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 Baumbac............