A Perfect Waiter

by Alain Claude Sulzer

  Erneste left the attic room soon after Klinger. He might have said he needed some fresh air because he genuinely did, he couldn’t remember. Meantime, Jakob remained silent. He didn’t attempt to find words to explain his behavior, which seemed self-explanatory in any case. Instead of rendering the situation slightly less irredeemable, he left it in the air by saying nothing. He didn’t apologize or attempt to justify himself. At length he got to his feet, frozen-faced and seemingly at a loss, with reddish patches visible on his knees. And because Erneste couldn’t endure his own distress or the sight of Jakob’s reddened knees and helpless expression, he turned tail. He turned on his heel and went out because nothing could prevent him from taking flight, which was possibly the worst thing he’d ever done. Instead of forgiving Jakob, he left him on his own. He felt he was suffocating, in need of air.

  In search of some task that might have taken his mind off things, he wandered through the hotel but failed to find anyone who needed his services. The kitchen and terrace were deserted, the bar was closed, and there was no one in the lobby but the receptionist. He left the building by a side entrance, plunged straight out into the sunlight and started walking. It was just after two. In the last few minutes his life had been turned inside out like a glove. The pain was relentless; it became more intense with every breath, every step, every memory. He hadn’t been mistaken: Jakob hadn’t been the same for a long time. He was a different person since returning from Germany in the spring. Jakob didn’t need him anymore. He’d been going his own way ever since then.

  Erneste had left the hotel in his waiter’s outfit although staff were requested always to wear plain clothes off the premises, but he took care not to run into anyone, not wanting to be seen and compelled to talk. Without debating which way to go, he headed down through the woods to the lake, stumbling occasionally because he was walking too fast. He passed the spot where they had kissed for the first time and came to a halt in the middle of the path, abruptly convulsed with despair. Then he continued on his way to the lakeshore, where he spent a long time gazing at the water. When a steamer laden with passengers approached he turned back.

  Jakob was gone by the time he returned to their room. It was now three o’clock. Too late, nothing to be done, it was over. He suddenly felt so dizzy from the heat and his exertions, he had to lie down. He pulled off his dusty black shoes. The thing he’d sometimes dreamed of had happened. It wasn’t a nightmare, it had happened precisely where he was at this moment. He had only to look around to confirm that.

  For two days they didn’t exchange a word. They couldn’t always avoid each other, but their different working hours were a boon when it came to taking evasive action. Erneste held his breath and pretended to be asleep when Jakob entered their room in the small hours, and he hardly dared swallow when Jakob lay down beside him. They didn’t even exchange a glance for two whole days, though they couldn’t help meeting in their room in the afternoons.

  Erneste felt as if he was walking through a wall, and it cost him an effort to make out the objects in the room. Incapable of lucid thought, he was equally incapable of speaking out. Although he had a pretty clear idea of how this endless torment could be ended, he didn’t end it. They lay there mutely side by side.

  Erneste felt sure that Jakob was continuing to see Klinger, but the indirect confirmation of his suspicions exceeded all his worst fears. On the third day Jakob informed him that he’d spoken to Herr Direktor Wagner and handed in his notice. Those were the first words that had passed between them after two days of silence. They were said by the by, so to speak, just as Erneste was about to leave the room. He let go of the door handle. No words could have hit him harder.

  Jakob had sat up in bed. The baneful announcement was brief and to the point: “I spoke to the manager today. I’ve quit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m off to America in a few weeks’ time.”

  “America? Why?”

  “Klinger needs a manservant. I’m going with him.”

  “I see. You’ll make a good manservant.”

  “I think so too. I’ve got to get away from here.”

  “Away from me.”

  “Away from here. If there’s a war, and there will be, I’d have to go back to Cologne. Everyone says so—Klinger says so. And I don’t want to go back.”

  “Klinger says so, and you’re going with him. He’s rescuing you.”

  Jakob nodded. “Yes, he’s helping me.”

  Outwardly composed but without grasping the significance of the words, Erneste said, “And I’ll stay on here and wait for the war to end. Everything will sort itself out in due course.”

  He had been prepared for anything, but not for the fact that Jakob’s future had long been settled behind his back without a moment’s thought being given to the possibility that this might determine his future too.

  Nothing could prevent Jakob from leaving him for good. Klinger had already made arrangements to do as Jakob wished. Jakob had opted for Klinger because he knew that Klinger would opt for him. Klinger could be helpful to Jakob, that was undeniable. Jakob would accompany him and his family to America as a lover in the guise of a manservant. When Erneste envisaged the full extent of this upheaval, he thought he was losing his mind. But the condition didn’t last. He didn’t lose his mind. He went on working as if nothing had happened.

  “When passion becomes a slaveholder,” said Klinger, “it becomes dangerous. Jakob didn’t love me, whereas all I wanted was to possess him to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Knowing this, he exploited it and despised me for it. His own role he ignored—he didn’t think it contemptible at all. Later on, not long after the war, I wrote a novella, The Wound, which presented a veiled account of our liaison. It was a thorough failure because my treatment of what I ought to have written about was deficient in the extreme. I made no attempt to write the truth, I lacked the courage, so everything remained superficial. I described the disastrous love of an older man for a younger woman who drives him insane, not the love of one man for another man who reduces him to a cipher and almost obliterates him. I never even tried to be truthful in The Wound; I simply skirted around the truth regardless of any loss of veracity. I lacked courage, so I became a liar. All I produced, alas, was a repetition of something far from unique in literature, yet my little novella was regarded as verging on the scandalous, so it attracted a lot of publicity. What an uproar it would have caused had I written even a fraction of what I could have written! But it was even filmed—perhaps you’ve heard of the picture. It was just another step down the road to obfuscation. My due reward for abusing the truth was a second-rate cast, a mediocre director and an opportunistic scriptwriter. My novella ends with a murder. The film begins with a murder and is one long justification of that murder. The murderer’s guilt is relativized and, thus, excused. My story, the true story, ended quite differently. That’s the story I should have written, but I couldn’t—I never even tried because the time isn’t ripe for such stories. Mark my words, though, in twenty or thirty years’ time it may be possible to write a story like that. If I’d kept a diary, which I never have, alas, the story of my dependence on Jakob would be documented in every detail and available for everyone to read: an account of what a man can suffer and what can be done to him. Sadly, it was not to be. You, Monsieur Erneste, are the only person I’ve ever told. I didn’t devote a single word to Jakob in my memoirs. They break off when I emigrate to America, and there won’t be a sequel. It would be nice if I could say I shall die in peace, at one with myself and the story of my life, but that isn’t so. And I fear my story doesn’t interest you particularly. On the other hand, I can only tell it to someone who knows it but is utterly indifferent to it. Because, of course, I mean absolutely nothing to you.”

  “As little as you did when you took Jakob away from me, or when I saw things in that light. Of course, he was simply doing what he wanted.”

  The tea had gone cold. A fl
y was squatting on Erneste’s saucer. He stared at the slices of cake on the plate. Frau Moser hadn’t reappeared. Klinger’s house was pervaded by an almost soothing hush.

  “And now, tell me why you came. What do you want?”

  “Jakob has written to me. I’ve received two letters from him.”

  “You’re in contact with him?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “You’ve been in contact with him all this time?”

  “Not at all. I hadn’t heard from him for thirty years. I didn’t even know if he was still living in America—if he was still alive, even.”

  “So he’s alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He asked me to get in touch with you.”

  “Why?”

  Erneste took Jakob’s letters from his breast pocket and put them down beside the tray. Klinger glanced at them. He evidently recognized Jakob’s handwriting, but ingrained reserve forbade him to reach for them at once.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Money.”

  Erneste stared at the letters intently, almost as if they might dissolve into thin air.

  “I’m here as his go-between,” he said. “That’s the role he assigned me. He wants you to help him financially. That’s my job.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

  Erneste handed Klinger the letters. He didn’t take his eyes off him during the minutes that followed. Klinger put his glasses on. His expression underwent a gradual change. “Nobel Prize … plenty of cash … FBI… Weston …” He rose to his feet, occasionally muttering the words aloud as he read them. Then, abruptly, he froze and looked down at Erneste.

  “He must be insane, absolutely insane, to think he can melt my heart with these fairy tales. Weston, Burlington and the rest of those witch hunters—they drowned in their own mire long ago. Times have changed, nobody’s after me anymore. I’m a man of repute in the States as well.”

  Erneste shrugged. “You must help him all the same.”

  “How old and ugly he must have become, and how low he’s sunk, to have to resort to such tricks. You can’t be frightened of people who’ve lost all their clout. The men he talks about, the ones he claims are after him, have long been completely devoid of influence. Their boss died ten years ago. How uninformed does he think I am?”

  “You won’t help him?”

  Klinger sat down again. He replaced the letters on the table and removed his glasses.

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. He should know that.”

  “Why not?”

  Overcome by a fit of uncontrollable agitation whose sudden violence even he found surprising, Erneste jumped to his feet and shouted the words again and again. His question remained unanswered. Klinger, who was unprepared to reply, called Frau Moser. He slumped a little in his chair and shook his head, but that was no answer. Moments later Frau Moser entered the room, in which the fading daylight only dimly disclosed the two men’s drained and exhausted faces. She looked from one to the other, then signed to Erneste to accompany her. He didn’t demur. He picked up the letters, pocketed them, and turned to go. Without bidding Klinger goodbye, he silently left the room in which his cries still seemed to linger in the air. By the harsh glare of a flash of lightning, real or imaginary, the scene underwent a transformation, and he left the room feeling just as he had when leaving that other room in Giessbach thirty years before. Where Jakob had been kneeling, Klinger now sat, and where Erneste stood, Erneste stood again, beyond anyone’s power to help. He felt the door handle just as he had felt it then, although this time he didn’t touch it because the door by which he left the room was open. He went out into the hallway. Frau Moser walked ahead of him to the front door, where she took leave of him with a nod. The attic room was now deserted. And so, from one moment to the next, he returned from the past to the present. He walked back down the hill, made his way through the village to the station, sat down on a bench on the platform, and waited for the next train. He looked at his watch: another seventeen minutes.

  Twelve minutes later he got up and left the station. He walked through the village again and headed back to Klinger’s house, striding along quickly and purposefully now that he knew the way and had no need to ask for directions. When he came to Klinger’s gate he rang the bell again and again, but he guessed, even as he pressed the button for the first time, that no one would answer. He was unwanted now. To that extent he now resembled Jakob and had been put on a par with him. That lent him a certain strength. Now that they knew who he was and what he wanted, they were deaf to his plea.

  Erneste got up early the day after his visit to Klinger. He had a bath and shaved, and while shaving he inspected his face closely in the mirror. He managed to examine it with the eye of a stranger. Although traces of his beating were still visible, they were now so faint, he had no need to fear that they would arouse unwelcome suspicions. He could go back to work with an easy mind.

  An hour later—he walked there as usual—he entered the Restaurant am Berg by the tradesmen’s entrance and was surprised to find that his reappearance was greeted with pleasure, not only by the manager but also by his fellow waiters—even by the chefs and kitchen hands. Although none of them slapped him on the back, still less inquired the reason for his absence, he could tell from their friendly faces that they had missed him a little and might even have been worried about him. Erneste resumed work as if he had never been away. He supervised the tables in the Blue Room, which were just being set, checked the position of the napkins and the arrangement of the cutlery and glasses. For the first few hours, during which he occasionally undertook minor adjustments with an economical touch, he felt thoroughly at ease in his accustomed environment. He wasn’t a guest or visitor here; he was at home, having been given to understand that he was needed. He even exerted himself rather more than usual for the next few days, blind to everything that happened outside his work.

  He had his reasons, because he was naturally aware that he had achieved nothing. He tried to act as if all was well, but not even the hardest work could blind him to the reality of his utter failure. His attempt to gain a hearing had misfired. He had come away empty-handed, and that was a shattering blow. It wasn’t Jakob who had failed, nor was it Klinger, who had refused to help; it was himself, Erneste, who had tried to help in vain. Klinger had used him to unburden himself by airing a secret he might well have taken to the grave but for Erneste’s appearance on the scene. Erneste hadn’t been sent for; he had come of his own volition. Perhaps his visit had injected some welcome but fundamentally unimportant variety into Klinger’s life. Just a brushstroke, a dab of paint on the fading palette of his existence.

  Erneste was troubled by the thought that his mission had achieved precisely nothing, so he tried to take his mind off this by concentrating on his work. He succeeded in banishing Jakob from his mind for as long as customers and colleagues claimed his attention, and whenever the thought of Jakob did cross his mind he shooed it away like a troublesome fly and readdressed himself to his various duties. He was assisted in this by two social functions, a big dinner on Friday night and a first-night party on the Saturday. Among those he waited on were a world-famous Swedish tenor and an English conductor whose glances in his direction were so unambiguous that he felt startled rather than flattered. His mementos of the latter occasion were the Swedish tenor’s autograph and the conductor’s languishing gaze. A lot of eating and drinking was done both nights, so he had his hands full. The tenor and the Romanian prima donna attracted great attention when they left, whereas the conductor’s departure passed almost unnoticed. He gave Erneste a last, silent look as he helped him on with his coat and slipped a visiting card into his pocket. There was a phone number scribbled on the back.

  By Sunday morning, if not before, Erneste could shelve the thought of Jakob no longer. Wide awake at seven o’clock, only four hours after going to bed, he lay s
taring at his open wardrobe. He had a headache—everything gave him a headache these days. Jakob was waiting impatiently. He was waiting in the wardrobe, waiting among his clothes and the objects lying around. He was waiting here, waiting in New York, waiting for an answer, for a letter, money, help, but he’d even been denied a refusal. The only person who could answer him was too cowardly to do so. Writing to Jakob was out of the question, for Jakob was uninterested in the truth. On the other hand, Erneste didn’t want to lie to him, so he wouldn’t write, not yet. He couldn’t act unaided. To act he needed Klinger’s help, but Klinger had refused it and would continue to do so unless he did something, so something had to be done. There was only one way out of this apparent impasse: he must bring pressure to bear on Klinger. There was only one thing to do and he would do it.