Fiasco (25 page)

“I understand,” said Köves. “My thanks to you, Chairman.”

“For what?” the old fellow asked, patently astonished. “I didn’t say anything! But I can see how much you want to go, and I won’t hold you up. We’ll stay a little longer. Here, rascal!” he called out to his dog. He did not offer his hand either, as if he had forgotten to do so or had taken offence at Köves.

He may have got there too early, though of course it was also a Sunday: Köves could not see a single free table in the South Seas. He had already spotted Sziklai beforehand—to Köves’s considerable surprise he was sitting at the table of a man with a grey moustache and some kind of uniform—not a military or police one, nor even anything like that of the customs men: rack his brains as he might, the only other bodies among Köves’s acquaintances whose members might wear a uniform were railway workers and firemen—but in any event he did not get beyond his own arbitrary guesswork as he was approaching the table. Sziklai was appearing not to recognize him, and it was only the vigorous shaking of a hand dangled under the table which gave Köves to understand that he should not take a seat there for the time being, nor even greet him. There was the usual hum in the place, the usual smells, and great merriment at the Uncrowned’s table: as he passed, the way regulars do with one another, Köves gave an easygoing nod, while the Uncrowned, his thighs wide apart, his waistcoat unbuttoned over his belly, and in mid-guffaw (evidently someone had just told a joke or funny
story) good-humouredly called over to Köves: “Good evening, Mr. Editor!” Sitting at a table further away, in a tight, outmoded suit, with a strangely cascading necktie and a rakish stuck-on moustache (it could only have been stuck-on because a day ago not so much as a bristle had been sprouting on the spot), was Pumpadour: there must have been an interval between two acts at the theatre and he had popped across in his costume for a drink, or perhaps because he had an important message for the Transcendental Concubine, who, chin resting on her hands, was listening to him impassively, her gaze emptily fixed, maybe on transcendence, maybe on nowhere (three empty spirits glasses were already lined up before her). Toward the rear was a noisy crowd: the table reserved for the musicians (as Köves had learned from Sziklai some time before), who would later be dispersing to go to the nightclubs where they were engaged. Not long before, Köves had spotted among them a conspicuous figure, his physiognomy, over a polka-dot bow tie, broad as the moon: his acquaintance, the bar pianist, who in turn noticed Köves and joyfully got to his feet in order to greet him, so that Köves abandoned Sziklai for a moment.

“Well now!” exclaimed the bar pianist, sinking Köves’s proffered hand into his own huge, soft fist, “Have you found it yet?”

“What?” Köves asked, having no idea offhand what the pianist could be asking him to account for.

“You said you were looking for something.”

“Yes, of course, of course,” said Köves; the musician evidently had a better recollection of his words than he himself did: “Not yet,” at which the pianist, for whatever reason, seemed satisfied, as though he had been fearing the opposite and was now relieved.

“Where did you meet Tiny, the pianist?” Sziklai asked, when Köves sat back down at their table, and Köves, glad that he was at last able to say something new to Sziklai, told him about the bench and the pianist’s dread. “How do you mean, scared?… Him of all
people?…,” Sziklai’s harsh features began to crack bit by bit from the smile which spread across them.

“Why?” Köves asked, finding Sziklai’s amazement somewhat unsettling, “Is that so incredible?”

“What do you think,” Sziklai countered. “Who do you suppose plays the piano in the Twinkling Star?”

“Aha!” Köves responded, whereupon Sziklai’s “You see!” carried the air of didactic superiority of someone who had managed to bring order to Köves’s confused frame of reference.

In the “Rumpus Room,” the name given to a low-ceilinged, windowless parlour, illuminated only by the nightmarish glow of neon tubes, in a wing right at the back of the restaurant, card games were going on amid a cacophony of sounds clattering back off the walls, with slim, grey-templed Uncle André, the Chloroformist, a bored, man-of-the-world smile on his lips, was walking from table to table, stopping every now and then, behind a seat, to take a peek at the cards, and Köves was just debating inwardly whether he should leave and come back later when Alice, as she rushed by, took his fate in her hands:

“Come,” she said, “I’ll give you a seat with my partner,” and with that was around him and making her way toward a table in the corner—in point of fact, a sort of service table, stacked with tableware, glasses, and cutlery, from which Alice laid the tables—at which a well-built man sat beside a pile of plates, his head bowed as if he were sleeping, only the balding crown of his head showing, in front of which Alice, with Köves a few paces behind, now halted and, leaning across the table, gently, yet loud enough for Köves to hear clearly, asked him:

“Are you thinking?…,” at which the man slowly lifted up his face and sleepy-looking, grave expression to Alice—a fleshy oval of a face, were it not for this expression, accusatory even in its plaintiveness, irritated even in its wordless sufferance, and, taken as a
whole, somehow crippled—whom Köves had of course seen a number of times before in the South Seas, though up till now only from farther off, when he had given an impression that was more genial, friendly, and, one might even say, cheerful.

“I’m going to seat the editor here,” Alice went on. “He won’t disturb you.” The woman’s voice surprised Köves: breezy as she always was with strangers, himself included, the bravado seemed frankly to desert Alice in front of her “partner.” He was even more astonished by the murmured entreaty that she directed at him:

“Try and amuse him a little,” as if she were entrusting a seriously ill patient to his care, at which, on taking his seat at the table, nothing more amusing coming to mind at that moment, Köves for a start told him his name, and the man in turn informed him of his own, in a high, strident voice, like an operatic singer:

“Berg!”—snippily, sternly, and yet somehow still sonorously: it was already known to Köves, of course, along with the usual dismissive waves of the hand and expressions of commiseration accorded Alice by common consent, whenever the South Seas’ regulars mentioned the name—if it was mentioned at all—among themselves.

“What am I going to have for supper tonight?” he said and then turned to Alice, clearly complying with her entreaty beforehand by giving a smile that was more intimate and ready to joke, and it seemed the waitress too immediately played along with the game:

“Cold cuts,” she said.

“What’s that when it’s at home?” Köves enquired.

“Bread and dripping with spring onions,” Alice replied. Then, turning to Berg, who did not seem to be in the least amused, and maybe had not even heard their banter (his head was bowed as if he had dozed off to sleep again), she asked him in a softer voice which sounded almost anxious:

“Would you like a petit four?” at which Berg again lifted his lethargic, accusatory expression at her:

“Two!” he said. On that note, the woman went off, while Berg, turning to Köves, who now felt for the first time the gaze of that distracted, yet somehow still discomfiting look being directed at him, commented:

“I’m fond of sweet things!” in a sonorous, matter-of-fact tone from which Köves nevertheless reckoned he could pick out an apologetic note:

“I’m quite partial to them myself,” he found himself saying offhand, and idiotically of course (it seemed that some of Alice’s incomprehensible discomposure must have rubbed off on him).

Still, it seemed as though this had aroused in Berg some interest toward him:

“Journalist?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Köves. “But I’ve been fired,” he added promptly, to preempt any possible misunderstandings as it were.

“Well, well!” Berg remarked. “Why was that?”

To which Köves, breaking into a smile, responded:

“Can anyone know?”

“One can,” Berg said resolutely in his high voice. So that Köves, plainly surprised by an answer of the sort which was so uncommon there, said, shrugging his shoulders with a slightly forced lightheartedness:

“Then it appears you know more than I, because I don’t know, that’s for sure.”

“But of course you know,” said Berg, seemingly annoyed by the contradiction. “Everybody knows; at most they pretend to be surprised,” and here a distant memory was suddenly awakened in Köves, as if he had already heard something similar here before.

Their conversation, however, was interrupted for a while by Alice’s return. She set down the petits fours in front of Berg, whereas Köves was given rissoles, two sizeable discs, with potatoes and pickled cucumber, Alice clearly being of the opinion that Köves
could stuff himself cheaply on that. Although not slow in responding with a grateful smile, in reality Köves could hardly wait for them to be left alone:

“Could it be that you too were kicked out?” he asked, because he seemed to recall having heard something of the kind about Berg, though he did not remember precisely, of course, for in the South Seas, as Köves had begun to notice bit by bit, people knew everything about everybody and nothing about anybody.

It seemed, though, that Berg, too, was sparing with accurate information:

“You could put it like that,” was all he replied, nibbling the pink icing off one of the petits fours and placing the pastry base back on the plate.

“And”—it went against his practice, but this time Köves, for some reason, did not wish to concede the point—“do you know why?”

“Of course I do,” Berg said coolly, resolutely, indeed even raising his eyebrows slightly as though exasperated by Köves’s obtuseness. “Because I was found to be unsuitable.”

“For what?” asked Köves, who in the meantime had likewise tucked into his supper.

“What I was selected for.” Berg bit into the second petit four, which was chocolate-coloured though of course it did not contain chocolate, just a paste that resembled it.

“And for what were you selected?” It seemed that Köves, in his bewilderment, was unhesitatingly adopting Berg’s curious ways with words.

“What I am suited for,” came the answer, with the same effortlessness as before.

“But what are you suited for?” Köves kept plugging away.

“You see,” Berg’s face now assumed a ruminative expression, not looking at Köves, almost as though he were not talking to him
but to himself: “that’s the point. Probably for everything. Or to be more precise, anything. No matter. Presumably I was afraid to give it a try,” and, returning to the real world as it were, Berg now looked around the table with a searching gaze until his eyes alighted on the serviettes, on one of which he proceeded to wipe his fingers, which were clearly sticky from the petits fours. “And now we shall never know,” he continued, “because I have been excluded from the decision-making domain.”

“How was that?” Köves asked.

“By recognizing the facts,” said Berg, “and the facts recognizing me.”

There was a clattering: Alice carried away a number of plates and sets of cutlery from the stock piled on their table, with Berg closing his eyes, as though the woman’s scurrying around and the attendant skirmishing were a cause of physical agony, while Köves made use of the opportunity to ask for a glass of beer from Alice, who, leaning over the table and articulating as if she were speaking to a deaf-mute, asked Berg:

“Aren’t you thirsty?” to which Berg shook his head, his eyes still shut, his face anguished, now somehow childishly imploring, merely held up two fingers, at which Alice hesitated a bit:

“Won’t that be too much?” she asked, at which Berg folded one finger down, to leave just the index finger raised beseechingly upright.

“Fine,” the woman said after some further reflection; “You’ll upset your stomach,” as she hurried off. Köves, who by that point could hardly wait to make a remark, was at last able to trot it out:

“That all sounds very interesting, but I don’t quite understand.”

“What was that?” Berg opened his eyes, having visibly forgotten what they had been talking about before.

“What do you mean,” Köves was growing impatient, “by the facts recognizing you?”

“I said that?” Berg asked.

“You did,” Köves urged, rather like a child waiting for the next instalment once a story has been begun.

“No more,” said Berg, and now cracking a smile, as if he were seeking to tone down his words with the smile, “than that I am just like a certain gentleman who tasted vinegar.”

Impatience was gradually beginning to curdle into irritation for Köves. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“It’s not who I’m referring to that matters,” said Berg, “but what he said.”

“Well then,” Köves pushed, “what?”

“That all this be accomplished.” Berg smiled, whereas Köves, in whom the last vestiges of politeness were swept away by this smile, contrived in its raggedness, and this way of talking, with its riddling and quackery, and who was now aroused to unconcealed exasperation, remarked almost aggressively:

“It’s all very well that the person in question said that, but you—forgive me!—you are sitting here, on a comfortable café seat, and you’re not sipping vinegar but scoffing petits fours, and with great relish too, as I can see.”

Berg, though, was not perceptibly in the least put out by Köves’s irritation, if he even noticed it:

“Don’t blame me for that,” he said, almost appeasingly. “They seem to have forgotten about me.”

“Who has?” Köves regained his self-control, all that was left of his irritation being an unspoken aversion, though that aversion was somehow still thirsting to be satisfied. His question, however, was succeeded by silence, and Köves had given up on an answer—he had also nearly polished off his supper and was hankering only for the beer that he had ordered—when suddenly, in a sonorous tenor voice, his head bowed so that Köves could hardly see his face, Berg started to speak after all: