Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

‘And what about his cucumber salad?’ asked Janet with a trace of mockery, reminiscent of a schoolteacher interrogating a student she had caught in a lie.

Kalkuttai was determined to go on, but first he stirred up the cucumber salad in its capacious serving plate, using his fork to herd back into the thick of the salad those bits of black pepper, paprika and slivers of onion that had fled to the edge of the dish.

‘He used no mustard in his cucumber salad, but he had the presence of mind, whenever he had a rendezvous at the Vac hostelry with some woman from Budapest, to blow thirty-one kreutzers on a telegram, requesting advance attention to a properly prepared cucumber salad. This way he never had to contend with a cucumber salad that was bitter or not marinated, for the cucumbers had a whole night to imbibe all those devotional articles, the spices and flavours necessary for producing a decent salad. You can always find the right wine vinegar in a place that sells unadulterated slivovitz — usually in the neighbourhood of an orthodox synagogue.’

Janet started to smile now, which did not suit her character as a grave and serious woman. Her smile was a meld of a certain amount of disappointment, a bit of sorrow, but also resolve. ‘Well, I confess this cucumber salad has been marinating only since this morning, maybe that’s why it fails to meet Mr Kalkuttai’s approval,’ she said in a restrained tone of voice. ‘In any case one can certainly learn from that surveyor because any man who takes his own case of mustards and condiments to the inn at Vac cannot be a total loss. Tell me, Kalkuttai, have you ever done any surveying, by any chance?’

Kalkuttai, still in a playful mood, answered in a rather jocose manner: ‘I would have liked to, had I not chosen government service.’

… After this, the lady of the house had little more to say, other than wishing him good health after the meal. She cleared the table, coming and going, disappearing for a while only to return and find Kalkuttai staring at the ceiling, nursing post-prandial daydreams. We may very well guess the nature of these after-lunch thoughts, and so did Janet, and therefore it is understandable that she took her revenge upon her lover in the following manner.

After a while Kalkuttai retired to the small chamber without a window or any other egress, to stare at yellowing fashion plates and an illustration depicting the execution of the Emperor Maximilian pinned to the wall. Immersed in his reveries he did not notice that Janet had silently locked the door from the outside, sent the servant girl away, and gone out to visit a girlfriend whom she had not seen in a long while.

(1926)

In the manner of storytellers of old, I respectfully warn my readers before they jump to any conclusions about the title of this piece. No, we are not talking about some infamous pub-crawler, some notorious drunkard who vomited torrents of lies and jests reeking of garlic, and whose shamelessly provocative behaviour made him unwelcome to those tavern-keepers and their patrons who, in the former Hungary that stretched from the Carpathian mountains to the sea, had at least once a day occupied every available tavern seat (that is, the guests did); had filled every single glass (that is, the tavern-keepers did), glasses that were as much in evidence as the painted ones, topped by an abundant head of white froth signifying since time immemorial a freshly tapped keg, calculated to put thoughts into the head of every thirsty man passing by these weathered tin signs that protrude into side streets. Why, on some occasions (holidays or fair days) they even filled up the glasses that had apparently been enjoying a much-deserved rest in some melancholy niche or on a cobweb-laden shelf that the ageing tavern-keeper rarely uses, thereby avoiding unsavoury quarrels with patrons because of certain items (chipped glassware or vessels containing funerary ashes) on the same shelf alongside glasses that happen to be perfectly good, but possess an iridescent rainbow tinge … (Yes, it can be disheartening to see rainbow colours, vibrant as a blast of organ music, on the side of an old drinking glass! As if some drunken devil had lifted the rainbow from the sky to beautify the glasses he drank from during his wicked benders, just as certain experienced females often daub the hues of innocent maidenly charms on their cheeks.)

Well, the hero of our story had been thrown out even from those taverns where the Slovak pedlar need not bother trying to sell new glassware, taverns where the bricked-in windows’ ledges hold only the wassail cups of guests who had long ago migrated to the cemetery. So why on earth did they eject our man from taverns when he never paced the uneven floor of the taproom with mayhem in mind, nor peeked into the kitchen with intent to filch a roast rib or anything else stealable? Nor did his raincoat reek of stale stuffed cabbage, an aroma that would set even the most ancient barflies sniffing at the air, with nostrils that had never probed anything but musty, antique wine casks at the request of the superannuated tavern-keeper who wanted to know if a barrel was still redeemable and worth sending to the cooper for a makeover — such as a physician might attempt for an old man on his last legs. No, the raincoat in question had no odour whatever as he swung it off his shoulder, no excuse for the few lingering old veterans to recall the cholera epidemic of 1868 when you couldn’t step out of the house because of corpses littering the street.

So let us see now, why was our hero tossed from every tavern he entered? True enough his name was Draggle, a name likely to remind most wine drinkers of grapes and vintages drenched by rain and rendered undrinkable. However, in those days it was not customary to give your real name as you introduced yourself upon entering, not even if you were addressing his lordship, the almighty tavern-keeper himself. Most guests traipsed in, crossing the threshold as lightheartedly as a bird alighting on a branch, without elaborate greetings. Some did enter the tavern, spouting all sorts of jocose salutations, having had this habit for as long as thirty years without ever noticing they were the only ones laughing at their own clownish greatings. Most guests entering a tavern mumbled something into their beard — you couldn’t tell if it was good evening, good day or goddamn — but then it’s no news that people don’t frequent taverns simply to exchange hellos.

Now Draggle, with whom we are concerned here, always chimed out his greetings loud and clear and appropriate to the time of day, like a schoolboy with an ear out for the school bell. For instance, he would never be caught saying ‘Bon appetit’ when it was past lunchtime! Respect for your fellow man means assuming they have eaten their lunch at the proper time. Whoever has failed to do so is an object of pity to be heard out with sympathetic nods as he relates the unexpected event that prevented him from tying on the napkin at the sound of the noontime church bells. Draggle liked to hear a man who was late for lunch blame the long wait at the tax office, wiping clean his plate almost apologetically on account of the lateness. Truth to tell, Draggle had never in his life entered a tax office, and hearing such complaints made him feel vindicated.

The aftertaste of his lunch still lingering, Draggle liked to drop in at those Josefstadt taverns frequented mostly by patrons who on the first or the fifteenth of the month paid in advance for their meals, or else purchased one of those little booklets containing various meal tickets the size of postage stamps. In certain establishments such as the ‘Matty’ (indicating the restaurant bearing the name of King Matthias), these patrons received smaller portions, but not so at the Plum Tree, where the widowed Mrs Teneri gave her stamp-carrying customers larger than average portions. This good woman clearly intended to keep all her patrons for the duration of their lives, her rough treatment having sent Mr Teneri to his grave far sooner than her guests would have believed possible. Therefore she now lavished all her pent-up affections upon her guests, bachelors, widowers or divorced men with more than their share of troubles who had quietly resigned themselves to lunching at taverns for the rest of their lives. Some of this landlady’s affection overflowed in the direction of Mr Draggle, even though the sagacious lady was well aware that sooner or later she would have to eject Mr D. from her eatery.