“I’m looking for Skublics.”
“You can keep looking, but I don’t know who that is.”
“Supposedly he lives here.”
“No one told me,” said the woman, shaking her head and pulling the curtain shut. Gordon reached inside his pocket, pulled out a two-pengő coin, and with that knocked on the window once again.
“Whadayawant?”
“I found this under your window,” he said, showing her the coin in his palm. The woman reached out for it, but Gordon pulled his hand back.
“What is that name you said, sir?” asked the woman, her eyes on Gordon.
“Skublics.”
“Aha! Now that’s different. I don’t know what goes on in his place, but I’m not even interested, I’m telling you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“And I don’t know what sort of girls go to him, morning and night.”
“Which flat is his?”
“See the attic door?” The woman pointed. Gordon nodded. “Well, if you open that, you’ll see another door first thing on the right. Knock on that.” The woman reached her sinewy, crooked hand out the window. Gordon dropped the coin into her palm and went to the attic door.
In the dark he could barely make out the door, it blended in so much with the wall. At some point it had been painted terra-cotta red, like the building’s bricks, but now both it and the wall were grimy. He knocked. No answer. Again. Still no answer. He pounded. Nothing.
Gordon was just about to leave when a skinny girl with alarmingly white skin stepped out from the darkness. Her thin strands of greasy hair were woven in a knot, and her big eyes shone of fear. Even her pleated skirt was not enough to hide her spindly legs and bony hips. Her white blouse with its worn embroidery hung loosely on her frame, but even so, Gordon could see her sunken chest, her flat breasts. With a long finger she anxiously fiddled with a stray lock of hair.
“Please don’t make noise,” she requested.
“And who are you?”
“I’m . . . Mr. Skublics’s . . . cleaning woman,” came the girl’s faltering reply.
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“I came early,” she explained. “Mr. Skublics is never home in the morning, sir. He’s always at the thermal bath, and I got here early.”
“When did your train get in?”
“Six,” the girl blurted out without thinking, but then it hit her, and wringing her hands, she continued: “Oh, please don’t tell anyone, sir! There’s no work to be had in Debrecen, which is why I’m here. And I don’t even have a servant’s license.”
“You don’t need a servant’s license for what you’re preparing to do,” said Gordon, looking her square in the eye.
“You sure do need one for cleaning!” the girl protested.
“All right, kid. For that you do. But take it from me, this sort of cleaning doesn’t lead to any good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Forget it, kid. I’m not going to the police.”
The girl dropped to her knees and clutched Gordon’s left hand, which she proceeded to smother with kisses. “God bless you, sir! May the grace of the good Lord be with you! There are six of us siblings, I’m the oldest, and . . .”
“Don’t go explaining it to me,” said Gordon, pulling his hand away. “I’ll be back later. After lunch. Will Skublics get home by then?”
“The others said he would.”
Gordon reached the Circle in a couple of minutes. He saw that his grandfather’s balcony door was now open. Every morning the old man would roam about the neighborhood markets—come rain, sleet, or snow—looking for fruit he was ever determined to turn into jam.
The building entrance was open, and so Gordon walked up to the second floor and opened the apartment door. Mór couldn’t get it through his head that he no longer lived in the provinces, that locking the door was a good idea. From the sounds coming from the kitchen, Gordon could tell he was pottering about in there even now. The clatter of pots and pans mingled with the sound of the old man’s cheerful cursing.
“Wonderful, wonderful!” he said, his face lighting up on seeing Gordon. He wiped his hands on the blazer that was buttoned askew over his round belly. Gordon had bought him at least three aprons, but the old man wouldn’t hear of using them. He was like those veterans of the Great War who proudly wore their injuries. He wanted everyone to know that he was cooking jam. Not that he could have denied this had he wanted to: bits of fruit skin were stuck to his gray beard, and the jam of the day had even found its way to his bushy eyebrows. Opa was willing to make one concession only: although he didn’t remove his blazer, he did roll up the sleeves along with those of his shirt. Of course, even if his shirt cuffs came away clean—he wore a clean shirt every day—the sleeves of his blazer provided a fairly accurate picture of his recent culinary experimentations.
“Son, I bought some marvelous grapes on Lövölde Square, I did!” He smiled broadly. “Simply dazzling. And just thirty-eight fillérs for a kilo. For the rhubarb I had to go all the way to the City Market, but it was worth it, boy, was it ever worth it. Just look at these nice hard stems.” Reaching into one of his baskets, he pulled out five plump rhubarbs. Gordon shuddered; he didn’t even like them stewed.
“What are you working on now, Opa?” he asked.
“Ha!” The old man’s face lit up again, and he continued triumphantly. “Not even the Gastronome has heard of this! I thought of it a couple of days ago: grape-rhubarb jam!” He stirred the mixture bubbling on the stove. “If it works, I’ll send him the recipe immediately. Immediately, I say!”
Gordon nodded. Mór was obsessed with getting his name into the Gastronome’s column in the Sunday issue of the Budapest Journal. It was as if his decades of healing others had vanished from his memory banks without a trace. He knew a great many people in the capital, so when he decided after his wife’s death to move up to Budapest from his hometown of Keszthely, hours to the south on Lake Balaton, he could easily have resumed his medical practice or even taught. But no. The old man seemed bent on devoting his final decades to creating a jam the Gastronome would find worthy of publication.
“You didn’t eat what I sent with Krisztina, did you?” he asked sullenly.
“I did, Opa,” said Gordon. “What sort of jam was it?”
“Chestnut,” replied Mór with a dismissive wave of the hand, “but I’ve figured out how I ruined it. As soon as I find really nice chestnuts at the market, I’ll try it again.”
“I thought it was good. Not that I could have said it was chestnut, but it was tasty.”
“Well, you’ll like this a whole lot better,” Mór claimed, reaching into the pantry and taking out a small pot, which he proudly set down on the table. He took a brioche from the bread basket, spread a slice with some butter he took from the refrigerator, and applied a thick layer of the stuff from the pot.
Gordon was in no position to resist. But he would have liked to. While he couldn’t stand anything sour, the old man, who found classical jams—strawberry, apricot, peach—gauche, experimented with more hair-raising recipes. Gordon took a deep breath, and then a bite of the jam-covered brioche. He watched Mór’s ruddied face. Slowly Gordon nodded, quickly forcing down the whole slice.
“Well? Well?” asked the old man.
“I’m just asking, Opa, but shouldn’t you have removed the seeds from the grapes?”
Mór threw a hand to his forehead. “For the love of God! I forgot. That one thing.”
“And the sugar, too,” Gordon mumbled, but the old man didn’t hear, for he was back by the stove, stirring the simmering jam. “Opa, I’ve got a question,” he continued louder.