Bodor Ferenc: Coffee-Houses - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1992)

Sziget (islamd)

This, too, used to belong to someone else. It has not yet been returned to its former proprietors who—they say—are selling coffee and the clerk’s wife’s tipple only a short distance away. The democratic deluge of the boulevard washes around the walls of the Sziget, thrusting their tongues inside and demanding ice-cream. The interior is like an uninhabited, though communized castle, only recently abandoned by co-operative accounting and the choir society. The squire left behind a chandelier of sorts, and something very like a fireplace; in the inner room the proportions inspire cosy intimacy. Elderly ladies gaze back into the thirties through the mirrors, fresh- complexioned young girls rush about with strawberry cakes and Mecseki wine among neobaroque epithets. At the counter, policemen sip soda water, downtown crime chirping at their throats. We can now float out to the Sziget far into the night.

7 SZENT ISTVÁN KÖRÚT, V.

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