Sweet Bitter Cane
Page 38
“Vichyssoise,” the SS officer said. “You remain true to your cuisine, at least.”
“You misread me yet again,” Mrs. Steiner said. “The soup may be French but the coolness is an American touch. The evening is warm.”
The waiters withdrew to the side servery.
At that moment, Kovács motioned. Food was ready for other tables. While he delivered these meals Zeno worried about returning to serve Catherine Steiner. But what choice did he have? And after all, she’d not noticed him. She was occupied in countering the officer. It was worth the risk. He’d say nothing to Tibi.
His serving at other tables was without fault, and with each plate his confidence rose. And when he returned to Mrs. Steiner’s table, he did what was required without incident. She never looked at him. The table’s conversations were inconsequential, talk of the opera in Budapest, of some marriage scandal, of the war. The officer defended Germany’s dwindling position in Russia, especially since the January fall of Stalingrad.
“The Hungarian Second Army suffered terrible losses,” Földes said.
“There’ll always be troop losses,” Laszló Fehér said.
“The Soviets crushed the remainder at the Battle of Voronezh.”
Müller breathed deeply. “You must realize the loss of Hungary’s troops is our own loss. New machinery, modern machinery is needed.” He looked directly at Catherine Steiner and she returned the intensity of his gaze. “There are moves to secure these things. Perhaps your husband would be interested in such contracts?”
Catherine glared at him. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps we could discuss this, later this evening?”
Catherine looked quickly at the others. “I’m sure there’s nothing we can’t discuss here. My husband will return at the weekend. He’d be happy to meet with you.”
“How ironic!” His open palm struck the table. “I must return to Budapest at the weekend. To work.” He roared with laughter and returned his eyes to Földes. “Once this work is completed, the war will proceed as the Führer intends.”
When the waiters approached later with desserts, no one was speaking. Ilona Rákóczy’s stern expression turned into a welcoming smile. Földes banged his hand hard on the table and argued that Hungary had taken considerable action.
“Then why has Regent Admiral Horthy so resisted deportation?” Müller said.
“The men are working in labor camps. For years, we have restricted the number of Jews in different areas of business. They are completely forbidden from government office. And we have made this tighter by defining a Jew as more than one grandparent of Jewish extraction. They are a race, not a religion. And we’ve legislated against marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. Any such intimacy is illegal.”
“Then why not deport them as we have asked?”
The dessert plates were lowered to the table.
“They’re restricted,” Földes said, “identified and controlled.”
Catherine Steiner stood, abruptly pushing back her chair. She turned to leave the table, turning directly towards Zeno. He’d no time to retreat. She looked into his face. Both froze. He felt his heart fall away. Her blue eyes flared violet, remained impassioned but not, he thought, with recognition. All eyes at the table were on her, but as this standoff extended, the eyes drifted to him. He stepped sideways. She looked down, away, and began to walk.
The fleet of waiters peeled from the table. All Zeno had to do was fall in line. As he moved back into the depths of the restaurant, he saw Catherine Steiner, her step brisk over the restaurant foyer. She’d bid no farewell, no explanation. She’d just left, much as Tibi said she had earlier that afternoon.
CHAPTER TWO
Zeno arrived for work at 6 a.m. in the reception area, comfortable again in his bellboy uniform. The concierge moved about, put his half glasses on, read something, took them off, and moved about some more. He barked a command at his assistant, sending him into a similar flurry of motion.
“What’s the matter?” Zeno asked.
“Catherine Steiner has lost a gold crucifix.”
Zeno froze. The concierge took off his glasses and glared at him. The crucifix. God damn it. And damn his inattentive memory to hell. It was lying on the floor in his shorts pocket. Zeno closed his mouth, tried to brush his expression clean.
“She thinks it’s been stolen,” the concierge said.
Damn, damn, damn.
“We must go to the Steiner suite,” the concierge said, “and see if we can find this thing.”
“But I can’t.”
The concierge swung back around to him. “You can’t?”
“Someone should work here.” He waved his hand at the reception desk. “There are people checking out this morning. Someone should be here.”
“You don’t seem to realize the gravity of this situation.” The concierge’s voice hissed on the “s” in the last word. “If it can’t be found, Steiner will call the police and we’ll all be under suspicion. Move it!”
The Steiner suite was on the top floor of the hotel, seven stories up, five bedrooms, a lounge and dining area, a large balcony with an uninterrupted view across the hotel grounds to the lake. The entrance hall had parquet floors, the lounge a higher ceiling and larger chandeliers, the furniture was plumped with a little more down than counterparts on lower floors.
Already a fleet of black and white uniformed maids fluttered about the room, the drapes pulled back, the weak sun spilling onto the floor. The apartment’s electric lights were still turned on. A maid, Magda, who normally worked on a lower level of the hotel, rolled her eyes as she passed Zeno.
Catherine Steiner was seated on a sofa, wearing only a long sky-blue silk dressing gown pulled in hard at the waist. With her was Ilona Rákóczy, also in a robe and looking as if she’d just been pulled from bed to this drama. Despite the panic he felt, Zeno stared at Catherine. She wore no makeup. Her face, although still handsome, bore no trace of a girl and yet no real trace of age, no undue creases, the skin lucent despite her time at the lake. Her dark hair carried no gray. As she looked about the room, her eyes flashed. She was beautiful. He knew it then, as he’d suspected at the lake — beautiful beyond any face he’d ever seen.
“It was a recent gift from Sándor,” she said. “Thank God he’s not here to witness all this.”
“You’re not here to stand,” the concierge said, sotto voce, to Zeno. “Help György lift the furniture.”
“I remember wearing it yesterday afternoon,” Catherine said. “I put it on before I left.”
“What time was that?” Mrs. Rákóczy asked.
The concierge motioned Zeno close to Catherine to help lift an armchair.
“I don’t know…. When we met for a drink, in the afternoon.”
“Around three, then?”
“I imagine so.”
Mrs. Rákóczy thought for a moment.
“I believe I saw you wearing it. I think I saw it. But you left us. Where did you go after that?”
Despite his heart rate, Zeno glanced at Catherine. Her face darkened. Did she now think of her swim at the lake? Imagine the crucifix at the bottom of the lake? Did she now think of him? His bare ass. He turned his back on her.
“Where did you go?”
“I walked in the forest — “
“But we looked for you there.”
As they stooped to lift the armchair, the quick motion caught Catherine’s eye. She looked first at the chair then directly at him. He could feel her gaze. His face burned. Magda ducked down under the chair, twisted, and looked up into the underlying springs and lining.
“I… noticed it was missing, last night at dinner.”
“At dinner?”
“I hadn’t put it on.”
Shouldn’t he end this silly game, this waste of time? No. He couldn’t speak directly to Catherine Steiner. He’d lose his job for that alone. He looked at the concierge. He couldn’t trust him, and anyway, she’d sworn him to secrecy.
&
nbsp; Magda found nothing in the springs of the chair. She stood up, looking at Zeno.
“What a farce,” she said quietly.
Zeno and György lowered the arm chair and lifted another for Magda to inspect. The fruitless search continued for an hour, every item in every room moved, turned, parted, shaken, or pulled apart. Once it was clear nothing could be found, the hotel manager, who’d arrived halfway through the search and taken control, asked Catherine what she wished.
“I’d just like it found. Perhaps I dropped it in the hotel grounds.”
“Of course. Now there’s good light, I’ll instruct a thorough search of the grounds.” The manager looked towards an assistant and nodded. He left the room. “Would you like tea brought up?”
“No,” she said. “Perhaps it has been stolen.”
“If you’d permit us to search the grounds, before we contact the police...”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
At the manager’s instruction, the workers drained from the rooms. Zeno made his way back to reception, the area completely unmanned and the lobby empty of patrons or staff. He ran to his chalet.
The room was dark save for a shaft of sunlight, the air close and warm. Tibi was still asleep, his naked back turned to Zeno, the bed sheet pushed to the base of the bed. Zeno closed the door. In the dark, he fell to his knees and patted his hands on the floor, searching for the discarded shorts.
“Are you looking for this?”
Tibi rolled over, cocooning himself in the sheet. He pulled his hand free. The gold crucifix rested in his palm, the chain laced between his fingers.
“Why have you got it?”
“Stubbed my toe when I went to relieve myself.” Tibi frowned. “Where’d you get this?”
“I found it in the garden. It belongs to Catherine Steiner.”
Tibi bounced the crucifix in his palm. “Why didn’t you hand it in?”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot to hide it?”
“I forgot about it till I got to work and everyone was looking for it.”
Tibi looked at him, pulled his mouth sideways.
“This must be worth six hundred pengő. How much will you earn this summer?”
“Four hundred.”
“We could sell it.”
“That would be dishonest.”
“You’re not convincing me. What’s going on with you and her?”
“Nothing.”
“Yesterday evening you asked about her. Last night at dinner you were nervous around her. What are—”
“Nothing happened. They’re searching the grounds. Fast. Help me find it in the garden, will you?”
“These bourgeoisies have too much already.”
“I have to give it back, dammit.”
“Don’t swim out of your depth.” Tibi allowed the crucifix’s chain to unravel from his hand. It fell to the bed. “If there’s a reward, I want half.”
The hotel grounds swarmed with maids and butlers and gardeners and any other spare set of hands, arse-up in flower beds, hedges and potted plants, others picking about in the well-tended hedgerows like workers in a field of tea. The Italian, Giovanni, waded in the murky waters of the main fountain, his trousers rolled up knee high, laughing and flicking water at one of the maids.
“I’m sure Catherine Steiner didn’t swim there yesterday,” Tibi said. “Where did you find this?”
“Over there.” Zeno motioned with his eyes. “At the path.”
At the entrance of the path, two maids half-heartedly brushed aside the bushes.
“We should go there,” Tibi said.
“But they’ll see us.”
“You can’t find this where she wasn’t. Unless you know somewhere else?”
“Shut up. What about on the terrace?”
“You said that woman saw her leave with it.”
“Right.”
Tibi was right. It had to be found somewhere credible to her, some place she wouldn’t dispute. Zeno breathed deeply. They walked towards the start of the path. Unobtrusively, they mixed with the others. How long should he wait? What was a fair time to search? He made his way towards the exact spot, but there were so few shrubs in which to hide it, really only the ones in which he’d found it. He held the crucifix in his palm. The maid, Magda, stood up in front of him, searching the same spot. He rammed the crucifix back into his pocket.
“Nothing there,” she said. “Not that it’s any great surprise.”
She moved off to another area. He looked over at Tibi, who nodded to him to advance on their plan. Zeno began to act. He looked at those around him and tried to reproduce their slightly heavy brows, their eyes moving quickly, side to side, up and down. He checked if anyone was near and slipped the crucifix from his pocket and allowed it to fall. The chain caught in the branch. And there it hung, entangled, the sunlight catching on the gold. For a moment he thought he should just leave it for someone else to discover. But how long could this whole charade continue? What if no one found it? And what if someone did discover it and didn’t turn it in and the police were called?
“I’ve found it,” he said. No one but Tibi looked at him. How would a voice sound in such a situation? Elated? Surprised? Relieved?
“I’ve found it,” he yelled, with all three qualities entwined in the words. Bodies straightened, heads and faces appeared from all manner of positions. Tibi ran to his side.
“Well done,” Tibi said, squatting down to unravel the chain from the bush. People congregated around them.
“Thank God,” another maid said. “Now we can all go back to work.”
A senior worker arrived, took the crucifix from Tibi’s hand and walked back towards the hotel. The other workers dispersed.
“What were you worried about?” Tibi said. “They only want the crucifix. Now they’re satisfied. There’s no scandal. No questions asked. No reward.”
“Back to your places,” a duty officer announced.
“But I searched here,” Magda said. “I didn’t find it.”
She looked at Tibi and Zeno and then again at Tibi. Zeno shrugged his shoulders slightly and looked away.
“What one eye misses,” Tibi said, “another sees.”
“But I looked here.”
Her eyes were determined.
“And you didn’t find it,” Tibi said. He screwed up his face at Magda and tapped Zeno on the back to make him walk.
The other bell boys were already in the reception area, the concierge back in place and working at a decidedly smoother pace. The morning proceeded. Bags and guests arrived and were processed with speed, dispersed to the various corners of the hotel. And from these corners bags were collected and brought back to the foyer, out to the waiting army of taxis and cars. Amongst all these comings and goings, there was no sign of Catherine Steiner. She must have stayed all morning in her apartment. Zeno could melt away again.
“Which one of you found the crucifix?”
Zeno blushed. It was the hotel manager.
“I did,” he said.
The manager glared at him as if he wasn’t capable of such a thing.
“Then you must smarten yourself and come with me.”
“Why?”
The manager spun with great gusto towards him.
“Because Catherine Steiner wishes to thank you. Personally.”
People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.
Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944)
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Si
xteen
Chapter Seventeen
Part Two
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
End note:
Acknowledgements
Book Clubs
Previous Publications – Available through Amazon:
Chapter One
Chapter Two