by Ed Ifkovic
“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 innocent
s. 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 investi
gator, 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.