Add a fött gyümölas of stewed fruit Hungarian, in season, and life can be very wonderful. We ladled up our soup and gave thanks to fat geese… and Father Panin said a prayer for all good creatures who feed us.
After the meal I gave Father Panin a cheap German cigar, part of it pure tobacco, I was told.
He lit his cigar… pulled his beard to one side (to protect it from sparks)… and smiled.
“I will give you a story, such a story that you will become famous overnight. It will not be easy… but then when it is over, the story will write itself. You have been to Rome?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, good. You like children?”
“I'm polite to them.”
He thought a while. “Saturday you leave for Rome. Listen to an old man… you go to Rome.”
“But how?”
“Your way is paid. Second class including meals.”
“But why?”
“You want to write… Have you no adventure? Motga, the wine!”
The wife was deaf to the plea, so he had to get it himself. “Listen, my son. If you have not got the spirit of adventure, you will never write. Do not ask, take. Do not brood, think. The world is waiting to open its secrets to you. Do not even ask… it can't help rolling at your feet if only you are not blind.”
I smiled. “You're a jewel smuggler.”
Father Panin shook his head. “What cheap reading you do. I give you nothing, not even a letter. All I say is… be on the Rome train Saturday. A place will be held.”
“No.”
Father Panin poured the last of the wine into glasses. “Better get an easy job someplace. A clerk in a leather shop… maybe you can keep books… perhaps someone in America could use you to herd cowboys.”
“One just herds the cows… the cowboys are the herders.”
“Anything but a creative artist. You have good intentions and no desire to carry them out.”
The priest looked at me. He wore a great nose like a great man, and I had a sudden impulse to trek and migrate towards water and Scotch at the English Club. His wife came in, the views and crowfeet of discouraged beauty on her honest face… and she picked up the empty wine bottle and went out. It was warm in Buda, and outside the window the ghostly pawing of moths filled the hot night.
I stood with dignity. “I'll be on the train.”
He smiled at me and held his stomach. “I have eaten too much. Ah, for the simple life. An Athenian meal of a few olives and the head of a fish. Bleak thinking, Stephen, austerity in furniture, a small diet are the greatest gifts we deny ourselves…”
“I said I'd be on the Rome train.”
He was looking at a still-life painting I had given him. “We deviate from the nature of things and call it art. I must go now to the Russian bath.”
I knew his only hygienic ritual was to make a face at himself in a bathroom mirror, but I could see he wasn't going to talk about the Rome train again. I went home and packed…
Saturday came, and I was at the station feeling a perfect damn fool. Priests always got me. I was the prey of credulity and suspicion. There was a place for me on the train. The train started. I sat forward, watching the river divide Buda from Pest, and after a while the train general or admiral (he had enough gold braid for it) came in, leading a small six-year-old boy by one hand. He was a handsome child with blue eyes and golden hair left a little too long.
The admiral bowed. “This is Egon Zelsmith.”
“Who?”
“Me,” said the child.
The admiral nodded. “Father Panin said you are escorting him to his mother in Rome.”
“Wait!” But the admiral had gone, and Egon sat facing me, his legs crossed, kicked his socked feet into space… He was a very handsome child.
“You live in Rome, Egon?”
Egon handed me a letter. It was from Father Panin.
Dear Stephen, You are blessed with youth and health, and you are curious about life. It is easy to be curious… but to show real interest in anything—that takes knowing. Egon is a good child. Deliver him to his mother at the Hotel da Fabriano. Bless you, my son, and may you find your story. In beato omnia beata…
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