Joe was at loose ends. Besides, this was a facet of Budapest life he had yet to investigate. The intimate night spots, frequented by all strata of Sov society.
He came to a quick decision. "O.K., Max. Let's give it a look. Possibly it'll turn out to be a place I can take Nadine. She's a bit weary of the overgrown glamour spots they have here. They're more ostentatious than anything you find even in Greater Washington."
Max said, in his fiesty belligerence, "Does that mean better?"
Joe grunted amusement at the little man, even as he took up his jacket. "No, it doesn't," he said, "and take the chip off your shoulder. When you were back home you were continually beefing about what a rugged go you had being a Mid-Lower in the West-world. Now that you're over here the merest suggestion that all is not peaches at home and you're ready to fight."
Max said, his ugly face twisted in a grimace, even as he helped Joe with the jacket. "Well, all these characters over here are up to their tonsils in curd about the West. They think everybody's starving over there because they're unemployed. And they think the Lowers are, like, ground down, and all. And that there's lots of race troubles, and all."
Even as they left the apartment, Joe was realizing how much closer Max had already got to the actual people, than either he or Nadine. But he was still amused. He said, "And wasn't that largely what you used to think about things over here, when you were back home? How many starving have you seen?"
Max grunted. "Well, you know, that's right. They're not as bad off as I thought. Some of those Telly shows I used to watch was kind of exaggerated, like."
Joe said absently, "If international fracases would be won by newspapers and Telly reporters, the Sovs would have lost the Frigid Fracas as far back as when they still called it the Cold War."
The Bécsikapu turned out to be largely what Max had reported and Joe expected. A rather small cellar cabaret, specializing in Hungarian wines and such nibbling delicacies as túrós csusza, the cheese gnocchis; but specializing as well or even more so in romantic atmosphere dominated by heartstring touching of gypsy violins, as musicians strolled about quietly, pausing at this table or that to lean so close to a feminine ear that the lady was all but caressed. It came to Joe that there was more of this in the Sov world than at home. The Sov proletarians evidently spent less time at their Telly sets than did the Lowers in the West-world.
They found a table, crowded though the nightspot was, and ordered a bottle of chilled Feteasca. It wasn't until the waiter had recorded the order against Joe's international credit identification, that it was realized he and Max were of the West. So many non-Hungarians, from all over the Sov-world, were about Budapest that the foreigner was an accepted large percentage of the man-in-the street.