But the baron wasn’t in the mood. He glared at the poet. Báróecsedi was a pretty fat guy, and a little on the jealous side. He blinked suspiciously at his bride, the retired policeman. They looked at each other with pouting lips, like the lovers in that famous picture, the one Sweetheart once showed me in the museum in Rome, Cupid and Psyche.
“Look, Mr. Borsai,” he growled. “I’d be grateful if you left these Christian agricultural matters out of it. I am a nervous old Jew with a bad stomach. I am not impressed by the fact that the yellow clover is in bloom. If it’s in bloom, let it bloom,” he added angrily.
The poet was offended and went to sit with the secretaries of state. “Cigars for the press!” he cried.
The waiters rushed to bring the cigar tray and the poet picked up a fistful of Hungarian Symphony cigars from a tin box, stuffing them into his pocket. One of the secretaries of state, the muscular one, who had been given a medal of some sort, waved the headwaiter over and told him he should add it to the bill as official state expenses. Joe Lepsény, the war correspondent, seemed reluctant and refused, despite the others encouraging him to fill his pockets too.
“No thanks,” he sniffed. “Tomorrow morning I’m due at the supreme council of the Ministry of Economics.”
Full of respect, one secretary of state asked him whether there was an important decision about to be taken.
“No idea,” the war correspondent replied disdainfully. “But they have American cigars.”
They looked at him with envy because it was rumored that Joe had been nominated to the State Committee for the Administration of Forfeited Estates. It was one of the most prized positions in the People’s Republic. The sax player said he started drooling every time he thought of what would happen if a Forfeited Estate and Joe Lepsény were left alone in a room together. You know, the estates … rare paintings, antique furniture, all the stuff the gentry left behind when they hit the westbound trail in fear of the Russkies arriving. The sax player was in seventh heaven thinking of this, his solos sounding more melancholy than ever. Everyone looked respectfully at Joe Lepsény, who remained a war correspondent even though there was no war anymore. He wore riding boots, a windbreaker, and a deer hunter’s hat with a chamois tail stuck in the band, as well as a red-flag badge in his buttonhole. Later, after the revolution, he turned up in the West. He claimed to be an aristocrat from Budapest, but someone ruined the story by saying he was nothing of the sort but a laundry worker from one of the city slums. That wasn’t generally known in the bar back then. In any case this was not time to start playing at comrades, because the place was really coming alive.
It was gone midnight and there were no tables left by the time the president of the Emergency Committee arrived with his disooze friend and a sidekick — everyone knew the sidekick was head screw at the town prison — so they had to produce an extra table from somewhere and make a place for it near the band. There was a great deal of running about, because it was a real honor for the bar to have such a famous man be a customer. I have to admit he was quite a guy. No one had heard of him a year ago; then he surfaced like that monster at Loch Ness in Scotland that’s been in all the papers. The saxophonist blew a brief fanfare to celebrate the great man’s arrival, his cheeks puffed out like apples, while I added a discreet and respectful drumroll.
Then they turned on the purple light because wherever the disooze went you had to have proper mood lighting. The proprietress, a famous lard-bucket of a woman, who carried on as before supplying nonprofessional women to her select clients, didn’t know where to put herself in all the excitement. She personally filled the celebrity guest’s glass with bourbon. Everyone watched, deeply impressed. The secretaries of state looked on in awe because the president of the supreme council outranked ministers. He was master of life and death, since politicals who’d been condemned to death turned to him with their last appeal for mercy. If he’d had a bad day he rejected the appeals and they were got ready for the drop. No one ever asked him what he did and why. The proprietress whispered in the pianist’s ear that she had had her finger on the pulse of the market for thirty years, that she knew every unlisted telephone number in town, knew where exclusive goods might be offered to big spenders, but that she had never seen such glittering company in the bar all together at any one time.
Báróecsedi bowed from his seat to greet the president, who responded with an indulgent wave. The president was a big-time trophy Communist, a high-class medal shining in his buttonhole, but it was the baron and his bride, the waxed-mustached police sergeant, those all-but-extinct creatures, remnants of the old world, that he greeted most warmly — more warmly than he did the secretaries of state or Joe Lepsény, that upstanding, badge-wearing Party notable. I watched it all and remembered what I’d been taught in the morning: that real Commies, the true, dyed-in-the-wool, long-in-the-tooth sort, felt a deep-seated, jaw-clenching hatred for those who had only lately adopted republican colors. They loathed them more spectacularly than they did the old guard of boujis and barons. I watched everything like a hawk, since from that time on, every moment I spent there, I was, for all purposes, in my office. I was at work.
The president looked like something out of a fashion magazine, like an English lord dressed for the club, a lord, what’s more, bought brand-new from the shop. Suit, shoes, everything — it was all made to measure. He smiled graciously at everyone, like a proper emperor who knows he has absolute power and can afford to be charming, generous, and condescending. The disooze he’d arrived with had been his night-and-day companion for a while — she was a fine, fat piece of trophy flesh herself, famed for attending every show trial at which the president showed some guy the way to the gallows, because such things amused her. She was a dyke. She sang in a hoarse whisper and specialized in torch songs. The boss turned the lights down low so it was purple everywhere, like patchouli. We waited awestruck to see what the celebrity guest would order.
The big-time guest must have had a hard day, because he closed his eyes as he drank and seemed to be lost in thought. Then he whispered something to the disooze, who obediently took her place at the mike, and in a cigarette-stained voice, straight from the heart, she crooned a heartbreaking ballad.
“You’re the one light in my darkness!”
I only had to touch the drums very gently, tapping them with my fingertips. The saxophonist marked time, carefully watching the head screw as if he thought some plot was being hatched. The screw was constant companion to the president, just in case the great man had a brain wave that needed immediate acting on. Here in the bar he was the one who could give concrete form to the president’s thoughts and carry ideas through. The tear-jerking ballad being over, the secretaries of state clapped their hands raw. Báróecsedi spread his arms to show how transported he was, that no dyke could sing more beautifully than this dyke had just done. He knew what he was talking about: he was in the business himself. The president stood up, kissed the artiste’s hand, and led her back to the table. The head screw also leapt up and busily set to polishing the chair the lady was about to sit on with the sleeve of his jacket. The poet covered his eyes, as though such heavenly raptures were too much for him. He really got off on it.
I put the sticks down. The president ordered Champagne for the band. With all the low lighting everyone was in the mood. It was like an angel had flown through the place.