Free Cafe Europa by Ed Ifkovic

But as we walked in, someone snapped on an overhead light, and the narrow room was suddenly bright. I blinked wildly because the walls were covered with canvases that startled. At least they startled me , a woman who favored the serene elegance of, say, John Singer Sargent. Elongated figures, garish misshapen heads, bulging eyes, splashes of vibrant color so bold they seemed blood-letting and barbaric, geometric angles passing for nudes, landscapes filtered through a drunken eye or a hashish-smoker’s delirium.
    Dazzled, Winifred and I hesitated in the doorway. This was a brave new world. Bertalan Pór, amused, nudged us in.
    Winifred sucked in her breath, a smile on her face.
    But our stillness was shattered by a lusty yell—Harold, out of breath, pushing behind us. “I saw you headed here and rushed…”
    Winifred grumbled. “No one invited you, Mr. Gibbon.”
    He grinned. “But I’m expected everywhere.”
    Harold galloped past us, taking charge, and stood in the middle of the gallery, face to face with the young woman who’d switched on the lights. “What the hell is this? Someone’s idea of a nightmare?” But he was laughing out loud. He swirled around, taking in the unorthodox paintings.
    Lajos Tihanyi, puzzled by Harold’s gesturing and strutting and the outburst in loud English, turned to Bertalan Pór for an explanation, but his friend looked to me.
    Harold stamped his foot. “What in tarnation?”
    Tihanyi’s face tightened, a flash of anger in his eyes, a vein on his neck throbbing.
    I smiled bravely. “Keep in mind that Mr. Gibbon is not an art critic. He knows little of culture. After all, he does work for William Randolph Hearst.”
    Bertalan Pór laughed and nodded at Tihanyi—a look that begged him to relax. Tihanyi breathed in. In careful, spaced-out English, Bertalan Pór said, “Then he is like most of Budapest—frightened of the new art, condemning this…new vision .” He lingered on the last word, as if uncertain he used it correctly.
    Stepping close to a huge canvas, Harold peered at a painting, which, I noted nervously, was signed by Tihanyi, and blurted out, “You know, before the coming of war there are always fireworks—flashes of anger and decay and smoke signals in the sky. The workers’ protests. Breaking down the old guard. A slap in the face of tradition.”
    Harold, fingers tapping his chin, suddenly faced us. He pointed to Tihanyi’s brilliant purples and reds. A portrait of a man whose wide-open eyes suggested astonishment at the world he found himself a part of. An emaciated man in what looked like a bolero hat, but the cubist angles reinforced the subject’s smugness, his venality. “The end of the Habsburgs is here .” He bowed to Tihanyi and Pór. “You, sirs, are the true revolution.”
    Bertalan Pór bit his tongue. “Yes, we are.” Deadly serious.
    Pór then enthusiastically showed us his work, an elaborate narration in a chaotic blend of Hungarian, German, English and, I swear, a trace of bungled French. He pointed to one painting— The Sermon on the Mount —that he said had been the subject of an attack on him a few years back. “A man cursed me in the street.”
    â€œA badge of honor, sir.”
    Pór bowed to Harold. Thank you. “ Köszönöm. ”
    Harold’s eyes popped. “Maybe this is what I should be writing about. The Hungarian artists who strike out at moribund Habsburg inertia with a paintbrush.”
    At that moment Winifred, gazing out the front window, started, and we followed her gaze. For a brief moment I caught the eye of the mysterious American from the Café Europa, that bearded man in the shadows, who sat with Zsuzsa Kos and János Szabó. The rich American from Boston—or so Harold suggested.
    â€œJonathan Wolf,” Harold announced.
    The man, peering in through