Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

‘Today’s main course must have included tomato sauce,’ was Draggle’s innocuous opening statement as he sat down at a table where he had spied an acquaintance. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, when, as usual, I had lunch at home, prepared by my housekeeper. It’s just that tomato sauce is the kind of food that stains your suit even if you pass in front of the restaurant serving it. There’s simply no escape once they open the jar it was locked into last summer, like some genie. The very colour of that sauce entices, especially when served liberally, as in this place. Why, some men are such fools for tomato sauce that they almost plunge right in when dipping that forkful of meat. Some people claim this phenomenon has a scientific explanation, but as a layman all I can say is that this sauce is one of the least expensive to prepare, especially if the customer does not insist on extra sugar in it. This sauce, although inexpensive, accomplishes all that you could expect from a sauce: it gives a reddish hue to those portions of the meat that the patron would otherwise cut off and discard, parts that remain on the beef only through the neglect of the butcher or the cook. For even if you welcome, around the edge of your steak, a thin rind of lard that casts a dreamy glow like the moon’s halo, you might still look askance at suspicious snippets of skin and titbits that belong in the gullets of those gluttonous dogs that hang around near a slaughterhouse, and reconsider dunking your forkful of meat in the tomato sauce along with these soft, tripe-like scraps that are liable to be tainted — and perhaps trim off these pendants which actually give meat its food value, and make butcher boys and their dogs grow so big.’

From behind the tomato-stained napkin, the acquaintance countered: ‘As for me, I can’t think of real beef without these loose, untrimmed, skin-and-bone titbits.’

‘I am not talking about bony parts, because at restaurants where the beef is served with the bone, you can be sure you’re getting a prime cut. It is next to the bone that one can best tell if the meat is spoiled — no matter how many sauce-boats or bowls of tomato sauce are lavished by the management. Not even a mushroom sauce can camouflage the taste if the meat is not fresh, although I grant you that a well-prepared mushroom sauce is perhaps the only one that can vie with the lively effects of tomato sauce, which stays youthful even in wintertime. True, mushrooms always have a taste of maturity, the savour of a man or woman past his or her first youth. Mushrooms just happen to be born old, for they have a chance to mull things over before they emerge from the soil, whether it’s in the cellar, greenhouse or the woods. Yes, mushrooms are little old men even as the forester’s laughing daughters stumble upon them after a rainy night. Fresh mushrooms! Think of all that subterranean deliberation preceding the decision to meet humankind! In any case there is a basic difference between tomato and mushroom sauces, in as much as the former, that is the tomato sauce, always needs a bit of meat, bread or rice to be enjoyed, whereas a mushroom sauce is sufficient unto itself, you can sop up the remaining spoonfuls while contemplating the plate that’s getting cleaned, seeing your past, as it were, in an ever clearer light. When the last spoonful of an abundant portion of mushroom sauce is gone, you may still have a crust of bread in hand to wipe the plate with, if you wish a reprise of certain flavours.’

‘But your philosophy of life shouldn’t have anything to do with the savour of food. The best appetites belong precisely to those who never worry about life or food.’ The tomato-stained napkin had barely had a chance to finish his say (clearly he had further observations to make) when Mr Draggle pointed to the small ticket the waiter at the next table was putting away into his grandiose accordion-pleated leather wallet.

‘Let’s see that ticket, Lajos!’ cried Mr Draggle in the voice of a gendarme collaring a counterfeiter. ‘Lo and behold, here you have a meal ticket, obviously the product of some wretched little printer’s shop in the basement of an alley reeking of rats and newsprint. And this printed ticket, ever since the widow Mrs Teneri has blessed it with her restaurant stamp, has been emanating a clearly perceptible scent of tomato sauce. This ticket is well aware that its owner tore it from the book for the sake of ordering tomato sauce. The same way, a funeral wreath signals from far off whether it has seen service on the sarcophagus of an old man or a youth. Take a whiff of the bouquet of the tomato sauce and right away you’ll smell the top shelf of the pantry where the jars of tomato sauce stand at attention, arrayed in rank and file.’

‘My dear man,’ replied the besieged guest, still trying to take cover behind his napkin, ‘I’ve heard that everything on earth, every object, human, vegetable, animal or mineral, has its own unique unmistakable smell, but I simply cannot fathom why this piffling little scrap of paper should smell of tomato sauce.’

Here Draggle turned towards the glass of wine he preferred as his après-lunch mouthwash (for which he would invent so many different names that he never failed to confound and amaze the bartender, dubbing it, by turns, a whiff, a lark, a long step, a cat’s pounce, a watchbox, a puffball), and having pushed away the glass with a certain finality that implied a settling of accounts with his opponent, in a gesture of ravenous vehemence undid the last three buttons of his vest and, turning away from the table, delicately cleared his throat, as customary in such small restaurants, acting to all intents and purposes as if about to order a second lunch — although according to certain malicious tongues you could never be certain that Draggle had in fact had his first.

He launched into his tirade with a mighty invocation: ‘Let me, at this very instant, meet again the small portion of braised beef I had enjoyed before noon in the course of my official rounds at my friend Hintenreiter’s on Wreath Street. Although this kind of braised beef is only available when the restaurant owners’ social circle happens to gather at Hintenreiter’s for their Thursday brunch, as announced in the Restaurateurs Weekly . Naturally it is not only attended by restaurant owners from all parts of town, who arrive after their trips to market (having sent the horse and carriage and the cook home with loaded shopping baskets, usually topped by cauliflower, sorrel, shallots and fresh asparagus for home consumption), but also by those good friends who care enough about their stomachs to check the paper every week for the current venue of the brunch. And since my official post leaves me free to get away from slaving at the desk (this was all that Mr Draggle would ever reveal about his official post), I just pick up my walking stick with a light heart and proceed on my merry way to these intimate gatherings that are always marked in my pocket diary. Of course I usually run into some of my restaurateur friends with beet-red faces shaved for the occasion, who pound me heartily on the back to inquire, “Well, well, my friend, how did you like last week’s brunch at Geza Neuzidler’s?” No disrespect is meant by this familiarity; their curiosity about my opinion implies just the opposite. And in fact I sang the praises of Geza’s brunch, and I’ll praise it again now, because nowhere else do they favour the guest with the kind of dumplings he serves with sour lungs.

‘I also lauded the brunch held two weeks ago at Schwab’s, for I could still recall those smallish but most toothsome, bite-size but still substantial stuffed cabbages, which, although served as an appetizer, were prepared from cabbages that were the first of the season at the open air market on the Danube quay. Baron Podmaniczky may wear his pantaloons ironed to a razor-sharp edge, but I doubt that he ever tasted a stuffed cabbage like we had at Schwab’s. Why, somehow you managed to convince yourself that it wasn’t so much the stuffing that made the difference but the flavours of the cabbages themselves, cabbages that had seen only a small shredder, or were sliced with a knife, and went into the pot with runt, stump, knots and veins intact. These heart-roots of cabbage in their first youth are capable of vying with the taste of first love. They let you savour the aroma of springtime fluids, you can tell that these knots and veins actually filter their juices from the fresh rains that hover over the garden, choosing, like savvy little housewives, those most favourable for raising cabbages.