on the chocolate croissant I’d been handed until it would be time to go the next three steps. But that was many years ago.
As soon as I was old enough to stay home by myself, I rarely chose to accompany Mama or Anyu and their friends on their window-shopping coffee-house-stopping Double Bay circuits. When I eventually started going out with friends and boys unchaperoned, I preferred the anonymous, urban streets of Darlinghurst, Sydney’s more hip, less up-market version of a café-boutique neighbourhood or the trendy Danks Street, where my gallery is. It was there that I had my first taste of freedom. The sound of sirens, the smell of bus fumes, the feel of grit and grime under my fingernails, the sight of facial piercings, purple hair, random graffiti. There I could wander all day without bumping into a single familiar face.
I never imagined how lonely that would feel here in Double Bay.
“What a surprise. I didn’t think you’d come.” A throaty voice comes out of nowhere, tired, jaded. I can’t tell whether she’s pleased or irritated.
“Eva?”
“Change places with me, will you, daahrlink? I have to keep my eye on them.” I move to the other side of the booth, my inner thigh smack bang on top of one of those bristly cuts in the vinyl, my face exposed, directly opposite the front door. “Is that all you’re having? Nixon, Nixon daahrlink,” she sits down with a thump and calls over the waiter. “Bring us a nice piece of cake will you? The big one, daahrlink. Oh, don’t look so worried, Lily. It’s not for you.” She slaps his bottom as he zooms away, then bellows after him. “And get me a coffee, daahrlink, would you?” Vood you?
“Sugar today?” he calls back.
“Five sugars! But don’t stir … you know I don’t like it sweet.” She coughs up half her lungs and then whispers in my direction. “He’s gorgeous, you know, but so simple …”
We watch him fumble over the cake display and we wait. He finally arrives with a generous portion of Black Forest cake, mounds of fresh cream atop a mountain of chocolate sponge littered with ruby-red cherries and snowflakes of icing.
I feel sick. Anyu is going to kill me.
“See ya, ladies,” he announces, and then something in Hungarian. Eva responds, but I just stare at him. Something’s not right. He’s too young and too handsome to be speaking Hungarian. Only old people speak Hungarian.
Eva changes to English. “Meet my niece Lily. This is Nixon, daahrlink. Isn’t he gorgeous?” I manage a half-smile. Niece? “Well we are sort of related, by marriage anyway.”
So she is family. That answers my first question.
“See ya, Lily,” he says, smiling. Is he saying goodbye? What do I say?
“Lily wants to learn Hungarian, don’t you, daahrlink?”
I cringe.
But she’s right. We are not here for fun. I take out a small exercise book and a pencil. I scribble a quick title: Hungarian Lessons, November 2009. Ready for action. Business only. I may be her niece, but this is no social call. I want that to be clear.
I conscientiously write down “see ya” on the first page.
“It’s with a ‘z’. S-Z-I-A. Szia.” Nixon reaches across the table to point out my mistake. “Szia. ‘Sz’ always sounds like an ‘s’ in Hungarian. Our ‘s’ is pronounced ‘sh’, and our …” I tune out. Eva’s right. He is gorgeous. Clear, hazel eyes look straight into mine, as if without a care in the world. He has a handsome, boyish face with a sprinkling of freckles on his cheeks and two adorable little dimples framing a soft mouth. There’s something earnest about him. (Or is it simple?) There’s no design about his messy hair, no pretence in his voice, no hidden melodrama in his wrinkled brow. Anyu will definitely hate him.
“… so you see once you know how a letter is pronounced, it never changes, never ever. It’s easy as pizza pie!” The waiter Eva calls Nixon has just given me my first Hungarian lesson: Hungarian is actually easy to learn.
“What does it mean, then?” I ask. “What’s szia?”
Eva manages an opinion in between a mouthful of cream and a hearty cough. “Don’t worry too much about szia, daahrlink. That’s not what you’re here for. Only real Hungarians say szia. We don’t talk like that.”
We means Jews, or Hungarian Jews who, according to my family, are not really Hungarian at all. Jews are different. They look different, speak differently, dress differently, value their family differently. Jews are educated differently, gamble differently, drink and beat up their wives differently. All this is fine until a non-Jewish Hungarian says anything about us being different. I wonder whether Nixon is Jewish. I wonder whether he is offended, if he understands.
But he doesn’t bat an eyelid. “You know what szervusz means, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I say. Szervusz means both hello and goodbye. It is one of the few words of Hungarian I already know, together with bazd meg az anyád (fuck your mother) and nem akarok fürődni (I don’t want a bath). Invaluable phrases indeed, but they only take you so far in a conversation.
“Well szervusz is old fashioned now. Hungarians have replaced it with szia,” Nixon continues. “And it’s not even true Hungarian word.” Eva rolls her eyes. “Lots of people use it, don’t they, Eva néni? Austrians, Germans … It comes from the Latin: servus humillimus, I am your most humble servant.”
I smile. I can’t imagine the Hungarians I know being anyone’s humble anything.
“And szia is so Hungarian then?” Eva asks. “Nixon daahrlink, stop putting propaganda into a little girl’s head. Such a proud Hungarian, he hasn’t told you where szia comes from, has he? Did you ever play poker, Lily?”
I nod.
“The only English these Hungarians remember comes from their beloved card games – I see ya 250 forints, and I raise ya another 500. Don’t let them tell you how humble they are, Lily, don’t fall for it.”
“Yes,” Nixon says, earnestly. “It does come from English, or probably American.” I watch his eyes light up. America! “It’s from see ya later. It means the same as szervusz. Hello and goodbye.” His entire body straightens up with pride. “Only more modern, of course.”
“Vonderful!” Eva says. She licks her fork. “Go get me another piece of cake, would you? Lily’s not hungry. I’m eating here for two.” She then turns to me as he diligently dashes away. “What?” she says. Vot? “He needs something to do.”
I watch him at the counter. He carefully prepares the cake, stopping every so often to throw a comment back towards the kitchen. He gets more and more distracted until he finally gives up on Eva’s order and disappears through the swinging doors behind him.
“Nixon’s a funny name,” I say to Eva. I’m not so interested in our lessons anymore.
Eva sighs. “I know. I know. Not everyone is like us,” she whispers. “Yes, everyone dreamed of escaping, but not everyone had the balls to leave in fifty-six like us. And when it was too late, it was just too late.”
