Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

Sortiment (who amongst you still recalls that name?), editor of a Budapest weekly, was fated to track down poets and writers in their haunts behind the red windows of taverns where he would never have set foot on his own account, preferring to avoid premises where wood shavings litter the floor. The story of his chronic stomach ailment was the story of his life. Yet all his livelong days he was obliged to bolt down the braised pörkölt gravies, soupy goulashes and watery broths bathing the slabs of boiled beef served up by tavern kitchens everywhere. Let us take a closer look at but one day in Sortiment’s life, and get to know, as a lesson for all of us, the man turned pub-crawler by happenstance — when by all rights he should have been resting, clad in a hospital gown, sipping herbal tea in a cool sickroom under the care of an old aunt.

The trouble started when Sortiment had to change from bedroom slippers to street shoes, following night after night of nightmares in which the next issue of Sunday News was prevented from appearing because of a lack of manuscripts from poets and writers. Therefore he was forced to pull from under the bed his shapeless boots with the uppers loosened by all the footcloths stuffed inside, and down at the heels, just like the boots of barflies who spend their lives wearing down tavern thresholds. Mr Sortiment was not very good at bending over, being one of those men with sensitive stomachs and increased bodily girth — especially around the waist. For this reason, while pulling on his boots, Sortiment cursed the ruddy-nosed, dissolute-looking, goateed editor who, in a neighbouring street of the Inner City, like himself put out a weekly rag. Sortiment believed his greatest enemy to be this skinny man who apparently had nothing better to do than chase hot-blooded dames on Franciscans Place, while Sortiment had to hustle and sweat to find authors with manuscripts. But at long last the boots were on. Editor Sortiment’s footwear was of a cut that made left and right interchangeable.

Mirror there was none in Sortiment’s room, for he had no desire to see himself ageing daily in pursuit of the godforsaken business of his weekly paper. This explained the hit or miss brushing he gave the hair that bristled above his ears, hair that felt to the touch like the hog’s bristles on his desktop that he used for wiping his pen. From time to time Sortiment observed in a shop window’s reflection that under his black, broad-brimmed, severe Calvinist hat his hair seemed to be greying mightily, but he always dismissed these evil thoughts, for he had to assemble the next issue of the Sunday News .

Now, as he picked up his black-sheathed umbrella cane (a contraption at the time still a novelty in Pest, where only the priest of the Elizabethtown district had one like it), he gave no thought to his own appearance, but a sudden gust of anger made him grit his teeth when he remembered the Petöfi-style beard of a jaunty writer of stories who, wearing neatly pressed salt-and-pepper pantaloons and a blue and white polka-dot bow tie knotted into a butterfly bow, some weeks ago had extorted an advance for a story that never got written … Sortiment conjured up the writer’s physiognomy, his dyed moustache twirled to a point, his pomaded hair parted in the middle (‘just like some haberdasher’s clerk’), those slyly twinkling eyes and the sizeable Adam’s apple bobbing up and down thirstily above the broad, rigid shirt-collar, until Sortiment handed over the desired cash.

This vision made the editor slash at the air with his umbrella cane: ‘Let’s find Ligetsarki!’ he growled as he began in advance to gather some choice invectives to hurl at that illustrious founding member of more than one literary society.

A grey pigeon squatted on the hands of the church-tower clock that showed ten in the morning when the editor Sortiment stepped out of the ancient Inner City townhouse on whose first floor baggy-trousered editorial associates with bunions on their feet had just begun work on the forthcoming issue of the Sunday News. Where, oh where, was that swindling short-story writer to be found at this hour? Perhaps at the barbershop, having his thinning locks brushed forward over the ears, to lend his face an appearance of respectability? Or more likely at the tavern where he receives a discount for devising Hungarian-sounding names for items on the French menu? Sortiment decided in favour of the tavern, for he himself rarely visited the barbershop.

In the tavern he only bothered to look in the room where the tablecloths were red and blue, for experience had taught him that his acquaintances frequented only these rooms in restaurants. Writers of short stories sat down at tables laid with white cloths only around the first of the month, when government pay cheques arrived.

Seven Owls was the name of the tavern, a circumstance that maddened Mr Sortiment, who sensed a blaring plagiarism here. According to his lights, Seven Owls was the name of a former rooming house for students where the landlord Szendrey, father-in-law of the poet Petöfi, rented out rooms by the day to single young men — whereas this Schwabian tavern-keeper who named his establishment after the Seven Owls had nothing to do with the said Szendrey … Sortiment happened to know that the present proprietor came from a suburb of Buda and had started out as a red-haired waiter answering to the monicker Seppl.

‘Will you be having something for brunch?’ The query came in a voice redolent of cabbage smells, just as Mr Sortiment was sitting down at a corner table that offered an ideal cover to ambush the unsuspecting short-story writer. The editor did not respond, being huffily preoccupied with finding a shelter for his umbrella cane and churchwarden-style hat, in order to secure them against the thieves who, as everyone knew, were rife in the restaurants of the city, and who would leave behind some tattered hat on the peg in place of the fine headgear they’d lifted. The umbrella and hat found their place on the rack right above Mr Sortiment’s head — a brazen thief coveting that hat would have to steal the head first — when the editor at last bothered to look up. In front of him stood a sleepy, wrinkled, unshaven young waiter who had obviously spent the previous night serving rambunctious drunks, before the police put an end to the revels by removing the rowdies to the cells, leaving the intimidated waiter to catch his forty winks by laying his weary head on a table in the emptied taproom … Sortiment eyed the shopworn fellow with the superiority of men who have had their restful sleep.

‘Let me have a menu and we’ll see!’ he replied morosely.

‘Would you like something to drink? A beer, or some wine?’ The melancholy voice again inquired, like the woeful refrain of some bibulous song resounding from a side street.

‘After I’ve had something to eat!’ Sortiment replied, and looked right through the waiter as if he were invisible.

He turned his attention to scrutinizing the tavern’s interior to form some notion of which poets and writers would be contributing their work to the next issue. As yet his eyes, swollen with red-cabbage hues and ashen grey emotions, did not detect a single writer or poet — the good-for-nothings were late risers — but he did identify the district chimney sweep at a neighbouring table (in civilian clothes, of course). The man was famous for spending all day in taverns while his journeymen scraped away at the chimneys of the Inner City. Sortiment wondered what this experienced tavern-goer had ordered to eat and drink before hearing out the cook’s complaints about her smoking kitchen stove.

The district chimney sweep had ordered ‘lights’ — sour lungs doused with gravy and served with two rock-solid dumplings and a double portion of lemon slices on the side. This dish was a favourite brunch of men whose teeth had been set on edge by wine, and for this reason the lungs were diced, or sliced into ribbons to make them more easily digestible. Of course real ‘lights’ were prepared using pig’s lungs, thought Mr Sortiment, trying to find fault with the way the chimney sweep was spooning up the sour lungs while dunking into the gravy small bits of bread sliced by a penknife drawn from a vest pocket.