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

PlLLAMGÓ (BUTTERFLY)

This butterfly hovers over the seedier quarters of the city, loyal to the working class. It is a café converted from a bakery. One of its assets has only recently diappeared: a man in blue overalls with a tankard of beer in his hand, spurring one to have a draught. The walls are red pepper coloured, im imitation of brick dust. Customers without a vestige of artistic or historical sense trample upon a Klee-patterned mosaic floor in magnificently good repair. A benign, motherly waitress watched over the broken cubes of the interior during our visit. Interiors like this probably come into being spontaneously, gradually, like a stalactite cave; they could not possibly have been designed. The red leatherette seats retain the impression of your buttocks for a long time, regaining their original form with a sound that is practically a hiss. Youngsters in jogging suits converge, running, arriving from various directions to plump down in front of the café, witless from weekend houses and the music of Radio Danubius.

27 KÖZVÁGÓHÍD ÜTCA, XV.

PILLANGÓ, on the outskirts of the city, poetless

63