Cafe Europa (16 page)

“So Mr. Wolf is not a friend?”

“I scarcely know the man. I've seen him lingering around the hallways, sheltered by what he thinks are invisible doors, watching, watching.”

“I did see you talking to him that night as you sat on a bench on the quay.”

That stopped him. “Really? Were you hiding in the bushes by the locust trees?”

“I saw you push him.”

A long pause as he considered what to tell me. Finally, sighing, he said, “He disturbed my silence.”

“So you shoved him?”

“He asked too many questions.”

“About what?”

“Well, if you must know, and obviously you do, since Americans have taken all rudeness as their province, he first feigned an interest in my verse, his being supposedly a lover of Dante Rossetti and that circle.”

“Really?” That surprised me.

“Amazing, wouldn't you say? And he looks like any wealthy American on the Grand Tour, buying folk baubles he'll display back in America as relics of some fabled European past.”

“Yes, the same past you entertain in your mind.”

For the first time he offered a real smile. “Touché, my dear Miss Ferber.”

“That was it—that talk of poetry?” I smiled. “That's why you shoved him?”

“Of course not. I'm not a foolhardy man. Mr. Wolf has no good intentions in Budapest.”

“What do you mean?”

He stared into my face. “He purposely goaded me. A remark that I—I might be a spy. That's when I shoved him.”

“A spy?”

“For the Austrian military.”

“Are you?”

“He's a mad man.”

“But that was it?”

A puzzled look covered his face. “Bizarre, his questioning, I must say. He asked about the hotel guests.”

“Like?”

“Like the Blaines. He saw me saying good morning to Marcus Blaine. That pleasantry stunned him, I gather.”

“Mr. Blaine?”

“He didn't return the greeting, as I recall. But Jonathan Wolf wondered about our…friendship. Of course, there is none.”

Blaine? That flummoxed me. What was Wolf up to? “That seems absurd.”

“Exactly. If you must know, once again, I suspect that he's not an American, despite the tailored clothing and bundles of dollars he sends flying into the Hungarian economy.”

“That surprises me.”

“Score one point for me then.”

“What proof?”

“None. He has a slight accent that suggests he's from Eastern Europe, though it's been polished and honed.”

“Hungarian?”

“One wonders. That, or Slavic. Perhaps German.”

“What else about him?”

He waited a moment, glanced toward the Danube. The light was shifting as twilight neared. A rosy haze at the horizon, a patch of cobalt blue around the wispy clouds high in the sky.

“I believe he's an Italian anarchist.”

“Mr. Nagy, why?” My voice rose. “I can't imagine an anarchist looking so…”

“So splendid in a suit?”

“Well, yes.”

“I know in America—and even here, sadly—the cartoonists depict the anarchists as grubby socialist Muscovites in peasant garb, running through the streets with lit bombs in their hands. Left-wing Jews.”

I smiled. “Yes, I've seen such cartoons. We had a Haymarket riot in the States—horrible—and the cartoonists did just that.”

“Anarchists are the true spies, my dear lady.”

“And they're in Budapest?” At that moment I felt that Nagy didn't believe what he was telling me—it was some foolish lie calculated to get me to react. An Italian anarchist? Jonathan Wolf?

He went on. “You forget, an Italian anarchist killed our beloved Empress Elisabeth as she strolled a river bank in Geneva. There are troublemakers everywhere, especially in the empire. With the crisis with Serbia looming, they lie in wait. They look for opportunity. You do know that there have been attempts on Franz Josef before. On other members of the royal family. A Bosnian Serb threw a bomb at Franz Ferdinand already. The brutal Young Bosnia, insane radicals. The ultimate prize is the old man himself. Franz Josef. That would be cataclysmic.”

“You are an apologist for the old regime, I take it.”

“I am loyal to the Habsburgs. They civilized our lives, even here in rebellious Budapest.”

“But not modern.”

“Modern?” A mocking tone. “You mean automobiles and the like? America insists the world mimic its love of foolish invention. Someday America will ruin the world with its noisy contraptions. Without a royal family, an emperor, we flounder, slide back into the Dark Ages. Chaos.”

“And how do you fit into the scheme of things?”

“I hope I am the bard. The empire's Homer, though not of epics but of simple elegiac lyrics.”

“Odes to the end of something?”

He grimaced. “Now you sound like that pesky reporter, Mr. Gibbon.”

“He predicts a war shortly.”

“There will be no war. None. The world fears the awesome Austrian army. Serbia squeals like a cornered pig in a sty—which, by the way, is where they discover their monarchs—but Austria-Hungary is mighty. A day's skirmish perhaps, the Serbian weeps and licks wounds, and Emperor Franz Josef dines that night on consommé, partridge, and caviar.”

“All civilizations have a golden age and then become decadent. It's the sweep of history, no?”

“You're a poor student of history, I fear.”

“Alexandria, Rome, Greece, others.”

“We are not corrupt from within.”

“Mr. Gibbon believes…”

He held up his hand. “Please.”

“What do you think happened to him last night?”

“An American flashing money in a bad neighborhood where only miscreants reside. What else could happen?”

“But he was warned to leave Budapest.”

He deliberated that. “I've been told that's what he
says
was told him. Frankly, he's a man who craves sensation. A gossipmonger, hungry for attention. Booming American headlines. He probably hired those hooligans to pummel him.”

“Bertalan Pór ran after them and says one at least wore remnants of the Austrian military guard. I'm not certain…”

Again the hand in my face, but now there was a flash of anger. “That horrible Hungarian. Him and that…that circus performer, Lajos Tihanyi, hands gesturing, his mouth mumbling sounds a caged monkey would be embarrassed to utter.”

My smile was beatific. “For all his being deaf and dumb, sir, he manages to express himself beautifully, especially with his art.”

The man rolled back, tickled by my remarks, a laugh escaping his chest. “You call that art. A tribe of Negroes splashing colors on a canvas. Another symptom of a wayward society stinking with the manure of France.”

“I admit these artistic currents today confuse me—but they don't
alarm
me. Abstractions, geometric patterns, black crosses, this Kandinsky, this Malevich, this Matisse in Paris—we have to allow the contrary vision, no?”

Emphatic, sneering: “No.”

“So much for expanding one's vision.”

“That's not vision. That's distortion, purposeful or willful destruction of a tradition. We already have too many of these embarrassing exhibitions in Budapest, let me tell you. The Vienna Secession. Oskar Kokoschka and his dabs of obscene paint. I've walked by the windows of galleries—impossible, destructive. Bertalan Pór and that defective he's friends with— they
kill
art. Gertrude Stein and that mob of scribblers who cannot parse an intelligent sentence.”

Though I felt no need to defend my Hungarian friends, I said, “Perhaps they are the pioneers. Perhaps they see something that will be commonplace a hundred years from now, something accepted as natural and right and true to some artist's soul.”

“For Lord's sake, Miss Ferber, do you hear what comes out of your mouth?”

That rankled. “I don't speak unless I have something to say.”

“American cockiness.”

“Perhaps you should imbibe a bit of American stamina and brio and…and zest for life. This languid posturing of another century gets to be wearing on the nerves. Like a fussy cat that keeps pawing at you.”

His eyes got wide. “Yes,” he said in a world-weary voice, “the American invasion of the world. Look how it ended with the American heiress.”

“That's cruel, no?”

“But true. Cassandra Blaine and her parents sweep into an old city and decide to buy it for their occasional humor.”

“Still, Mr. Nagy, you must agree that a young girl shouldn't die because of the sins of her ambitious parents.”

“You saw that girl, Miss Ferber. Too loud, too insane, her laughter over nothing funny.”

“Again, no reason to be murdered.”

He debated that. “But don't you realize cause and effect dominate the sweep of history? Her father bustles about, the man of affairs, masterminding the building of a structure to house an American insurance company. No one in Budapest really needs that. Hobnobbing with women with titles and history, a mother suddenly wants her own blue blood, not the thin red kind she inherited. So easy to arrange a marriage. Everyone's doing it. When Consuelo Vanderbilt listened to her mother and married that dirt-poor Duke of Marlborough, immediately every rich mother from a prairie state shed her buckskin and gingham and swam the Atlantic for a tiara and a title.”

“Again, not Cassandra's fault.”

“She has to assume some blame, no? She was a woman in her twenties—not a giggly girl playing hoops. Her marriage was one more metaphor of the new stupid American greed. America is money. Simple as that. Money. Not art nor music nor literature. You
have
none. You have stockyards and gold mines and—and rustlers. Everything is
bang bang bang
. The Colt .45 and the rifle. Cassandra's father sits on money made from killing people in your Civil War.
Bang bang bang
. You are all cowboys who became the Indians. Red skins, all of you. Not bows and arrow, Miss Ferber.
Bang bang bang
. Shoot up the world. Hold up the world. Give me your money or I'll shoot you.

“Yes, the good Count Frederic von Erhlich is poor, the result of his father's indiscretion. And his mother the countess less than wise. But that wedding could
never
be. The empire crumbles under such temptation.”

“You've thought this through, sir. And you got your wish. The wedding will not take place.” I breathed in. “But tell me. Who should the count marry now?”

He actually gave the idea some thought. Then, nodding as if he'd solved a riddle, he said slowly, “His station.”

“What?”

“Someone from his class. With equal parts nobility and lineage.”

“And if such a lass is not available for purchase?”

“Crass, Miss Ferber.”

“Good. I was afraid I was too subtle with you.”

He lapsed into silence, but he was furious. Color rose in his neck, an eyebrow twitched, the eyes darkened. “Americans will never understand marriage.”

“It's not a difficult concept. Boy meets girl, boy…”

“Stop, please.”

“Are you married?”

“Of course not. I…“ He tapped the sheets on the table. “I have my poetry.”

“What is
your
station in life, sir?”

He waited a long time. “You're mocking me, Miss Ferber. I'm not a fool. To the contrary, I see the future clearly—and it isn't pretty. Luckily I have enough family money to avoid mixing with the world—out there.” He crooked an elbow and wagged a finger at the quay. “I may worship the past—look back to previous centuries with sadness—but I believe I
understand
the future. Not your Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi and that bunch of misguided Hungarians panting like dogs before a perverted French master. They stink up the streets. Oh yes! I see the future.”

“And just what do you see?”

“All
this
will disappear. The idea of stations will disappear. If there is a war, people like me will disappear.” He pointed to Castle Hill. “All that beauty will disappear. An anarchist's bomb will end it all.” A sickly leer. “The deformed and the invalids will rule the world.”

I lifted my chin. “Quite the picture you paint, sir.”

“Your odd Tihanyi will be our Prime Minister, Miss Ferber.”

“Cruel again, Mr. Nagy.”

“Oh, I hope so. Perhaps you're a woman who understands cruelty, Miss Ferber. You're young but you'll have your battles royal as your life goes on. The world fascinates you—but also irritates. I suspect you'll destroy a few souls.”

I started to speak but he rushed on. “Like most Americans, you are afraid of silence. You know, one of our writers, Gyula Krúdy, has a character say, ‘Everybody who still wants to live here after Franz Josef's death is a fool.'” He bowed slightly. “Well, I'm that fool. We are headed for a century of disaster. I feel it in my bones. Everyone will be an anarchist. Or a socialist. Americans will own everybody. Gypsies will head parliament. Jews will slaughter Christian babies for blood ritual. Good men will have to shake the hands of Jews and Gypsies. Unthinkable. Automobiles will run over innocents. Airplanes will fall into houses. Stars will fail to shine. The sun will be dimmed. Women like that fire-breather friend of yours, Miss Moss, will lead the charge. Can you imagine that catastrophe? Women will
vote
.”

He stressed the word, an awful curse. “Women will whip men for their own pleasure.” He was out of breath now, panting, sweating, paralyzed with his own dark vision of the future.

I stood up and bowed with a flourish. “It sounds like something to look forward to.”

“Destruction, Miss Ferber?”

“Voting, Mr. Nagy.”

Chapter Fourteen

Mrs. Pelham gasped when Harold Gibbon walked into the café a short time later. Sitting at a table near her, waiting for Winifred to join me before we left for supper, I watched Cassandra's erstwhile hired companion—the prim watchdog who'd failed at her task—gingerly sipping a glass of red wine. She been there for a half hour perhaps, escorted in by an overdressed Russian man wearing too much gold chain and too many diamond rings, his hair slicked back and glistening, a man in his forties. Mrs. Pelham, to my surprise, was glibly chatting in Russian and English, but forced to slip back into her native London speech when words failed her.

This encounter was obviously some sort of employment interview, as I gathered the Russian would be bringing his family from St. Petersburg shortly, and he worried about his headstrong seventeen-year-old daughter, Natasha.

“A firm hand, that's what I provide,” Mrs. Pelham advised. He nodded at her. She smiled back at him and sipped the wine.

Annoying, all of it. When she first strolled in, she caught my eye but quickly averted her glance. I saw anger and suspicion—and, for no good reason, warning.

When Harold stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying the room, it was, I supposed, a purposeful entrance. With a bandaged head, bruises on his face and neck, he looked the veteran returning from a war, save for his grin. He spotted me and waved. Then, to my consternation, he spotted Mrs. Pelham, who'd suspended her conversation in mid-sentence, slack-jawed, staring at the wounded man.

“Ah, the delightful Mrs. Pelham. The lady's companion who courts death.”

That made no sense, and the Russian, glowering, watched Harold through half-shut eyes as he struck a match and lit a cigar. Mrs. Pelham's expression froze.

Harold looked back over his shoulder toward the lobby, calling out in Hungarian. He turned sideways as Endre Molnár joined him. For a moment the two chatted quietly, Endre's face glum but Harold's typically impish. Endre was dressed like an enterprising American businessman with a black suit, gold velvet vest, and an ostentatious gold watch fob. Very dashing, I had to admit, though the grandiose European moustache still had a life of its own, its shellacked edges turned up like tusks.

“Miss Ferber.” Both men bowed at me, though Endre Molnár's was genuine courtesy and Harold Gibbon's smacked of parody. I invited both men to sit at my table.

“Mr. Gibbon,” I began, “you look like the first casualty of that war you predict.”

“So you remember my prophecies.”

“They're a little hard to forget when you trumpet the idea constantly. Usually at this very table.”

Endre Molnár laughed. “Mr. Gibbon believes war is a game. We Europeans understand it is unavoidable insanity.”

“Not a game,” Harold went on. “A strategy played out by the greedy.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked him.

He shrugged off my remark, though he placed a hand on his bandaged head. “Women look at me with sympathy.”

“If that's what you insist on believing.”

Endre was shaking his head. “Your friend does not take this assault seriously, Miss Ferber. Perhaps you can make him understand.” He glanced toward the terrace. “There is danger out there.”

“Hooligans,” Harold interrupted. “Mountain brigands venturing into the city to rob the tourists.”

“But what about the warning, sir?” I insisted. “That you leave Budapest. That's hardly the request of a simple robber.”

He weighed the strength of my words. “I know, I know. But maybe I
imagined
they said that. I wasn't exactly in control of the moment. And I know that Bertalan Pór believes they were sent by disgruntled Austrians who balk at my message. In so many dispatches I wrote about the death of the empire. Last week's column made a dire prediction about Franz Ferdinand's fate. I predicted his death. The Austrians, irate, wired Hearst—make the scoundrel Harold Gibbon back off. The ambassador sent an indignant letter. Hearst loved it—published their cable.”

“More bold headlines, Mr. Gibbon?” I teased.

He beamed. “The only kind the Chief enjoys. In fact”—he paused, reached into his back pocket and extracted a newspaper—“you can see for yourself.”

Dramatically, he waved the front page before our eyes. The usual garish, house-on-fire headline: “Hearst Reporter Brutally Attacked!”

Harold's fingers tapped the paper. “Me! The reporter has become the story. Hearst is drunk with it. He's sent wires all over the place.” Another dramatic pause. “Me!”

He pointed to a small, grainy photograph of himself—Harold as the young journalist in a stiff Eton collar, Ben Franklin eyeglasses perched on his nose. “Me! Washington, goaded by the Chief, has been hammering at Baron Meyerhold. No progress in solving Cassandra Blaine's murder, of course. What an embarrassment for the Austrians! And now—me!” A sidelong glance at me. “If I didn't know better, I'd think the Chief himself paid hooligans to attack me. It's sort of the thing he'd actually do—
create
the story, not report it.”

“Harold, is he creating a war in Europe?”

Harold's smile was disingenuous. “No, but he encourages folks like me to help it along.”

I pointed to his bandaged head. “Good job.”

“I'm not a popular man in Vienna.”

“Which is why you are in Budapest,” Endre Molnár added.

“But perhaps you'd best return to America,” I told him.

“Never!” he roared, his serious tone at odds with his playful demeanor. “Have you lost your mind? This is the hotbed, everything I work for. Here. Right here. The first shot will be fired in due time, and I want to be
here
. Austria continues to squeeze the poor Serbians.”

“But,” I tapped my finger on the table to make a point, “let's hope the first shot is not aimed at you.”

“Hey, I'm too small a target. It'll be like shooting a schoolboy skipping down the street.”

Endre turned to me, concern in his eyes. “Your friend has refused to talk to the police. Inspector Horváth of the Royal Police visited but was turned away. That was not wise. I know Horváth as a good man. A man I often play cards with at the National Casino. He is concerned…”

“Nothing to say. This is all part of my job. It's what I do, you know. I stir up a hornet's nest, and the wild insects buzz and hum and flit. And I get the story.”

“Well, this time you
are
the story,” I told him. “How much does it hurt?” I waved at his head.

“It's nothing.”

“Really? A small price you pay for being the story?”

“Great, ain't it?”

“Not really,” I answered slowly, biting my lip.

Winifred joined us, and Endre Molnár jumped up, bowed, held out a chair. Harold, his mind off somewhere, remained seated. Winifred frowned at him. “Don't bother to get up, Mr. Gibbon.”

He didn't answer.

I told Endre, “Miss Moss and I are going to the Opera House. Maria Jeritza in Puccini's
The Girl of the Golden West
. Seven o'clock curtain. We'll sup afterwards at the Lake Restaurant.”

He smiled. “Ah, you are becoming Hungarians.”

Harold was paying no attention to us. “You know what I find interesting?” he broke in. “That pompous investigator, Baron Meyerhold, hasn't been around lately.”

“How do you know?” I asked him.

“I have spies in this hotel. They tell me everything.”

“Well, clearly not everything.”

He made a face. “They tell me what's important. In some quarters I'm seen as a prophet of the end of Austria-Hungary. I'm not fond of Serbians, that much is true, though I don't like the Austrians bullying them around. But I do like the Hungarians. Hospitable folks, most of them.”

“Except for the ones who beat you in the streets.” My face was set.

“Austrians,” Harold whispered.

Endre looked nervous at the shift in the conversation. “Mr. Gibbon, you are doing it again.”

“What?”

“Talking too liberally about politics.”

“That's what I do.”

Endre leaned in, confidentially. “But Baron Meyerhold has visited me any number of times. In my rooms.”

That surprised me, and alarmed. “And what happened?” My throat dry.

Endre deliberated what he wanted to say. “He says very little, in fact.” A raffish smile as he touched the edges of his moustache. “He mentions my wealthy family. My distinguished father. The internationally renowned pottery we produce. The coveted name of Zsolnay. A signature of Hungarian art, known worldwide. That's how he talks of it. ‘You, sir, a delightful man of affairs.' Flattering, humming along, unctuous, believing none of it.” He twisted his head to the side. “My father has influence.”

“So he'll not arrest you?” I was relieved.

He shook his head. “Not so simple as that, dear Miss Ferber. Vienna would love to see the whole tragedy ignored, forgotten. But the Americans are insistent on some resolution of this murder. The American government listens to Mr. Blaine who is a powerhouse in your country. Aetna Insurance. Colt Firearms. The rich upper crust. Newport society. Dinner at the White House. A telegram from Teddy Roosevelt. William Randolph Hearst trumpeting the story in the newspapers, courtesy of…” He stopped and stared at Harold.

“Because of me.” Beaming, bowing.

“So the American Embassy demands an arrest. Baron Meyerhold conveniently believes I am the man who took poor Cassandra's short life away. But he's caught between American and Hungarian influence. Of course, he despises Hungarians, but he is politically astute. Inept, but not a fool, that man.”

“A horrible combination.”

“He's feeling the pressure from America.” Endre looked at Harold. “From your Mr. Hearst. Those headlines speak of scandal, cover-up, incompetence. Not good. And this latest attack on you, Harold, will bring him back to my rooms. As I said, an incompetent man, spinning in circles and hoping he'll fall into a confession.” He laughed. “He's afraid of America.”

“He should be,” Harold said. “President—Hearst.”

“Yes, even the Hungarian and Austrian newspapers are afraid of Mr. Hearst. He hammers and steams and pounds his fists.” He wagged a finger at Harold. “The editors here don't know how to translate his explosive American idioms, but they understand the fury.”

“So the Baron doesn't know what to do?” I asked.

“A messy murder—an American.”

“So nothing will happen?” The prospect of a murderer going free gob-smacked me.

“No,” Endre went on, “ultimately I will be arrested. But in terms acceptable to Hungarian authorities. Somehow I must be discredited, some manufactured scandal perhaps, something anti-Hungarian. Someone reports that he heard me curse my country in a late-night tavern. The newspapers report it. Some trumped-up nonsense that will have the Magyars nodding and saying—Ah, too bad, a true son of Hungary lost his way. Take him away. Chain him.”

“Horrible,” I protested.

“But a fact of life in a corrupt world.”

“Hey, I got a question about the note you received from Cassandra that night.” Harold punctuated his words with his fist on the table.

“What?” Endre asked, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

“It's one fact my spies can't help me with. And something the police haven't paid much mind to. The note Cassandra sent to
you
that night—the invitation to meet her in the garden.”

Endre looked pained, turning his head aside and staring out the terrace to the Danube. “What does it matter now?”

“Oh, but it does, my friend. How did you find that note?”

Endre didn't want to discuss it, but he sighed, resigned. “Someone slipped it under my door at my apartment. Not in the box at front. Under the door. I admit I was surprised.”

“Why?”

He smiled, his moustache twitching. “Earlier notes from Cassandra were left discreetly in the front box. But this time someone walked into the hallway—to be certain I received it that very night. I was there, in fact, but heard nothing. When I walked past my door, I spotted the note on the floor. From Cassandra.”

“And you answered it.”

“Of course. The note they found on her…her body. I said I'd meet her as she asked. I left it with the clerk in front.”

“That's my point,” Harold stressed. “Cassandra would have asked the day clerk or the night clerk, one of the porters, even a bellboy, to deliver the note.”

“And?” I asked, impatient.

“And no one has admitted delivering the note. I've checked—my sources. Cassandra gave it to someone
not
connected to the staff. Someone she trusted.”

“Mrs. Pelham?” I wondered out loud.

“I doubt it.” Harold glanced at the table where Mrs. Pelham sat with the Russian, her back turned from us. When I glanced over—we all did, unfortunately—she must have sensed that she was being discussed. She swung around and glared, but only for a brief second. Frowning, she emptied the last of her wine. The Russian was signaling for a check.

“Could Cassandra herself have slipped out and left it?” I asked.

Silence, long and uncomfortable. “Maybe,” Harold acknowledged. “Unlikely, but possible. She was known to slip away from Mrs. Pelham's brutal eye now and then.”

Endre laughed. “Yes, she did. We did meet secretly.”

“So it is possible.” I looked into Endre's face.

“She wouldn't walk into the building—too daring. Even if she did, wouldn't she have knocked on the door?” he asked. “A quick comment—meet me tonight. Then rush off. Impossible.”

“No,” I concluded, “someone in the Blaine household—a maid perhaps, or the valet—could have done it—in defiance of her parents' rule. Dangerous for them, but maybe Cassandra bribed one—or pleaded. A few gold coins pressed into an eager palm. Or, in fact, perhaps one of the servants might have sympathized with her.”