"What happened, Adam? What's wrong?"
"Hungry," I muttered, dragging my feet on the painted stone floor.
Greta rounded the bar with surprising speed for such a big-boned woman. She caught my arm and led me to my table. I dropped into a chair.
"Just a moment, Adam."
She left me and I slumped down lower in the chair.
"Is he sick?" I heard a customer inquire.
"Just tired, Moshe. Nothing to worry about," Greta said, her shoes clicking a quick rhythm on the tiles.
Less than a minute later she placed on the table a hunk of dark bread and a wedge of hard cheese and a sharp wood-handled knife.
"I'll be back with more soon."
I didn't bother slicing the cheese, just bit off a chunk with my teeth. I tore off a lump of bread and crammed it in my mouth. I chewed with eyes and mouth half open, caught in some bestial trance. I swallowed the food before I had chewed it properly, and it hurt my throat as it went down. I only felt the pain vaguely, as I did the taste. The food Greta brought could have been the watery soup they had served in Auschwitz or it could have been a feast worthy of kings. I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was that there was a lot of it.
One mouthful followed another. Dimly I was aware of Greta laying a plateful of powdered eggs and vegetables on the table. She returned half a minute later with a pot of coffee and a glass. "Plenty of sugar," she said.
I nodded, giving a guttural grunt of approval. I could not acknowledge her with words. My mouth was too busy.
In less than two minutes, I had finished the bread and the cheese. The hunger inside me took it all in and demanded more.
There must have been enough powdered eggs for three or four men, all scrambled together into one big white-yellow mess. It all went down, as did the vegetables. I drank one cup of coffee after another until the pot was dry. Normally, I added very little sugar to my coffee or none at all. On that day, though, the oversweet coffee Greta had made was what I craved.
I went through another half loaf of bread, this time with margarine and sardines, and finished up with a thick slice of apple pie and a prodigious amount of orange soda.
Finally, the hunger was sated. I threw down the fork with which I had dismembered the apple pie, and sat back in my chair. My hands were no longer shaking, and the cold I was feeling was the natural result of sweat evaporation. My jaw muscles hurt from all the chewing I'd done, and my throat felt raw and abraded. Greta was seated on the opposite side of the table, peering at me. As I met her eyes, the worry lines in her forehead smoothed.
"Better?" she said. "Go wash your face. I'll clear the dishes and we'll talk."
I rose unsteadily to my feet. There were five other customers at the café, all men, and all were staring openly at me, as if I were some circus freak. In a way, I guess I was. I gave each of them a hard stare until they averted their eyes. I staggered to the bathroom. There was a small mirror above the sink and I gave myself a look. My face was drained of color. I could only imagine how pale I had been when I came into the café, before Greta loaded me with food. My stomach felt bloated and heavy. I considered throwing up, but I don't waste food. The water from the faucet was cold and felt great as I splashed it on my face. I cupped water in my hands and drenched my hair and the back of my neck. Some of it ran into my mouth and I tasted the bitter-salty taste of my sweat.
Greta was at my table. She'd brought a pitcher of water and had already poured each of us a tall glass.
"Now," she said as I dropped back into my chair, "tell me what happened."
The café was empty. While I was washing my face, Greta had shooed the rest of her customers out and flipped the open/closed sign on her door.
"You shouldn't have done that," I said. "Now I'm costing you money."
"Now?" Greta smiled. "You're saying that as if you haven't been costing me money till today. Never mind about that. I want to know what happened. Besides, do you think the sight of a ghostlike man stumbling into my café, who then proceeds to eat like a herd of cows, is conducive to the healthy appetite of my customers? Don't worry about them. They're regulars, sort of like you are. They'll be back tomorrow."
Greta's café was a sort of second home to me (perhaps even first). I spent considerable time there nearly every day and often received clients there. Shortly after I began patronizing her café, Greta had encountered a problem: a local thug had tried to squeeze her for protection money. I made the thug understand that Greta was off-limits. I requested no payment from Greta and she began not charging me for my food and drinks. It was an informal arrangement—I liked being in her café, and Greta liked having me around. She made me feel at home, and I made her feel safe. Sort of like family does. After a while, it turned into a kind of intimate joke. We both referred to me as her "best customer" and discussed at length the beneficial effect I had on her bottom line.
Now I felt that this arrangement had run its course.
"I insist on paying this time."
I dug into my pocket, took out the folded notes Milosh had given me as payment, and handed them to her.
Greta shook her head, making her swollen nest of salt-and-pepper curls dance about her head. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Come on. Take it. I feel bad enough as it is. It's time I started paying, anyway. You haven't had any trouble for months."
"And I don't expect to have any, not while you're here every day."
"Paying won't make me go away. I come here every day because I like this place. Take it."
She looked at me for a moment. "You won't let this go, will you?"
"No," I said. "I won't."
She took the money with a sigh. "I'll charge you half price starting tomorrow. Take it or leave it."
I nodded acquiescence. "Deal. But I plan on advancing to a full-paying customer soon."
"Fine, fine. Now tell me what is going on."
I told Greta of my chance encounter with Yosef Kaplon on the street, how I had gone to see him play at Café Budapest, and about the beauty of his music. I related to her our conversation after the performance, and Kaplon's survival story and grief for his mother. Then I told her of his suicide and being hired by Milosh Dobrash and of what I had uncovered so far.
"And then I got struck by the Hunger and made my way here," I said.
"Gave me quite a scare, you did. You looked like a bleached sheet," Greta said, and I could see the dismay in her eyes. "It was even worse than the other time."
I nodded. I had experienced what I had come to call 'Hunger attacks' before. They were rare and I did not know what caused them. Greta had seen me through a previous attack, which was why I came to her café when I felt the Hunger coming, and didn't stop in any other place I passed on the way.
"Something about this case is getting to me. The truth is that I already have enough for my client, but…"
"But not enough for you," Greta said.
I nodded. "And I'm not sure why that is. I barely knew the man. Even in the camp, he was but one face out of many. Why is it important for me to know why he killed himself, especially now that I've fulfilled my assignment and will not be paid for additional work?"
Greta was slow in responding. She sipped her water, gave me that compassionate look she had when her eyes seemed to get bigger and deeper, and said, "Perhaps you're afraid."
"Afraid? Of what?"
"That you might not be as strong as you think you are. That if this man who survived Auschwitz suddenly broke apart and took his own life, it might also happen to you. And maybe you think that if you understood why he did it, that you'll be safe, safe from yourself."