have been hot out there. Can you believe the air-conditioner stopped working Wednesday morning? Can you imagine the heat in the office without air-conditioning? I should have called the bloody union. That’s what I should have done!”
“She recognised me, you know, after all these years.”
Sam sashays back to the table waving a phone number on the back of an order form. He sits down triumphantly.
“No, wait,” Mama continues, mainly towards Sam. “I should have gone to the funeral! That’s what I should have done. It would have been cooler than that bloody furnace of an office, you know. But Anyu, oh Lily, I can just imagine how Anyu must have been in a shocker of a mood in that heat.”
“I’m sort of … you know … kind of interested, you know … I’m sort of curious about Eva …”
“I probably should have sent Mrs Symonds a note. She probably thinks I’m a terrible person. But what was I going to say? Huh? Oh, I’m sorry your bastard of a husband finally dropped dead. No, it’s better this way. I’m sick of bullshit. I’m sick of all these charades.”
“And then, you know, as fate would have it, we … we sort of bumped into her at Dr Horvath’s surgery.”
Sam joins in. “Imagine, Judy, not for fifteen years, and then Lily bumps into her twice in one day! I think it’s a sign.” He smiles.
“A sign? A sign? You know what it’s a sign of?” Mama puts down her cup of tea and throws her serviette on the table. “It’s a sign of you being an idiot! You want to talk about fate? I’ll tell you about fate! It’s nonsense. Bloody nonsense. I don’t want to hear about it. Lily, you’re starting to sound like your father. You’ve been spending too much time with your grandmonster. You kids are going backwards, you know that, back to the dark ages. Why would anyone want to go back to the Old World? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
I smile. I know how Mama thinks. It’s ideas like fate that made her decide never to teach me Hungarian. The bullshit stops here, she always says. But things are more complicated than that. You can’t just cover up centuries of paranoia and superstition with a university degree, a different language and a new country, even one tucked away at the end of the world. The truth is this: bullshit runs in families, like curly hair or big noses. For some, it may be a recessive gene, but I feel the Hungarian-ness in my blood and I need someone to decode it for me before it becomes too toxic.
Mama suddenly gathers up her purse and keys. She glances quickly at her watch and stands up. She mumbles something about having to go and turns away.
“And stay away from that bitch Eva,” she says, already halfway to the gate. “She’s bad news.”
Too late, I think. My fate is already sealed. Tomorrow is Saturday, the day I am to meet Eva at eleven am in a café in Double Bay for my very first Hungarian lesson.
Chapter Five
She’s not here. I’m ten minutes late and she’s not here.
I panic.
Maybe Mama was right. Maybe Eva is bad news. What on earth am I doing here? I can just hear Eva’s voice as she booms over the telephone line to her own Dotsis and Puncis, laughing out loud about that skinny, sickly granddaughter of Agi who is still single and, imagine daahrlink, comes to me to learn Hungarian because her own mother simply forgot.
I check my phone. There is a voicemail from Dr Horvath’s receptionist reminding me of my new appointment time and a cryptic text from Sam: don’t do anything I wouldn’t do ;)
I shouldn’t have come so late. I spent an irritating morning working on a portrait of Anyu that looked at me accusingly. It got worse and worse with every layer of paint. It was the eyes. Anyu was watching me.
I take a deep breath. I settle into a booth in a far corner of the café and I wait. I think back to my last words with Eva.
“Come to the café on Saturday, daahrlink. I’ll be there at eleven.”
She didn’t have to explain. I knew exactly which café she meant. It used to be the place to be seen in Double Bay: the place for Continental delicacies with a Hungarian accent, the place of my childhood. The Oktogon.
I haven’t been here in more than fifteen years. Zany Gypsy music spills out from behind the bar. It’s the soundtrack of my childhood: slow, repetitive whining that gradually builds up into a heated frenzy and when it finally hits that crescendo, there’s only momentary relief. I wait for it to start all over again.
It’s a bit early in the morning for frantic violins, but I smile. I’m home.
I look around. The place is empty. The smell of simmering bableves, bean soup, seeps in from the kitchen doorway and suddenly I’m six years old again. I remember long afternoons in one of these dark booths by a mirrored wall, sweating on sticky, burgundy vinyl benches. I remember the smell of fried onions and the sound of bickering in a disorienting blend of English and Hungarian. I remember the little tears in the seats that opened up under pressure, revealing a yellowy, spongy mattress that crumbled in your fingers and stuck under your nails. There was the fat delivery boy from the pastry shop. There were never-ending bowls of creamed spinach and the smell of cinnamon on my plum dumplings. I remember feeling at home.
I also remember when Mama told me that we would not be going back there anymore. I didn’t ask why. There was no point. I knew the answer already: Don’t be an idiot, Lily.
But that was more than fifteen years ago. I’m an adult now. I can have coffee wherever I like.
I think.
“I’ll see you there, daahrlink, don’t be late,” Eva had warned me as she tumbled out of Sam’s Jeep. Brilliant, I thought. We’ll be safe there. I knew it would be the one place neither Mama nor Anyu would ever set foot, the one place their friends would never go, the ultimate safe haven. Still, I choose the booth furthest from the street front and sit with my back to the window.
You just never know.
I order a black coffee from an earnest-looking waiter with a sexy just-got-out-of-bed hairstyle. My fourth coffee for the day. He smiles sweetly as he rushes by. I wonder where he’s going in such a hurry. Apart from a young Asian couple hovering dreamily over a giant bowl of rainbow ice-cream and a middle-aged woman agonising over the cake display, the place is empty.
The Oktogon isn’t what it used to be. The room looks neglected. Lonely, limp carnations rest on every table beside unlit candles in petite glass bottles. Faded burgundy drapes frame dull mirrored walls. A heap of coffee-table-book-sized menus in tattered vinyl covers lies in a leaning tower beside the bar. A row of identical, bronze, semi-naked ladies with feathered headdresses lines the wall stretching all the way to the front door. One leans casually over my head balancing an orb in her outstretched palm. But there’s nothing enchanting about her: the unlit bulb is mottled and discoloured and the end of her perky nose is chipped.
The waiter notices me from the other side of the empty room; he smiles again, scratches his head, buzzes around in an awkward semi-pirouette and then scurries off excitedly through the swinging doors to the kitchen. The Asian couple leave quietly and their leftovers sit on the table melting into a brown mess. What’s happened to my Oktogon? Where is the bustle and commotion, the prancing and gossiping? I remember constantly wrinkling up my nose at the strong perfumes and waiting ages in the queue to the toilet. I remember fancy outfits, glamorous women applying lipstick in front of the mirror, and the incessant ka-ching of the register. Now all I see are leftovers. The Oktogon is no longer Old World. It’s just plain old.
The entire Double Bay, or as we like to say, Double Pay, isn’t what it used to be. Though it may still be home to the chic designer boutiques and Viennese-style coffee houses that originally gave it its reputation for glamour and wealth, there’s a palpable change on the streets. New money. Young money. The sunglasses are still big, the accents