Kornel Esti by Deszö Kosztolányi

asked Sárkány:
    “I say, who's this?”
    “I don't know.”
    “Well, come on, then.”
    He linked arms with Sárkány as if nothing had happened, and to the astonishment of the onlookers went off with him. Esti joined them.
    “Did anyone fall for it?” he asked.
    “Yes,” they said with a grin.
    They let one of the balloons go.
    And so they came to the coffeehouse.
    The coffeehouse—at lunchtime—was quiet, deserted. Cleaning ladies were going about with brooms and buckets, wiping the marble tabletops. Morning coffee drinkers who had lingered were paying. A slender acrobat passed through the ladies' room.
    The afternoon coffee beans were being roasted. The aroma tickled their nostrils. Upstairs the balcony, with its twisting, gilded columns, like a Buddhist temple, seemed to be expecting something.
    Here they settled down at their tribal table. First they tried to organize their material affairs. Kaniczky had sixteen fillér, Sárkány thirty. Esti had one korona and four fillér. * Not much on which to fight the battles of the day.
    Sárkány, who had the best prospects that day since he had written a poem, beckoned to the morning headwaiter, got him to count out twenty Princeszász, ordered coffee, then showed him the manuscript which he would be able to sell to the Fületlen † at three that afternoon, but at the latest between six and seven, and asked him for a loan of ten koronas. The waiter resignedly advanced the sum. Esti ordered a double espresso. Kanicky called for bicarbonate of soda, water, and a “dog's tongue.” ‡
    The bicarbonate came. Slowly, absentmindedly, Kanicky sipped the three glasses of water that stood before him, even though Estitapped the ash from his cigarette into one of them. He began to write a sketch, so as to have some money. Suddenly he jumped up, clutched his head: he had to make an urgent telephone call. Nervous anxieties swarmed around his glistening brow. He asked his friends to go with him down to the telephone. He didn't like to be alone.
    On the way to the ground floor they pushed, joked, met friends, and forgot what they actually wanted. Loathsome figures were hanging like leeches on the telephones, speaking German, old fellows, forty or fifty, who couldn't really last much longer. It took Kanicky half an hour to get through. He emerged from the booth triumphant. She was coming at three that afternoon. He borrowed five koronas from Sárkány on his word of honor, and then Esti got one of the two that he had lent him.
    After organizing their material affairs, they lightheartedly went back to their places at the table. Kanicky wrote a couple of lines of his sketch. Again he left off writing. He called a messenger and sent a letter to the girl whom he had telephoned. They smoked and sighed, laughed and were sad in quick succession, and waved through the plateglass window to women passing in the street. When the waiter placed some fruit before them they gave each one a name: the apple was Károly, the grapes were Ilona, the plum had to be Ödön, the pear, because of its softness and voluptuousness, Jolán, etc. A sort of restlessness stirred in them. They played party games with letters, colors, voices, mixing up, exaggerating, and patching together everything. They asked the oddest questions: what would happen if something were not as it was? No, they were not satisfied with Creation.
    At three o'clock Sárkány hurried off for the money order. The coffeehouse was buzzing, the noise on the balcony was becoming louder and louder. In that raucous din they felt the pulse of their lives, felt that they were getting somewhere, making progress. Every table, every booth was occupied. Storm clouds of smoke towered in the air. It was good to relax in that vapor, in that warm pond, to think about nothing, to watch it seethe and bubble, and to know that those who were splashing in it were being slowly softened by it, steamed, cooked through, reduced into one single simmering