Myself, I didn’t really have much to recall as far as cake was concerned. At any rate I couldn’t have said which was the best one I ever ate. In response to all those best cakes of hers, I said that at Eastertime my grandmother used to make a babka that to this day I could taste in my mouth. Though I couldn’t say if it was actually the best cake I’d ever had. That didn’t matter. Sometimes I buy a babka for Easter, in one cake shop then in another for comparison, but so far I’ve never found one that tasted the same as my grandmother’s. Not to mention that babkas from the store go dry after two or three days, whereas the ones my grandmother baked could sit there for months, then when you cut it it would still be moist with butter. Plus, they were so plump. Have you ever had a babka like that? Then you’ve missed out on one of the best things there is. You should have come at Eastertime. Or right after, or even a few days later. We used to take the babka up to the attic and leave it there. We wouldn’t eat more than a slice each a day. You could have tried it.
When I was married my wife decided to find a recipe for babka like that, because at Easter she was sick of hearing about how my grandmother baked babkas and all that. She even wrote to some well-known pastry chef. He actually sent her a recipe and she made it, but it wasn’t the same. Grandmother would usually make a dozen or more babkas at a time. The kneading trough would be brimming with dough. She’d fill the earthenware baking dishes about half full, then when the cakes rose, they virtually bubbled. They looked like mushrooms. We’d usually each have a piece for afternoon tea. Grandmother would divide it up so it lasted as long as possible. Thanks to that, it felt like Easter went on and on.
No, she hadn’t had Eastertime babka. She asked me to tell her about it. But how can you tell someone about babka. You can describe the shape, say that it had notches in it from the earthenware dishes it was baked in, that it was broader at the top and narrower at the bottom. But none of that amounts to anything. It’s the taste that matters, not the shape. And how can you describe a taste? You tell me. Any taste. Let’s say, something sweet. What does sweet mean? There can be a million kinds of sweetness. As many kinds as there are people. One person puts a spoonful of sugar in their coffee and it’s already sweet enough for them, someone else needs two or three spoonfuls for it to be sweet. During the war for example there was no sugar, so people would boil up a syrup out of sugar beets, you’d have been disgusted if you’d tried it, but everyone found it sweet like before the war. There’s sweet and sweet, no two sweetnesses are alike. Sweet today, sweet once upon a time, sweet here or there — each one is a different kind of sweetness.
So I told her it was made of flour and eggs and cream, because that was all I knew, the rest my grandmother took with her to the grave. She may have taken the whole mystery of those babkas with her. All that remained was the fact that they melted in your mouth.
She grew sad when I told her that. To cheer her up I said that all the cakes she’d told me about were for sure the best. I asked if she’d like to have one more. I’d give her a free pass. She smiled through her sadness and said the only thing she would have been tempted by would be a piece of the Eastertime babka. In that case, perhaps she’d have a glass of wine, I asked. She said yes at once. As we were drinking our wine, lifting the glass to our lips over and again, she gave me a look as if she finally remembered me. For myself, I no longer had any doubts that it was her. I don’t mean from the train, or the park bench, or anywhere in particular. By then, none of that was of any significance.
You probably think that you have to meet a person first to be able to remember them later. Have you ever thought that sometimes it’s the opposite? So you think it all depends on the memory, yes? In other words, first something has to happen, and then, even if it’s years later, memory can bring it all back? If you ask me, though, there are things that it’s best for memory not to meddle with. I agree with you that in the cases you’re talking about, that’s how it is. But we don’t always need help from our memory. There are times when our greater need is to forget. It’d be hard to live perpetually in thrall to memory. So sometimes we have to mislead it, trick it, run away from it. I mean, when it comes down to it we don’t even need to remember the fact that we’re here on this earth. Despite what you think, not everything has to happen according to how it’s organized by memory.
Why was it that when she came into the cafe and looked around for a free place, I was certain that even if someone had vacated a table at that moment, she still would have come up to mine and asked:
“Would you mind if I sat at your table? All the other seats are taken.”
“You’re welcome to,” I would have said, as I actually did say.
And the rest you know. I’m not hiding anything. Why would I? I’ve not brought happiness to women. I don’t know a whole lot more than that. Besides, you can read a book, watch a film and it’d be the same. It’s always the same. There aren’t any words that would make it different. Yes, if you ask me, everything depends on words. Words determine things, events, thoughts, imaginings, dreams, everything that’s hidden deepest inside a person. If the words are second-rate the person is second-rate, and the world, even God is second-rate.
If I tell you that I loved her, it still won’t tell you anything, because it doesn’t tell me anything. Today I only know as much as I knew back then. Or rather, it’d be better to say that I don’t know now just as much as I didn’t know then. Because what does it mean to love? Please, tell me if you know. And since I loved her like I loved no one else on earth, why didn’t we know how to be with one another? Actually, to say I loved her isn’t enough. I sometimes felt that she was the one who had finally given me life. As if it wasn’t that she was made from my rib but that I was made from her rib, the opposite of how it is in the Bible. When I’m dying I’ll see her coming into the cafe, looking around for a free table, then coming up to mine and asking:
“Would you mind …?”
“You’re welcome to.”
She sits down, but we don’t feel like talking anymore. Not even about cakes. Not because we’ve said everything already to each other, since we’ve hardly said anything. We’d have needed an eternity to say everything to one another, not just the short moment we’ve lived through. I don’t know, maybe by now we’re afraid of words, even words about cake. Maybe there are no more words for us. And without words there’s no telling what any of the cakes were like, and all the more which one was the best.
We weren’t good together the way you might have expected. But we were even worse without each other. We split up, came back together, split up again, came back together again. Each time we swore we’d never part. After which it was the same thing. Then when we got back together, every time it was like we were back in the cafe that first day.
I can’t remember if I told you that one time I happened to go back to the same sanatorium, and after taking a walk one day I dropped by the cafe. I was sitting there drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. At a certain moment I look up over the paper and I see her coming in. By then we’d separated for good. There were free tables, but she came up to me and asked:
“Would you mind …?”