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

PÁLMA (PALM)

Above the shop-front the neon palm-tree still lures one to the tropics, but the plastic cakes have disappeared from the shop window. Boutique goods have taken their place. At the door, the sternest hat-check girl in the city stows confiscated coats in the mirror wardrobe. Doughnuts, cakes with flaky icing, pale pink soft drinks on the counter. Inside, the banquet-hall of a hunting-lodge everyone awaiting an official delegation. Mellow songs with accompaniment reverberate from the depths of the echo machine towards our sensitive ears. There are still orange-coloured silk lampshades, bracket-lamps and chandeliers. Then a pipe suddenly sprouts from the wall, papered with neo-renaissance textile, and disappears back into it, stiff and black like a stern snake. A waitress with an ingratiating smile passes her sponge over the artificial marble table-tops between phonecalls. All along the claret-coloured settees bulging-eyed lovers stare at each other’s portion of dumplings swimming in chocolate sauce.

36 ERZSÉBET KÖRÚT, VII.

PÁLMA

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