The Cafe Down the Street (Part I)

The Mercedes was parked nearby, and outside a wet cold dominated, which together with the poorly lit streets, the scattered remnants of rubble and the burned out houses, formed a horrifying and ominous atmosphere. 

The hotel occupied a corner at the intersection of one of the city main streets and a smaller one, which led as if to nowhere, and across the street stood the gray and bleak side of the opera house. I walked further. 

After a dozen or so meters appeared out of the darkness a strange, small, free-standing building, like some small island in an ocean of rubble. It was a single-story building, but relatively large, built a few years ago I think in the occasion of some propaganda-important congress. 

That particular assembly had been graced by many communist-sympathizing global intellectuals. In this congress participated even the greatest painter in the world, Pablo, in tribute to his art and position on the matter of world communism called here, Pikutasso. 

I came closer. 

The whole of the building was reminiscent of a gigantic, flattened brick with a corner entrance and several large windows, as if they belonged to a storefront which overlooked a street in a sorry state of disrepair. 

The building was painted in the color cream-yellow. There was a café there, whose name, if I remember correctly, had something to do with art. Inside the café there was only one room, but rather large; it fit a rather long bar with characteristic bar stools, more than twenty tables, a modest dance floor and, at the far end, a sizeable stage. 

The rest, meaning the coat checks, the rest rooms and the kitchen, were rather tight. The manager that ran the place was a straight-edged fellow from Lwow. The café staff consisted of a coat check attendant that was always someone different, two peasant waitresses and a pre-war dame that ran the bar and had some close and secretive contacts with Bławat, who resided not far away in his own café. 

No strong drinks were served here for alcohol. Aside from the horrible warm beer, you could only drink some suspicious sweet wine or warm vermouth. There was also always different horrid tort cookies, not too tasty and not the freshest, and of course the coffee, also dreadful, because it was heated in the so-called Turkish fashion. 

Into a cold, wet glass the barmaid dropped a teaspoon of some cheap variety of coffee, grounded thickly, and she poured over this hot water from a teapot, and the top of the glass she covered with a glass saucer. You could also, of course paying more, order coffee not from one but from two or even three teaspoons, but this was already a beverage for the perdite, for desperados and the decadent, called Satan’s piss. 

The rabble constantly drank the normal coffee and always while drinking the ubiquitous dregs that formed settled on their teeth and in the corners of their lips, and sometimes even on the beard or nose. Especially on the women this did not add charm. Espresso machines were then still in our country unknown, and the pre-war models had already been forgotten a long time ago.