to receive completely cleared dishes and plates. However, one could always hear a few disgruntled shouts from the chefs.

Panni, my sweet, have you got a little rice or potato on that tray.

You’d hear something like this whenever something went missing from the paper-lined trays prepared for the beggars.

The most important thing was not to mix solid leftovers with bones or liquids, not for the world. They were to be put in three different barrels, and the barrel lids had to be well clamped down to contain the smell and prevent spilling during transport. Sauces, gravies, and dips had separate regulations. All mustards and leftover horseradish or sour-cherry sauce served with Viennese boiled beef and Alföldi ham went into the liquid slop; gooseberry cream, mayonnaise, and cheese or ham béchamel went into the barrel with the solids. Cranberry served with venison, along with rose hips from the bottom of the sauce bowl, had to be sorted with the liquids, while dill sauce and tomato sauce went into the barrel for solids.

I hope, Jucika, you haven’t forgotten that we don’t put cucumber sauce with the solid leftovers. You can’t be that forgetful.

Oh, please excuse me.

It’s not your movements you should be frugal with, you know.

It wasn’t intentional.

If your head wasn’t wandering elsewhere, your hands would know what to do.

The fat from roasts was collected separately in a large, wide enameled saucepan, and fresh fat was always added to and melted with it, but I don’t know what happened to it. The dregs of the saturated fat in which meatballs, Wiener schnitzels, or breaded chicken legs had been fried didn’t even have a chance to cool off completely; as it was thickening it would be scooped out with slotted ladles and put right in with the solids; they’d snap it up and knock it in hard; it sizzled and spluttered. The burned oil in which they fried fish or doughnuts, lángos, apples in blankets, various croutons and croquettes, marinated elder blossom, palacsinta, or differently sized and shaped soup noodles was definitely thrown into the liquid slop.

And so was salad dressing and all scraps and remnants of vegetables.

The barrels were taken away not by the sanitation people but, every other day, by people from the pig farm in Nagytétény.

I found the black door of the garbage bay ajar or, more precisely, found that it could no longer be closed properly because of the thick layers of grime on it.

In this frightening underground passage, tiled to the ceiling and stinking of chlorine, the light was always on.

It was on now.

Deep inside was another door, but it could be opened only from within the basement. It was considered an emergency exit and the staff was forbidden to obstruct it in any way. This is where they pushed out the barrels and where the various kinds of garbage were brought from the upper floors. Inside, there was not even a knob on the door, only a button. It was locked now. No stranger could enter the building unseen, but when I wanted to leave the building secretly, I could always use this exit.