The hotel wasn’t really of millionaire standard and had probably been surprised at having such distinguished Americans thrust upon it. But the result was one that not even millionaires can count on buying: it tried. It had clearly stripped its unused rooms to cram their suites and the public rooms with the best furniture, polished its silver and bribed its staff until one shone and the other tried to.
In the evening, the guests naturally gathered in the lobby with its verandah and the cool, if not quite sanitary, wind that filtered through the trees from the river.
“For Heaven’s sake,” Ranklin was imploring Corinna, “don’t let Lucy overdress. It won’t be that sort of place. I’m going in a lounge suit.”
“Is this the end of the empire? I thought Englishmen dressed for dinner in the jungle.”
“If we were only going to meet monkeys, I wouldn’t be bothered.”
O’Gilroy wandered out onto the verandah to join them, a waiter at his heels like an eager dog. Ranklin took the opportunity to order another whisky.
“You’d better take my automobile,” Corinna said disapprovingly. “You won’t be fit to do much walking.”
“Car?” Then Ranklin wished he hadn’t asked: where Corinna went, could a hired car be far behind?
“He’ll be here at seven; I’ll have Lucy ready by then. Conall, try and keep him sober.”
In fact, Ranklin was manipulating himself, trying to believe the evening would be so boring that it was bound to be better than he feared. And that he would be cheerful and talkative as a result. The whisky was insurance.
“About this secret document,” he said. “You’re sure there’s no other way of getting a look at it?”
Corinna made a face. “Lucy says he keeps it in that briefcase – ” And Ranklin could remember Hornbeam clutching it on the train; “ – I guess we could hire some highwaymen to rob him when he goes …”
“All right, all right. You can burgle his room – if O’Gilroy thinks it’s safe. He’s in charge. And if he says No, then No it stays.”
She began to pout.
“If you get caught,” Ranklin said quickly, “and there’s a rumpus, with you they’ll say ‘Girls will be girls’ and assume it was O’Gilroy leading you astray. And even if Hornbeam doesn’t get legal with us, from then on O’Gilroy, and I, will be under suspicion. The hotel may tell the police, they may become interested in us … we’d be better off on the next train back to Paris.”
If you could persuade Corinna that she was wrong, that was an end to it. She wasted no time on grudges or regrets: that idea’s dead, let’s get on with the next. “You’re right, of course. Okay, Conall, I’ll take my time from you.”
O’Gilroy smiled – partly from relief, Ranklin thought. He must have seen the risks himself, but just didn’t know how to say so to someone like Corinna.
43
To find the roots of a continental city, look for the easily defended: the high ground, or the river-as-moat. Or in Buda, both. The rambling flat-topped ridge of Castle Hill rose only a few hundred feet above the river, but it rose sharply, stiffened by thick walls that by now seemed to grow out of the rock. The wide river hurried past less than a quarter of a mile away below, and from the ramparts a single field gun would dominate the whole area of Pest on the far side.
Behind the walls was a city in miniature, complete in grandeur and squalor. The Royal Palace with its eight hundred and sixty recently refurbished rooms waited for the Emperor to recall that he was also Hungary’s King and drop in for a night, the Coronation Church (where he had dropped in long enough to be crowned, over sixty years ago) studded with needle spires like a startled hedgehog, a host of ministries, barracks, town houses originally built by Turkish merchants and alleyways that once housed the Danube fishermen.
And the Panna Tavern.
Hazay had met Ranklin’s request perfectly. They entered from a crooked alleyway through a door in an ironbound gate, already plodding against a frothing tide of violin music. And there ahead of them, at the end of a small courtyard crammed with tables, was a vine-roofed bandstand with a gypsy band sawing and strumming for dear life. Or cash.
A waiter, obviously familiar with, and primed by, Hazay weaved them through the crowd to a side table with chairs for six. Seeing Ranklin’s surprise, Hazay explained: “I thought Miss Hornbeam would like to meet some of my friends – poets, writers – who might come by. If not,” he shrugged and smiled, “they will go away.”
“Why, I’d just love to meet your friends,” Lucy smiled back, and Ranklin relaxed. Unless somebody found a cat bone in their chicken, the evening looked like being a success. He raised his wineglass and silently wished equal success to Hornbeam’s lecture – and the burglary of his room.
“Of course they are all real gypsies,” Hazay was telling Lucy. “Who will pretend to be a … an outcast, a wanderer, a thief? Myself,” he added wickedly, “I do not believe the stories in the country villages that they are also blood-sucking – vampires – and cannibals.”
Lucy was listening, wide-eyed, and Hazay was enjoying himself: gypsies were a journalist’s dream people since whatever you said about them somebody had said – and believed – before, so you were only reporting, not inventing. The music swirled about them, alternately wild tavern dances and slow melancholy tunes that the locals seemed to soak up and appreciate without for one moment stopping their eating and arguing.
“Czermak, he was a nobleman who took his violin and joined the gypsies,” Hazay was saying, “and Czinka Panna – this cafe is named for her – she was most rare, a woman violinist, that was nearly two centuries ago, and the great Bihari … who knows who was the best? Their music was never written down, nobody alive has heard them play, now it is only memories of memories …”
The band-leader violinist had worked his way towards them, playing a tune for each table that asked. He was authentically dark and swarthy, but short and tubby, too; Ranklin recognised his own unromantic shape. But when Hazay tore a banknote in two, licked one half (you’re a braver man than I am, Ranklin thought) and stuck it to the leader’s forehead and he began to play, he seemed to grow in dignity and even height. The music flowed out of him like a familiar tale from a natural storyteller. That was all it was, a simple retelling of simple musical emotions, and if the magic was in the ear of the behearer – and in the wine in the behearer, too – then Lucy seemed ready to settle for that.
The band-leader finished, got the second half of the banknote, and moved on with a deep bow to Lucy. Then they realised that two of the spare chairs were occupied, a new bottle of wine was on the table, and Hazay did the introductions. Miro was small, dark, with a thin face and jerky expressions, as if afraid he would be late with the appropriate one. Tibor was large, slow, bear-like, with what seemed like a fringe of fur rather than beard on his face. Both appeared to be that vague age of old students and young poets; Mitteleuropa cafe philosophers, Ranklin thought unkindly, not welcoming the effort of new acquaintances this late.
They greeted Lucy with great warmth, quickly establishing that she (a) thought Budapest was wonderful, and (b) didn’t know Tibor’s cousin in Brooklyn. But their real interest seemed to be in Hazay.
“Miro’s worried about the peace talks in Bucharest,” Tibor explained, as Miro and Hazay chattered quickly in Magyar. “Stefan knows all the latest news, and Miro is writing a poem.”
“A poem?” Lucy couldn’t see the connection; Tibor looked surprised at her surprise.
Ranklin intervened: “If he’d said a speech or an article, you wouldn’t have thought it odd. Well, here a poem does the same thing.”
Tibor beamed at Ranklin. “Yes, you understand. Why not a poem?”
“Why not?” Lucy agreed, smiling.
“He blames the warmongers in Vienna for urging Bulgaria into starting the war she has just lost …”