The only other occupants were two teens pressed romantically against the doors at the other end of the car. The train slowed to a stop at, according to the sign posted above the door, ARANY JÁNOS UTCA, named for the father of Hungarian nationalist poetry — some said of Hungarian nationalism itself. There, two Gypsies, one skinny and one preposterously fat, entered through the rear doors. It occurred to him that he had not purchased a ticket. The larger of them looked at Harkályi, but avoided making eye contact. The train started to move. He placed the wet plastic bag on the seat beside him and discretely patted the left side of his breast, as if his billfold may have already disappeared, and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets in order to keep his arms fast against his body for protection. The skinnier of the two men stood at the far door, looking out into the nothingness of subterranean Budapest, while the other planted his sizeable frame strangely close to the groping couple. Harkályi stared at him, watched him slide his right elbow forcefully against the small of the young man’s back. The boy did not respond. With his left hand— Harkályi saw all of this quite clearly — the Gypsy easily removed the boy’s wallet from the back pocket of his dungarees, then discretely handed it to the skinny man. The skinny man walked to the front of the train, toward Harkályi, and flashed a defiant smile that convinced him to remain silent. The Gypsies stood in their respective doorways and remained there even as the train stopped at Deák Square, the hub of the entire metro system, where all three of the city’s underground lines met. Would-be riders approached the doors of his car from the platform, but seeing the dark-skinned men blocking their paths, moved on quickly to the adjoining cars. When the orange lights buzzed again, signaling that the doors would now close, both men darted out, leaving Harkályi alone once more with the young lovers. He felt for his billfold one more time and found it safely in place. He had trouble controlling his breathing. When he got off at Ferenciek Square he looked back to see that the victimized lovers remained oblivious, ignorant, for the time being, of what had occurred. The hóvirág, which Harkályi had forgotten, traveled with them.
4.
A small cadre of waiters appeared from the kitchen, each burdened by a gigantic, round tray covered with flutes of pale, sparkling wine. They marched out in a solemn, single-file line, followed closely behind by an equal number of young waitresses in traditional, tightly bodiced servant attire. The conversations, the clink-clinking of silver against glass, even the drunken sing-along emanating from another, unseen room, all petered out until the entire coffee house arrived at a briefly sustained moment of silent incredulity. The processional soon splintered off into discrete pairs, who then distributed complimentary beverages to every table.
The building lacked the old-world charm that Harkályi had anticipated, but it was indeed warm and lively and appeared capable of providing an authentic Hungarian meal. He sat on a bench along the right-hand wall of the wide, main room, which also housed two long rows of round tables and a series of close-together, four-man tables, one of which he shared with three tweed-clad and spectacled men engaged in a rigorous debate he couldn’t comprehend. He took them for university professors, or some other variety of public intellectual. A balcony opposite his seat contained yet another seating area, and from the sound, there seemed to be even more dining rooms hidden from his current view. He watched the men at his table order coffee after coffee, which they interrupted with the occasional Unicum, an oil-black digestive that smelled uncomfortably like compost and left a green-blue coat inside the bulbs of their stemmed glasses. They didn’t acknowledge him. A raucous game of chess two tables over earned a small crowd of observers.
A mustachioed waiter appeared at their table holding over his right shoulder a heavy tray of glassware. The waitress with him carefully plucked four of them from different sections of the tray’s surface, helping the waiter maintain a safely balanced distribution of weight. “Tessék,” she said, setting one before each of them at the table. The intellectuals did not respond or even appear to notice. “Köszönöm szépen,” Harkályi told her, earning a lovely smile despite fumbling so egregiously over his pronunciation and, without question, his accent. The men at his table turned briefly toward the foreigner among them and then promptly resumed their strenuous argument and gesticulation. No one else acknowledged the sparkling wine, so Harkályi ignored his as well, busying himself by consulting his map yet again and watching the excitement around him. The bubbles in his flute soon stopped rising and conspired around the lip of the glass. In the time of his grandparents, and even of his parents, the coffee house had served as the firmament of Budapest’s social and intellectual spheres. It was an informal establishment, or less formal than in years past, yet it remained governed by a certain civility that he did appreciate. He had found nothing similar in America, and only distant approximations in Vienna and Paris.
The noise slowly swelled until, at midnight, the maître d’hôtel appeared near his station at the exit and, with a wireless microphone, begged for the attention of his patrons, who obediently complied. The massive team of waiters and waitresses then stood among the tables, each with his or her own glass of formerly sparkling wine. Even a few of the white-clad chefs stood in the kitchen doors for the duration of the five-minute speech, of which Harkályi clearly discerned just “Magyarország” and “szabadság,” which the maître d’ repeated frequently. Hungary and liberty. It was a toast in honor of Independence Day, the anniversary of the 1848 uprising against the Hapsburg Dynasty — and the outward excuse for Harkályi’s return. When he finished, finally, the maître d’ lifted his glass, looked around at his attentive audience, and said, “Egészségetekre.”
The others at Harkályi’s table lifted their glasses. “Egészségedre, egészségedre,” they said all at once, and touched their glasses to Harkályi’s. “Egészségedre.”
He was uncertain, at first, how to respond. “Cheers,” he said. “Cheers. Cheers.”
One of the intellectuals, the man next to him on the bench, asked him, “You are English?” His thick eyeglasses did not mask the circles beneath his eyes, which were as black as the peels of rotten bananas.
“No. I am … I am an American, I guess you could say.” He longed for the distraction of his meal, if only the chefs would stay in the kitchen long enough to prepare it.
“American,” another of the men said. He was fat and bald, with a face more sympathetic than those of the others. The buttons of his shirt barely contained the body and undershirt trying to escape from beneath them. “We will teach you to say ‘egészségedre.’ It means—”
‘“To your health,’” Harkályi said.
“You can speak Hungarian?”
“No, but I learned a small amount as a child. I was born here in Budapest.”
“What? Then you are a Hungarian, not an American!” the third interrogator said. He was only slightly less fat.