Читать книгу Darling, impossible! - Eva Novy - Страница 9

She’s not here. I’m ten minutes late and she’s not here.

I panic.

Maybe Mama was right. Maybe Eva is bad news. What on earth am I doing here? I can just hear Eva’s voice as she booms over the telephone line to her own Dotsis and Puncis, laughing out loud about that skinny, sickly granddaughter of Agi who is still single and, imagine daahrlink, comes to me to learn Hungarian because her own mother simply forgot.

I check my phone. There is a voicemail from Dr Horvath’s receptionist reminding me of my new appointment time and a cryptic text from Sam: don’t do anything I wouldn’t do ;)

I shouldn’t have come so late. I spent an irritating morning working on a portrait of Anyu that looked at me accusingly. It got worse and worse with every layer of paint. It was the eyes. Anyu was watching me.

I take a deep breath. I settle into a booth in a far corner of the café and I wait. I think back to my last words with Eva.

“Come to the café on Saturday, daahrlink. I’ll be there at eleven.”

She didn’t have to explain. I knew exactly which café she meant. It used to be the place to be seen in Double Bay: the place for Continental delicacies with a Hungarian accent, the place of my childhood. The Oktogon.

I haven’t been here in more than fifteen years. Zany Gypsy music spills out from behind the bar. It’s the soundtrack of my childhood: slow, repetitive whining that gradually builds up into a heated frenzy and when it finally hits that crescendo, there’s only momentary relief. I wait for it to start all over again.

It’s a bit early in the morning for frantic violins, but I smile. I’m home.

I look around. The place is empty. The smell of simmering bableves, bean soup, seeps in from the kitchen doorway and suddenly I’m six years old again. I remember long afternoons in one of these dark booths by a mirrored wall, sweating on sticky, burgundy vinyl benches. I remember the smell of fried onions and the sound of bickering in a disorienting blend of English and Hungarian. I remember the little tears in the seats that opened up under pressure, revealing a yellowy, spongy mattress that crumbled in your fingers and stuck under your nails. There was the fat delivery boy from the pastry shop. There were never-ending bowls of creamed spinach and the smell of cinnamon on my plum dumplings. I remember feeling at home.

I also remember when Mama told me that we would not be going back there anymore. I didn’t ask why. There was no point. I knew the answer already: Don’t be an idiot, Lily.

But that was more than fifteen years ago. I’m an adult now. I can have coffee wherever I like.

I think.

“I’ll see you there, daahrlink, don’t be late,” Eva had warned me as she tumbled out of Sam’s Jeep. Brilliant, I thought. We’ll be safe there. I knew it would be the one place neither Mama nor Anyu would ever set foot, the one place their friends would never go, the ultimate safe haven. Still, I choose the booth furthest from the street front and sit with my back to the window.

You just never know.

I order a black coffee from an earnest-looking waiter with a sexy just-got-out-of-bed hairstyle. My fourth coffee for the day. He smiles sweetly as he rushes by. I wonder where he’s going in such a hurry. Apart from a young Asian couple hovering dreamily over a giant bowl of rainbow ice-cream and a middle-aged woman agonising over the cake display, the place is empty.

The Oktogon isn’t what it used to be. The room looks neglected. Lonely, limp carnations rest on every table beside unlit candles in petite glass bottles. Faded burgundy drapes frame dull mirrored walls. A heap of coffee-table-book-sized menus in tattered vinyl covers lies in a leaning tower beside the bar. A row of identical, bronze, semi-naked ladies with feathered headdresses lines the wall stretching all the way to the front door. One leans casually over my head balancing an orb in her outstretched palm. But there’s nothing enchanting about her: the unlit bulb is mottled and discoloured and the end of her perky nose is chipped.

The waiter notices me from the other side of the empty room; he smiles again, scratches his head, buzzes around in an awkward semi-pirouette and then scurries off excitedly through the swinging doors to the kitchen. The Asian couple leave quietly and their leftovers sit on the table melting into a brown mess. What’s happened to my Oktogon? Where is the bustle and commotion, the prancing and gossiping? I remember constantly wrinkling up my nose at the strong perfumes and waiting ages in the queue to the toilet. I remember fancy outfits, glamorous women applying lipstick in front of the mirror, and the incessant ka-ching of the register. Now all I see are leftovers. The Oktogon is no longer Old World. It’s just plain old.

The entire Double Bay, or as we like to say, Double Pay, isn’t what it used to be. Though it may still be home to the chic designer boutiques and Viennese-style coffee houses that originally gave it its reputation for glamour and wealth, there’s a palpable change on the streets. New money. Young money. The sunglasses are still big, the accents still strong, the perfume still potent, but these are no longer my people. The accent has changed. It is an accent fed on different flavours, different guilt trips, different tales of hardship and escape on their way to the Lucky Country. Gone are the elegant women in Chanel leaving three-hour salon appointments with big hair, carefully balancing their handbags on outstretched freshly painted nails; gone are the parties of suntanned, open-shirted gentlemen with heavy gold chains sipping cappuccinos at roadside tables. Instead there are groups of Asian university students sharing frozen yoghurt sundaes on plastic furniture and handsome, young, Armenian accountants at American coffee chains ordering double caramel decaf mochaccinos with soy milk.

It used to be that everyone knew me in Double Bay. I couldn’t take three steps without someone pinching my cheeks or thrusting some sweets in my hand. They’d lean forward, bend down, throw me a token how’s school? and then turn to Mama or Anyu without waiting for a reply and start talking in Hungarian. I’d squash ants in the cracks on the footpath with my sandals or nibble on the chocolate croissant I’d been handed until it would be time to go the next three steps. But that was many years ago.

As soon as I was old enough to stay home by myself, I rarely chose to accompany Mama or Anyu and their friends on their window-shopping coffee-house-stopping Double Bay circuits. When I eventually started going out with friends and boys unchaperoned, I preferred the anonymous, urban streets of Darlinghurst, Sydney’s more hip, less up-market version of a café-boutique neighbourhood or the trendy Danks Street, where my gallery is. It was there that I had my first taste of freedom. The sound of sirens, the smell of bus fumes, the feel of grit and grime under my fingernails, the sight of facial piercings, purple hair, random graffiti. There I could wander all day without bumping into a single familiar face.

I never imagined how lonely that would feel here in Double Bay.

“What a surprise. I didn’t think you’d come.” A throaty voice comes out of nowhere, tired, jaded. I can’t tell whether she’s pleased or irritated.

“Eva?”

“Change places with me, will you, daahrlink? I have to keep my eye on them.” I move to the other side of the booth, my inner thigh smack bang on top of one of those bristly cuts in the vinyl, my face exposed, directly opposite the front door. “Is that all you’re having? Nixon, Nixon daahrlink,” she sits down with a thump and calls over the waiter. “Bring us a nice piece of cake will you? The big one, daahrlink. Oh, don’t look so worried, Lily. It’s not for you.” She slaps his bottom as he zooms away, then bellows after him. “And get me a coffee, daahrlink, would you?” Vood you?

“Sugar today?” he calls back.

“Five sugars! But don’t stir … you know I don’t like it sweet.” She coughs up half her lungs and then whispers in my direction. “He’s gorgeous, you know, but so simple …”

We watch him fumble over the cake display and we wait. He finally arrives with a generous portion of Black Forest cake, mounds of fresh cream atop a mountain of chocolate sponge littered with ruby-red cherries and snowflakes of icing.

I feel sick. Anyu is going to kill me.

“See ya, ladies,” he announces, and then something in Hungarian. Eva responds, but I just stare at him. Something’s not right. He’s too young and too handsome to be speaking Hungarian. Only old people speak Hungarian.

Eva changes to English. “Meet my niece Lily. This is Nixon, daahrlink. Isn’t he gorgeous?” I manage a half-smile. Niece? “Well we are sort of related, by marriage anyway.”

So she is family. That answers my first question.

“See ya, Lily,” he says, smiling. Is he saying goodbye? What do I say?

“Lily wants to learn Hungarian, don’t you, daahrlink?”

I cringe.

But she’s right. We are not here for fun. I take out a small exercise book and a pencil. I scribble a quick title: Hungarian Lessons, November 2009. Ready for action. Business only. I may be her niece, but this is no social call. I want that to be clear.

I conscientiously write down “see ya” on the first page.

“It’s with a ‘z’. S-Z-I-A. Szia.” Nixon reaches across the table to point out my mistake. “Szia. ‘Sz’ always sounds like an ‘s’ in Hungarian. Our ‘s’ is pronounced ‘sh’, and our …” I tune out. Eva’s right. He is gorgeous. Clear, hazel eyes look straight into mine, as if without a care in the world. He has a handsome, boyish face with a sprinkling of freckles on his cheeks and two adorable little dimples framing a soft mouth. There’s something earnest about him. (Or is it simple?) There’s no design about his messy hair, no pretence in his voice, no hidden melodrama in his wrinkled brow. Anyu will definitely hate him.

“… so you see once you know how a letter is pronounced, it never changes, never ever. It’s easy as pizza pie!” The waiter Eva calls Nixon has just given me my first Hungarian lesson: Hungarian is actually easy to learn.

“What does it mean, then?” I ask. “What’s szia?”

Eva manages an opinion in between a mouthful of cream and a hearty cough. “Don’t worry too much about szia, daahrlink. That’s not what you’re here for. Only real Hungarians say szia. We don’t talk like that.”

We means Jews, or Hungarian Jews who, according to my family, are not really Hungarian at all. Jews are different. They look different, speak differently, dress differently, value their family differently. Jews are educated differently, gamble differently, drink and beat up their wives differently. All this is fine until a non-Jewish Hungarian says anything about us being different. I wonder whether Nixon is Jewish. I wonder whether he is offended, if he understands.

But he doesn’t bat an eyelid. “You know what szervusz means, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I say. Szervusz means both hello and goodbye. It is one of the few words of Hungarian I already know, together with bazd meg az anyád (fuck your mother) and nem akarok fürődni (I don’t want a bath). Invaluable phrases indeed, but they only take you so far in a conversation.

“Well szervusz is old fashioned now. Hungarians have replaced it with szia,” Nixon continues. “And it’s not even true Hungarian word.” Eva rolls her eyes. “Lots of people use it, don’t they, Eva néni? Austrians, Germans … It comes from the Latin: servus humillimus, I am your most humble servant.”

I smile. I can’t imagine the Hungarians I know being anyone’s humble anything.

“And szia is so Hungarian then?” Eva asks. “Nixon daahrlink, stop putting propaganda into a little girl’s head. Such a proud Hungarian, he hasn’t told you where szia comes from, has he? Did you ever play poker, Lily?”

I nod.

“The only English these Hungarians remember comes from their beloved card games – I see ya 250 forints, and I raise ya another 500. Don’t let them tell you how humble they are, Lily, don’t fall for it.”

“Yes,” Nixon says, earnestly. “It does come from English, or probably American.” I watch his eyes light up. America! “It’s from see ya later. It means the same as szervusz. Hello and goodbye.” His entire body straightens up with pride. “Only more modern, of course.”

“Vonderful!” Eva says. She licks her fork. “Go get me another piece of cake, would you? Lily’s not hungry. I’m eating here for two.” She then turns to me as he diligently dashes away. “What?” she says. Vot? “He needs something to do.”

I watch him at the counter. He carefully prepares the cake, stopping every so often to throw a comment back towards the kitchen. He gets more and more distracted until he finally gives up on Eva’s order and disappears through the swinging doors behind him.

“Nixon’s a funny name,” I say to Eva. I’m not so interested in our lessons anymore.

Eva sighs. “I know. I know. Not everyone is like us,” she whispers. “Yes, everyone dreamed of escaping, but not everyone had the balls to leave in fifty-six like us. And when it was too late, it was just too late.”

Hungarians talk about “fifty-six” like everyone else knows what they’re talking about. It was the year of the Hungarian Revolution. Hurting from years of harsh Stalinist rule, the Hungarians staged a revolution which was quickly quashed by Soviet tanks. In those few short, chaotic weeks during which the borders were open, over a quarter of a million Hungarians fled the country, among them Eva, Anyu and my father. Those who got out quickly were the lucky ones. The West, deep in anti-Communist sentiment, opened its borders, its hearts and its wallets, and these refugees could literally go wherever they wished. But for those left behind, there was no more chance to escape. The Iron Curtain fell again, heavier than ever before, and it would be another forty years before Hungarians were allowed to leave. But it didn’t stop the population from dreaming.

“They dreamed of America, they did. So when Nixon was born, they gave him a name that would help him in the big, wide world. But imagine, I’ll let him tell you one day what it was like to grow up in state-run socialist youth groups with a name like Nixon.” She stops momentarily for another coughing fit. “Between you and me, daahrlink, his parents were peasants. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Why not call him Pierre or something more intelligent if they wanted him to leave Hungary one day?”

I laugh. Anyu and her friends are the same. For their generation of women, no one is more sophisticated or refined than the French. No one more complicated or elegant. And as for Americans, no one is more crass.

“And they didn’t even realise, you see, that Nixon is a family name.”

I know this about Hungarians. They always say the last name first. It’s Horvath Georgie, Freedman Eva, Nixon Richard. “So it’s Nixon with a bloody ‘X’. Come daahrlink, let me show you the Hungarian letters.” She snatches the exercise book from my hands and takes over. She writes down the alphabet. “They are a little bit different to what you are used to, you know. But you’ll be happy in the end. Once you know how they are pronounced, they’ll never change on you. Ever.”

I listen to her deep, scratchy voice go through the sounds, and watch her long, red claws point one by one to the elegantly scrawled letters on the page. I diligently repeat after her: ahh, beh, tzeh … I catch a glimpse of Nixon at the bar. He really is cute. He is excited and animated, arms all over the place, talking to a big man in a bloodstained white apron who, if not for his jovial cheeks and lively eyes, looks more like an axe murderer than anyone I’d imagine seeing in a Double Bay café. I wonder if they’re talking about me.

“Concentrate, Lily!” Eva snaps. “Come, repeat after me.”

I don’t know what I am expecting from my first Hungarian lesson, but sitting here repeating isolated, meaningless sounds one after the other isn’t part of it. I know I won’t leave the café this afternoon able to speak Hun­­gar­ian, equipped with a new understanding of my personal history and cultural identity. But there is something surreal about my quest. I am, after all, learning the unlearnable. And Eva’s not helping.

She senses my frustration. “Lily, come on! You are the one who wants to learn Hungarian. I know this already!”

But I can’t help myself. “I want to learn sentences. This is boring!” I’m a little shocked that I actually said it, but it’s the truth.

Eva isn’t shocked at all. “Now come on, daahrlink, you’re just being like your grandmother now. Don’t be ridiculous. Hungarian is, after all, impossible to learn!” She coughs and reaches for her unlit cigarette. “Think you know best? You have to trust me, Lily. We can do this, but you have to let me do things my way. Okay?”

I nod. My vay.

“Jesus,” she says. “What on earth has she done to you, you poor thing? I didn’t really imagine she would fuck you up so badly.”

Three tables arrive at the same time for lunch and Eva gets up to seat them. I pack my stuff and leave the café hungry and exhausted. I sit in my car and stare at the crisp exercise book. Hungarian Lessons, November 2009. I think about my outburst and the cute Hungarian waiter called Nixon. Eva gave me some homework and we arranged to meet again next Saturday morning, although, to be honest, I’m not so sure I’ll be there.

But then there is Nixon. Maybe this whole thing isn’t such a bad idea after all.

I open the first page and practise the alphabet. Ahh, beh, tzeh … I go through the entire alphabet, and then again. I shake my head.

Typical.

There is no X.