It was only late in life that I learned the simple lesson that history is merely anything that can happen. In my youth, in my art school painting days, I carried a Spenglerian Weltanschauung as big as a truffled goose. The things I loved then, those that excited me, seemed to impress no one else; the forms and colors of my life that dazzled me were gray and shapeless to everyone who politely stopped to look at them.
But I am wrong, there was one person who took an interest in me. An old Russian priest I met when I was in Budapest trying to talk Hungarian to the pretty girls (“Te egy igen szép lány vagy!“—“You're a very pretty girl.” “Menjen el tölem!”—“Scram, you bum!”).
He was a bread-eating, bread-blessing priest with a long beard, and he really believed that a fear of wealth was as bad as a fear of poverty. I used to meet him once a year at the Miklos Horvath Bathorys', who were related to the Sandor Hunydadys, who had a son I used to eat truffled capon with and drink Beaujolais with in Paris (but that's another story)… Anyway, the priest used to come to the Bathorys' once a year to bless the food… the suckling pig, köménymag leves (caraway soup), maj gomoc (liver dumplings), and korozott liptoi cheese… Father Aleksander Dragomiroff Panin. He looked like a bad Russian opera given by students of a home for the feeble-minded. He had one joke: he couldn't stand the singing in Boris Godunoff… “Why?” you would ask… “Because,” Father Panin would grin, “it isn't godunoff for me!” (His only English.)
I remember one day I was trying to become a writer and Father Panin found me at a café trying to finish a story, and he sat down and pulled on his beard.
“You are in trouble?”
“It is hard to find words to write.”
“It always is. Even Tolstoy… but enough of Tolstoy… They have a good wine here.”
We had some of the wine and he looked over what I had written and he said something I have never forgotten. “A book is easy… try to write a great line. That is rare. Anyone can write a book, but how many have written one great line that the world repeats over and over again?”
We ordered more wine and I tore up my story and I said I lacked the guile to be a writer, and Father Panin said that men without guile were men without talent and I was full of guile… full to busting!
“Look, my son, you want a story? I will give you one…”
Next door they were playing something fierce on an old mechanical piano… those oversweet Strauss waltzes with much Schlamperei. Father Panin frowned.
“Come home with me, and we will talk. Thank the good Lord my wife is deaf, and no longer listens.”
He lived in Buda, the wrong side of the river, up three flights of stairs, with a fat wife who was not so deaf as she made out to be and could cook like an angel… a Russian church angel of course, though I do think she was a Lith or Balt or Finn, one of those races that Father Panin lumped together as “small Russians.”
“These Hungarians, Stephen…”
“What about them?”
“They have so little culture to offer.”
“In Hollywood the Hungarians wait until Molnar has written a play, then they all celebrate and steal the first act.”
“What do they do with it?”
“They sell it to the studios. The Hungarian first act is a product of Hollywood, like Garbo…”
“The Hungarians are lucky to find a place like Hollywood for their first acts… but here I like it because you can get köménymag leves—caraway soup.”
“It is good and it is bad.”
“Here it is good,” and Father Panin's wife came in with a steaming bowl and ladled it out with a small, pint-sized scoop, into plates big enough to hold St. John's head.
Köménymag leves is not as easy to make as it sounds… yet any one can make it with a little courage and a firm hand. Take two generous tablespoons of goose fat, melt it, and add a half cup of white flour, stirring constantly. Stir until a golden brown, and add 6 cups of water into which you have mixed a big pinch of salt and the juice of one lemon. Get an ounce of caraway seeds, and chop fine a little parsley. Add this to the mixture. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. Make rye or corn bread croutons, very crisp, and serve… köménymag leves!
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