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.