Dine and Die on the Danube Express

by Peter King

  He wiped his eyes on his apron.

  “Do you have any more questions about Fraulein Malescu’s visit to my domain?” he asked.

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “I certainly want to thank you for your time though. And I have enjoyed sharing a laugh with you.”

  “Anytime, anytime,” he said jovially. “Please come again soon.”

  He was escorting me to the door, a friendly hand on my arm. I was opening it and about to exit when he spoke again.

  “The next time you are here, you may wish to ask me about Fraulein Svarovina’s visit.”

  It was a great exit line except that I was the one making the exit, and he was the one with the line. I grasped the doorknob, opened the door, and went back into the coach. Facing him, I said, “Svarovina was here, visiting, after Malescu?”

  He was enjoying this, the son of a gun. Through his happy smile, he said, “Yes, she was indeed.” His smile began to fade. “The poor lady, she died, I know.” A look of alarm appeared on his face. “Of course, her visit here had nothing to do with her death.”

  I waited a moment, letting that thought crystallize in his mind. He was working on it, I could see.

  “Acid Essence of Almonds smells like bitter almonds,” he said. “Not exactly but similar—and while cyanide is a deadly poison, Acid Essence of Almonds is quite harmless.”

  I nodded and let him continue. “You see, when Fraulein Svarovina came after Fraulein Malescu, I gave her the same tour of our facilities here. When we reached the fruit and nuts storage, Fraulein Svarovina had a little trouble speaking and asked me for a glass of water.”

  I looked around. “So you had to go into the next coach to do that—I see no water supply here.”

  “That is correct. So she was here alone for perhaps a minute or a little less—” He broke off with another of his engaging smiles. “That is what you were going to ask me, isn’t it? Was she alone in here at any time?”

  “That is what I was going to ask you,” I conceded. “My next question was going to be—but you probably know that, too.”

  “Was anything missing? That would be your next question—well, no, I didn’t think that, not at first. I mean, she is—she was—the understudy to a famous actress, so I would not expect her to be taking anything.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “But then you can never be sure—there was a Spanish cabinet minister on one of our trips, and he was constantly taking oranges. He didn’t need to do so, we could have—still, never mind.”

  “So later you noticed that ajar of Acid Essence of Almonds was missing.” I had had enough of Herr Hofstatter second-guessing me. It was time for me to pull that on him.

  He smiled good-naturedly. “My pastry chef noticed that a jar was missing.”

  “Thank you for telling me this.”

  He looked anxious. “It is true, you know. Acid Essence of Almonds is quite harmless.”

  “Don’t worry. I appreciate your confidence. There is no blame to be attached to the kitchens on the train in any way.”

  “Come and see us again,” he urged.

  “I will,” I said, “and thanks again.”

  On my way back through the train, I was still putting the pieces together. The aroma of bitter almonds that I had noticed in Malescu’s compartment had bothered me. If she had taken cyanide, she would have been dead. She was not dead—therefore, she had not taken cyanide. Until now, that had remained a puzzle, but it was no longer the case. The aroma I had observed had been from Acid Essence of Almonds and not from cyanide. From there, it was only a short step to a major breakthrough in the case.

  I was still working on that short step when I met Herman Friedlander. The conductor looked unhappy. “Is anything wrong?” I asked him.

  He shook his head angrily. “I cannot get it right. I keep thinking I have it, then it goes wrong.”

  He noticed my perplexed look. “My symphony; I compose it as the train progresses, you see.”

  “Sounds like a hard way to do it.”

  “No, no, I often do this,” he said.

  “Did you enjoy the banquet in Budapest?” I asked.

  “It was very good,” he said, but without enthusiasm.

  “Authentic Hungarian dishes,” I prompted him, but he just shrugged.

  “I gather you won’t be conducting when the Mozart manuscript we are carrying is played in Bucharest?” I said innocently.

  “Bah! Of course not.”

  “Still, some think the manuscript is valuable,” I said. I wasn’t exactly trying to get his goat but he did offer a tempting target for a few digs.

  “I can’t imagine who they could be,” he said scornfully.

  “The manuscript has not yet been authenticated,” Friedlander added.

  “You think it is a fake?”

  “Until it is authenticated—it could be. Although that does not matter. Even should it prove to be actually written by Mozart, that does not make it a worthwhile work. Much of his music is weak, spineless, deficient in true musical content.”

  “A lot of people like his music,” I said, still trying to goad him.

  “People who like Muzak—not music.” Friedlander was at his most contemptuous, and I knew when to give up.

  “I’ll be conducting Salieri in Bucharest,” he continued.

  “Your ancestor.”

  “Precisely. It will be a fine concert. Will you attend?”

  “I would certainly like to do so.”

  “I will send you a complimentary ticket.”

  “Thank you; you’re very kind.”

  He gave me a bow and went off, his head no doubt filled with the music of a large string section, and I hoped he was getting it right.

  I stopped in the nearest toilet room and washed for lunch. It was a casual affair, strung out over about three hours so that the dining coach was sparsely occupied throughout. I presumed the magnificent repast of the previous night had temporarily satiated appetites.

  The afternoon followed much the same pattern. I talked with as many passengers as I could but could not discern any useful information. Most apparently wanted to forget the earlier events and keep the topics trivial.

  The views out of the window were of cultivated land with lots of activity. River traffic increased as we neared the town of Mohacs, and after it, village after village on the riverbank was pursuing its busy routine. We passed several vineyards as we rolled on southwards toward Belgrade.

  When dinnertime came around, the passengers’ lethargy looked to be yielding to a more positive attitude. As I went into the dining coach, there were half a dozen there already, and Erich Brenner waved for me to join him. With him were Dr. Stolz and Eva Zilinsky.

  Herr Brenner had ordered a bottle of Moriezerjo, a wine not seen outside of Hungary, he said. As the Danube Express was still inside the country, he wanted us to taste the dry, golden wine. “It was first produced here in the eighteenth century,” he told us, “by refugees from Bavaria who hacked down the trees and planted vines. The refugees knew how to make wine, and they recognized the soil here to have a high mica and quartz content. This is a very unpleasant combination for the dreaded Phylloxera, the bug that loves vine roots.”

  We watched the waiter pour the rich-colored liquid. “The efforts of the refugees prospered, another reason for their success,” said Herr Brenner, “being that they located their vineyards on mountain slopes, where they are protected from winter frosts yet have a complete absence of shadow in summer.”

  It was dry, surprisingly so in view of its strong color, and with a satisfying and lingering aftertaste rare in a wine suitable for accompanying a meal.

  At another table, I saw Paolo Conti with the Sundvalls and Helmut Lydecker. At another, the Australians and Henri Larouge were ordering already when Irena Koslova came in and joined them.

  At our table, Eva Zilinsky ordered a cold grape soup and carp in horseradish and sour cream sauce. Herr Brenner nodded approval. “Very Hungarian,” he agreed. For himself,
he had a ragout soup, which he told us the Hungarians made from the gizzard, liver, and heart of a turkey. He looked around the table to see who wanted to emulate him, but there no takers. He followed with a sirloin steak with mushrooms.

  Dr. Stolz took an asparagus salad and baked pike, while I had a cucumber salad and red mullet cooked on a spit. Dill and paprika are the only spices used by the Hungarians on the salad.

  The conversation was desultory. Herr Brenner gave us a few reminiscences of earlier trips and the eccentric passengers occasionally contributed, but the doctor was not communicative and concentrated on his meal. Eva Zilinsky tried to live up to what she evidently considered to be her reputation and tossed in a story now and then. I referred to some train journeys of the past, including one or two where the train blew real black smoke and the rails clicked and clacked.

  Herr Brenner’s recommendation for wine was heartily endorsed by all of us, and the waiter brought another bottle. “Dessert,” announced Herr Brenner. “We will all have a Hungarian dessert to mark our last meal in Hungary.”

  No one was inclined to refuse such an invitation, and Herr Brenner called the waiter. “We want a really typical Hungarian dessert,” he said. “What do you propose?”

  The waiter had several suggestions. He began with Dios Pite, a nut cake, then Dobos Torte, a chocolate layer cake. He continued with Kepvisolofank, a very different version of the cream puff. Various fruit or cheese strudels were available too as well as crêpes in a variety of guises.

  It was a tough decision. The waiter mentioned another Hungarian specialty, golden dumplings, and we considered those but eventually, we all went for the Hungarian cream puffs. Served with a glaze of raspberry syrup, they were light as air and scrumptious.

  The wine had gone by the time we had eaten dessert, and I noticed Herr Brenner exchange a few quick words with the waiter. The reason became obvious when the waiter appeared with small, elaborate glasses and a crusted bottle.

  “The pride of Hungary,” Herr Brenner said theatrically. “It is particularly appropriate to serve it now as, at this very moment, we are passing through the region where this is produced. It is the great wine of Hungary—Tokay.”

  Everyone had heard of it, and I was sure that some of us had drunk it, but I had no doubt that Herr Brenner’s description was about to entertain us.

  “There is a condition called ‘noble rot’—it is a fungus that affects grapes. It gives them an unpleasant taste and oxidizes them. Amazingly though, with suitable climatic conditions at the end of the season, it contributes a unique taste to the wine, the reasons for which still cannot be adequately explained.

  “This was first discovered more than a century ago when Prince Rakoczi, the ruler of Transylvania, delayed the harvest on his estate because he was busy with one of his wars and all his workers were fighting. He managed to win that war, and the harvest could not be brought in until late November.”

  “Doesn’t that mean,” asked Eva Zilinsky, “that any vineyard could make Tokay? All they have to do is wait until the weather gets cold—like the Spatlese wines from Germany.”

  “They are simply sweet wines, gathered late,” said Herr Brenner. “Tokay has a taste that is like no other wine—but you can see for yourselves.” He motioned to the waiter. He handled the bottle reverently, with a cloth with colored edges, clearly a special one.

  “This grade is known as Essentia,” said Herr Brenner. “The grapes for this are not pressed, the juice is allowed to drip from the grapes into a tub. It is one of the factors that make Tokay unique. Very few wine producers want to invest that much time in a wine. This is the finest grade of Tokay.”

  It was immeasurably sweet. Little wonder the glasses were tiny and not filled. There was a hint of fruit, a little like apricots but not quite identifiable. The remarkable thing about Tokay—and I had noticed it before—is that its sweetness changes to a dry finish so that the mouth is not left with the cloying sweetness of sugar. It is truly a taste experience quite unlike any other in the wine realm.

  After the Tokay, my dinner companions drifted away one by one. I was left till last because I was observing the table where Irena Koslova sat. The Australians had left already. I watched Larouge speaking to Irena, and she was shaking her head. The Frenchman tried again but finally gave up and left. I thought Irena was looking in the direction of my table, and I walked over to hers.

  “Enjoy your last meal in Hungary for this trip?” she asked me.

  “Yes, it was excellent.”

  “Did you notice that La Malescu is not here?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I hope it doesn’t mean that she has disappeared again.”

  “Elisha Tabor is not here either.”

  “That’s true. A good thing you are here—brightening up the room.”

  She smiled an acknowledgment and rose. I went with her to the door, which a steward opened for us.

  Irena hesitated. “Let me see now—I still have a problem remembering which direction my compartment is.”

  “It’s this way,” I told her. “May I escort you?”

  At the door, she produced her key and inserted it in the lock.

  “A pity we couldn’t sit at the same table,” I said.

  The door swung open. “Larouge and that nice Australian lady waved to me to join them,” she said.

  “Like I say—a pity.”

  She looked into my eyes. Hers were deep and inviting. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, “you’re here now.” She placed a hand at the back of my neck and pulled me into the compartment, adroitly kicking the door closed at the same time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  IRENA WAS STILL SLEEPING the next morning when I woke. She opened her eyes briefly, smiled, turned over, and went back to sleep. I dressed, returned to my compartment to change, and went to the dining coach with a healthy appetite.

  I started with a bowl of fresh fruit, which included plump cherries, juicy apricots, aromatic pears, fat blackberries, and tangy grapefruit slices. One of the chefs was Italian, I knew, and he and his chrome-plated monster of a machine produced a caffe latte that put all its imitations to shame. I asked for a cup of the magnificent brew it produced, then I was ready to order.

  The waiter ran through a tempting array of possibilities. “I want to stay with Hungarian dishes as long as we are still in Hungary,” I told him.

  He motioned out of the window. The rail line was running along the edge of the Danube Valley, looking down two hundred feet or more at the slowly flowing river. The surface was broken by numerous small islands. A castle that was in no worse repair than a score of others we had seen slipped by, and, as we climbed even higher, a vineyard stretched away to the horizon.

  “We travel more slowly at night,” the waiter said, “so we are still in Hungary, though we will be leaving it very soon. Zimony will be the last Hungarian town we pass.”

  “Didn’t it used to be an important frontier station?” I asked.

  “Yes, it did, very important.” He was at least ten years older than I and he smiled with a touch of nostalgia. “But in these days of harmony, frontiers are no longer the exciting places they were in the past. Passports are no longer the vital documents they were—officials would delay a train for two or three hours to examine passports, then the customs people would come through the train with forms and documents and searches and questions.”

  “The good old days?”

  “Ah, you are right. Perhaps some things have changed for the better, what used to take hours now only takes minutes.”

  “Still, all the romance has gone out of it, hasn’t it?” I said. “Frontier guards with their uniforms and guns, the flags, the barriers, the languages—now one frontier is just like another, and the thrilling moments of passing from country to country have vanished.”

  “That is unfortunately true.”

  “At least the Donau Schnellzug maintains a semblance of romance,” I said. “The periodic whistle, the puff of smoke, the s
lower speed … not to mention these coaches.”

  “It is a wonderful train,” he agreed and waited patiently for me to make a breakfast decision, his pen poised.

  “Tell me about the Crêpes with Ham.”

  “Certainly. Flour, salt, eggs, butter, and milk are blended until thick. We let this batter stand at least an hour, then we bake small crêpes. We mince ham and add beaten egg yolks. In another pan, we beat sour cream with white pepper and tarragon and add it to the ham mixture. We spread some on each crêpe and fold into small squares.” He smiled, took a breath, and continued.

  “Each crêpe is then dipped into beaten egg, then into flour, then into egg again, and finally into bread crumbs. The crepes are then fried until crisp and served at once.”

  “I wouldn’t dare order anything else,” I told him. “It sounds irresistible.”

  It was. The tarragon and pepper had been added by a sure hand at spicing, and the crêpe were golden brown and thin, just on the edge of crispy.

  “Something else, Meinherr?” the waiter asked when I had finished.

  “One more cup of this delicious caffe latte,” I said.

  I looked down on a small market square, full of stands and people. It was evidently market day, and the farmers had brought in their wares for sale. Our train moved past it at a reduced speed so that we could take in the full view. It was an animated scene and a Gypsy band was unpacking its instruments. The Zigeuner, the Gypsies, are making a comeback in Hungary after so many decades of repression and brutality by two ruthless totalitarian regimes in succession.

  Now we were approaching the junction point where the broad Save River joins the Danube and widens it considerably. The great War Island sits in the middle of the conflux, and the railbed here runs high along the riverbank. The town of Zimony was coming into sight, surrounded by trees and green hills. This is Croatia once again, after being part of Yugoslavia for so long and Austrian before that. We rolled smoothly past the town and as the waiter brought my second caffe latte, he glanced out the window, and said, “Now we approach Belgrade.” It was the Serbian capital once again after it, too, had been absorbed by Yugoslavia.