The Vajkays headed towards the table they had taken the day before. But there sat a spirited threesome already well into their meal. That was all they needed. All the other tables were taken too. They waited. But on Sundays, in the comforting knowledge that Sunday is a day of rest, people eat more studiously than at other times. They spend that little bit longer picking their teeth and rolling bread pellets with which they are content to play for hours.
With a few clipped words the head waiter begged their pardon, before taking off again on his swallow's wings.
The woman suggested they might look in on the other restaurant in town, the Baross. Ákos paced sulkily up and down; he was frightfully hungry, and the sight of all the food only fired his appetite. Suddenly two arms began to wave in the air towards him. At the horseshoe table beside the palm trees the enormous figure of Bálint Környey rose to his feet and called out to them:
“Over here!'
“Won't we be intruding?'
“Of course not. Come and sit down; we've already finished. Here, or over there.”
The Panthers had finished lunch and the table was thick with crumbs. Now they only smoked and sipped their drinks. At the Vajkays’ arrival they all rose to receive their new guests, even Szunyogh who, owing to his state of perpetual inebriation and his 180 pounds, found it hard to move on his spindly legs. A series of introductions followed.
As hosts the Panthers were most obliging. They rang for the waiters, who immediately swept the table, brought clean plates and glasses, and pressed menus into the hands of the new arrivals.
Ákos sat at one end of the table between the commander in chief and Szolyvay, the comic actor.
Mrs Vajkay sat at the head of the table beside Priboczay, the lilac-haired pharmacist from whom she bought digestive tonics and face powder for Skylark. Her other neighbour was a tall, elegant gentleman in a top hat. She had noticed him the day before, but didn't know who he was. Even now she hadn't caught his name.
The gentleman ceremoniously kissed her hand, as was customary with a lady of repute, and thoroughly overwhelmed her with his refined and unobtrusive attentiveness. He recommended one dish and advised against another; as one who dined there every day, he knew the kitchen intimately.
His face was candid and reassuring. He must have just been shaved, for traces of rice powder could still be seen on his chin and the not unpleasant fragrance of the barber's shop still wafted from his skin.
Suddenly the head waiter came over to him, whispered something in his ear, then drew him aside to one corner of the restaurant. Here the waiter handed him a letter, to which a courier was awaiting a reply. The letter was from Olga Orosz, the prima donna with whom he had been living over the summer. She had to see him now, just one more time, before they parted for ever. Would he be so kind as to hurry to her at once? Her formality of expression was a mark of their estrangement. Imre Zányi crumpled the letter into his pocket and signalled that there was no reply. He was used to farces of this kind.
Mrs Vajkay took advantage of his absence to ask the pharmacist the young man's name. Hearing that it was Imre Zányi, the leading man, she was thunderstruck. She had — as she explained to Priboczay — initially imagined him to be some youthful priest, but his fashionable morning coat and unaffected, wordly manner had immediately led her to suspect otherwise. So it was he! She had never seen him on stage, but had heard a great deal about him.
The actor returned to his place at the table. He continued to devote his every attention to the woman, asking her questions and listening to her replies with his handsome narrow lips pressed tightly together. Then he began to recite a torrent of extracts memorised from French conversation pieces, raising his hand somewhat preciously to his brow, a gesture he employed with special predilection on the stage. The woman was enraptured. Not since her girlhood had she encountered such an agreeable and gracious young man. How refreshing, how polished, how bohemian, and yet how courteous! She made a point of expressing her delight at having finally made his acquaintance. At this the actor sprang to his feet, gave a low, almost over-theatrical bow, and replied that, on the contrary, it was he who'd had the good fortune to meet such a genteel and distinguished lady.
At the opposite end of the table the men talked politics. They spoke of state delegations, constitutional crises and of Prime Minister Kálmán Széll.
“Ah, yes,” Környey sighed. “A visionary statesman and a first-rate brain.”
Priboczay, who was an old forty-eighter, became visibly heated.
“No doubt because he went to Vienna for the unveiling of the Albrecht statue. He, prime minister of Hungary. For shame!'
“Tactics,” Környey replied.
“Tactics,” Priboczay nodded bitterly. “And when they ordered our boys out to the Hentzi statue in Pest? That was tactics too, I suppose? Bánffy would never have done such a thing. Never. Your man's a common toady.”
“Raison d'état,” Feri Füzes commented.
Now Priboczay was really fuming.
“Right, Law and Justice? Isn't that the party slogan?” he hollered to provoke the young government supporter. “Schwarzgelb mercenary, Viennese lackey!'
Feri Füzes could not allow the Hungarian prime minister's name to be slandered in this fashion. Enough was enough. As a man with an almost superstitious deference towards all figures of authority, he ventured to reply:
“And what of your famous Ferenc Kossuth? I suppose he's going to hand us a free-trade zone on a platter? Together with Hungarian supremacy?'
“You leave him out of this. He's the son of our great father Kossuth. You wouldn't understand such things, my boy.”
Feri Füzes blushed. Then, with a certain peevish superiority he observed:
“I have every respect for Lajos Kossuth and his politics. But just like everyone else, Lajos Kossuth has his good points and his bad points.”
And he looked about him for support.
But at this everyone had chuckled, including Környey, and even the oldest and staunchest of sixty-seveners, for they all knew that Feri Füzes, although the perfect gentleman, had less than his fair share of grey matter.
For a moment Feri Füzes was at a complete loss. Then he asked himself how such behaviour could possibly offend a proper gentleman, and looked for someone else to provoke. But the others soon placated him and he went on smiling his familiar smile.
Ákos did not take part in the debate. What did he care for either Kálmán Széll or Ferenc Kossuth? Weightier concerns and deeper questions played upon his mind.
He sat immersed in his own thoughts, his morning dreams still swimming through his head, his face heavily shadowed by his own bad conscience. He glanced towards his wife, who was already eating.
Seeing this, he appeared to reach a momentous decision. He frowned, put on his spectacles and plunged into a fastidious study of the menu.
He couldn't see it too clearly because, in places, the ink of the hectograph had smudged and faded. He reached into his upper waistcoat pocket for the magnifying glass he normally reserved for deciphering litterae armales, and, the strength of his spectacles thus doubled, examined the menu in detail.
Applying no less rigour and self-sacrificing passion to the study of this document than to the search for some sixteenth-century Vajkay of Bozsó whose descent remained uncertain, he scoured the family tree of noble dishes for the entry he had been dreaming of unceasingly since the day before. On this occasion it was between the stuffed sirloin and the pork chops that the name “goulash” humbly but meaningfully stood. No sooner had he hit upon it with his finger than the waiter set it down before him.