WAITER
(At a copper-yellow dusk, in a café on the boulevard, a noisy still life, with mirrors, fake glitter, plaster roses and human heads! A lukewarm one with a skin! A porter in the right corner! Filtered, without! A phone call, a phone call! I’m coming! Here’s your aspirin! Suicide candidates are sipping raspberry syrup! A straw to it, a straw! The last straw! Quickly as it’s for a sick person! A slip of paper for the writers! Literary cold cuts! And an idea, an idea! The waiter I have known for a long time, like all waiters, also knows me, like everyone he has seen once. We talk hurriedly as he runs past my table. With five-minute and half-hour breaks,)

“But what did you want to be when you were ten, Dezső?”
“A priest.” (He runs away. I ponder on this for five minutes with bulging eyes, while spooning my curdled milk. I shout over to him.) “Why a priest?”
“I went to the Benedictines.”
“And then?”
“Then a restaurateur who lived opposite us in Kőszeg, on the Main Square, told my father that he would take me to his side and make me a restaurateur.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifty-nine.” (The head waiter says: How come fifty-nine?”, and wants to count.)
“How many years have you been in the profession?”
“Forty-six.” (The head waiter hearing the number looks at us again.)
“Where did you serve?”
“Opatija, Germania, Français, New York, Palermo, Miramare, Japan.” (Like the triumphant stages of a globetrotter.)
“How long are you working?”
“Eleven hours a day.”
“How much can you walk in kilometres?”
“It’s easy to calculate. Walking an hour, you can cover five kilometres.”
“So fifty-five kilometres a day?”
“But I also run.”
“You could have travelled around the world many times.”
“The main thing is to take care of our feet. Every morning I go to the steam, cut out my corns, my calluses, like all waiters before coming to the store. I’m not complaining though. Nice job, interesting.”
“Have you met many famous people?”
“I also served Francis Joseph in Sopron, at the station, at a military exercise. The old man sat down with his aide-de-camp and ordered himself.”
“In Hungarian?”
“Oh, come on.” “Ich bitte um ein Glas Cognac.” In the Lerchenfeld dialect. He drank it, didn’t say a word to his aide-de-camp or to me, and then handed me ten forints. Endre Ady was also my guest. He drank wine.”
“Who was the most gallant?”
“A prelate who was having fun in Uzhhorod in 1911. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he kept stuffing me with money. If he asked me what time it was, son, or where the phone was, son, or what time it was, son, he would hand me a ten-crown piece of gold. I earned 160 crowns in gold on him every night. He was a blessed, bohemian man.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No way. I live only for my family. Here is the portrait of my son, with his fiancée. (He shows it proudly and delightedly.) No cards, no horse racing.”
“Were you in the war?”
“I worked as an officer’s chef in Bosnia for two years. Then someone reported me to send me to the front. I went to Russia, but my regiment soon telegraphed me back. A year later I was sent to Italy, but my regiment telegraphed back from there as well. You know, the stomach. It’s a powerful master. I cooked well.”
“Do you know your guests who are sitting here?”
“You only have to look at them, I know what their pedigree is, what is in their heads and pockets.”
“Show me some.”
“Well, for example, there’s the gentleman in the corner who is eating iced coffee right now. He comes in here every single day. First of all, he orders two giant pickled cucumbers, then milk semolina, then iced coffee, then melon, then black coffee, and then a Wiener schnitzel. Sorry, he’s calling again. (He runs over.)
“For God’s sake, what did you order again?”
“Boiled corn.”
“What is your job?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Maybe a stomach specialist?”
“A gynaecologist.”
“That’s different. Then I understand.”
“And there’s an old gentleman sitting over there.” This is the free-riding guest. He asked for brown coffee with foam, licked the foam off it, and then complained that there wasn’t enough foam on it. I served him some. Then he found the coffee very brown and asked for milk. “Repairing” milk. At other times, he does it the other way around. He orders light coffee and asks for a “repair” black coffee.
“Is there dine and dash?”
“Oh please, dine and dash customers are innocent. They eat six rolls and only announce two. But we know that. They are served the cake when they are reading. And they are not angry if we really charge them six rolls. They don’t do it as a swindle. They just don’t have the heart to admit it. What else can I say? Some guests get started slowly. You have to greet him with the right emphasis, very loudly. “Good afternoon, Director, your humble servant, Editor!” They realize with a smile that they haven’t even paid yet. There is always a ‌“dry” guest who sneaks in, says that ‌“later”, he will hide next to the stove and read all the newspapers in a flash. The “impostor” guest is a different story. We had one just last week. He had a hearty dinner, leaning his chair against the table, saying that he would return. He even left his glasses behind. He never came back to pick them up.
“Are there any other funny guests?”
“They are extinct. But in the past, we also had to be funny as people wanted it. A glass of water, but make it wet. When we put him in front of him, the guest pointed out in fright that the water had flowed together. And he called me my father, my leader, my president. The world has become serious and sour.”

(What versatility, overview, agility in movement and perception, and what knowledge of human beings. How many novelists are there who do not know people at all in their study, and how many globetrotters who have not seen a quarter of the world. The waiter, although stuck in one place all his life, does not wear his feet and shoes in vain, he reaches far, always to get to know each other. He sees how young guests get older, how their teeth and hair fall out, how couples get together over a bottle of champagne and how they separate, how marriages take place, and how the husband negotiates with his lawyer about divorce on a gloomy morning, ordering dark coffee without anything. He is a real wise man He brings wine to the intoxication and baking soda to disgust.)