World famous cook (Ferenc Móra)

One day after lunch I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep without rocking. It happens to other men, but not every man dreams such dreams as I did.

I dreamt that I was the king of the carrot and stick, with a carrot spur. I'd pick, pick my spur - I would, but a hungry mutton chop took a bite out of the carrot's spur.

I would draw my sword, and cut the offending mantle in two: were it not that my sword were not a locust leaf. I would cut off my crown: it is full of melon-skin! I am alone, my lord: but what shall become of me now?

Well, suddenly I had a silver bell ringing above my head. It may not have been a silver bell, but a bird with a golden mouth: but the fellow came so fast that he could not have caught a hundred snails.

Then the soft wing of the golden-mouthed bird stroked my face. Perhaps it was not a lily flower, but its velvety petal: I opened my eyes to it after all. But I saw with it neither bell nor dove - only a white lily. Vilma stood before me in snow-white, with one hand caressing my cheek, and the other clasping the corner of her ruffled bun.

- Nini, Wilma, is that you? - I say to her. - Sit down with us, be our daughter!

- "Thank you, I have a house, too, with a little chair, I could sit there," she said, bending like a flower in the wind, "but tell me where the world-famous cook is.

I was so speechless at this question that my head almost fell off. I had never heard of the world-famous cook. I was just about to scold William that he must have got the wrong house number when suddenly the door was blown out by a whirlwind. The whirlwind's head is tied up like a cook's, a broken key by the handful on the strap of her binder, a large wooden spoon in her tiny hand - this whirlwind is called Pannika.

- I am the world-famous chef, how can I be of service?

- "I would like to eat some good ozsonna", says Vilmácska with great humility.

- "We'll eat if we can spare it," says the world-famous chef, flippantly.

There was so much good there, there was a lot to see. Poppy-seed horseshoes, walnut cake, crispy lugasse.

- "Come and walk over to my place," the world-famous chef invited her guest to join her.

A rope was stretched in the corner of the kitchen, with a large white tablecloth hanging from it, behind which was the kitchen of the world-famous cook. But she wouldn't let the guest in here.

- You can stay outside, my little William. I don't like strangers in my kitchen. I'll be out in a minute, I'm just going to take in the ojones.

He rounded, turned, slid, rolled, and by the time he turned out, the guests were already grinding the doorknob again.

The Sárika and the Klárika.

- Will there be a good ossonnaise, world-famous cook?

- If you bring, you eat, if you don't, you watch.

Sárika brought buttered croissants, Klárika figs, oranges, carob, and the world-famous cook was so happy that she twiddled her broken keys so hard that the kitten bit off her moustache in fright.

- There will be so much ozone, my souls, that even the rooster will crow about it!

She sneaked behind the tablecloth with kiffis and fruit, and the guests were full of praise for the world-famous chef:

- A word is a word, but Pannika is a good hostess!

- "He has no mate in six empty farms", the Filler Dog also chimed in from under the table. The little girls would have swept him off his feet for this taunt, had not little Vica opened the door for them. Her bundle was full of popcorn, red as a rose, white as foam.

- Corn, corn! You brought it for us, didn't you, Vica?" the little girls rejoiced.

But Joke has got her knitting together.

- I'm looking for the world-famous chef.

The world-famous chef jumped out from behind the tablecloth with a wooden plate.

- Popcorn? Pour it in the wooden bowl, Vica! But you know what, my souls? This ozone needs to be laid out neatly. And I've lost the key to my cupboard, no tablecloth, no plate, Vica, run home for a tablecloth! Sarika, get a plate! Clare, bring a knife, fork and spoon. What are you bringing, Vilma? And you bring a glass, and in that glass a blossomed rose, with a bud in it, and we'll put it in the middle of the table. It'll be an ossuary that you'll never cease to talk about.

Closer this way, quicker that way - the guests may not have even run away, but they were already running back. Even Vilmáchka waved back the rose, but it had no bud.

- Oh my God, what will the world-famous chef say? - the little one squealed.

But the world-famous chef said nothing. She was silent behind the tablecloth, like a caterpillar under a leaf. And yet the kitchen stone was already tapping impatiently with the little shoes of the guests, and the knife-fork was rattling in the empty plates.

- "The table is long, the tablecloth is narrow, the ostrich will be short," the Filler growled in derision.

This time he wasn't swept up in it either. The little guests looked at each other in fright: alas, had something happened to the world-famous cook? Had she burnt her finger, scalded her hand, dropped a mortar on her foot?

- Pannika! Pannika!" they shouted desperately.

Her milk is saltless, the cook is speechless. What will become of this, my lord, my creator? What could be done, the little girls peeped under the tablecloth into Pannika's ozone kitchen for the last time.

Well, she said, there was no kitchen and no ossuary. Just a big sleigh, and a little sleigh on top of it: that's where the world-famous cook slept. One mouthful of poppy seed, one of walnuts, one of orange hair and one of puff pastry. In her lap the wooden plate, and in it a grain of popcorn.

Whoever guesses where the world-famous chef put the world-famous ozone, let it be that one grain of popcorn.