I Served the King of England (10 page)

The Hotel Paris was so beautiful it almost knocked me over. So many
mirrors and brass balustrades and brass door handles and brass candelabras, all polished
till the place shone like a palace of gold. There were red carpets and glass doors
everywhere, just like in a château. Mr. Brandejs gave me a warm welcome and took me
to my temporary quarters, a little room in the attic with such a pretty view of Prague
that I decided, because of the room and the view, to try to stay there permanently.
After I’d
unpacked my suitcase to hang out my tuxedo and my
underwear, I opened a closet and saw it was full of suits, and a second closet was full
of umbrellas, and a third was full of topcoats and inside, hanging on strings nailed to
the wall, were hundreds of ties. I pushed the hangers together and hung up my clothes,
and then looked out over the rooftops of Prague, and when I saw the shimmering Castle,
the home of Czech kings, I was flooded with tears and forgot all about the Hotel
Tichota, and I was glad they’d suspected me of trying to steal the
Bambino
, because if my boss hadn’t believed it, I’d still be
raking the paths and tidying the haystacks, nervous, wondering where the next whistle
would come from and who would be blowing it, because by that time I’d figured out
that the porter had a whistle too and was acting as the boss’s eyes and legs, and
he’d watch us and then whistle just like the boss. When I went downstairs, it was
noon, and the waiters were changing shifts and having lunch, and I saw they were eating
croquettes—boiled potato croquettes with fried bread crumbs—and everyone in
the kitchen was served this, including the boss, who was eating in the kitchen just like
the cashier. Only the chef de cuisine and his assistants had boiled potatoes in their
skins. I was served croquettes with bread crumbs too. The boss had me sit down beside
him, and while I ate, he ate too, but rather delicately, as if to say, If I, the owner,
can eat this, then you, my employees, can eat it too. Soon he wiped his mouth with a
napkin and took me out into the restaurant. My first job was to serve the beer, so I
picked up the full glasses in the taproom and arranged them on my tray, putting a red
glass token in a box for each beer, which was how they kept track of them
here, and the old headwaiter pointed with his chin to where I was
supposed to take the beer. From then on he just used his eyes, and I never made a
mistake. Within an hour I could tell the old headwaiter was stroking me with his eyes,
letting me know he liked me. He was class itself, a real movie actor, born to the
tuxedo. I’d never seen anyone look better in a formal suit, and he seemed right at
home in this hall of mirrors. Even though it was afternoon, all the lights were on,
candle-shaped lamps with a bulb in every one and cut-glass crystal pendants everywhere.
When I saw myself in the mirror carrying the bright Pilsner beer, I seemed different
somehow. I saw that I’d have to stop thinking of myself as small and ugly. The
tuxedo looked good on me here, and when I stood beside the headwaiter, who had curly
gray hair that looked as though a hairdresser had done it, I could also see in the
mirror that all I really wanted was to work right here at this station with this
headwaiter, who radiated serenity, who knew everything there was to know, who paid close
attention to everything, who filled orders and was always smiling as though he were at a
dance or hosting a ball in his own home. He also knew which tables were still waiting
for their food and would see that they got it, and he knew who wanted to pay, though I
never saw anyone raise his hand and snap his fingers or shake the bill. The headwaiter
would gaze out over the restaurant as if he were surveying a vast crowd of people, or
looking out over the countryside from an observation tower, or scanning the sea from the
pilothouse of a steamship, or not looking at anything, and every movement a guest made
told him at once what that guest wanted. I noticed right away that the headwaiter
didn’t like the
waiter and would reproach him with his eyes
for getting the plates mixed up and taking the pork to table eleven instead of table
six. When I’d been serving the beer for a week, I noticed that whenever this
particular waiter brought the food from the kitchen on a tray he would stop before he
went through the swinging door and, when he thought no one was looking, lower the tray
from the level of his eyes to the level of his heart, look hungrily at the food, and
take a pinch of this and a pinch of that—just a tiny amount each time so it looked
as if he’d accidentally dipped his finger in the food and was licking it off. I
saw the headwaiter catch him at it but say nothing, just watch. Then the waiter would
wave his hand, hoist the tray over his shoulder, kick open the door, and rush into the
restaurant. He always ran as though the tray were falling forward, his legs a-flurry,
but it was a fact that no one else dared carry as many plates as Karel (that was his
name). He could get twenty plates on his tray and lay eight along his outstretched arm
as if it were a narrow table, and hold two more in his outspread fingers, and three
plates in the other hand. It was almost like a vaudeville routine, and I suspect that
Brandejs, the boss, liked the waiter and thought that the way he served the food was one
of the attractions of the establishment. So almost every day we employees had potato
croquettes for lunch, sometimes with poppy seeds, sometimes with a sauce, or with a
toasted roll or covered with butter and sugar or with raspberry juice or with chopped
parsley and melted lard. Each time, there would be the boss himself eating those potato
croquettes with us in the kitchen. He never ate very much, because he said he was on a
diet. But at two o’clock Karel
the waiter would bring him a
tray, and judging by the silver covers over the food it must have been a small goose or
a chicken or a duck, or some kind of game, whatever was in season. He always had it
brought into one of the private chambers, to make it look as though it was for someone
else, a member or a broker from the Fruit and Vegetable Exchange, because the brokers
always went on conducting their business after hours in the Hotel Paris. But when no one
was looking, our boss would slip into the room, and when he came out he’d be
glowing with satisfaction, a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth. I suspect that
Karel the waiter had some kind of arrangement with the boss. When the main day at the
exchange, which was Thursday, was over, the brokers would come to our hotel to celebrate
over champagne and cognac the deals they’d closed. On each table would be trays
laden with food, or really only one tray, but full enough to make it a real feast, and
every Thursday, from eleven o’clock in the morning on, some brightly painted young
ladies would be sitting in the restaurant, the kind I’d met at Paradise’s
when I was working at the Golden City of Prague, and they’d be smoking and
drinking vermouth and waiting for the brokers to show up. When the brokers did show up,
the girls would split up and go to separate tables, and the men would select them for
the private chambers. Then I could hear the sounds of laughter and the tinkling of
glasses through the curtains as I walked past, and this would go on for hours, until
finally the brokers would leave in high spirits and the young ladies would come out and
comb their hair, redo their kiss-smeared lipstick, tuck in their blouses, and glance
behind them, almost putting their necks out of joint trying
to see
if the stockings they’d just put back on had the line, the seam, running straight
down the middle of their legs into their shoes to the exact center of their heels. When
the brokers left, neither I nor anyone else was ever allowed to go into the private
chambers, and we all knew why. Several times, through a half-drawn curtain, I saw Karel
lifting the cushions, and that was his little business on the side, picking up lost
coins and bills, and the occasional ring or watch chain. It was all his, the money that
fell out of the pockets of the brokers’ trousers, coats, and vests as they dressed
or undressed or were writhing about.

One morning Karel loaded up his tray with twelve main dishes and as usual
stopped just inside the door to pinch a bit of sirloin tip and a touch of Brussels
sprouts to go along with it, topping it off with a morsel of dressing from the veal.
Then he lifted the tray as if the food had given him new strength and with a smile on
his face struck out into the restaurant. But a customer who was taking snuff, or had a
cold, inhaled abruptly through his nose, and as he inhaled it was as if the force of the
intake pulled him straight up by the hair, because he suddenly rose to his feet,
sneezing loudly, and caught the corner of the tray with his shoulder. Karel, leaning
forward at the waist, had to run to catch up to the loaded tray, which now was sailing
through the air like a flying carpet, because Karel always carried his food high. Either
the tray was too fast or Karel’s legs were too slow, but in any case when he
reached for it the tray slipped away from his upturned hand, his fingers scrabbling
desperately for it as all of us in the business watched, including the boss, who was
entertaining a group from the hotel owners’ association. Mr. Šroubek himself
was at the banquet table, and he saw what then happened, just as
we had foreseen it would. Karel took one more mighty leap in the air and managed to
catch the tray before it fell, but two plates slid off one after the other, and first
pieces of beef roll à la Puzsta, then dumplings poured over a guest who was just
raising his eyes from the menu to ask if the meat was tender and the sauce warm enough
and the dumplings light. It all slid off the plates and onto the guest, and as he rose
to his feet dripping with sauce, the beef roll à la Puzsta and the dumplings
tumbled off his lap and fell under the table. One dumpling remained on his head like a
small cap, a yarmulke, the kind a rabbi wears, or a priest’s biretta. When Karel,
who had managed to save all the other ten plates, saw that and saw Mr. Šroubek, who
owned the Hotel Šroubek, he raised the tray even higher, gave it a little toss,
flipped it over, and flung all ten plates onto the carpet, demonstrating, as if he were
in a play or a pantomime, how disgusted he felt about those two plates. He undid his
apron just as theatrically, flung it at the floor, and stomped out in a fury, then
changed into his street clothes and went out to get drunk. I didn’t understand it
yet, but everyone in the business said that if you dropped the two plates like that, the
other ten had to end up on the floor too, because of a waiter’s honor. But the
matter was far from over. Karel came back, his eyes flashing, and sat down in the
kitchen, glowering out into the restaurant. Suddenly he jumped up and tried to pull the
large cupboard down on himself, the one that held all the glasses. The cashier and the
cook rushed over and pushed the cupboard back upright, while the glasses clattered out
of it and crashed to the floor, but those two plates
had given Karel
such power that he almost managed to pull the cupboard over three times. Each time the
cooks, who by now were all red in the face, slowly pushed it back upright, and just when
everyone had got his breath back, Karel jumped up and grabbed the kitchen
stove—which was so long that when you added wood at one end, the fire would almost
be out by the time you got to the oven at the other—and gave the stove such a yank
that he pulled the stovepipe out of the wall, and soon the kitchen was full of smoke and
fumes and everyone was choking. With great effort they got the pipe back in place, and
the cooks, all smeared with soot, collapsed in their chairs and looked about to see
where Karel was, but he was gone. Just as we all heaved sighs of relief, suddenly we
heard a tinkling sound. Karel had kicked a hole in the glass of the air shaft over the
stove and smashed his way down into the kitchen, and he landed with one leg up to his
knee in the lunchtime special, which was tripe soup, and the other leg in a pot of
goulash combined with sauce for the filly-on-mushroom. There were splinters of glass
everywhere, so the cooks gave up, and they ran for the porter, who was a former
wrestler, to take Karel out by force, since they decided he must have some kind of
grudge against the Hotel Paris. The porter set his legs firmly apart and spread his huge
paws as though he were holding a skein of wool to be wound into a ball and said,
What’s it going to be, you horse’s ass? But Karel slugged the porter so hard
that the porter fell over, and the police had to be called in. By the time the police
arrived Karel was docile, but in the corridor on the way out he knocked down two of them
and kicked a dent in the helmet of a third while the policeman was still wearing it. So
they
dragged him into one of the private rooms and beat him up, and
each time he screamed, all the guests in the restaurant looked at one another and
shrugged their shoulders. Finally the policemen took him out, all bruised up, but as he
passed the cloakroom he told the girl that those two plates would cost some more yet,
and he was right, because word had barely come back that he’d settled down when he
suddenly kicked a hole in the porcelain sink and yanked the pipes out of the wall so
that everything in the room, including the policemen, was soaking wet before they
managed to stop up the holes with their fingers.

And so I became a waiter on the floor under the guidance of the headwaiter
Mr. Sk
ř
ivánek, and there were two other waiters, but
I was the only one allowed to lean against the table in the alcove when things slowed
down in the early afternoon. The headwaiter told me that I’d make a good
headwaiter but that I had to train myself to fix a guest in my memory as soon as he came
in and be aware when he was leaving—not necessarily at lunchtime, when a customer
would have to pick up his coat from the cloakroom, but in the afternoon, when meals were
served in the café and the cloakroom was closed—so that I would learn to spot
those who wanted to sneak out without paying. I was also supposed to be able to estimate
how much money a guest had with him, and whether he would spend accordingly, or should
spend accordingly. That, Mr. Sk
ř
ivánek said, was
what being a good headwaiter meant. And so when there was time for it he would quietly
describe to me what sort of guest had just arrived or was just leaving. He trained me
for several weeks, until I felt ready to try it on my own. I would look forward to the
afternoon as
though I were setting out on some adventure, and
I’d be as excited as a hunter waiting for his quarry to appear. The headwaiter
would either smoke, his eyes half closed, and nod contentedly, or he would shake his
head, correct me, and then go to the guest himself and show me that he’d been
right, and he always was. And that was how I first found it out, because when I asked
the headwaiter a basic question—How do you know all this?—he answered,
pulling himself up to his full height, Because I served the King of England. The King? I
said, clapping my hands. You mean you actually served the King of England? And the
headwaiter nodded his head in satisfaction. And so the second phase of my training
began. It was exciting, something like the lottery, when you’re waiting to see if
your number will come up, or hoping to win the door prize at a masquerade ball or some
public celebration. A guest would come into the restaurant in the afternoon, the
head-waiter would nod, we’d go into the alcove, and I’d say, Italian. The
headwaiter would shake his head and say, Yugoslav, from Split or Dubrovnik. And
we’d look each other in the eye for a moment, then nod, and each put twenty crowns
on a tray in the alcove. I would go to ask what the guest wanted, and when I’d
taken his order, and was on my way back, the headwaiter would see my expression, sweep
up both twenty-crown notes, and slip them into his enormous wallet, for which he’d
had one of the pockets in his trousers bordered with the same kind of leather, and
I’d be astonished and ask, How did you know that? And he’d answer modestly,
I served the King of England. And so we’d bet like that, and I’d always
lose. But then he said that if I wanted to be a good headwaiter I
had to be able to recognize not just the nationality but also what the guest was
likely to order as well. So when a guest came into the restaurant, we’d nod, go
into the alcove, and lay our twenties on the sideboard, and I’d say, Goulash soup
or the tripe-soup special. The headwaiter would say, Tea and fried toast, no garlic.
Then I’d go for the order and say, Good morning and what would you like? And the
guest would say, Tea and fried toast, no garlic, and as I walked back the headwaiter was
already scooping up both twenties, and he’d say, You have to learn to recognize a
gallbladder case when you see one. Just take a look at him. His liver is probably doomed
as well. Another time, I thought the guest would have tea with bread and butter, and the
headwaiter said, Prague ham with a pickle and a glass of Pilsner beer, and of course he
was right, and when I’d taken the order and was coming back with it, the
head-waiter saw me coming, raised the little window, and called the order into the
kitchen for me: One Prague ham. And when I got there, he added, And a pickle on the
side. I was glad to be learning, even though I wasted all my tips, because we bet
whenever we could and I’d always lose, and each time I asked him how he knew,
he’d slip the twenties into his big wallet and say, I served the King of
England.