“Do the gentlemen like half-cooked gristle?” Sziklai thereupon ordered Wiener schnitzel, at which the waitress, closing her eyes and pursing her lips, asked him:
“Tell me, in all honesty, when and where did you last see a Wiener schnitzel?” At this, Sziklai, seemingly exasperated, started to pick a quarreclass="underline"
“But it’s here, on the menu!” he shouted.
“Of course it’s there,” the waitress retorted. “What kind of a menu would it look like without Wiener schnitzel?”
It struck Köves that they were playing some kind of legpulling parlour game with each other, to which distant shouts and the waitress’s sudden impatience put an end. “Enough!” she said. “Our charming guests are already being kept waiting at other tables. You’ll get potato hot-pot!”
And with that she was off, while Sziklai, his features suddenly cracking and the boyish smile surfacing among them, enlightened Köves:
“That’s Alice, the waitress,” which Köves cheerfully noted. That cheerfulness switched over to frank enthusiasm when it turned out that the potato hot-pot was actually not potato hot-pot, and under the mixture of potatoes and eggs Köves’s probing fork prodded a fine slice of meat, whereupon he was just about to open his mouth when Sziklai intimated by vigorous head-shaking that he ought to keep his mouth shut (clearly they were being accorded a privilege of some kind). “You can always count on Alice,” was all Köves was able to get out of Sziklai.
That was not the case with the other fidgeting, gesticulating or, to the contrary, sluggish or even mutely absorbed customers hovering near at hand or farther away in the sweltering half-light, about whom Sziklai seemed to know everything, with Köves taking in only a fraction of what he said about them. Regarding a fat, balding man, whose sickly-coloured face, despite the occasional mopping with a handkerchief as big as a bedsheet, was constantly glistening with perspiration and whose table seemed to be a sort of focal point, at which people arrived in a hurry, then settled for a while before jumping up again, whereas others stayed there for longer exchanges of ideas, a person whom Sziklai himself also greeted (the bald man cordially returned the nod), Köves found out that he was the “Uncrowned,” and although who gave him that nickname was unclear, its import was easy to explain because he was the uncrowned king there, with half the coffee bar working just for him, Sziklai recounted.
“How come?” Köves enquired.
“Because,” said Sziklai, “the chap was actually pensioned off as unfit for service.” And when Köves asked what kind of service he had been engaged in previously, Sziklai responded: “What do you think, then?” and although Köves didn’t think anything, being simply too lazy to think anything at all, nevertheless, pretending to take the hint, he dropped in an “Aha!”, and it seemed that was precisely the answer expected from him. Now, he continued, “taking into consideration his previous merits” (and here Sziklai gave Köves a meaningful wink), the Uncrowned was granted permission to vend scarves and shawls to peasant women at provincial markets, as well as to take photographs of peasants and sell them the pictures. The permit was originally made out in the Uncrowned’s name, authorizing him alone to sell and to take photographs. But then, for one thing, there was so much to do — peasants, normally the most mistrustful of people, Sziklai related, virtually turn into kids the moment someone wants to take a family photograph of them, so much so that it could happen there wasn’t even any film in the camera (given that it wasn’t always possible to obtain film in the shops), so they clicked the machine with an empty cartridge, took the deposit that had been agreed on, and of course the peasants subsequently never received the pictures that had been “taken,” while the name and address given by the photographer, naturally, proved false — so much work that one man couldn’t possibly get through it, besides which the Uncrowned was a severe diabetic and had heart disease. Also, there were plenty of people who needed “papers,” said Sziklai. That was how they would come to be working for the Uncrowned: one way or another, he would obtain an official document for them, which stated that they were working for a non-profit company. That way they would not be open to charges of workshyness or sponging, nor could he be called to account for giving employment to what was maybe a nationwide network of agents. Because of course nobody, not even the Uncrowned, could give employment to any agents, could they; agents, on the other hand, could never work as agents without appropriate papers which certified they were not in fact agents, so they were therefore dependant on each other, said Sziklai, and the Uncrowned was respected not just as a boss but as their benefactor.
“What about him over there?” Köves gestured with his head toward a farther-off table by the street-side window, where he saw a silver-maned man, whose rugged face with its marked unruly features seemed to vouch for extraordinary passions that were held in check only with great difficulty. He wore spectacles with double lenses, the outer of which were dark-tinted and could be flipped up (as Köves could tell because they happened to be flipped up), and he seemed to be immersed in some occupation that could not be made out from where they were — Köves would not have been surprised if it were to turn out he was writing a musical score or painting miniature pictures. Sziklai’s face, however, burst almost into splinters when his gaze swung across in the direction Köves was indicating:
“Pumpadour,” he laughed. In his free time he, too, was one of the Uncrowned’s employees. To paint the dye onto the fabric intended for peasant women they used a spray device driven, or pumped, by a treadle, and that work is usually done by Pumpadour, which is the name given him by the Uncrowned, who incidentally appreciates the joke and is a fan of the theatre, and by way of a full-time job Pumpadour worked for the theatre across the street as one of the extras (Köves was almost surprised, this being the first he had heard that the town had a theatre), beside which he also took on repairing clocks and watches. No doubt that’s what he was doing right then, repairing someone’s watch, though while on the subject it often occurs that once he’s taken a watch to bits he’s never able to put it together again, and all the customer gets back is the dial, the metal case, and a heap of tiny springs and cogs, carefully wrapped in a sheet of paper, despite which he’s never short of work, because the way he shakes a watch, puts it to his ear, opens its lid to take a look at the clockwork through those double-lensed spectacles — that inspires people with confidence time after time, not to speak of the low prices he charges.
All Köves could learn about a blonde woman — a striking figure, the way she propped her face, interesting after its own fashion, with the chin resting on her folded hands, staring with an empty gaze at nothing, an untouched glass of spirits on the table — was the name by which she was known in the South Seas: “the Transcendental Concubine,” whereas it was Sziklai who drew his attention to a grey-templed, suntanned, conspicuously elegant gentleman, remarking that Uncle André was “the Chloroformist.”
“How’s that?” Köves laughed, and Sziklai related that once upon a time, when foreign countries still had links by international railways, Uncle André used to strike up acquaintances with rich ladies travelling first class, then by night press a wad of cotton wool, doused with chloroform, over their faces and then rob them; according to Sziklai, even now Uncle André knew by heart the timetable of all the express trains on the continent (if express trains were still running, that is, and the old timetables were still valid), even though he personally had been “withdrawn from service” on several occasions, indeed for long years at a time. As to what he did nowadays “to maintain standards,” all Sziklai knew was: