Although in actuality working on a private mission for Philip Holland,
Frank Hodgson and the others high in government responsibility who
were planning fundamental changes in the West-world, Joseph Mauser was
ostensibly a military attache connected with the West-world Embassy to
Budapest. As such, he spent several days meeting embassy personnel,
his immediate superiors and his immediate inferiors in rank. He was,
as a newcomer from home, wined, dined, evaluated, found an apartment,
assigned a hovercar, and in general assimilated into the community.
Not ordinarily prone to the social life, Joe was able to find interest
in this due to its newness. The citizen of the West-world, when exiled
by duty to a foreign land, evidently did his utmost to take his native
soil with him. Even house furnishings had been brought from North
America. Sov food and drink were superlative, particularly for those
of Party rank, but for all practical purposes all such supplies were
flown in from the West. Hungarian potables, not to mention the
products of a dozen other Sov political divisions including Russia,
were of the best, but the denizens of the West-world Embassy drank
bourbon and Scotch, or at most the products of the vines of
California. The styles of Budapest rivaled those of Paris and Rome,
New York and Hollywood, but a feminine employee of the embassy
wouldn't have been caught dead in local fashions. It was a home away
from home, an oasis of the West in the Sov-world.
Joe, figuring that in view of the double role, unknown even to the
higher ranking officers of the embassy, he could best secure
protective coloring by conforming and would have slipped into embassy
routine without more than ordinary notice. But that wasn't Nadine's
style.
From the first, she gloried in porkolt, the veal stew with paprika
sauce, in rostelyos, the round steak potted in a still hotter paprika
sauce, in halaszle, the fish soup which is Hungary's challenge to
French bouillabaisse, and threatened her lithe figure with her
consumption of retes, the Magyar strudel. All these washed down with
Szamorodni or a Hungarian Riesling, the despair of a hundred
generations of connoisseurs due to its inability to travel. When
liqueurs were called for, barack, the highly distilled apricot brandy
which was still the national tipple, was her choice, if not Tokay
Aszu, the sweet nectar wine, once allowed only to be consumed by
nobility so precious was it considered.
Her apartment became adorned with Hungarian, Bulgarian and Czech
antiques, somewhat to the surprise even of the few Sovs with whom she
and Joe associated. It had been long years since antiques were in
vogue. She dressed in the latest styles from the dressing centers of
Prague, Leningrad or from the local houses, ignoring the raised
eyebrows of her embassy associates.
Joe, with an inner sigh, followed along in the swath she cut, Nadine
being Nadine, and the woman he loved, to boot.
His being raised in caste to Upper through the easy efforts of Philip
Holland, had made no observable difference in his relationship with
Nadine. Of course, she was Mid-Upper, he told himself, while he was
Low-Upper. Still it was far from unknown for romances to cross such
comparatively little boundary. He couldn't quite figure out why she
seemed to hold him at arm's length. Months had passed since she had
told him, that day, she would marry him, even though he be a Middle.
But now, when he tried to get her off by herself, for a moment of
intimacy between them, she avoided the situation. When he brought
their personal relationship into the conversation, she switched
subjects. Joe, wedded for too long to his grim profession,
inexperienced in the world of the lover, was out of his element.
His Upper caste rating also made little impression on the other
embassy personnel, largely because it was the prevalent rank. In
dealing with the Sovs, they came into contact almost exclusively with
Party members and policy was that West-world officials never be put in
the position to have to work with Sovs who ranked them. Only routine
office workers were drawn from Middle caste, and largely they kept to
themselves except during working hours.
Joe's immediate superior turned out to be a General George Armstrong,
with whom Joe had once served some years earlier when the general had
commanded a fracas between two labor unions fighting out a
jurisdictional squabble. Although Joe hadn't particularly
distinguished himself in that fray, the general remembered him well
enough. Joe, recognized as the old pro he was, was taken in with open
arms, somewhat to the surprise of older embassy military attaches who
ranked him in caste, or seniority.
At the first, getting organized in apartment and office, getting his
feeling of Budapest, its transportation system, its geographical
layout, its offerings in entertainment, he came little in contact with
either the Hungarians or the other officials of the Sov world, who
teemed the city. In a way it was confusion upon confusion, since
Budapest was the center of sovism and the languages of Indo-China,
Outer Mongolia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Karelia, or Albania were as apt to
be heard on street or in restaurant, as was Hungarian.
But Joe Mauser was in no hurry. His instructions were to take the long
view. To take his time. To feel his way. Somewhere along the line, a
door would open and he would find that for which he sought.
In a way, Max Mainz seemed to acclimate himself faster than either
Nadine or Joe. The little man, completely without language other than
Anglo-American, the lingua franca of the West, whilst Joe had both
French and Spanish, and Nadine French and German, was still of such
persistent social aggressiveness that in a week's time he knew every
Hungarian of proletarian rank within a wide neighborhood of where they
lived or worked. Within a month he had managed to acquire present
tense, almost verbless, jargon with which he was able to conduct all
necessary transactions pertaining to his household duties, and to get
into surprisingly complicated arguments as well. Joe had to give up
attempting to persuade him that discretion was called for in
discussing the relative merits of West-world and Sov-world.
In fact, it was through Max that Joe Mauser made his breakthrough in
his assignment to learn the inner workings of the Sov-world.