Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

Remembering his gastric problems, Mr Sortiment turned his eyes away from the chimney sweep just as the man was starting to squeeze lemon juice over his dish … The editor’s doctor had forbidden him to indulge in foods containing lemon.

But at this moment a resplendent figure appeared in front of him. This was Mr Mozel, the head waiter of the establishment, who, as a sign of the popularity and respect he commanded, was always referred to by his last name, and deservedly so. For he was the finest among the various Messrs Tiltsers, Petanovics’s and Klivenyis who scurried around the patrons of Inner City restaurants. Greeting the editor, Mr Mozel presented a radiant visage such as one sees on a fat suckling pig just doused with boiling water in the kitchen to liberate it from superfluous bristles. You could tell from a distance by the cut of his tailcoat that it was not bought at a flea market but was custom-made to fit his voluminous figure. Neither did the pockets of this coat swell with various wallets that head waiters were wont to carry for keeping apart banknotes of diverse denominations. No, these pockets were lined with deerskin, so that the coat kept its form-fitting shape. Hidden out of sight under the tails of the coat were the change purses, and Mr Mozel was famous for being able to hand over the exact change at a single pinch, never making the patron nervous by fumbling for change. Mr Mozel was like a splendid menu, the cover of which carries a bouquet of water-fowl, hares, boar’s heads, pheasants, fat grouse and ox heads, as imagined and drawn by some starving artist. Mr Mozel’s ever-present smile seemed to say that there was no such thing as gastric ailment and that people had only one desire in life, to sit down at a comfortable table in a restaurant and eat their way through the items listed on the menu. Mr Mozel stepped up to Mr Sortiment’s table with the respectful greetings due to an editor, and an air of officiating at a ritual involving matters of life and death …

‘We have wonderful “lights” today. I’ve already had some.’ Thus spake Mr Mozel to Mr Sortiment, while the latter was toying with thoughts of a spa in Bohemia next summer, for the sake of his health.

‘ “Lights”?’ Sortiment echoed, terrified.

The head waiter’s answer was lip-smacking, solicitous, full of promise: ‘Oh yes. Sour lights. Served today for our best customers.’ He spoke, and clicked his tongue.

The editor cast a glance in the chimney sweep’s direction. The latter was in the act of sopping up the last remnants of gravy on his plate by means of a piece of bread stuck on the point of his pocketknife, sweeping the last drops on to his spoon.

‘Oh well, let it be, I’ll have the “lights”,’ said Mr Sortiment with a touch of listlessness. Then he added, with a flicker of animation: ‘One must have a bite for brunch, after all.’

‘And a mug of Kobanya beer, freshly tapped, to go with it?’ suggested Mr Mozel, and gave the table a few slaps with the napkin he carried under his arm, as one who is most gratified by the results thus far.

The sleepy waiter now reappeared with a basket of croissants and Kaiser rolls. The dyspeptic editor found himself deliberating with the utmost care which Kaiser roll was most fully baked, done to a russet shade. Furthermore, he cast a glance at the salt rolls — even though his doctor had proscribed salty food — before settling on a Kaiser roll extracted from the middle of the heap using the finger with the green signet ring, the finger he deemed cleanest.

But here came Mr Mozel already, with the promised delicacy, smiling at the editor from a distance as if he were the bearer of glad tidings. In one hand he held the plate of sour lungs swimming in brown gravy that was surely the product of the finest beef ribs or pork chops. The dumplings were made with pig’s liver and vegetables, so that their cannonball hardness would not upset even the most sensitive of stomachs. Slices of lemon, split at the ends, were affixed to the edge of the plate, and there were three of them, one more than the chimney sweep’s portion (which the latter instantly noted).

‘I brought you the last portion we had,’ confided Mr Mozel. ‘The best-cooked pieces, from the bottom of the pot. Even though the Father Superior of the Franciscans had just sent a message asking for a portion of sour lungs to be put aside for him …’

He served the plate of food as if it were some miracle-working drug for Mr Sortiment, followed by the glass of beer held in his other hand, luminous in the late autumn sunshine glinting on Franciscans Place. The glass of beer, golden, fragrant with the scent of hops, and adorned by a paper collar, would have made even a dying man reach out for it — while our Sortiment tried to keep the thought of death as far away as possible, if only for the sole reason that his weekly had to appear on Sunday … The editor stirred the gravy with his fork and strove to find some pleasant prospect to occupy his thoughts, other than devious writers of short stories or uninhibited canines on the street corner.

So his thoughts turned to his youth, when, coming from an Uplands village, he had arrived in Budapest as starved as a runaway wolf pup. With only small change in his pockets he had ordered sour lungs in an arcaded, smoky Inner City tavern where the patrons were far more corpulent than he was — as if the tavern-keeper’s ambition had been to gather every man of some girth in the city in order to exhibit them as living testimonials to his tavern. The gentlemen who sat there had beefy necks, buffalo statures, and all looked like butchers. They kept casting envious glances at each other’s plates, just as the chimney sweep did at his plate now …Those old-time tavern patrons’ necks bulged like blood sausages above the backs of their collars and their bald pates sweated profusely from the spicy food laced with paprika, pepper and garlic, while their faces assumed the colour of earthenware pots glowing red, left too long on the kitchen stove. They paused in their feeding only long enough to wipe away with a moistened napkin the remnants of spilled soup and sauce from their vest or jacket. For only the most experienced among them had the presence of mind to tie a napkin around his neck before plunging into the comestibles, the way a barber ties on a sheet before a shave. After the editor had recalled these old-time tavern guests with their enormous appetites, he looked around the room to see if he could find a patron eating in that appetizing manner of old, and whose example would make him forget all of his dyspepsia as well as his accursed editorial existence.

His glance at last found one patron who resembled those former tavern customers, but alas, this man had not ordered sour lungs, but a platter of boiled beef, for by now the hands of the clock had progressed past eleven.

Who was this man who had ordered boiled beef?

Sortiment, who knew just about everyone in the Inner City, realized he was looking at the shoemaker from Parisi Street, the man whose chief interest in the calendar was keeping track of the national holidays. Naturally, the shoemaker held the country’s first king, St Stephen, in highest esteem, for on St Stephen’s Day every gentleman worth his salt dressed in his best, including appropriate footwear. (This shoemaker also kept tabs on the anniversary day of Franz Josef’s coronation, although as regards boots, this day could not vie with St Stephen’s Day.) The Parisi Street shoemaker looked like a guild master, tall, with a twisted salt-and-pepper moustache, and a bearing that was always solemn, as if taking the measure of some baron’s foot (by means of little paper ribbons). He liked to rub his hands together, as if preparing to hold the hand of one of his titled customers. This shoemaker took it for granted (he barely nodded his head) when the sleepy waiter served him a portion of beef so enormous that Sortiment at once regretted becoming angry at the rumpled fellow whose exterior made him unsuitable for service anywhere but in the cellar of the Seven Owls. And in any case the sour lungs he had pre-empted from the Father Superior of the Franciscans did not turn out to his liking, and his conscience was troubled about whether he had done the right thing. The dumplings were especially hard to swallow, and he feared they would prove difficult to digest. He might have nightmares about the Sunday News never again appearing in his lifetime.