“We're taking your mother to the Hungarian Embassy for lunch. Be sure she's dressed to the nines and curried and combed. A nice filly, Sari, too good for your father. Poor Henry, he's a clod and will always be one … he didn't get any of my red blood, just my baby-blue eyes.” Gramp laughed and ordered another drink.
I went up and gave Mama her marching orders, and she said, “He's drunk!”
“He's high.” I admitted, expressing myself in one of Uncle Willie's phrases.
“And the Hungarian Embassy? Are you sure we arc invited, or is he too drunk to know?”
“Jo lstenem” I said. “Magyarul beszél tern”
Mama went pale. “Where did you learn iliac?”
“From Gramp, it's Hungarian, he learned it when he was building railroads in Europe. He also taught me how to swear, Te nem jo bolond …”
“Stevie, has he been letting you smell his breath?”
“Just a whiff.”
Mama cried a bit and said I would end up a drunkard like Uncle Roc. But she dressed very well and did up her face (she was one of the first respectable women to use lipstick). And being Mama, she began to enjoy the idea of having lunch at the Hungarian Embassy. I must confess it was years later that I learned that it was the old Austro-Hungarian Embassy, but Gramp didn't like the Austrians and so left them out.
I remember the Embassy; it was just after the war and it wasn't really open yet, but some people were getting ready to open it up. It was a grand place, so full of china and pictures and gold that it seemed to sink at least a foot extra into the ground. According to Gramp's journal, we were the guests at lunch of Count Sandor Lászlo Miklos Horváth; “a genuine Hungarian” was what Gramp called him. There were several other guests at a long table, and the footmen did not have their knee pants and white-wigs on, bur it was very fancy. Gramp was still high and getting higher. He always was very elated and high after getting depressed about his long-lost youth.
There was Danubian carp and Lake Balaton fogas imported on ice and by steamship from the old sod. I must admit I don't know whether these Magyars had any Tokay that day, but there was a fine strudel, I know, because I got a little ill from overeating. That and the Liptauer cheese. There was chilled Köménymagos Leves. a caraway soup, and the end for me, anyway, was a Dobos Torta, fifteen layers of chocolate and mocha cream with a roof of caramel icing over it all. I remember eating my third slice and looking up into Gramp's face in the taxi going back to the hotel and saying, “We gotta save the Union from President Grant … ”
“You bet, ” said Gramp, “We gotta lick 'em once and for all.”
“Men are beasts, ” said Mama, rubbing my aching brow.
I had the king of all bellyaches that night, and Gramp fell asleep after feeding me slugs of castor oil and orange juice, and it was a few days before we could travel, Gramp said his old war wounds were troubling him, and I wondered why he wore an icepack on his head because he had no scars there. I lived on milk and crackers, and Gramp and I refought the last days before Richmond in 1865.
Mama came home in a new hat with feathers on it, and Gramp said we were ready to move west. “Washington is certainly no place for civilized people. The pace is killing …”
“And the whisky expensive, ” Mama said crisply.
“That hurts, Sari, ” Gramp said, going up behind Mama and putting his arms around her, “But I'll cell you what I'll do. You neglect to write home all the details of our visit here, and I'll pay for that hat …”
“How do you like it?” said Mama.
“On toast with hard-boiled eggs, ” said Gramp.
Mama said he was still high but she smiled at the idea of his paying for the hat, and we all made our peace, and I tested out my new stomach on a steak at lunch. It held.
The car was in front of the hotel, and as Gramp tried to get behind the wheel.Mama shook her head and pushed him aside.
“I'm driving, Gramp, you're still a little, well, full of medicine.”?
Gramp couldn't make a scene, and I could see his head was still aching, so he moved over and Mama got us under way with a series of jerks and jumps, and somehow we got out of town and headed west. Gramp suddenly came alive and said, “Sari, where did you learn to drive?”
“I didn't. I've just been watching you. I wasn't going to trust my life and the life of my innocent child to your sprees.”
Gramp looked mad, got out a cigar, set it alight, and refused to speak for fifty miles, until he had to get out and change a tire. Mama walked me down the road and out of car range.
“I'm glad we're out of Washington, baby boy. It's a town I wouldn't care to live in. Promise me you'll never be President of the United States.”
I promised. Several times in the last few years I've been tempted to retract, but I've never given in. A boy's promise to his mother is pretty sacred, to me, anyway …
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