The Storyteller [antikvár]

prologue My grandfather Vili had a particular weakness for the "Gerbaud girls." The Gerbaud was then, much as it is now, a wonderful place to meet. It was a glittery, overproduced spot on Budapest's Vörösmarty Square, where you went to be seen as much as to see who else was there. Around the turn of the century it was already a Baroque period piece, a coffeehouse in the Viennese tradition with touches of Turkish influence, and it was one of Vili's favourite spots as a young man. The Gerbaud girls had been a challenge for his amorous advances. Though young and inexperienced, they had been well-trained by Madame Gerbaud in the art of evading the eager hands of pushy customers. Vili succeeded in charming them with silk stockings — a rare luxury even among the wealthy and unknown in the countryside where most of the girls had come from. Years later, in 1949, when he took me to the Gerbaud for the first time, he told me that once he had fallen in love there. The three high-ceilinged rooms had been restored, except for the crystal chandeliers (smashed by the Germans, the pieces taken home by the Russians), and there were the blood-red drapes, the lion-footed tables, the discreet murmur of grown-up conversation, the hand-painted counter, the glass-enclosed confections, chocolate tarts with whipped cream caps, tortes with marzipan, vanilla swirls, candy-covered cakes — it was the pinnacle of all my best dreams. Vili pulled the chair out for me to sit on — "It's how gentiemen do it," he told me — and when I couldn't slither up or hop onto it, he lifted me into the whooshing, soft, maroon velvet cushion. The sound of magic.