KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN
I have visited Baumbach’s. I have heard Milwaukee drinking its
afternoon Kaffee.
O Baumbach’s, with your deliciously crumbling butter cookies and your
kaffee kuchen, and your thick cream, and your thicker waitresses and
your cockroaches, and your dinginess and your dowdy German ladies and
your black, black Kaffee, where in this country is there another like
you!
Blackie, true to his promise, had hailed me from the doorway on the
afternoon of the following day. In the rush of the day’s work I had
quite forgotten about Blackie and Baumbach’s.
“Come, Kindchen!” he called. “Get your bonnet on. We will by Baumbach’s
go, no?”
Ruefully I gazed at the grimy cuffs of my blouse, and felt of my
dishevelled hair. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t go. I look so mussy. Haven’t
had time to brush up.”
“Brush up!” scoffed Blackie, “the only thing about you that will need
brushin’ up is your German. I was goin’ t’ warn you to rumple up your
hair a little so you wouldn’t feel overdressed w’en you got there. Come
on, girl.”
And so I came. And oh, I’m so glad I came!
I must have passed it a dozen times without once noticing it—just a
dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost
within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby
black sign with gilt letters that spelled, “Franz Baumbach.”
Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. “There
he is. That’s all you’ll ever see of him.”
“Dead?” asked I, regretfully, as we entered the narrow doorway.
“No; down in the basement baking Kaffeekuchen.”
Two tiny show-windows faced the street—such queer, old-fashioned
windows in these days of plate glass. At the back they were quite open
to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge, white, immovable
structure—a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake.
Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and on its
broad breast reposed cherries, and stout butterflies of jelly, and
cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I
had ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide a
knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all this
splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing:
“Charlottens Geburtstag.”
Reluctantly I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German
confectioner’s art, for Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve.
“But Blackie,” I marveled, “do you honestly suppose that that structure
is intended for some Charlotte’s birthday?”
“In Milwaukee,” explained Blackie, “w’en you got a birthday you got t’
have a geburtstag cake, with your name on it, and all the cousins and
aunts and members of the North Side Frauen Turner Verein Gesellchaft,
in for the day. It ain’t considered decent if you don’t. Are you ready
to fight your way into the main tent?”
It was holiday time, and the single narrow aisle of the front shop was
crowded. It was not easy to elbow one’s way through the packed little
space. Men and women were ordering recklessly of the cakes of every
description that were heaped in cases and on shelves.
Cakes! What a pale; dry name to apply to those crumbling, melting,
indigestible German confections! Blackie grinned with enjoyment while I
gazed. There were cakes the like of which I had never seen and of which
I did not even know the names. There were little round cup cakes made
of almond paste that melts in the mouth; there were Schnecken glazed
with a delicious candied brown sugar; there were Bismarcks composed of
layer upon layer of flaky crust inlaid with an oozy custard that evades
the eager consumer at the first bite, and that slides down one’s collar
when chased with a pursuing tongue. There were Pfeffernusse; there,
were Lebkuchen; there were cheese-kuchen; plum-kuchen, peach-kuchen,
Apfelkuchen, the juicy fruit stuck thickly into the crust, the whole
dusted over with powdered sugar. There were Torten, and Hornchen, and
butter cookies.
Blackie touched my arm, and I tore my gaze from a cherry-studded
Schaumtorte that was being reverently packed for delivery.
“My, what a greedy girl! Now get your mind all made up. This is your
chance. You know you’re supposed t’ take a slant at th’ things an’ make
up your mind w’at you want before you go back w’ere th’ tables are.
Don’t fumble this thing. When Olga or Minna comes waddlin’ up t’ you
an’ says: ‘Nu, Fraulein?’ you gotta tell her whether your heart says
plum-kuchen oder Nusstorte, or both, see? Just like that. Now make up
your mind. I’d hate t’ have you blunder. Have you decided?”
“Decided! How can I?” I moaned, watching a black-haired, black-eyed
Alsatian girl behind the counter as she rolled a piece of white paper
into a cone and dipped a spoonful of whipped cream from a great brown
bowl heaped high with the snowy stuff. She filled the paper cone,
inserted the point of it into one end of a hollow pastry horn, and
gently squeezed. Presto! A cream-filled Hornchen!
“Oh, Blackie!” I gasped. “Come on. I want to go in and eat.”
As we elbowed our way to the rear room separated from the front shop
only by a flimsy wooden partition, I expected I know not what.
But surely this was not Blackie’s much-vaunted Baumbach’s! This long,
narrow, dingy room, with its bare floor and its iron-legged tables
whose bare marble tops were yellow with age and use! I said nothing as
we seated ourselves. Blackie was watching me out of the tail of his
eye. My glance wandered about the shabby, smoke-filled room, and slowly
and surely the charm of that fusty, dingy little cafe came upon me.
A huge stove glowed red in one corner. On the wall behind the stove was
suspended a wooden rack, black with age, its compartments holding
German, Austrian and Hungarian newspapers. Against the opposite wall
stood an ancient walnut mirror, and above it hung a colored print of
Bismarck, helmeted, uniformed, and fiercely mustached. The clumsy
iron-legged tables stood in two solemn rows down the length of the
narrow room. Three or four stout, blond girls plodded back and forth,
from tables to front shop, bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of
coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to
know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and
between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn,
sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its
occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented cafe
was Germany.
“Time!” said Blackie. “Here comes Rosie to take our order. You can take
your choice of coffee or chocolate. That’s as fancy as they get here.”
An expansive blond girl paused at our table smiling a broad welcome at
Blackie.
“Wie geht’s, Roschen?” he greeted her. Roschen’s smile became still
more pervasive, so that her blue eyes disappeared in creases of good
humor. She wiped the marble table top with a large and careless gesture
that precipitated stray crumbs into our laps. “Gut!” murmured she,
coyly, and leaned one hand on a portly hip in an attitude of waiting.
“Coffee?” asked Blackie, turning to me. I nodded.
“Zweimal Kaffee?” beamed Roschen, grasping the idea.
“Now’s your time to speak up,” urged Blackie. “Go ahead an’ order all
the cream gefillte things that looked good to you out in front.”
But I leaned forward, lowering my voice discreetly. “Blackie, before I
plunge in too recklessly, tell me, are their prices very—”
“Sa-a-ay, child, you just can’t spend half a dollar here if you try.
The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They’ll
smother you in whipped cream f’r a quarter. You c’n come in here an’
eat an’ eat an’ put away piles of cakes till you feel like a
combination of Little Jack Horner an’ old Doc Johnson. An’ w’en you’re
all through, they hand yuh your check, an’, say—it says forty-five
cents. You can’t beat it, so wade right in an’ spoil your complexion.”
With enthusiasm I turned upon the patient Rosie. “O, bring me some of
those cunning little round things with the cream on ’em, you know—two
of those, eh Blackie? And a couple of those with the flaky crust and
the custard between, and a slice of that fluffy-looking cake and some
of those funny cocked-hat shaped cookies—”
But a pall of bewilderment was slowly settling over Rosie’s erstwhile
smiling face. Her plump shoulders went up in a helpless shrug, and she
turned her round blue eyes appealingly to Blackie.
“Was meint sie alles?” she asked.
So I began all over again, with the assistance of Blackie. We went into
minute detail. We made elaborate gestures. We drew pictures of our
desired goodies on the marble-topped table, using a soft-lead pencil.
Rosie’s countenance wore a distracted look. In desperation I was about
to accompany her to the crowded shop, there to point out my chosen
dainties when suddenly, as they would put it here, a light went her
over.
“Ach, yes-s-s-s! Sie wollten vielleicht abgeruhrter Gugelhopf haben,
und auch Schaumtorte, und Bismarcks, und Hornchen mit cream gefullt,
nicht?”
“Certainly,” I murmured, quite crushed. Roschen waddled merrily off to
the shop.
Blackie was rolling a cigarette. He ran his funny little red tongue
along the edge of the paper and glanced up at me in glee. “Don’t bother
about me,” he generously observed. “Just set still and let the
atmosphere soak in.”
But already I was lost in contemplation of a red-faced, pompadoured
German who was drinking coffee and reading the Fliegende Blatter at a
table just across the way. There were counterparts of my aborigines at
Knapf’s—thick spectacled engineers with high foreheads—actors and
actresses from the German stock company—reporters from the English and
German newspapers—business men with comfortable German
consciences—long-haired musicians—dapper young lawyers—a giggling group
of college girls and boys—a couple of smartly dressed women nibbling
appreciatively at slices of Nusstorte—low-voiced lovers whose coffee
cups stood untouched at their elbows, while no fragrant cloud of steam
rose to indicate that there was warmth within. Their glances grow
warmer as the neglected Kaffee grows colder. The color comes and goes
in the girl’s face and I watch it, a bit enviously, marveling that the
old story still should be so new.
At a large square table near the doorway a group of eight men were
absorbed in an animated political discussion, accompanied by much
waving of arms, and thundering of gutturals. It appeared to be a table
of importance, for the high-backed bench that ran along one side was
upholstered in worn red velvet, and every newcomer paused a moment to
nod or to say a word in greeting. It was not of American politics that
they talked, but of the politics of Austria and Hungary. Finally the
argument resolved itself into a duel of words between a handsome,
red-faced German whose rosy skin seemed to take on a deeper tone in
contrast to the whiteness of his hair and mustache, and a swarthy young
fellow whose thick spectacles and heavy mane of black hair gave him the
look of a caricature out of an illustrated German weekly. The red-faced
man argued loudly, with much rapping of bare knuckles on the table top.
But the dark man spoke seldom, and softly, with a little twisted
half-smile on his lips; and whenever he spoke the red-faced man grew
redder, and there came a huge laugh from the others who sat listening.
“Say, wouldn’t it curdle your English?” Blackie laughed.
Solemnly I turned to him. “Blackie Griffith, these people do not even
realize that there is anything unusual about this.”
“Sure not; that’s the beauty of it. They don’t need to make no
artificial atmosphere for this place; it just grows wild, like
dandelions. Everybody comes here for their coffee because their aunts
an’ uncles and Grossmutters and Grosspapas used t’ come, and come yet,
if they’re livin’! An’, after all, what is it but a little German
bakery?”
“But O, wise Herr Baumbach down in the kitchen! O, subtle Frau Baumbach
back of the desk!” said I. “Others may fit their shops with mirrors,
and cut-glass chandeliers and Oriental rugs and mahogany, but you sit
serenely by, and you smile, and you change nothing. You let the brown
walls grow dimmer with age; you see the marble-topped tables turning
yellow; you leave bare your wooden floor, and you smile, and smile, and
smile.”
“Fine!” applauded Blackie. “You’re on. And here comes Rosie.”
Rosie, the radiant, placed on the table cups and saucers of an
unbelievable thickness. She set them down on the marble surface with a
crash as one who knows well that no mere marble or granite could
shatter the solidity of those stout earthenware receptacles. Napkins
there were none. I was to learn that fingers were rid of any clinging
remnants of cream or crumb by the simple expedient of licking them.
Blackie emptied his pitcher of cream into his cup of black, black
coffee, sugared it, stirred, tasted, and then, with a wicked gleam in
his black eyes he lifted the heavy cup to his lips and took a long,
gurgling mouthful.
“Blackie,” I hissed, “if you do that again I shall refuse to speak to
you!”
“Do what?” demanded he, all injured innocence.
“Snuffle up your coffee like that.”
“Why, girl, that’s th’ proper way t’ drink coffee here. Listen t’
everybody else.” And while I glared he wrapped his hand lovingly about
his cup, holding the spoon imprisoned between first and second fingers,
and took another sibilant mouthful. “Any more of your back talk and
I’ll drink it out of m’ saucer an’ blow on it like the hefty party over
there in the earrings is doin’. Calm yerself an’ try a Bismarck.”
I picked up one of the flaky confections and eyed it in despair. There
were no plates except that on which the cakes reposed.
“How does one eat them?” I inquired.
“Yuh don’t really eat ’em. The motion is more like inhalin’. T’ eat ’em
successful you really ought t’ get into a bath-tub half-filled with
water, because as soon’s you bite in at one end w’y the custard stuff
slides out at the other, an’ no human mouth c’n be two places at oncet.
Shut your eyes girl, an’ just wade in.”
I waded. In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy
filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the
last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I
investigated the interior of the next cake.
“I’m coming here every day,” I announced.
“Better not. Ruin your complexion and turn all your lines into bumps.
Look at the dame with the earrings. I’ve been keepin’ count an’ I’ve
seen her eat three Schnecken, two cream puffs, a Nusshornchen and a
slice of Torte with two cups of coffee. Ain’t she a horrible example!
And yet she’s got th’ nerve t’ wear a princess gown!”
“I don’t care,” I replied, recklessly, my voice choked with whipped
cream and butteriness. “I can just feel myself getting greasy. Haven’t
I done beautifully for a new hand? Now tell me about some of these
people. Who is the funny little man in the checked suit with the black
braid trimming, and the green cravat, and the white spats, and the tan
hat and the eyeglasses?”
“Ain’t them th’ dizzy habiliments?” A note of envy crept into Blackie’s
voice. “His name is Hugo Luders. Used t’ be a reporter on the Germania,
but he’s reformed and gone into advertisin’, where there’s real money.
Some say he wears them clo’es on a bet, and some say his taste in dress
is a curse descended upon him from Joseph, the guy with the fancy coat,
but I think he wears ’em because he fancies ’em. He’s been coming here
ever’ afternoon for twelve years, has a cup of coffee, game of chess,
and a pow-wow with a bunch of cronies. If Baumbach’s ever decide to
paint the front of their shop or put in cut glass fixtures and
handpainted china, Hugo Luders would serve an injunction on ’em. Next!”
“Who’s the woman with the leathery complexion and the belt to match,
and the untidy hair and the big feet? I like her face. And why does she
sit at a table with all those strange-looking men? And who are all the
men? And who is the fur-lined grand opera tenor just coming in—Oh!”
Blackie glanced over his shoulder just as the tall man in the doorway
turned his face toward us. “That? Why, girl, that’s Von Gerhard, the
man who gives me one more year t’ live. Look at everybody kowtowing to
him. He don’t favor Baumbach’s often. Too busy patching up the nervous
wrecks that are washed up on his shores.”
The tall figure in the doorway was glancing from table to table,
nodding here and there to an acquaintance. His eyes traveled the length
of the room. Now they were nearing us. I felt a sudden, inexplicable
tightening at heart and throat, as though fingers were clutching there.
Then his eyes met mine, and I felt the blood rushing to my face as he
came swiftly over to our table and took my hand in his.
“So you have discovered Baumbach’s,” he said. “May I have my coffee and
cigar here with you?”
“Blackie here is responsible for my being initiated into the sticky
mysteries of Baumbach’s. I never should have discovered it if he had
not offered to act as personal conductor. You know one another, I
believe?”
The two men shook hands across the table. There was something forced
and graceless about the act. Blackie eyed Von Gerhard through a misty
curtain of cigarette smoke. Von Gerhard gazed at Blackie through
narrowed lids as he lighted his cigar. “I’m th’ gink you killed off two
or three years back,” Blackie explained.
“I remember you perfectly,” Von Gerhard returned, courteously. “I
rejoice to see that I was mistaken.”
“Well,” drawled Blackie, a wicked gleam in his black eyes, “I’m some
rejoiced m’self, old top. Angel wings and a white kimono, worn
bare-footy, would go some rotten with my Spanish style of beauty, what?
Didn’t know that you and m’dame friend here was acquainted. Known each
other long?”
I felt myself flushing again.
“I knew Dr. von Gerhard back home. I’ve scarcely seen him since I have
been here. Famous specialists can’t be bothered with middle-aged
relatives of their college friends, can they, Herr Doktor?”
And now it was Von Gerhard’s face that flushed a deep and painful
crimson. He looked at me, in silence, and I felt very little, and
insignificant, and much like an impudent child who has stuck out its
tongue at its elders. Silent men always affect talkative women in that
way.
“You know that what you say is not true,” he said, slowly.
“Well, we won’t quibble. We—we were just about to leave, weren’t we
Blackie?”
“Just,” said Blackie, rising. “Sorry t’ see you drinkin’ Baumbach’s
coffee, Doc. It ain’t fair t’ your patients.”
“Quite right,” replied Von Gerhard; and rose with us. “I shall not
drink it. I shall walk home with Mrs. Orme instead, if she will allow
me. That will be more stimulating than coffee, and twice as dangerous,
perhaps, but—”
“You know how I hate that sort of thing,” I said, coldly, as we passed
from the warmth of the little front shop where the plump girls were
still filling pasteboard boxes with holiday cakes, to the brisk chill
of the winter street. The little black-and-gilt sign swung and creaked
in the wind. Whimsically, and with the memory of that last cream-filled
cake fresh in my mind, I saluted the letters that spelled “Franz
Baumbach.”
Blackie chuckled impishly. “Just the same, try a pinch of soda
bicarb’nate when you get home, Dawn,” he advised. “Well, I’m off to the
factory again. Got t’ make up for time wasted on m’ lady friend. Auf
wiedersehen!”
And the little figure in the checked top-coat trotted off.
“But he called you—Dawn,” broke from Von Gerhard.
“Mhum,” I agreed. “My name’s Dawn.”
“Surely not to him. You have known him but a few weeks. I would not
have presumed—”
“Blackie never presumes,” I laughed. “Blackie’s just—Blackie. Imagine
taking offense at him! He knows every one by their given name, from Jo,
the boss of the pressroom, to the Chief, who imports his office coats
from London. Besides, Blackie and I are newspaper men. And people don’t
scrape and bow in a newspaper office—especially when they’re fond of
one another. You wouldn’t understand.”
As I looked at Von Gerhard in the light of the street lamp I saw a
tense, drawn look about the little group of muscles which show when the
teeth are set hard. When he spoke those muscles had relaxed but little.
“One man does not talk ill of another. But this is different. I want to
ask you—do you know what manner of man this—this Blackie is? I ask you
because I would have you safe and sheltered always from such as
he—because I—”
“Safe! From Blackie? Now listen. There never was a safer, saner, truer,
more generous friend. Oh, I know what his life has been. But what else
could it have been, beginning as he did? I have no wish to reform him.
I tried my hand at reforming one man, and made a glorious mess of it.
So I’ll just take Blackie as he is, if you please—slang, wickedness,
pink shirt, red necktie, diamond rings and all. If there’s any bad in
him, we all know it, for it’s right down on the table, face up. You’re
just angry because he called you Doc.”
“Small one,” said Von Gerhard, in his quaint German idiom, “we will not
quarrel, you and I. If I have been neglectful it was because edged
tools were never a chosen plaything of mine. Perhaps your little
Blackie realizes that he need have no fear of such things, for the
Great Fear is upon him.”
“The Great Fear! You mean!—”
“I mean that there are too many fine little lines radiating from the
corners of the sunken eyes, and that his hand-clasp leaves a moisture
in the palm. Ach! you may laugh. Come, we will change the subject to
something more cheerful, yes? Tell me, how grows the book?”
“By inches. After working all day on a bulletin paper whose city editor
is constantly shouting: ‘Boil it now, fellows! Keep it down! We’re
crowded!’ it is too much of a wrench to find myself seated calmly
before my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred
thousand words if I choose. I can’t get over the habit of crowding the
story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into a
descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder, expecting to
find Norberg stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand.
Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police
reporter’s story of a fire four minutes before the paper is due to go
to press.”
Von Gerhard’s face was unsmiling. “So,” he said, slowly. “You burn the
candle at both ends. All day you write, is it not so? And at night you
come home to write still more? Ach, Kindchen!—Na, we shall change all
that. We will be better comrades, we two, yes? You remember that gay
little walk of last autumn, when we explored the Michigan country lane
at dusk? I shall be your Sunday Schatz, and there shall be more rambles
like that one, to bring the roses into your cheeks. We shall be good
Kameraden, as you and this little Griffith are—what is it they say—good
fellows? That is it—good fellows, yes? So, shall we shake hands on it?”
But I snatched my hand away. “I don’t want to be a good fellow,” I
cried. “I’m tired of being a good fellow. I’ve been a good fellow for
years and years, while every other married woman in the world has been
happy in her own home, bringing up her babies. When I am old I want
some sons to worry me, too, and to stay awake nights for, and some
daughters to keep me young, and to prevent me from doing my hair in a
knob and wearing bonnets! I hate good-fellow women, and so do you, and
so does every one else! I—I—”
“Dawn!” cried Von Gerhard. But I ran up the steps and into the house
and slammed the door behind me, leaving him standing there.