The Waiter

by Matias Faldbakken

  “Now they’re having starters,” the Maître d’ says, shocked, to the Bar Manager and me. How has this happened? Not easy to say. Sellers turned everything back to front, I mumble. He reversed their dinner. We just have to do it the wrong way round.

  “The girl can stay awhile longer, but then that’s it,” the Maître d’ commands, heading into the kitchen with his work-ethic stride, to pass on the order from table thirteen himself. “Lotion time,” the Bar Manager mutters. And once the starters are ready, the Maître d’ comes out and serves them himself, demonstratively. The starters which, in reality, become some kind of dessert: Kalix roe, the famous caviar from Norrbotten, produced by the little vendace fish, to the Child Lady. Twelve European flat oysters, or “kisses from the sea,” as Sellers provocatively chose to call them as he ordered, three for each of the men. Blaise looks dumbfounded when the shells are placed in front of him, but he slurps down the first. Anna has been given five dough balls and some warm chocolate in a metal sugar bowl; she eats rapidly with the comically long dessert spoon. Sellers wins her over just as quickly. To include “the younger generation” in the conversation, he says, pointing to Anna, he wants to have an “exchange” around the whole concept of streaming, but he repeatedly says “streamings,” something which cheerful little Anna notices. She giggles and bites her lip and waits for the Pig’s and Blaise’s reactions and is now completely infatuated by Sellers after just five minutes. She’s sold. And as though that wasn’t enough, he’s now lighting up a cigarette and brazenly flaunting the smoking ban.

  “There’s a lot that needs streamings,” he says thoughtfully, taking a deep drag. He breathes out a thick column of smoke. A girl of nine can barely have seen how cigarette smoke behaves indoors. Soft and bluish, it rises towards the ceiling.

  “Don’t take the smoke from the elders,” says Anna.

  “Listen to her!”

  Sellers laughs. “The Child Wordsmith. I have faith in you,” he says.

  And would you believe it, the Maître d’ has gone all abstract now: before they finish their oysters, he goes over to ask if they would like a little sparkling wine before their food: “A glass of prosecco, perhaps, while we wait for the meal to begin? Or champagne? We have the good Ruinart Brut, fresh, creamy.”

  Sellers is beaming, as malicious as only a scamp can be. “Fantastic,” he says, “some bubbly before the meal. Thank you.”

  Blaise knocks back oyster number two and swallows firmly. Is he gulping? The phrase “ruddy faced” fits the Maître d’ wonderfully: he’s extremely ruddy, a real rud. He pours the Ruinart slowly, very slowly, a textbook example of how to pour the sparkling wine, but also straight against the traditional European serving rite. The champagne is only just running out of the neck. Like some kind of blood dumpling in a suit, he stands there pouring, well within a Maître d’s custom but also verging on collapse because everything is going backwards. If it had been down to Sellers, the sparkling wine would have trickled back into the bottle from the glasses.

  “There’s nothing like the fizz of champagne before food, quaffed down from Marie Antoinette’s teat,” Sellers says ceremoniously, sipping handsomely from his shallow coupe glass.

  Blaise grips his last oyster but manages to drop it and it falls, with a good spoonful of shallot and Moscatel vinegar, onto his phenomenal lapel. The mollusk rolls down Blaise’s entire left flank and lands on his thigh. It leaves behind a dark trail, like a snail. It’s a shock to the entire table. Everyone watching, the Bar Manager and myself included, gasps inwardly. You can actually hear the meticulousness break, not to mention Blaise’s wallet jingling. Blaise looks at the Pig with an expression of disgust and then jumps up like a coiled spring. The Pig follows him. The Maître d’ has frozen in a position resembling a Greek statue, but he composes himself and goes to his aid. “Let’s go and see Old Pedersen in the cloakroom,” he says with vigor. “Pedersen will have a solution for this; he knows his stuff.” With hurried steps, the three rush out into the foyer, where Pedersen is sitting, full of experience and old tricks.

  The Child Lady turns to Anna and asks whether she isn’t tired. “You’re up late every evening,” she says. Anna shakes her head. “You’re so pretty,” says the Child Lady.

  Sellers’s eyes suddenly freeze, and his boyish smile disappears. He points to the Child Lady with his cigarette and says, with full force, “I’ll short-circuit you.”

  The Child Lady, otherwise a machine for envy, loses her grip and glances to one side; it’s as though she has been emptied. She pauses. Anna’s eyes dart back and forth. Sellers looks at me and nods firmly. And, in a rare, clear moment, I spot my chance.

  “Come on, Anna,” I say. Anna gets up. “Grab your bag and wait under the mezzanine. I’ll be right back.” Anna does as she is told; I run over to the spiral staircase and rush upwards, making the iron framework sing. Bent over at the top, I see Old Johansen sitting with his face pointing straight up and his mouth open. The back of his head is resting on his neck fat, completely still. Is he dead? No, his fingers are moving; he’s playing. “What about playing one of those night tunes that Bach wrote for Count Keyserling,” I say. “Possibly no. 21.” Old Johansen straightens up and seamlessly transitions into one of Bach’s night tunes.

  Anna is standing obediently with her bag on her back. On the short wall beneath the mezzanine, that false ceiling, there is a small wooden door with a bolt. It’s the old wood store—or wood chamber, if you like—no longer in use. A blue plaque screwed up between all the other adornments reads Annar Andredagen (1942–45). In here, I say to Anna, undoing the bolt on the door. A man called Annar hid in here every other day during the war, they say, I tell her. Look at all the newspaper cuttings! It’s empty now. Pretty good space? We’ll lie you down in here, Anna, I say. Dad isn’t here yet. It’s late. You can look at all the cuttings on the walls here. There’s a picture of Andy Panda. I have to keep working my shift. Is your bandage OK? Anna asks. Yes, it’s nice and tight, I say. Thanks so much. Now let’s make a nest for you in here. Come, Anna. Crawl in.

  I go back to the kitchen. In the wardrobe corner, I grab an armful of waiter’s jackets that aren’t being used. The chef moves and makes space.

  And once we’ve made a nest of the white waiter’s jackets in the old wood store, and Anna is lying down, with her knapsack as a pillow and even a jacket on top to soften it, and we’ve put the candle from table nineteen in the bracket, we hear a gentle knock from outside. The door opens with a creak and Sellers peers in. He smiles. “Shall I tell you a fairy tale?” Anna nods from her lying position. Then Sellers crawls in and sits down by one side of the girl and starts.

  Are you lying there, staring

  What is it you’re staring at

  Do you want a whopping?

  Control your eyeballs

  Staring

  Gawking

  There are so many nice things to glare at

  It’s glowing

  The glow

  It’s shining

  The shine

  Watch so your eyes don’t fall out of your head

  Then they fall out

  The eyes roll out and over the ground

  Into the troll’s bag

  The troll runs to the hills

  Where he hammers the eyes into coins

  The troll gets rich, so rich

  The troll takes the eyes to the mountain

  Inside are all the eyes, and they are coins

  THE NAME

  ANNA LIES QUIETLY IN HER nest. After ten minutes she starts breathing more heavily, and a jolt passes through her body. The door to the cubbyhole creaks; I don’t want to wake her. Best to sit here a bit longer. When is a child sleeping deeply? I think I should reach out in the dark and stroke her head, but I pull back. Instead, I quietly repeat her name: “Anna, Anna.” I’m trying to stroke her with her own name, you could say.

  Sellers has vanished. Is that Blaise I hear out in the restaurant? The wall distorts the voices; I don’t k
now who is saying what. It’s like I’m blind. Types like Blaise don’t give in. Certain types like Blaise and the Pig, they don’t give in. Types like Sellers, they come back. They don’t give in. They’re tireless. People like the Child Lady are always coming back.

  “It’s a paradox that life is so ordinary when it’s so short and unusual,” someone out there mumbles. Who was it? It couldn’t be the Maître d’; his maxims are more irritable, less wondering. Maybe the Pig. He’s old enough to think along those lines.

  “Fame is a mask that eats into the face,” someone else says. A woman. There’s no way the Child Lady could have come out with something that inspired.

  Anna stirs. I continue to say her name: “Anna, Anna.” It’s all I can think of. It’s my way of rocking the crib. Her name also flows into me as I say it. It’s a strong technique, I think to myself. I can feel it. I feel a weight, and I ebb away.

  •

  Then everything is muffled. Judging by the hum of voices, there are fewer people in the restaurant. Did I nod off? It does seem like I was out of it for a moment. I hear the sound of the General Manager M. Hill’s calculating machine. The churning. She’s come down to count up, like she does every evening or night. She descends the two flights of stairs wearing an exquisite blouse and with her hair soberly tied up, typically accompanied by her son, K. Hill, who is now twenty-four years old. They sit in their usual spot, at the little table for two behind the pillar. The son is learning how to cash up the old-fashioned way.

  I’m all ears. I know exactly how the sequence goes. The General Manager will be given a glass of Niepoort, just like Widow Knipschild, and this glass will be accompanied by a thin cigarette, a menthol. Usually it’s I who set out the glass and the ashtray, one on each side of the calculating machine, but now I’m here, in this cubbyhole, and it’s getting a bit late to come crawling out. Late and strange, to say the least, to come crawling out of the wall.

  The ashtray is antique, a small cast-iron hand, outstretched so that you can tap ash into its waiting palm. Stinking of cigarette butts, it’s kept hidden behind one of the terra-cotta pots next to the “fat” mirror, just beyond the lavish shelves of booze the Bar Manager looks after. I hear the Bar Manager lifting down bottle after bottle now, wiping them and putting them back. Does anyone but me actually know where the General Manager’s personal ashtray is kept?

  M. Hill has all the till receipts from the day to the left of the calculating machine, a ledger to the right. She goes through the takings meticulously. Her polished nails tap the buttons. I hear the calculator whirr each time she adds a sum. A long strip of paper appears, the sums printed on it. All the figures are crunched. The numbers then added to the ledger. Her cigarette burns out in the ashtray; not many puffs are taken.

  It’s like this every night: once M. Hill sits down with the calculating machine, it’s over. By then, even the slowest guests have settled up. In the cloakroom they pull on coats and jackets, cloaks. Hats are less common these days, but they do still make the occasional appearance; believe it or not, Pedersen still has to hand over the odd hat, it is put onto a head, and disappears into the night. The Maître d’ remains, splitting hairs, making sure that every last thing is where it should be. Everything has to be reset. He’s very particular about that last reset.

  •

  Anna is sleeping now, I should think. I don’t move. I’ll have to stay put. Through the old steam hatch above the bracket in the dark room, I can see the cinema and, beyond that, the theater, the meeting places of the past. If I move my head right up against the wall, I can also see the end section of our sign. Oddly enough, the sign is split in two, with an upper and a lower panel. It stretches from one end to the other, above the entrance, and is supported by four narrow pillars in bright orange Skyros marble. That’s how it has been for years, towering crosswise like some huge European reptile. The facade has an Adolf Loos–like character, but it’s definitely pre-Loos, clumsier, more provincial.

  Unlike a church window, which is illuminated from the outside, like an advertisement for the glory to come, there is an opening at the back, through the wall along the length of our sign. This means that every evening the light from the restaurant shines through the sign and onto the street. The sign functions as a kind of dim light box. Cloakroom attendant Pedersen is in charge of the two ceiling lamps which produce that effect. When he leaves for the night, he turns them off.

  On the upper panel, The Hills is written in pale white script, surrounded by dark slabs of onyx that are divided by a flamboyant pattern of lead came; it’s essentially a stained glass window, leaded glass. The lower panel is a slanted box, an oversized cabinet, with straight lines of white, blue, and red around The Hills. The pieces of glass here form a speckled font, with green, yellow, and pink elements. The name of the restaurant is repeated, in other words, one on top of the other; we see a duplicate, The Hills The Hills. Some kind of stutter, perhaps.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to:

  Gardar, Marie, & Lilja

  Øyvind Ellenes

  Ingeri Engelstad

  Niclas Salomonsson

  Gardar Eide Einarsson

  John Kelsey

  Katharine Burton

  Leander Djønne

  Halvor Rønning

  Richard Øiestad

  Peter Amdam

  Tonya Madsen

  Knut Faldbakken

  A Scout Press Readers Group Guide

  The Waiter

  Matias Faldbakken

  This reading group guide for The Waiter includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  Introduction

  In the tradition of modern classics The Dinner and A Gentleman in Moscow comes The Waiter, in which the finely tuned balance of a grand European restaurant (that has seen better days) is irrevocably upset by an unexpected guest.

  In a centuries-old European restaurant called The Hills, a middle-aged waiter takes pride in the unchangeable aspects of his job: the well-worn uniform, the worn but solid tablecloths, and the regular diners. Some are there daily, like Graham “Le Gris”—also known as The Pig—and his dignified group of aesthetes; the slightly more free-spirited drinking company around Tom Sellers; and the closest one can get to personal friends of the waiter, Edgar and his young daughter, Anna.

  In this universe unto itself, there is scarcely any contact between the tables . . . until a beautiful and well-groomed young woman walks through the door and upsets the delicate balance of the restaurant and all it has come to represent.

  Like being in a snow globe, The Waiter is a captivating study in miniature. Everything is just so, and that’s exactly how the waiter needs it to be. One can understand why he becomes anxious when things begin to change. In fact, given the circumstances, anxiety just might be the most sensible response . . .

  With the sophistication of The Remains of the Day and the eccentricity of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Waiter marks the North American debut of an exciting new voice in literary fiction.

  Topics & Questions for Discussion

  1. The Waiter’s opening chapter propels us straight into The Hills, where everything from the décor to the music contributes to the perfect atmosphere. What role does our Waiter play in this coordinated dance with the customers?

  2. We learn a little about the Maître d’ from the Waiter and the Bar Manager; how does he fit into the atmosphere at The Hills?

  3. The Waiter thrives on routine: “Regularity and service act as a bulwark against inner noise. I work as much as I can,” (page 29). He finds peace and security in his job but what about being a waiter brings him comfort?

  4. Everyone in The Hills is affected by the young woman’s entrance into their small community. What about the wo
man’s presence immediately sets them all on edge? How does the Waiter behave differently?

  5. When the Pig attempts to engage the Waiter in conversation, he shuts down. He speaks to the Pig daily, so why does this specific conversation send him into a panic?

  6. The Waiter and Edgar have a long-standing friendship that seems based in intellect and habit over emotion. How would you characterize their relationship?

  7. Our Waiter begins making mistakes, one after another. His composure is shaken, but what has him speaking out of turn and making unsolicited suggestions? Is he trying to impress the “Child Lady”?

  8. There is fallout from the Waiter’s trip into the cellar. How does such a simple journey impact his service for the rest of the evening?

  9. The arrival of Sellers’s group disrupts the delicate balance within The Hills and leads to quite the dramatic exchange between his group and the Pig’s. What precise sequence of events leads to their standoff?

  10. What do we learn about our Waiter from his interactions with Anna?

  11. The Child Lady tries, with notable effort, to engage the Waiter in conversation about Edgar. Why does this, and their interaction the night before, unnerve him so much?

  12. We see so little of the world beyond The Hills’s dining room, yet we venture into the cellar three times. How much does it differ from the first trip to the last? How does Anna’s presence change the experience?