A Perfect Waiter

by Alain Claude Sulzer

  There were reasons enough to mistrust the future—indeed, to dread it. This war everyone was talking about—how ineluctably terrible it would be once it started, rending everything and everyone apart. Although it was all Erneste could do not to wake Jakob up, he let him sleep on. Erneste, too, felt convinced that war was inevitable. They couldn’t possibly be wrong, all these people who were so much better informed than himself. They all talked about the war, and if they didn’t talk about it they thought about it, you could tell that just by looking at them.

  When Erneste came back to the room after lunch, Jakob was usually still in bed, sleeping, reading, or bookkeeping. He had a little cashbook in which he kept a record of his income and outgoings, and he was understandably pleased when the former exceeded the latter. He engaged in this bookkeeping as often as he could. “I’m going to be rich someday,” he said once. Erneste didn’t feel any pride or respect when Jakob said such things, just a mixture of compassion and uneasiness. He felt tempted to say, “No, you’ll never be rich, neither of us will, we don’t have what it takes.” But because hurting Jakob was the last thing he wanted to do, and because he considered Jakob vulnerable, he said nothing and hoped his silence would be eloquent. But Jakob didn’t get the message. Erneste should have been more explicit, he should have told him point-blank that success was reserved for other people. Jakob inhabited a wider world than Erneste. He possessed a confidence that Erneste lacked, and it may have been this confidence that made him so strong. Jakob’s ideas transcended his present circumstances.

  Because the heat in the attic room was almost unbearable during the day, Jakob used to swathe himself in a damp towel. Cocooned in this, he would lie on the bed and sleep, pursue his extravagant daydreams, or do his sums. Quite often, too, he would read and fall asleep while reading. And so, when Erneste entered their room after lunch, he would find him either asleep, or daydreaming, or figuring, or reading. Although Jakob was making only slow progress with the big book he was reading, he didn’t give up but pressed on undaunted. Several minutes could go by before he tackled the next page of Klinger’s Oporta, but he refused to be beaten, intent on plumbing the big book’s secrets. And because he gave Erneste an almost daily résumé of what he’d read, Erneste ended by knowing at least the first chapter of that much-lauded, widely read masterpiece almost as well as if he’d read it himself.

  It wasn’t long before the towel began to dry off. Jakob would then get up, dump it in the washbasin, run cold water over it, wring it out, wrap it around himself and lie down again. “That’s better,” he would say, looking up at Erneste. And Erneste would get undressed, cup his hands under the faucet, sluice himself down at the washbasin and hold his head under the running water. Then everything would be damp: the sheets and his body, first cool, then tepid, and before long the room beneath the eaves would begin to steam like a paradisal dungeon with locks and keys to which the outside world had no access. Erneste would lie down beside Jakob, the hush broken only by the occasional creak of a beam above the thin attic ceiling as the heat brought the timber back to life.

  Erneste felt best of all when they lay silently side by side, when no words were needed and any word would only have broken the spell. He disliked it intensely when Jakob made disparaging remarks about some guest, which sadly happened more and more often. “You’ve no right to speak that way,” he would tell him sternly. “Not about someone who helps to provide your bread and butter.” But his rebukes fell on deaf ears. Jakob merely laughed at him, and his laughter was infectious. “Bread and butter, bread and butter!” he scoffed, imitating Erneste’s Alsatian accent, and in the end Erneste laughed too.

  Erneste couldn’t shake off the suspicion that Jakob’s opinions of certain guests weren’t really his own, and that he’d picked them up from someone else. Some of their fellow employees were always gossiping about the guests. “I’m not interested,” Erneste would say. “It’s no business of mine. We aren’t like them and they aren’t like us. As long as they let us get on with our work we shouldn’t concern ourselves with them. If they find fault with us, they probably have good reason to.” But usually he said little when Jakob inveighed against German philistines and avaricious Jews. “How do you know?” he would retort. “You can’t possibly know about such things.” Alternatively, he would let Jakob talk until he ran out of ideas.

  One day Erneste came across a 5-franc piece under Jakob’s pillow. When he asked him how the freshly minted coin had gotten there—it was dated 1936—and why he hadn’t put it away with the rest of his savings, Jakob hesitated briefly. His hesitation aroused Erneste’s suspicions, and Erneste’s raised eyebrows made Jakob waver. The money was Jakob’s, of that he had no doubt: it was under his pillow and Erneste hadn’t missed any money. Jakob hesitated, but then he opened his hand and Erneste dropped the coin into it, a small addition to the slowly growing nest egg with which Jakob hoped to secure his future after the war, if war actually came: a small hotel in Cologne or a roadhouse beside the Rhine—something of the kind.

  “How did the money get under your pillow?” Jakob couldn’t remember at first. Then he did remember after all: it was a tip from a guest who had checked out a few days earlier. He said his name, and Erneste recalled the man in question. Five francs was a lot of money, but ever since Jakob had been working in the hotel bar his personal gratuities had been piling up. They were a reward for the obliging way he attended to his customers in the bar at night—customers who sat drinking until the small hours and would have resented it if a barman seemed eager to get rid of them. Jakob’s face betrayed no such impatience. Having worries enough of their own, the refugees couldn’t abide other people’s. They may also have been purchasing his silence, for many of the émigrés stranded here had a dread of German informers. Were they afraid Jakob might be one?

  Jakob was holding the coin in his fist. “It probably fell out of my pocket when I was getting undressed,” he said. He kissed Erneste and stretched out on the bed with his arms behind his head. Erneste forgot all about his discovery. He was reminded of it eleven days later.

  Chapter 11

  Shortly after one o’clock he boarded the local train that ran along the lakeshore in an easterly direction. The journey took thirty-seven minutes. The car in which he was sitting was only sparsely occupied, for the most part by elderly folk and a few children. The train was on time. Passengers alighted at every station but none got in, so he had the car to himself after the fourth stop. The place where Klinger lived obviously wasn’t a tourist resort, and the commuters who used the local train every day were at work. Erneste tried to concentrate on the scenery—lake on the left, little villages and vineyards on the right—but his thoughts were elsewhere. His eyes skimmed the unfamiliar countryside, most of which slid past him unnoticed. The individual stations left no lasting impression. On one occasion he was struck by the brownish foliage of some parched geraniums on the windowsill of a waiting room. Seated on the bench outside was a girl of around seventeen. She was looking infinitely bored—as neglected as the flowers behind her. Another time his window was lashed by a sudden rainstorm, but the sun reappeared within minutes. He registered this without surprise.

  Erneste was wearing a pale-blue polka-dot tie with his gray suit, the only suit he possessed, which did for all occasions, and over it a light raincoat. His umbrella he’d wedged between the seat and the armrest. It fell over twice, and twice he wedged it back again. He tried hard to concentrate. It still wasn’t too late to change his mind, but if he didn’t change his mind he had to be well prepared. But that meant trying to imagine something that defied his imagination: a meeting with Klinger, face to face.

  After thirty-seven minutes the train stopped for the sixth time. Erneste got out and the train continued on its way. He studied the timetable. Trains back to Giessbach left every hour.

  He needed a drink before he set off for Klinger’s place, so he walked past the ticket office and into the little station restaurant. He was feeling weak. His
hands were trembling, but he knew how to cure this. He had time for a brandy.

  He pushed open the heavy glass door, the handle of which was sticky to the touch. The airless room contained a sprinkling of eating, drinking, smoking lunchtime customers, each of whom was contributing to the stale and stuffy atmosphere. An elderly woman with unwashed gray hair looked up as Erneste came in and eyed him over the top of her glasses. The waitress looked half asleep, but she was quick off the mark. Three minutes later he was sitting in front of a lukewarm, leathery-tasting cognac maison. The little tray was adorned with a complimentary “dead man’s leg”, one of those rock-hard hazelnut cookies the locals liked so much. Erneste picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp, then paid and left. He hadn’t removed his raincoat. None of the Restaurant am Berg’s patrons would have recognized him in this setting, nor, in all probability, would he have recognized them—if any had strayed here, which was most unlikely.

  Qu’il était beau, le Postillon de Longjumeau …

  The melody had been going around and around in his head ever since he emerged from the restaurant. There was no cab rank, and it appeared from the bus-stop signboard that buses drove straight along the lake to the next village without halting en route. And so, rather irresolutely, he set off inland, hoping to meet someone he could ask for directions. His gamble paid off. Before long he met a man walking a big black dog. Not only was the man able to direct him, but the equanimity with which he did so conveyed that it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been asked the same question. The locals must be used to strangers asking them the way to Klinger’s house, Erneste reflected. Everyone here must know who he is and where he lives.

  The man asked Erneste if he was a journalist, but it was courtesy, not curiosity, that prompted the question. Erneste said he wasn’t. “There aren’t any taxis here,” the man said. Erneste said he hadn’t expected there to be any and would walk. “You can’t go wrong,” the man said. “The village is small—you can’t miss it. Carry on up the hill, turn right after three or four hundred yards, then straight uphill again and make another right. You’ll see, you get the finest view of the lake and the mountains from there.” That terminated the conversation, and Erneste set off again.

  Perhaps the man was a little curious after all, he told himself. He thought he could sense his eyes on his back, but he didn’t turn around. Perhaps he was mistaken. The dog, which hadn’t made a sound before, emitted a hoarse bark, but not at him. Perhaps the man had encountered someone else walking a dog, but that wasn’t his concern.

  Qu’il était beau, le Postillon de Longjumeau …

  A quarter of an hour later he was standing outside Klinger’s gate. The house was almost obscured by a tall, dense yew hedge, so its size could only be guessed at. The gate was low enough, however, to reveal that a narrow path flanked by shrubs and rose bushes led up to the front door. Everything made an overgrown, neglected impression. The wilted roses had not been removed, the gate was coated with a thin film of lichen, and there was a tile lying smashed outside the front door, having presumably fallen from the roof of the porch. There was still time to turn around, and for a moment Erneste was tempted to do so. His failure to show up would probably pass unnoticed; Klinger must receive so many visitors that it would be of no consequence. Beyond this gate, beyond these unseen walls, lay a world in which he had no business and nothing to gain. He knew this as certainly as if he really knew that world, but he knew it only from the outside, as an observer, in his capacity as a waiter. Seen from the outside it possessed no appeal for him. If he rang the bell now, he would be doing it for Jakob. The only thing he could do for him was to try to speak with Klinger. Perhaps they would come to terms, perhaps not. Klinger was a famous man whose sole connection with Erneste was that he had blighted his insignificant life over thirty years earlier, or at least rendered his insignificant life a little more insignificant than it already was.

  The bell was on the right of the gate. Erneste stared at the button and the brass plate engraved with Klinger’s initials, which was weatherworn and tarnished. He’d been expecting a more impressive reception. He put out his hand and pressed the button three times. Before long a buzzer sounded, the gate gave a click and swung back a few inches. He pushed it open and walked up to the house. The front door opened.

  He recognized the housekeeper who had joined the Klingers in the summer of 1936 and then accompanied them to America. Frau Moser stood in the doorway, waiting for him to climb the five steps that led up to the dilapidated porch. She greeted him in a low voice, her face expressionless, and he got the feeling that she never raised her voice or registered any emotion. Although she wasn’t wearing an apron, it was obvious that she wasn’t a member of the family. The fact that she didn’t introduce herself wasn’t the only indication of her subordinate status.

  Frau Moser stepped aside, took Erneste’s coat, and asked him to wait in the anteroom. Then she withdrew, leaving him alone. She knows everything, he told himself, but she would never talk about it to anyone else. The door remained ajar. The house made a deserted but not unoccupied impression.

  Erneste found himself standing in a room filled with books. It wasn’t an anteroom, as Frau Moser had called it, but a library. In the center was a library table with two deep armchairs drawn up to it. The walls were lined with ceiling-high bookshelves, and between them stood display cabinets housing objets and mementos, gifts and souvenirs from distant lands. They included things Erneste had never seen before: Etruscan clasps, Chinese porcelain, Indian fabrics, pre-Columbian arrows, African figurines, Stone Age tools and countless fossils. Any space on the walls not occupied by books was given over to framed butterfly collections, vedute, drawings and sketches, copperplate engravings, a naked athlete, and copies of old masters. In one corner was a house plant whose pale-green tendrils brushed the ceiling and proliferated over the bookshelves.

  The source of the curiously warm glow in which the room was bathed seemed natural, but it couldn’t have been because the sun had gone in. Although the house looked rather rundown and depressing from the outside, what Erneste could see of the interior made a tranquil, cheerful impression. Every object and piece of furniture in this private paradise, from which the outside world had been banished, was of the finest quality. To have compared this paradise, even for a moment, with his own little apartment would have been inappropriate in the extreme, for everything in it defied comparison with anything he’d ever seen. So Jakob had spent a part of his life surrounded by beautiful objects like these—exactly how long, Erneste had no idea, and it occurred to him that Jakob and Klinger might have parted after only a short time. So what was Klinger supposed to pay Jakob for—what did he owe him? Like so many turns of phrase in Jakob’s letters, the significance of that one—He owes me, it’s only right!—still eluded him.

  Klinger suddenly appeared in the doorway through which Erneste had entered the room a few minutes earlier. Since the door was ajar and Erneste was sitting with his back to it, Klinger took him by surprise—indeed, he startled him, and for an instant Erneste thought he’d done so on purpose. Klinger cleared his throat and Erneste jumped up. An invisible man had suddenly become visible, a rear view turned into a frontal view, a frozen image started to quiver. What it represented was unexpectedly coming to life. The scene that had etched itself into Erneste’s memory on the afternoon of July 28, 1936, capable of being conjured up afresh at any time, often after an interval of years, became irrelevant for a few moments. Klinger had aged, that was unmistakable, but Erneste recognized him at once.

  Equally unmistakable was the almost instantly suppressed dismay in Klinger’s eyes at the sight of what remained of the treatment to which Erneste had been subjected a few days earlier: the traces of the savage beating that had prompted him to get in touch with Klinger after previously deciding, only a short while before, to let Jakob stew in his own juice and avoid all further thought of him. Klinger’s deep-set eyes were in surprising contrast to the rest of his appeara
nce. He had the impenetrably remote, self-absorbed look of an owl. His deliberately nonchalant manner failed to conceal the fact that he was on his guard.

  He came over to Erneste. He was taller than Erneste remembered, and didn’t look his age. He would be seventy-eight in a few weeks’ time.

  Then Klinger did something Erneste hadn’t expected, although it was quite natural: he shook hands. He held Erneste’s hand longer than necessary, looking him in the eye as if to gauge his sincerity. At that moment the image of Klinger that had poisoned his memory for so many years returned, and he involuntarily withdrew his hand, convinced that the other man must know what was going through his mind. Despite himself, he saw him again as he had seen him on that day in July of 1936, when he, Erneste, had made his unheralded appearance—when he had been inadvertently but all the more cruelly compelled to acknowledge that his hold over Jakob was no more, and that he had probably lost it a long time ago. Klinger possessed the power to dominate others, body and soul.

  Even before they sat down at the table and Frau Moser came in with a laden tray, Klinger surprised Erneste by saying, “It’s a long time ago, but I do remember you. You were Jakob’s young friend. Ah well, we were all young once.” The casual way he spoke conveyed that Erneste had played no great part in his memories of those days. All that surprised Erneste was that Klinger remembered him at all.