Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  It was they who lowered the heavy corrugated iron shutter over the storeroom entrance. They will raise it when the milk wagon arrives and the white bottles clinking in the iron crates are unloaded wordlessly. Even before this job is done, the bread man will make his delivery. The rear door of the wagon, cushioned on the inside, is opened and the warmly fragrant breads and bakery products are carried into the storeroom.

  The workers whistled while they worked, so I assumed that early-dawn bread delivery must be a joyful thing.

  I didn’t even have to remember the various tastes of fresh unpasteurized milk, of warm croissants or sweet brioches to distinguish between the hotel’s night and early-dawn activities or to know what sorts of things happened in the morning or in the afternoon. The scullery maids began every day with cleaning vegetables and disemboweling chickens. At 12:30 they turned their freshly whipped cream over to the pastry cooks, who could then complete their cakes and desserts; next they wrapped in blotting paper and then in kitchen towels the evenly sliced potatoes, later to be made into chips, and after that the girls were done. Their return boat would leave the Bem Square station at 1:30. It arrived in Tahi at 4:00, Kisoroszi at 4:40, and Dömös at 6:30, and every day of every year they made the same routine to-and-fro journey until the river became dangerously icy and boat traffic came to a halt.

  That was when all the weddings took place in the villages and the young women no longer came to work in the hotel. Barely adolescent girls had to replace them.

  Leaning on their baskets and against one another, they slept in the deafening dark bowels of the big paddle steamers.

  The staff of the Grand Hotel had specific instructions on how to deal with the children of guests. Very decisively but always kindly and politely, no matter how difficult this might prove to be. Except for me, it was very rare for children to be in the hotel in the early autumn. I was well behaved, polite, and managed quite well in the red-walled living room, empty but for the record player and my picture books for company. I knew what was allowed and what was not; and that described my reputation. He is a nice quiet boy, the adults would say, able to keep himself busy. They had no idea how I abused their trust and confidence. They thought they didn’t have to worry that I might get into an accident or do mischief. The chambermaids, bellboys, and cleaning women competed for my favors; they liked to have me along or waiting for them while they did their chores.

  Of my own secret mission, of course nobody knew anything.

  I loved to follow the different hotel workers along the corridors on the soft, dark red carpets, which absorbed the sound of footsteps, go downstairs with them via the rear stairwell, then take the elevator, glittering with its cut-glass windows, all the way to the top floor, doing all this to discover the hotel’s secrets. I realized early on that one should not say no to anything. The more willing and polite I was and the more reliably I behaved, the more communicative people became; ultimately grown-ups are rather careless with their secrets.

  It never occurred to anyone, for example, to lock the external door of the garbage bay from the inside.

  Beggars also had their place and hour; nobody imagined that the beggars might assault the garbage bins. They were supposed to line up just before the kitchen closed. They came one by one out of the night with their worn bags and frayed satchels, waited before the basement window, bathing in the light that filtered through it, in the kitchen stench streaming outward at and in the weakening preclosing kitchen clatter.

  If it rained, they stood under umbrellas.

  At most they would make courteous little gestures, well understood by others in the line: but of course, go on, your grace; oh no, don’t even mention it. And the chambermaids never ceased boasting that here, fortunately, we hardly have any real beggars. The directress takes this very seriously; she can’t abide smelly or filthy persons and will not suffer Gypsies or drunken louts. As far as she’s concerned, that kind of person can just stand in the rain or snow; she won’t give them a morsel.

  One wasn’t to speak of people in this line as beggars. The directress did not want to see a beggar who looked like one. She could not bear such human wrecks. Nobody could tell her that a person couldn’t wash in cold water.

  Watch it, little girl, I hear beggar from you again and I’ll rap your mouth for you.

  She’d do it too, there’s good reason to be afraid of that big ring of hers, because these people are decent ladies and gentlemen, and every person is entitled to respect. Poor war widows, disabled pensioners, victims of some family disaster. Some of them come for food to take to their gravely ill relatives. These people have been truly robbed of everything. God forbid someone should speak ill of these poor beings or humiliate them. If anybody, the communists should be ashamed of themselves.

  Everything’s all right so long as one is healthy and can work.

  Anybody can lose his job and wealth, anybody, it’s getting them that’s hard.

  You can believe me: nobody’s fate is assured.

  Enough misfortune awaits one in this life, may the Virgin Mary or the Lord Jesus protect you.

  Szidónia Oltó was the name of the chambermaid who from the very beginning took me under her protection. Because she was also an orphan, she knew what that meant. There was a certain woman among those poor beings, she explained to me, who once had been a permanent guest of the hotel and whose orders had not been easy to carry out. How could one possibly predict the course of one’s fate; one plays the big shot while one can. Such people usually want everything, no matter what it is. And they never run out of orders to give—don’t put it over there, put it here, and how many times do I have to tell you the same thing, and she won’t eat that, won’t touch it at all; what she wants is what’s being served at the next table.

  The wheel of fortune is always turning, little boy, don’t ever dare think of humiliating anyone.

  And she showed me who that certain woman was.

  I was in love with Szidónia Oltó and not only because she said interesting things but also because the skin on her elbows and knees was rough and scaly and she liked it when I rubbed them for her.

  The smell coming from her white blouse was quite strong whenever she held me to her breast, saying I was her little son.

  That poor thing lost everything, and I mean everything she had, except for that rabbit-fur coat, she’d whisper excitedly while we waited for a snack to be prepared for a guest on the third floor. The collar of that coat is pretty shabby too, look at it. You won’t believe this, but this woman, careful, she’s looking at us, every Easter she and her husband used to spend two weeks here, on the first floor.

  They’d take no place else, in the same suite used by Cardinal Pacelli and by the Prince of Wales.

  We thought that the man who at the same time was staying in room 11 was her lover, but it turned out that he too was her husband. That’s right, you heard me. There wasn’t another woman in the whole world as cunning as this one. Believe me. Now, of course, she’s drinking like a fish and has to hold on to a railing when she moves. She had to take the interior staircase up to her second husband, who’d wait for her there. Look how she’s wound up. Still, when you look at her today, you see the wife of General Pechl, yes, to this day, but she’s also the widow of Major Bertolini. Today, nobody wants her. When people found out about it, it was all covered up very nicely, even though they published news of the bigamy in the papers.

  This husband of hers sent the major to the front line so he’d be killed and there’d be peace and quiet at last. He was right to do it.

  You can take their supper for them, that slut.

  If her other husband hadn’t done what he did, she’d have rotted in jail.

  Put a little lettuce on the bottom, Danika, it looks so pitiful like this.

  You can believe me, there’s no justice in the world. But now, it doesn’t matter any more, no point blaming her. The Lord Jesus or the Virgin Mary, if they wanted to, would forgive even someone like her.
/>   I shouldn’t bother my head about their problems. I’d better stop talking about it altogether.

  The beggars were given not leftovers exactly but prepared food that guests had not accepted and the waiters, having no alternative, had returned to the kitchen virtually untouched.

  You can’t imagine how much I know.

  If guests didn’t ask to have the food they’d rejected packed for them, then it was packed for these wretches, but just as carefully as if they were guests. The directress saw to it that this was done properly. Spoiled food was not allowed in any of the packages, at worst only something that would not hold over for the following day.

  They owed this not only to notions of Christian charity but also to the hotel’s good name. And the directress would have done it exactly the same way even if her reward had been only the recipients’ gratitude, but, of course, one should have faith in providence.

  In the short lulls between the rushing waves of service to the guests, the cooks tossed these choice leftovers onto trays lined with wax paper, nimbly arranged the food to make it look attractive, and then covered the trays with more wax paper. Later scullery maids packed this untouched food not in decorative wrapping paper bearing the hotel’s logo, as they would have done for a guest, but in newspaper, and then handed the parcels out through the barred window.

  Not to just anybody.

  When they came at night, appearing for a moment with their broken shadows in the slanted beam of light behind the window bars, they had to bend down low to get the packages, which were simply handed out, one after the other. Nobody knew what his or her package might contain.

  Maybe even a whole cake.

  The packages disappeared into satchels, threadbare leather bags, and no matter how great the directress’s mercy and satisfaction, the recipients carried them as a burning sign of their shame. All the other food that guests left on their plates was thrown into the pig swill. The staff was forbidden to lick, nibble, or try to eat anything on the sly; tasting was the sole privilege of the chef de cuisine, and they could take nothing home. The directress’s view was that generosity had no place in this because to allow any filching would only make the staff greedier.

  If you capriciously permitted something today, tomorrow they’d take everything and be insolent about it; the day after tomorrow they’d filch your eyes out of their sockets.

  The scullery maids, among whom were the beginners called handy girls because they prepared things to be within reach of their superiors, separated what would be thrown in the liquid pig swill, such as water in which noodles had been boiled, from solid leftovers, within which they further separated out the bones. The dishwashers were supposed to receive completely cleared dishes and plates. However, one could always hear a few disgruntled shouts from the chefs.

  Panni, my sweet, have you got a little rice or potato on that tray.

  You’d hear something like this whenever something went missing from the paper-lined trays prepared for the beggars.

  The most important thing was not to mix solid leftovers with bones or liquids, not for the world. They were to be put in three different barrels, and the barrel lids had to be well clamped down to contain the smell and prevent spilling during transport. Sauces, gravies, and dips had separate regulations. All mustards and leftover horseradish or sour-cherry sauce served with Viennese boiled beef and Alföldi ham went into the liquid slop; gooseberry cream, mayonnaise, and cheese or ham béchamel went into the barrel with the solids. Cranberry served with venison, along with rose hips from the bottom of the sauce bowl, had to be sorted with the liquids, while dill sauce and tomato sauce went into the barrel for solids.

  I hope, Jucika, you haven’t forgotten that we don’t put cucumber sauce with the solid leftovers. You can’t be that forgetful.

  Oh, please excuse me.

  It’s not your movements you should be frugal with, you know.

  It wasn’t intentional.

  If your head wasn’t wandering elsewhere, your hands would know what to do.

  The fat from roasts was collected separately in a large, wide enameled saucepan, and fresh fat was always added to and melted with it, but I don’t know what happened to it. The dregs of the saturated fat in which meatballs, Wiener schnitzels, or breaded chicken legs had been fried didn’t even have a chance to cool off completely; as it was thickening it would be scooped out with slotted ladles and put right in with the solids; they’d snap it up and knock it in hard; it sizzled and spluttered. The burned oil in which they fried fish or doughnuts, lángos, apples in blankets, various croutons and croquettes, marinated elder blossom, palacsinta, or differently sized and shaped soup noodles was definitely thrown into the liquid slop.

  And so was salad dressing and all scraps and remnants of vegetables.

  The barrels were taken away not by the sanitation people but, every other day, by people from the pig farm in Nagytétény.

  I found the black door of the garbage bay ajar or, more precisely, found that it could no longer be closed properly because of the thick layers of grime on it.

  In this frightening underground passage, tiled to the ceiling and stinking of chlorine, the light was always on.

  It was on now.

  Deep inside was another door, but it could be opened only from within the basement. It was considered an emergency exit and the staff was forbidden to obstruct it in any way. This is where they pushed out the barrels and where the various kinds of garbage were brought from the upper floors. Inside, there was not even a knob on the door, only a button. It was locked now. No stranger could enter the building unseen, but when I wanted to leave the building secretly, I could always use this exit.

  I could go down to the basement on the staff staircase, where yellow coir matting silenced my foosteps. Sometimes I’d rouse myself in the middle of the night, sometimes at dawn, to carry out my mission; sometimes I wouldn’t even want to go to sleep but I’d wait until the Gypsy band finished playing in the dining hall, until only the soft, caressing dance music in the casino could be heard, until everything slowly closed and quieted down. Out on the terrace the waiters quickly turn over the chairs and place them on the tables, roll in the awnings and fold the sunshades. The last guests take leave of one another, titters and harsh abrupt laughter mixed with bubbling chitchat; car doors slam loudly as taxis and limousines drive off, a tipsy voice is heard along with the creaking of paired footsteps on the pebbled promenade. And then long silence. Only the leaves rustle, which for quite some time one might take for whispering lovers and would like to understand but can’t; it’s only the night and its natural noises. One is free to go at last.

  The reddish velour rugs silenced my steps in the corridors made insanely brilliant by the light of sconces adorned with crystals.

  I had to be careful not to let the black steel door of the basement close, because then I could return to the building only through the main entrance and my foxiness would be discovered. I could not afford to expose myself. But all I had to do was put a box of matches, a piece of bark, or a pinecone into the crack of the door.

  Though many things had changed since then, I still managed to feed the dog.

  I was welcomed by the stench of putrefaction, disorder, and filth; grime was smeared on the tiled walls and high up on the lights, and the ceiling was covered with deep layers of cobweb on which dust had settled in clumps. I had barely opened the door when the dog began to bark infernally because with incredible hissing and spitting at least fifteen cats of different colors and sizes jumped out of the lidless bins.

  The dog’s bark echoed hellishly along the cold walls.

  The cats went sliding on their extended claws across the stone floor strewn with fallen and dug-out garbage and raced between our legs, fur standing up on their spines and vertical tails, out into the open. I smacked the dog’s lumpy head good and hard, but his quieting down must also have been because his fine sense of smell was overcome by the disgusting odor of rotting food.

  The
cats disappeared in a flash, jumping out over the side of the ramp planted with evergreens.

  I listened for a few seconds, making sure we hadn’t woken one of the night watchmen. I could hear nothing but quiet puffing from the boiler room, deep in the ground.

  Perhaps another barge was approaching on the Danube: there was a decided if muted trembling, a struggling motor echoing underwater. At times like this, the stokers would be lying on the warm iron bridge above the boiler and, for warm pillows, resting their heads on one another’s shoulders.

  After the dog stopped bothering me and no longer cared what I did or didn’t do, and with his whole body trembling, his rear shaking, growling continuously and baring his teeth, he set about wolfing down everything I found for him in the solid-pig-swill barrel and managed with a piece of cardboard to scoop out: raw chicken heads with their forever-closed or forever-open fine-as-breath bluish eyelids, enormous pieces of bone both raw and cooked with invaluable shreds of beef still on them, and a whole plate of burned-at-the-edges potato chips. I quickly stepped outside.

  He’d be busy for a long time working on those bones.

  I closed the steel door behind me as best I could.

  So he couldn’t follow me. Early in the morning, somebody would surely discover him and let him out, or call the dogcatchers on duty.

  The filth was so thick in the hinges that I couldn’t close the door completely, no matter how hard I tried. Only a good cleaning, preferably with a strong jet of water followed by generous oiling, would do the job. I did not want the dog to follow me.