Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

Aranka arrived in answer to his summons and this seemed to further incense the provincial attorney. At this point a ‘real, live waiter’, heading his way with his bowl of soup fresh from the kitchen, would have been a sight far preferable to all the fair damsels in the world. But good manners have not been forgotten in the small town Mr Bombai came from to visit Budapest.

‘Busy day,’ Aranka opened, lowering her colorful woolen shawl over one shoulder. Wednesday lunch would be unimaginable without Mr Bombai.

The lawyer, who was most likely a dignified figure in his home town, chose to reply in a disingenuous manner: ‘Well, even a village lawyer such as myself is kept busy, regardless of what his Budapest colleagues may think. All the vexation I get back home. And then the runaround at the offices here in the capital: Court of Appeals, Supreme Court, Ministry of Justice. No, my dear lady, our humble rural existence is not quite as enviable as it appears to the distant observer. But at least at home we are used to eating lunch on time. When the noontime bell rings and soup’s still not on the table, here in Budapest it seems we must relinquish even this small pleasure. Say, Fritz, where’s my soup?’ the lawyer exclaimed, seeing a waiter appear at the far end of the room, whereupon the waiter fled in terror.

Aranka lowered her hand and rattled the bunch of keys on her hip, a manoeuvre to distract her guest. ‘You as a lawyer are well aware it’s best not to rush matters, better to wait until things ripen. Those old fogies at the court of appeals or those ancient Supreme Court judges aren’t going to strain themselves no matter how much you would urge them.’

‘Oh yes they will,’ replied the lawyer with a no-nonsense, countrified tone. ‘I happen to have connections, acquaintances just about everywhere, for at one time my father was a member of the National Casino. The old man gambled away plenty of money but at least he acquired some useful friends. And then again, my dear lady, getting judicial matters accomplished is after all not the same thing as preparing a cutlet.’

‘But they are not all that different’ said Aranka, placing her hand on the back of the guest’s chair. ‘Why sir, what would you say, if you did not receive the same conscientious service here that you give the clients in your office? Here, too, everything must be done exactly at the right time, to the minute. As long as the jury is out, and the lunch is still cooking, everything is on hold. We won’t let a half-baked dish leave our kitchen.’

‘So this is the fate of a hungry man who wanders into this inn, to his peril,’ replied the troublesome lawyer, as with a certain amount of resignation he broke apart a Kaiser roll and dabbed it in salt and paprika. ‘I know this will harm my appetite.’

‘Perhaps you’d like a glass of our home-distilled brandy, or a glass of beer,’ suggested Aranka.

‘That would send me straight to the hospital. I have an execrable stomach. At night I can drink a barrel of wine, but during the day I can’t stomach anything beside solid food.’

‘How is that possible?’ Aranka stared with wide-open eyes at Mr Bombai, who leaned back, shrugging his shoulders as if he found his own case utterly bewildering.

‘It’s because I used to have a stomach ulcer. Take it from me, that’s a wicked affliction, guaranteed to make your good humor go away further than a stork migrates. Why, it even makes you hate your own work. What’s the use, when your stomach rejects all the food you send down your throat? Even the sight of others enjoying their meals is noisome, seeing them consume their portions with a healthy appetite is enough to make you nauseated. The dyspeptic man looks at his dish with dubious eyes, looking for any excuse to send it back. You no longer even enjoy having money, no matter how easily you make it, because it won’t buy you anything you would want to eat. Well, Martin, I say to myself, at this rate pretty soon we’ll have to close up shop and stagger off on pilgrimages to holy shrines; if the lame and the halt get well there, why shouldn’t I, with merely a stomach ache …?’

‘Were you colicky?’ interjected the proprietress.

The guest’s response was prolix. ‘Yes, that too. But mostly my problem was a constant nausea that attacked me after every mouthful I swallowed, be it consommé, my all-time favorite, or smoked ham, the kind that is supposed to help even the sickest person. And I could not allow my stomach to bully me at will, because then I wouldn’t have been able to eat in public, whereas, being a bachelor, I was obliged to take my meals at restaurants.’

‘We like to cure that kind of affliction with a glass of fine brandy!’ said Aranka, with an implication of regret at not having known this worthy gentleman at the time of his stomach ailment.

‘Oh, I tried drinking brandy before lunch, after lunch,’ he said, with a wave of the hand. ‘But by then it was no use, because those late-morning snacks and beers, and the lunches missed on their account, succeeded in wrecking my stomach so that nothing helped anymore.’

‘What about your doctor?’

‘To tell the truth, I didn’t dare consult a doctor because, first of all, I was afraid that he would reproach me for neglecting my illness; if an educated man, a lawyer, behaved like this, what could he expect from a simple peasant? And then again, I am convinced that every man is his own best physician. Only he can feel what ails him, and how; it is futile to try to explain that to a doctor. How could he have understood that the instant I swallowed a mouthful of finest potato soup made with fresh cream, it would come back up? Believe me, I was ashamed of having become such an invalid; I thought the cheerful, sociable time of my life was over. I could hardly wait for night-time, to try to lay down my ever-aching stomach into some position where it would stop tormenting me, and let me get some sleep. I tried lying on my right side, but that usually gave me a cramp in my lower left calf. Then I would shift to my left side and for some reason, God only knows why, the corn on my right little toe would flare up as if the weather was about to change. Finally I had to settle on lying on my back, like a corpse in a coffin. Lying supine like that has the unfortunate side effect of depriving one of air, so that I’d wake with a coughing fit, as if I was about to suffocate.’

Feigning constantly increasing amazement, Aranka heard out the gentleman who had been so seriously ill at one time. ‘One can’t imagine the suffering that goes on in this world.’

‘I couldn’t have been any sicker if I’d lived on a diet of frogs, snakes and lizards. I was always thirsty, so I began to drink wine, but in the end even wine started to lose its taste. I said to myself, this is the end, my friend.’

‘But eventually God helped to heal you,’ opined Aranka.

‘Yes, because I wanted it so badly myself,’ said the guest, quickly tying the napkin around his neck as he pushed his plate forward and seized his spoon, upon glimpsing Fritz the waiter and the steaming cup of consommé full of long noodles. (This was a tavern of the old school, with porcelain soup cups bearing the same monogram as all the plates and eating utensils.) The guest stirred his soup, sipping at a spoonful of broth then slurping up a long ribbon of noodle that was left dangling.

‘So how did you go about curing yourself?’ inquired the proprietress, as if the subject was of burning interest.

Bombai, having successfully disposed of the first spoonful of hot soup, began spooning it up heartily. He measured out his words between spoonfuls:

‘I fasted, and kept on fasting even when I felt a twinge of appetite. I fasted like a dog, like a Hindu fakir. Like Succi, the Italian hunger artist who makes a living starving himself. My abdomen became flat, my intestines shriveled up, for I even stinted on my intake of water. I became so weak that it was too much of an effort to go from one room to the next. I longed to stay in bed all the time, for that’s where you fast best. Then suddenly I started to eat again. It happened while they were trampling cabbage next door — for even during my illness I refused to shut myself away from enjoyable sights. I watched those cabbage-tramplers and imagined the happy folks who would eventually eat that cabbage, cooked or stuffed, or even raw, as sauerkraut. And as my starved eyes looked on all that cabbage being trampled, I noticed a little girl who was cutting out the cabbage cores with a curved knife. She playfully offered me a cabbage core — Here, try one, mister, you’ve never tasted anything this good. Well, I ate that cabbage core and haven’t been ill since.’