Prague (31 page)

Krisztina Toldy poured more coffee for the American boy and began to sense she was not accomplishing either of her two assignments. How could she relax him and make him feel the importance of the press? She realized her two tasks were contradictory: To educate this boy would require verbal force, which would hardly soothe him. Besides, there was something incorrect about this boy. His smile and word of thanks were wrong. He was made of dirty mirrors. She saw he did not care what she said; he was too spoiled to understand what

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Horvath had done with his life. She tried her best to entertain the bearer of U.S. dollars, but in midsentence she would find his posture, his expression, his lips and hair so maddening that she would begin teaching and then end by haranguing.

Charles found this exhibition of her predicament increasingly entertaining, savored the sight of her at war with herself, and after his initial impatience, he began to hope Horvath would be infinitely late so that Charles might instead watch this tightly coiled aide-de-camp finally bust a spring. He memorized his favorite example of her confused outpourings and he recited it to Mark and John the next Monday evening at the Gerbeaud: "I am believing you will find Mr. Horvath an extraordinary businessman in your Western style, except that in the fundamentally, he is a man of moralness, and perhaps that is something you have seldomly seen in the West, or perhaps even never, since you are all unfamiliar with how living under the Communists did make some men strong. But perhaps this is impossible for your understanding what I mean."

Charles nodded and smiled sympathetically. "Mr. Horvath certainly was lucky to have been exposed to the Communists' inadvertent influence," he said. She rose and fetched a fresh pot. The coffee was offered and rejected, then accepted on second thought just as she was sitting down again.

"Do you have questions I might to answer?"

"Yes, thank you. This is a family-owned business, I think you wrote in one of your letters to my firm?"

"Since eighteen-eight, yes. Yes, the Horvath family is the business for one hundred and eighty-two years." She was energized again and leaned forward. "He is the sixth to guide this company, this Mr. Horvath. Our Hungarian history has until so far made it impossible for him to bring the most profits to the house—as I know your Western standards must have—but he has kept the press alive and free since forty-three years, like his father did in the wartimes. And we do make profits. We do not lose money here, sir. His father had your name." Pause. "Karoly." Her enthusiasm faded as she considered this coincidence, but she continued on. "His father also guide us through danger. We are given leaders that times require for us, Mr. Gabor, and we are blessed to have Mr. Horvath."

"If it's a family business, then who is Mr. Horvath's heir?" Charles interrupted before she could screech another love song. "Which of his children is he preparing to take over the leadership of the company after his death?"

She looked a little shocked to hear reference to her employer's demise, but

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Charles made no apology in word or gesture. "No, no, Mr. Gabor. Mr. Horvath will not have a death. He is immortal!" She chirped at her humor in the face of this horrible boy.

Charles replaced his empty cup on its saucer and leaned forward to reward Ms. Toldy a smile commensurate to her witticism. He had enjoyed her struggles to this point, but now he had heard the first piece of information worthy of his trip. Mr. Horvath was old (running the company for forty-three years) and was evidently heirless, as his trusted aide had dutifully not answered Charles's question.

"Heirless," he confirmed to his two friends that Monday evening at the Gerbeaud.

"Can't he use an inhaler?" Mark asked. "I did when I was a kid." "There's a spray you can rub on your scalp now, I think. It makes it grow back," John offered.

The door to the conference room opened and Charles forced a smile. Imre Horvath, his glasses propped up on his forehead, entered signing papers held by a young man. Two other young men followed them into the room. Papers overflowed, pens scraped, last-minute urgent advice was taken, split-second decisions made, and brilliant, multilayered orders issued in two languages. Charles stood slowly, drawn upward by script and ritual, simultaneously bored and alert, expecting little. "Ohhh, Mr. Gabor" came the English words tinseled in middle-European accents. "You must accept my apologies for being tardy."

"Horvath ur," Charles responded entirely in Hungarian. "Please do not apologize. Ms. Toldy has been excellent and informative company."

The emperor stopped short with exaggerated surprise. His court, too, froze, and the emperor made the recognized face of astonishment, followed by the acknowledged hand gestures of delight. "It is too wonderful," he exclaimed in English. "You speak Hungarian like a genius. These are exciting times when the best young Americans speak Hungarian." The three attendants grinned appreciatively, and Ms. Toldy, standing at the head of the table, smiled and relaxed in her hero's presence.

The older man who wanted the younger man's money shook the hand of the younger man who wanted the older man's position, and they continued their courtly dance. They descended into chairs on opposite sides of the long table. A glass of milk, apparently, materialized in front of Horvath, and Charles watched coffee reappear in his own cup. Ms. Toldy sat at Imre's right, and the

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three attendants slid themselves, in decreasing height, into three chairs on their master's left; Charles faced the five of them alone.

Imre spoke again in English, a generous gesture in order not to strain the young man's undoubtedly shallow pool of Magyar: "My good Mr. Gabor, we are very honored to welcome you to our press today. We are quite at your disposal. Your trip, I hope, was—" The script was followed precisely (alternating in generous English and generous Hungarian, until the man who reverted first to his native tongue would have admitted the same defeat as the man who lets his business rival pay for the lunch): the names of the three other men, the ritual exchange and tribal inspection of business cards, a joke about the ritual of exchanging and tribally inspecting business cards, Charles's request that the others call him Karoly, Horvath noting the coincidence, Charles's travel experience, Vienna, the neighborhood, the building, the sound of the presses clattering behind soundproof glass, questions as to how a young man could speak such flawless (an exaggeration, intentionally crafted to be transparent) Hungarian, brief explanations of family history, a reference to the weather and the inevitability of references to weather, a joke implying great age and wisdom, the teller having seen all the weather there is to see and expecting no more surprises in this life, the prints upon the wall. "This one"—a slow caress over the glass that protected the framed verse—"was written about this very firm, about our Horvath Press, when it was still young and still, of course, in Budapest. A great poet wanted to tell the world about how we ..." The man's story illuminated nothing; Charles nodded accordingly. "... and yet, no doubt ancient history, an old man's nonsense, you come all this way to talk business and here I am—" a mock-humble claim to be uninteresting, a deceptive claim semi-subliminally boasting its own inaccuracy, in fact designed to illuminate an actual, robust appetite for commerce. Conclusion of introductory remarks, shiny delicious early train to Innsbruck not yet an impossibility.

"You are very kind, Horvath ur," continued Charles in Hungarian. "I am here, of course, on behalf of my firm"—the older man nodded at Charles's frank admission that he merely represented other, more powerful, men with money—"to hear more about your company and about the specifics of how we may be able to help you." Charles realized how his words had been taken and so he added, "In that my report decides the firm's next steps."

Charles's questions leaped one at a time from the notebook in which he had lodged them the previous night. As the questions sprang up over the table,

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Imre would compliment them, charm them, allow to dance before them visions of history and tyranny, bravery and cunning, place them in a receptive mood before assigning one or another of his assistants the task of filling in details, until the question drifted, exhausted, back down into the notebook, to be replaced by the renewed vigor and insight of its successor. The questions in Hungarian probed cash reserves, capital assets, distribution networks, employee counts, backlists and catalogs, balance sheets and production schedules, income statements and lines of credit, supply chains and unit costs; the answers in English spoke of stories and histories, personalities and ancestors, dramatic events dictating difficult decisions, and dictated decisions yielding surprising results. Each time, Imre in English flattered Charles's Hungarian questions, and Charles in Hungarian flattered Imre's English anecdotes, until an assistant, following his boss by using chunky, metallic English, provided the details that Charles had originally requested. "Your question is insightful, young Karoly. Our financial records are entirely at your disposal. The specifics of your question touch on areas we have begun to examine quite closely as we preparing for this great move back to our homeland." And gradually Charles was allowed to understand what precisely Horvath wanted from Charles's firm.

For the last thirty-some years, there had been two Horvath Presses—the larger one in Budapest, nationalized without compensation by the Communists in 1949, and the smaller one in Vienna, reopened by Horvath after his escape from Hungary in 1956. As a victim of the 1949 nationalization, Horvath was now entitled to a reimbursement by the new, democratic Hungarian government: a symbolic restitution for his 1949 losses, a symbolic amount paid in vouchers that could only be used to buy back nationalized property (his own or someone else's) or to invest on the new, wobbly Budapest stock exchange. Horvath was looking for enough outside investment to pool with his feeble vouchers, resulting in a large enough bid to buy back everything that had been stolen from his family in 1949, to refurbish the reclaimed property to 1990 standards, to combine the healthy, profitable enterprise in Vienna with the rebuilt enterprise in Budapest, and to make the Horvath Kiado once again the vocal memory of the Hungarian people. "Ohhh, Mr. Gabor, this State Privatization Agency, it is charmingly named, no? Perhaps my vouchers will come with an apology? Or a greeting card signed by my jailers? Perhaps I will find they give me my vouchers but have already sold my press to some sad, abused greengrocer? So we must act with speed, you and I. But Balazs"—he nodded to the

tallest assistant (though still shorter than the imposing Horvath)—"is wise in matters mathematical. Balazs, what do you say to Karoly's clever question?" And the young Hungarian who lived and worked for his hero in Vienna provided the American in English with the accounting data he requested. And the same scorn, the same zealous faith Charles had felt emanating from Krisztina Toldy floated around Balazs's answer as well—no harsh words, nothing in fact but real and projected numbers were discussed, but Charles's rebellion, his unwillingness to bow low to the seated god, seemed to offend everyone in the room but the flesh icon himself.

"We have prospered here in Vienna, you can see. But most important, we have survived and maintained our duty: We are still the memory of our people, and during these dark forty years, this was more important than ever before. We are the publishers in ten languages of all the classic Hungarian authors and poets. The entire catalog of the Horvath Kiado, gathered over nearly two centuries, and we have assured they have not disappeared from the world's view even as they are banished from their homeland. Surely, Mr. Gabor, you can see the importance of such a feat."

"Indeed. Your books line my parents' shelves in Cleveland, Horvath lir," he replied. "I grew up with your editions."

Horvath smiled broadly and spread his fingers as far as they would reach, allowed the boy to see the strength in his old hands. "Then we have succeeded and I am very filled with pride."

"But is there sustainable, growable profit in selling only classics?"

"Ohhh, Mr. Gabor, do not think me a sentimentalist. You are correct: Something must pay for our mission. When we return to our rightful place, it will be the same as now, but in Hungarian: popular books and magazines, sports papers, a financial paper; Our Forint would renew a tradition of my family." Without taking his eyes off the American, he waved vaguely at the middle assistant, who, grateful for the opportunity and with the same fire in his eye as had inflamed Krisztina's and Balazs's, drew Charles's attention to an eclectic catalog that included, among other oddities, the fetishistic but wildly popular series of American "Mike Steele" detective novels translated into German (Killer in the Bath; A Long Hot Shower with Death; Suds, Bloody Suds; Lathered for Slaughter, and several others), the Viennese-pastry cookbooks, memoirs of German politicians and spymasters, the investment guides, diet books, pop psychology, inspirational soft-religion books, a soccer newspaper, and the puzzle magazine that had together accounted for 8 5 percent of the company's