Café Central

Die Geschichte des berühmten Traditionshauses geht über 130 Jahre zurück und war bereits zur Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert ein beliebter Treffpunkt für Persönlichkeiten aus Kunst, Literatur, Politik und Wissenschaft wie Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler oder Peter Altenberg. Viele berühmte Schriftsteller wie Franz Kafka benutzten das Café Central als Kreativwerkstatt und zählten zu den Stammgästen des Hauses.

Das Literatencafé befindet sich im Erdgeschoss des architektonisch einmaligen Palais Ferstel, dessen Räume ursprünglich der Sitz der Wiener Börse waren. 1876 eröffneten die Brüder Pach das Café, das mit feinster Wiener Küche, hausgemachter Patisserie, Live-Klaviermusik und einer großen Auswahl an österreichischen und internationalen Zeitungen Wien-Besucher und Einheimische gleichermaßen in seinen Bann zieht. Wer echtes Kaffeehaus-Flair erleben möchte, darf das Café Central auf keinen Fall verpassen.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Visiting Kathy’s grave was the less dramatic of the two. She’s buried in Harris Creek Cemetery, not more than a mile down the road from where I live and where we raised our family. Getting her into the cemetery was more difficult than perhaps it should have been; neither of us expected needing the burial, so neither of us made the arrangements. It’s somewhat mortifying, to use a rather apt word, to have to argue with a cemetery manager about your wife not having made a reservation to be buried. Eventually my son, Charlie, who happens to be mayor, cracked a few heads and got the plot. Being the father of the mayor has its advantages.

So, the grave. Simple and unremarkable, with one of those small markers instead of a big headstone. As a contrast, Kathy lies next to Sandra Cain, whose rather oversized headstone is polished black granite, with Sandy’s high school photo and some maudlin quote from Keats about the death of youth and beauty sandblasted into the front. That’s Sandy all over. It would have amused Kathy to know Sandra was parked next to her with her big dramatic headstone; all their lives Sandy nurtured an entertainingly passive-aggressive competition with her. Kathy would come to the local bake sale with a pie, Sandy would bring three and simmer, not so subtly, if Kathy’s pie sold first. Kathy would attempt to solve the problem by preemptively buying one of Sandy’s pies. It’s hard to say whether this actually made things better or worse, from Sandy’s point of view.

I suppose Sandy’s headstone could be considered the last word in the matter, a final show-up that could not be rebutted, because, after all, Kathy was already dead. On the other hand, I don’t actually recall anyone visiting Sandy. Three months after Sandy passed, Steve Cain sold the house and moved to Arizona with a smile as wide as Interstate 10 plastered on his skull. He sent me a postcard some time later; he was shacking up with a woman down there who had been a porn star fifty years earlier. I felt unclean for a week after getting that bit of information. Sandy’s kids and grand-kids live one town over, but they might as well be in Arizona for as often as they visit. Sandy’s Keats quote probably hadn’t been read by anyone since the funeral but me, in passing, as I move the few feet over to my wife.

Kathy’s marker has her name (Katherine Rebecca Perry), her dates, and the words: BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. I read those words over and over every time I visit. I can’t help it; they are four words that so inadequately and so perfectly sum up a life. The phrase tells you nothing about her, about how she met each day or how she worked, about what her interests were or where she liked to travel. You’d never know what her favorite color was, or how she liked to wear her hair, or how she voted, or what her sense of humor was. You’d know nothing about her except that she was loved. And she was. She’d think that was enough.