Before heading to the port the next morning, Benjamin insisted that they get up early and have a Viennese breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, rolls, and coffee under the arched ceiling of the Café Central. Claude sent Benjamin a text message at the last minute saying they wouldn’t be able to make it, so the two couples met up at the pier.
“Turbulent, wise and great.” Hungarian writer Attila József’s line in a poem about the Danube came to Benjamin as he waited there with Elisabeth, Claude, and Consuela. The Danube wasn’t quite as grand in Vienna as it was in Budapest.
Benjamin lit his robusto while Elisabeth and Consuela fussed with their luggage. Claude was on his phone, settling urgent matters at the publishing house. The race was on for literary prizes, and Claude needed to advance his pawns in order to persuade the jury. It would take some lobbying, as well as a fair amount of circuitous maneuvering. But he excelled in both.
Claude pretended to be modest. In fact, he was envied by his colleagues, feared by his associates, hated by some members of the press, and praised by others. He was an integral member of all the inner circles that counted, and every year he pulled off one publishing coup after another.
Claude was also a voracious reader and an indefatigable worker. He was erudite, refined, and curious about everything. In these respects, he and Benjamin were very similar. Their long-standing friendship was based largely on their shared affinities, which were just as important as the success of the Cooker Guide. The two men celebrated their bonds with glasses of vintage Chasse-Spleen and amber Armagnac, along with Montecristos and Épicure No. 2 cigars. And with unbridled imagination, they philosophized. The cruise on the Danube promised moments of charm and tranquility.
Claude ended his call just as they were boarding the ship. Looking preoccupied, he started to put his arm around Consuela. But she stepped in front of him and sashayed past a group of young crewmembers in white shirts. They all stopped and stared, which made Elisabeth give Benjamin another one of her “did you see that” looks. Embarrassed for his friend, Benjamin ignored it and handed a five-euro note to the man taking charge of their bags.
The Danube was silty, and the sky was ashen. This wasn’t the way Benjamin had envisioned leaving Vienna. He watched the women head off to their cabins and turned to his friend.
A siren blared at the rear of the boat, and suddenly the dock was far away. Minutes later, the Ferris wheel in the amusement park was no more than a pinwheel lost in the distance, and the spire of the Gothic Maria am Gestade church was trying in vain to pierce the black clouds hovering over the Austrian capital. Vienna was dissolving in the morning light. Beyond the hills, a thunderstorm was brewing. Beneath them, the wind was rippling the waters of the Danube and spraying gray foam onto its miry banks.
At the prow, Claude borrowed Benjamin’s lighter to rekindle his Havana. The two men puffed and silently took in the landscape. Flashes of lightning, followed by heavy drops of rain, soon dissuaded them from playing lookout any longer. The thunderstorm was quickly rolling toward the Danube. A second later, lightning struck a clump of poplars next to the river.
Claude and Benjamin retreated to the sitting room.
“Benjamin, this cruise line may not have sleek longships, but it does have charm and authenticity. I told Consuela it was just your style.”
And because the publishing house was picking up the tab, the lower cost had most likely suited him, Benjamin thought. The sitting room, with its leatherette armchairs, faded posters, and Art Deco–inspired bar wasn’t exactly charming, but he still liked the unpretentious feel of the ship.
Most of the passengers seemed to have taken refuge inside. They weren’t numerous: a mismatched couple probably from the United States; three Asian tourists; some corpulent men who looked Russian; two red-haired girls, freckled and as tall as poplars; a bearded man, English or Scottish, clutching a sketchbook; an old woman in a wheelchair accompanied by a dour attendant; two tanned men wearing similar expensive watches and designer shirts; and finally a willowy young woman with straight blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a turtleneck and a long cape, reminding Benjamin of Michèle Morgan in La Symphonie Pastorale, which he had seen several years earlier in a film retrospective.
“Have I ever told you, Claude, that my one regret to date is never having experienced an ocean crossing from Southampton to New York?”
“Does that stem from some nostalgia for old-style luxury?”
“Claude, it is so much more. ‘Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.’”
“André Gide,” Claude responded. “A man who fearlessly explored the shores of his own nature.”
Benjamin nodded. This man of letters was as facile with quotes as he was. “Let’s explore this ship, my friend,” he said, taking Claude’s elbow. “And I think we should start at the bar.”
In anticipation of the vineyards in the Eger region, which had been making wine since the thirteenth century, Benjamin proposed ordering two glasses of Egri Bikavér. This most famous of Hungarian wines was a deep crimson, true to its name, bull’s blood.
Benjamin was hoping it would lift their spirits. Claude seemed disturbed by his phone call. Benjamin, meanwhile, couldn’t shake his worries about Alexandrine. The two friends remained mostly silent as they sipped their drinks and watched the landscape pass by, commenting only now and then on the fauna and flora, some onion-shaped domes, a pair of gray herons, a migratory bird rising from a reedy marsh, and the black poplars. Nothing terribly exotic. Just the last stretch before they reached the East.
The beautiful Consuela, in a clingy black dress slit to her satiny thigh, interrupted the men’s somber musings. Claude slipped his arm around her waist. Without a word, the woman picked up Claude’s glass and sipped his bull’s blood. No sooner had she tasted it than she made a face and spit it back in the glass.
“How do you drink this stuff, Claude? Some Champagne! Nothing but Champagne!” she ordered the bartender, who was already undressing her with his eyes.