Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

‘Please don’t,’ said the customer, as if shooing away some fly, and he stacked the meat sliced from the drumstick back on the platter, as if it were some Wertheim-style safe where those mouthfuls would earn interest. He left only the drumstick on his plate, intending to finish it off first.

‘You work just like a surgeon!’ Fridolin now whispered in awe, simply to start a conversation.

The guest carefully grasped the bone, raised it and made it vanish in his mouth so that only the paper-cuffed end of the bone remained visible under the tinted moustache. We shall never know what the teeth and tongue did to the bone within that oral cavity. From time to time the stranger himself would shake his head as if in disapproval of the crackling sounds that emanated from within. After a while the bone re-emerged, utterly deprived of all its glory. One last time the guest sucked on the bone, intent on doing a thorough job, and be done with it once and for all.

‘No, I’m no surgeon, although I do have something to do with physicians,’ the guest now said, in order to fend off Fridolin. ‘But I happen to know how to eat. Most folks like to leave the bones for last, when the teeth are tired of all that rending, grinding, and mincing. Naturally by then they cannot do justice to the bone.’

‘So he’s not a surgeon, but has something to do with physicians,’ Fridolin thought, although the colour of the customer’s bald dome was the same rosy hue that he associated with the scalps of doctors and pharmacists, who probably used some secret lotion for the care of the complexion.

Meanwhile the guest, after the requisite dip in gravy, was shovelling slices of duck thigh into his mouth as into some storehouse, and he seemed especially gladdened by the sight of pieces of skin showing a soft layer of fat. This stowing away proceeded at an accelerated pace, with only a tentative stab or two toward the red cabbage before the eater made up his mind to balance a small heap of cabbage on his knife blade and shovel that too into his maw. The cabbage proved to be crunchy.

‘We’ll have to chastise the cook because she did not marinate the cabbage long enough,’ said the guest with a certain severity of tone to Fridolin, who, in the manner of old-time waiters, was fascinated by each mouthful of food that disappeared in his customer’s mouth.

‘Maybe you’d like a little gravy on the cabbage,’ the waiter ventured.

‘I know that without being told,’ replied the guest dismissively, as if he suspected some trick behind Fridolin’s advice. Then he dispensed one or two spoonfuls of gravy on top of the cabbage, which he did not neglect to turn over with his fork, as a small haystack is turned after a rainfall. Next he directed his attention back to the platter of roast duck, after munching on a piece of rye bread as if to obliterate some taste. Possibly that of the cabbage.

Now came the breastbone of the bird, which was plump enough to prompt the following remark: ‘No wonder our housewives come home from market with tears in their eyes … They simply cannot compete with the innkeeper’s wife who’ll pay any price for a fattened fowl. Waiter, tell me, how many portions do you get out of one duck?’

‘Two or three … maybe four,’ replied Fridolin hesitantly, for he did not like to divulge secrets of the kitchen.

‘There, you see!’ the customer gloated, as if he had caught the waiter out with that admission. But he let the matter rest, preoccupied as he was with the tasks of sucking away the last bits of duck breast and inner parts from the bone. By now the cabbage had absorbed the gravy, and his knife and fork reached for it with a certain amount of forgiveness. And this mouthful of cabbage was somewhat larger than the portion placed on his knife blade earlier.

‘Quite proper, that sharp knives are no longer in fashion at taverns. They always manage to nick the mouth. According to some it is not proper to put a knife in one’s mouth. If you ask me, a man has the right to eat any way he likes. Fashions may change but in the end we all die just the same. I use my knife even for the fish course,’ the guest announced with a challenging air and glanced at Fridolin as if expecting some comment. But by this stage all Fridolin cared about was noting how many slices of bread the guest consumed in the operation of mopping up the gravy left after the roast duck in the platter. Here and there a strand of red cabbage lingered to be plucked up by the eater’s nimble fingers.

‘Only what we eat is truly ours, because once we’re in the coffin we won’t be served any more helpings!’ The customer announced as he took a final swipe at the plate. ‘May God save everyone from lack of appetite!’ he added with a touch of piety, as if he had something else on his mind beside what was on the menu.

Once again, voices rising from tables occupied by neglected patrons started to hound Fridolin, but he rushed off to the kitchen for the saddle of hare he had set aside for this extraordinary guest.

The saddle of hare arrived and drew not a single wisecrack referring to some missing tomcat, a customary remark since times immemorial when rabbit is served in a restaurant.

The guest was holding a small pocket notebook bound in linen, as if going over some calculations, the way hard-working people do even while having lunch. There must have been something wrong with the figures because the guest contemplated the hare with a certain melancholy, as if he had to consume it under duress. However he did not omit to taste a spoonful of the piquant sauce that lay under the hare, or to cut up the dumplings to give them a chance to cool down, and he even probed the saddle of hare with his fork to test if the meat was tender enough.

‘A man is just like a hare. He never knows when the fatal shot will hit him as he flees. Tell me, Fridolin, how old are you?’ the stranger suddenly asked, as if something in his notebook had changed his mind about Fridolin.

The waiter was startled by the unexpected query, but then leaned towards the customer’s ear with an air of sly conspiracy: ‘For your Excellency’s information I am past fifty. But my boss thinks I am younger because no one likes to employ a waiter over fifty.’

‘Why, where do old waiters go?’

‘God only knows!’ said Fridolin with a sigh, encouraged by the customer’s apparent sympathy. ‘Some of us, especially head waiters, make sure they can soak their aching feet in all kinds of footbaths, preferably in Rákospalota or Budakalász, some suburb where you can still buy a small house. You have no idea, my good sir, how badly an old waiter’s feet can hurt! The pain is worse than a heart broken by unrequited love. And believe me I’ve seen plenty of men in love. Why, I remember “Lord Baltimore” from the golden youth of the Café Korona, each night he would march the length of Vaci Street slapping everyone because some piano tuner wouldn’t let his daughter marry him.’

Fridolin himself was so amazed by what he had just said about ‘Lord Baltimore’, that good-for-nothing ruffian of former days, that his mouth gaped. The mysterious customer meanwhile took this opportunity to proceed with his meal: a number of dishes on the menu still tempted with the fascination of the unknown. Then he cautiously sliced away the bits of meat from the saddle of hare, careful lest a bone break, for apart from the undesirable effects of swallowing a sliver, that would keep the teeth from testing the bone to judge its hardness and age. The bones in a saddle of hare will tell you how many years that hare has been evading the hunter’s weapon. But here the guest opted to change his system. He postponed the cleaning of the bone because he discovered buckshot in the meat. The bunny had received the shot in the saddle. And finding buckshot in the roast is always a welcome sight for someone who really likes game. The imagination can envision the melancholy yawn of the autumn fields where the hunter’s idle wait seems to harmonize with the weather until the moment when the rabbit emerges from among the dried cornstalks that bemoan their widowed state, and the hunter’s gun sounds off.