The Pastry Cook's Golden Crown

The Fantastic Story of a Man Whom Fate Tortured in a Most Absurd and Curious Fashion

FRANZ MOLNAR

Benjamin Glazer

THE pastry-cook stood stark naked before me. "Better throw something around you," I said to him.

With a nervous backward glance over his shoulder he wrapped himself in a huge white sheet.

It was difficult to make ourselves heard in the great echoing bath hall. Water dripped and streamed everywhere. Robust attendants were kneading, washing, rinsing, slapping the bare bodies of the bathers. Wherever I looked there were sheets with yellow legs protruding from them and, here and there, a muscular arm. Four or five white-sheeted figures drifted like ghosts toward the cabinet baths. My friend, the professor, with eye-glasses on his nose, otherwise completely nude, trampled in an ice cold footbath, his thin nose pointed heavenwards and his long beard waving jerkily aloft. For the past fifteen minutes the professor had been shouting, "Bruhahaha ... !"

"This is no place to talk," declared the pastry-cook. ''Come in here."

We entered the so-called drying room. On the last cot, away off in a corner, wrapped in a sheet, lay a man, asleep. I too wrapped myself in a sheet, spread another sheet over the cot. . . . Sheets, everywhere sheets.

"MY malady," observed the pastry-cook, "has a Latin name—traumatic psvchoneurosis."

Sitting, he bowed slightly as if he were introducing himself.

"Ah!" I said, restraining a smile, and nodding in formal acknowledgment.

"Trauma," he explained, "means shock, a shock that upsets one's life. Psycho, psychology—deuce take it—is the same as soul. Neurosis means disease of the nerves; comes from neur, the nerve."

"You live in Budapest?"

"No, in Ofen. I have a pastry shop there."

"You were going to tell me about the shock that . . . upset your life."

"Yes. As an author the case will interest you. In the first place you must know that my wife died. There were five children. What does a man do in a case like that? I took unto myself a new wife. Her maiden name I won't mention. You probably know the family—Budapest people. You are well acquainted in Budapest?

"Yes."

"All the more reason. Well, I married her. One afternoon I came home at three—"

"Is your wife a young woman?"

"Yes, but she was a widow when she married me. Did I say widow? No, she wasn't a widow at all. She had been divorced from her first husband. He is in Sarajevo now, an officer of high rank. Whatever made me say widow? She has light yellow hair, beautiful little eyes . . . not big, little . . . but wonderfully blue. You wouldn't call her fat— plump rather. A scrupulously clean woman; skin like milk; wears a black velvet band around her neck. They say she's a flirt, but they say that about every lively woman."

"Yes, indeed. And one day you came home—"

"One day I came home, and there in my shop stood a policeman. 'What's this?' says I. . . . Says he, 'A summons.' . . . 'For me?' . . . 'No, for your wife.' . . . 'Give it here.' ... I read it. So it was. A summons. . . . 'What is it for?' I ask him. . . . He says, 'Witness.' . . . 'What kind of a witness?' . . . Says he, 'A cab accident.' . . . 'What kind of a cab accident?' ... 'I don't know,' he says, 'ask at the police station.' . . . 'Oh, well,' I say to myself, 'since my wife's not at home I may as well go over to the police station myself.' . . . It's funny, but right away my heart started beating fast. I didn't know what had happened, but all of a sudden it came over me, regular palpitation of the heart. I run all the way to the police station. I look at the summons. It says, 'First floor, Room 14.' ... I walk in. . . . 'Good afternoon, Mr. Inspector. What is this for, Mr. Inspector? This has been served on my wife, Mr. Inspector.' . . . Mr. Inspector looked at the summons, and said, 'Ah, yes.' . . . 'Ah, yes,' I said, 'but that doesn't make me any wiser than I was before.' . . . Whereat the Inspector: 'Collision between a cab and an automobile. The lady is a witness.' ... 'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'but how does the lady come to be a witness? Was she in the automobile?' . . . 'No, sir, the only one in the automobile was a chauffeur. The lady was in the cab. She is a witness, and Dr. Henry Vadasz, of 84 Elizabeth Street, who was in the cab with her, is also a witness.' . . . Well, there you are. I thanked the Inspector.

. . . 'Quite welcome, I am sure.' . . . 'Good day sir.' . . .'Good day,' said the Inspector; 'Where are you going? That's the door to the cell room. There's the way out.' . . . Did you ever hear of such a thing? I was about to go into the cell room."

"CAPITAL!" I ventured, and echoed his nervous little laugh. A pause was in order here lest he excite himself too much and tell no more. "Capital, my dear fellow! Into the cell room! Not bad! Not bad at all! Well and what happened then?"

"You can imagine how I felt. Outside the police station I stopped and couldn't move another step. My feet simply wouldn't obey me. That, you see, was the trauma. So the Head Doctor at the Sanitarium explained to me later. The part where my feet couldn't move, he meant. After a while they moved. Yes, and this Vadasz, you know, I had better tell you about him. His name used to be Heissenberg, and he was a practicing lawyer during the time my second wife lived with her first husband. When I married her, people said—it was the jeweler who told me—that my wife had divorced her first husband on his account, but that Vadasz wouldn't marry her because she had no money. I paid no attention to those stories. I didn't want to believe them, even though I knew that Vadasz had been a frequent visitor at her house. Every Sunday at noon he used to go there for luncheon. I had never met this Vadasz . . . but, well, that has nothing to do with it. I go home, and wait, and wait, and at half past five my wife appears. . . . 'Ilonka,'—I show her the summons—'Ilonka. here's a summons for you from the police station.' . . . She says, 'Yes, the maid, you know, the one I discharged.' . . . 'Ilonka,' say I, 'this is no maid; this is a cab.' . . . Do you know, I think I must have screamed like mad? 'Eight o'clock at night! Fehervarer Street! You were in a cab! Dr. Vadasz, Dr. Vadasz, Dr. Vadasz!' I said, that is I screamed in my excitement. 'You were both in the cab. What were you doing in a cab on Fehervarer Street at eight o'clock?' "

"IF I were you," I admonished the pastryA cook, "I should put that sheet on. Why do you stand around naked?"

"Pardon me," he replied, and picked up the sheet which he had unknowingly let slip to the floor. And as he held it about him he was not unlike an actor in an ancient Greek tragedy. One of his shoulders was uncovered. As he spoke and moved his arms a nervous trembling agitated the upper part of his body.

He continued:

"What answer do you suppose she gave me? . . . 'Oh, yes. Vadasz had some business in the neighborhood and dropped in. I complained of a headache, and as he had another stop to make in Promontor, he asked me to drive over with him. The fresh air would do me good. So I went.' . . . Well, what do you think of that?"

"It is quite possible," I observed.

"That's what the Head Doctor said. But he didn't mean it. They only say such things to comfort the patients. Don't you think I know what such things are like? Spooning in a cab! 'Be careful, dear; people can see us.' 'Driver, turn down that side street!' ... I went through all that during the time I was studying to go on the stage."

"You used to be an actor?"

"Yes. I wasn't always a pastry-cook. First I was an actor. And I know how it is done . . . this kissing in a cab. Once I kissed a girl all along the suspension bridge and through the whole tunnel.

"But that was long ago. Now—it is different. How many children do you think I have? Five! and what kind of a business?"

"A pastry shop?"

"Not only that. A prosperous restaurant, too. And five children. And for half a year I had lived with that woman. Was I to throw her out of my house now. I couldn't have done such a thing to my first wife, much less my second. And besides, the children were so used to her. You have no idea what good care she took of them. Now you see what a position I was in. What do you think I did?"

"What?"

"I said to her: 'All right, Ilonka. You will acknowledge that it was an unfortunate thing to happen. Don't do it again. I'll forget it this time. But take care. Next time you mightn't get off so easily.' . . . She cried. She even scolded me. But I didn't say any more. For two weeks I couldn't eat a mouthful. Then I went to a doctor. He said I had a weak stomach and ordered a liquid diet. Two months I lived on milk and liquids. I lost eleven pounds. Then 1 went to another doctor. He sent me to this sanitarium."

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(Continued from page 50)

"And do you feel better now?"

"Yes, much better. I'm only allowed to have white meats, malted milk and vegetables. After meals, medicine. Every afternoon a steam bath. At night cold compresses on the stomach. I haven't been able to sleep lately, that is why I get a rub-down with wet sheets this time of day. And before luncheon I must take a thirty minute walk up a ten per cent, grade."

"And does that help you?"

"Yes, especially the rub-down. They wrap your body in damp sheets and rub it thoroughly. On your head they put a cooling apparatus. I have live children, you see, and 1 must do everything to be cured. After the rub-down I sometimes think it would have been wiser if I had said nothing to her at all. One must learn to make the best of things. After something has happened you can't alter it. The only thing I can't get used to is the malted milk. Yesterda> I cried for a half hour on account ci ine malted milk. Did she have to go driving with Vadasz? Do they love each other as much as that?"'

He gulped a little, as if something choked him, and turned away to enter the big bath hall. I remained sitting on my cot for a while, looking after him. The room in which I sat was dim. but the bath hall was aglow with clear golden sunshine that streamed through the skylight. I saw a smiling attendant take hold of the pastry-cook. For a moment his thin, undernourished bodygleamed under the glass roof, then suddenly they had covered it with a wet. clinging sheet. On his head they placed a glittering crown of brass through which cold water rotated. The sun shone on the brass crown and on the sheet which was draped in ample folds to his feet. It was as if the pastry-cook were wearing a crown of gold and a robe of shimmering white. His face was contorted, for he was weeping, but he could not rub his eyes because his hands were imprisoned under the sheet; wherefore he turned his head sideways to keep the tears from rolling into his mouth. The attendant dried his eyes.

"Mustn't cry," he admonished him. "Cheer up!''

My pastry-cook smiled sorrowfully-. The attendant began to rub him. And, watching from my shadowy corner, it seemed to me that those relentless sinewy hands were the buffeting hands of fate to which the pastry-cook had hopelessly', disconsolately, patiently resigned himself. And the picture I can't forget is when the attendant knelt down to clasp his feet; and the pastry-cook stood gaunt, snow-white, with the golden crown on his head, looking down at him with a forgiving, melancholy smile.