Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

Therefore the waiter bent closer to his unknown guest: ‘Perhaps you’d like something after the soup?’ he implored, as if waiting for some magic word that would render inaudible all the merciless, threatening, jeering voices around him.

The guest, however, said not a word, but simply took the menu clutched in Fridolin’s hands and drew his index finger down across the sheet. That’s right, with one sweep of his finger he went down the entire list of vegetables, meats, pastas, cheeses, salads and fruits that Fridolin had written there in ink. Fridolin backed up one step, as if the guest had mutely commanded him to do so, and rushed off towards the kitchen, afraid to glance at the multitude of ghostly customers filling the establishment.

The guest ladled soup into his bowl flush with the level where the rim bore the burnt-in initials of some old-time restaurateur. Nay, he kept on ladling past the monogram, as if he were a man who had no interest in such trivia. He leaned over the soup bowl, having sprinkled salt and pepper in it, and added some brown drops of soup fortifier from the bottle that stood on the table for the benefit of the guest. He did this thoroughly, before commencing to stir the soup as if to rock it to sleep as he would a child he meant to devour after it fell asleep.

He dipped the first spoonful from the periphery of the bowl, after using his spoon to herd back bits of vegetables and straying, long strands of pasta. The second spoonful arrived loaded with noodles that were thoroughly yellowed by the egg that had been stirred in. The third spoonful contained carrots and cauliflower, cheerful as the smile of a plump woman. As for the noodles that dangled from the spoon, they were slurped up without a second thought and vanished after a lick of the chops and a smack of the lips. This was nothing less than exchanging kisses with the soup, innocent, youthful kisses, to be followed by love of a more mature kind.

Who knows why, on this day of all days, there was a purée of peas with pig’s knuckles included on the menu? Cooks and tavern-keepers’ wives have their own systems that defy the interference of laypersons. The puréed peas swam in the customary brown gravy, and the guest could tell right off that the pig’s knuckles came not from some old sow but from a porker that was but a yearling.

By now Fridolin had advanced close to the unknown customer as if by his side he hoped for shelter from the storm of ghostly accusatory voices, although one or two overcoats, fashioned in the style worn by the Prince of Wales, had shifted from the rack and began to glide away as if propelled from the tavern by some invisible breeze. Hats waved in greeting and walking sticks started to walk by themselves. None the less the clamour of shouts was far from over: some guests, acting as if they had brought their own wine (for which they would be charged a corking fee), now began to thump the bottles against the tabletop. Others found superannuated beer steins on some cobweb-laden shelf that Fridolin had not even known about. Now these earless mugs were made to clink and clank in a dance that recalled for Fridolin the tin-kettle mock serenades back in Year One, when he had been a mere novice. Someone had even dug up the billiard cue that had long ago lost its rubber tip, and made menacing gestures as if he meant to exercise it on Fridolin’s back. Junky candlesticks clanged and clattered, freed from their hiding place where they were stored against the event of a power failure. At this time, too, emerged all the paraphernalia that decorate the crowning of a newly elected president of a table company: paper hats and rattles, a chimney sweep’s brush, and baby pacifiers. It seemed all of these were going to be used by the assembled folks to celebrate none other than Fridolin himself.

The waiter dared not move from his position by the side of the unknown customer whose protection he hoped to enjoy at least as long as he kept serving the dishes he had ordered from the kitchen. The guest’s left hand was already grasping the pig’s trotter, while his teeth and tongue were browsing for those titbits of meat that like to hide in the crevices of bones. Finding one of these pockets of flesh is a great boon, the equivalent of coming across a smallish purse lying in the road. In his right hand the guest clutched a spoon, with which he endeavoured to round up the remaining fugitive peas on the rim of his plate.

‘Some like to eat peas with a fork,’ the guest observed, ‘but I don’t hold with that fashion. My motto is: always act natural, no matter what happens … And you can’t get any serious eating done without a spoon because a spoon is like a kettle that brings out the deep taste of a dish. It’s regrettable you have no other greens on your menu today … Tell them in the kitchen: I deeply regret that.’

Fridolin, in spite of his knowledge of human nature, was at a loss how to interpret the guest’s regrets. Then and there he made up his mind to find out just who exactly was this extraordinary customer, who in one swoop had ordered the entire menu for lunch.

‘Well, let us see,’ the guest went on, ‘what other specials has the proprietor in store for us today.’ Having said that, he pushed away the menu offered by the waiter, as if he preferred to be surprised. Actually he knew quite well that the vegetable dishes were followed by the roasts, first and foremost the roast duck with red cabbage. And here came Fridolin bringing the duck, guarding it successfully from the ghostly hands that reached for it hungrily from all sides. By then the customer’s right hand held a fork ready to skewer a mouthful, and he had already sharpened his knife against another knife, creating an agreeable clatter. Then he positioned the roast duck in order to scrutinize it from every angle.

‘The platter is far bigger than the duck,’ he noted somewhat peevishly. ‘Why, on the right platter the drumsticks reach out over the edge, collared with white paper cuffs, like a bouquet of flowers. On a true grilled platter the sirloin overflows, it’s just too big for the plate. Still, this dish has a pretty decent shape, you can tell it dates from a time when people loved one another instead of throwing plates at each other’s heads.’

The stranger aimed his fork at the drumstick now, even though in Fridolin’s experience practised eaters always left the tastiest morsel for last. No, he had never seen a customer tuck into his roast duck starting with the drumstick. That sort of thing only happens at weddings, where people tend to compete for the best morsel. Anyway, this guest had pulled the plate so close to himself that it would have been difficult to snatch it away. He turned the drumstick this way and that on his plate, testing it with his fork to see if it was indeed as juicy as promised by the appearance of the meat done to a turn, in places darkened by the grill as flames like to flare up through the grate when a fatty item is roasting above.

And here the guest cried out in surprise: ‘Oh don’t tell me you took my spoon away? No, it won’t do to start rubbing a fresh spoon with your filthy napkin. I would have preferred to keep my old spoon, the one I’d got used to, ate my soup with, and my peas, and then wiped off with a piece of bread. How can you ask me to dip a strange new spoon in this gravy?’

From this point on the unknown guest eyed Fridolin with a certain amount of distrust, as if afraid that the latter’s sloppiness would sooner or later make his appetite go away, as any contretemps can ruin a man’s lunch. As a sign of his misgivings he used his own napkin to give an additional wipe to the spoon before launching it into the golden gravy under the roast duck. Yes, we must confess that even though the colour of that fat had the same hue as Tokaj vintages of old used to have, the customer now cast suspicious glances over his shoulder in the direction of Fridolin, especially when he noticed the latter edging closer, into an intimate proximity.