I Served the King of England (12 page)

A glorious event, the greatest honor that could ever have been bestowed on
a single hotel and restaurant, took place at the Hotel Paris, and I was lucky enough to
be there. A delegation had come to Prague on an official state visit, and the word was
that they liked gold. But it was discovered that there was no gold cutlery at the
official residence
in the Prague Castle, so the President’s
head chamberlain and the Chancellor himself began to make arrangements to borrow a set
from private sources, perhaps from Prince Schwartzenberg or Prince Lobkowitz. As it
turned out, these aristocrats had the cutlery, but not enough of it, and what they did
own, every knife and spoon, had their initials and their archducal coats of arms
engraved or stamped on the handles. The only one who might have been able to lend the
President a gold service was Prince Thurn Taxis, but he would have had to send to
Regensburg to get it, because it had been used there a year before at the wedding of a
family member who owned not only his own hotels and his own street, but also a whole
district of the city, including a bank. At last, after all the contenders had dropped
out, the Chancellor came to our hotel in person, and when he left the boss’s
office he was in a rage, which was good news for us, because Mr. Sk
ř
ivánek, who had served the King of England, had read everything
in the Chancellor’s face without his knowing it, and then from the face of Mr.
Brandejs, who owned the Hotel Paris, and what he learned was that the boss had refused
to lend the President his gold service unless the banquet was held here in the hotel.
That was how I learned—it practically knocked me down—that our hotel had
gold flatware for three hundred and twenty-five people. And so it was decided that the
luncheon in honor of the esteemed guest from Africa and his suite would be held here, in
our hotel. Then the cleaning began. Brigades of women arrived with buckets and rags and
washed not just the floor but the walls and the ceilings too, even the chandeliers,
until the hotel was bright and sparkling. When the day came for
the
Emperor of Ethiopia and his entourage to arrive and take up residence, a truck went
around to all the Prague flower shops and bought up all the roses and asparagus ferns
and orchids. But at the last minute the Chancellor came in person again and canceled the
suite reservations, though he confirmed the gala luncheon. The boss didn’t mind,
he simply added all the expenses of getting ready to put the Emperor up, including the
cleaning, onto the bill. So we began preparing a banquet for three hundred people. We
borrowed the maître d’ and the waiters from the Hotel Steiner, and Mr.
Šroubek closed his hotel for the day and lent us his waiters. Detectives from the
Castle—the same ones who had taken the
Bambino di Praga
to the cathedral
with me—showed up with three chef’s outfits and two waiter’s uniforms,
which they changed into at once so they could rehearse and sniff about the kitchen to
make sure no one was trying to poison the Emperor, and they checked the restaurant to
pick out the best places to keep an eye on the Emperor. When the chief cook and the
Chancellor and Mr. Brandejs sat down to draw up a menu for three hundred guests, it took
them six straight hours, and afterward Mr. Brandejs had fifty legs of veal brought to
his icebox, six cows for soup, three foals for tenderloin, one dray horse for sauce,
sixty swine, none heavier than sixty kilograms, ten suckling pigs, and three hundred
chickens, not to mention a doe and two bucks. For the first time I went down into our
cellars, with the headwaiter Mr. Sk
ř
ivánek, and
under his watchful eye the cellar manager counted again the supplies of wine, cognac,
and other liquors, and it was like being at Oplt’s, the wine and liquor
wholesaler. For the first time in my life I saw an entire wall
bristling with bottles of Heinkel Trocken and sparkling champagnes, from Veuve
Cliquot to Weinhardt’s of Koblenz, walls of Martell and Hennessey cognac, hundreds
of bottles of Scotch whiskies of all kinds. I also saw rare Mosel and Rhine wines, and
our own Bzenecka wine from Moravia, and Czech wines from M
ě
lnfk and Žernoseky. As he walked from cellar to cellar Mr.
Sk
ř
ivánek would caress the bottle necks fondly,
like an alcoholic, though as a matter of fact he didn’t drink, at least I’d
never seen him drink, and I suddenly realized I’d never seen him sit down either,
he was always standing. As he looked at me in the cellar he read my thoughts or at least
guessed them, because suddenly he said, Just remember, if you want to be a good
headwaiter, never sit down. If you do, your legs will start hurting and the rest of your
shift will be pure hell. Then the cellar manager turned the lights off behind us and we
came back up. The very same day, news came that the Emperor of Ethiopia had brought his
own cooks with him, and that they were going to prepare an Ethiopian specialty right
here in our hotel, because we had the gold cutlery just like the Emperor had in
Ethiopia. The day before the banquet the cooks and their interpreter arrived, shiny and
black, complaining of the cold. Our cooks were to be their assistants, but our chief
cook felt insulted and took off his apron and left in a huff. The Ethiopian cooks began
by making several hundred hard-boiled eggs. Laughing and grinning, they then brought in
twenty turkeys and put them in our ovens to roast, then mixed dressing in enormous
bowls, using thirty baskets of rolls and fistfuls of spices, and they brought a cartload
of parsley, which our cooks chopped up for them. We were all dying to see what these
black fellows would concoct. When they got thirsty, we brought
them Pilsner beer. They took a great liking to it and in exchange offered us shots of
their own liquor, which was made from grasses of some sort, and we drank toasts with it,
and it was terribly intoxicating and smelled of pepper and freshly ground allspice. We
were shocked when they had two antelopes brought in from the zoo, already gutted, and
they quickly skinned them and roasted them in the biggest roasting pans we had, with
huge chunks of butter and a bagful of their spices, and we had to open all the windows
because of the fumes. Then they put the stuffing in the half-roasted turkeys, and the
turkeys into the antelopes, and hundreds of hard-boiled eggs to fill in the empty
spaces, and they roasted everything together. But no one, not even the boss, was
prepared for what happened next. The Ethiopian cooks had a live camel brought to the
hotel and they wanted to slaughter it on the spot, but we were afraid to let them. The
interpreter pleaded with Mr. Brandejs, and then newspaper reporters showed up and our
hotel became the center of attention. They tied up the camel, who was bleating, Noooo,
noooo, as if to say, Don’t cut my throat, but one of the cooks cut his throat
anyway, with a kosher knife, and there was blood all over the courtyard, and then they
hauled the camel up by his hind legs with a block and tackle and took out his heart and
lungs and liver and things. Then they had three wagonloads of wood delivered, and while
the fire department stood by with their hoses ready the cooks quickly made a huge fire,
let it burn down until only the glowing coals remained, then barbecued the camel on a
spit supported by tripods. When the camel was almost done, they put into it the two
antelopes with the stuffed turkeys inside them, and fish as well,
and lined the cavity with hard-boiled eggs, and kept pouring on spices, and because it
was still too cold for them, even by the fire, they went on drinking beer, the way
brewery wagon drivers drink beer in the winter to keep warm. Now when the guests began
to arrive and the doormen were holding open the doors of the limousines, the black cooks
were still barbecuing suckling pigs and lambs in the courtyard and making huge cauldrons
of soup that used so much meat the boss was glad he’d laid in all those supplies.
Then Haile Selassie himself arrived, accompanied by the Prime Minister, all our
generals, and all the potentates of the Ethiopian army, everyone of them covered with
medals. The Emperor won us all over. He was dressed almost casually, in a kind of white
uniform with no medals, while the members of his government or the atamans of his tribes
wore colorful robes and some of them carried big swords, but as they took their places
it was obvious that they were well behaved and natural. Tables for three hundred guests
were set in the dining rooms of the Hotel Paris, and at each place was a set of
sparkling gold forks and knives and spoons. Haile Selassie was given a warm welcome by
the Prime Minister, and he responded in a barking voice, saying through his interpreter
that he had the pleasure of welcoming his guests to an Ethiopian meal. Then a fat man
draped in ten meters of cretonne clapped, and we began carrying around the hors
d’oeuvres the black cooks had made in our kitchen—cold veal with a black
sauce so strong it made me gag when I licked a drop of the stuff off my finger. When the
waiters elegantly slipped the small plates in front of the guests, I had my first sight
of three hundred golden forks and knives raised and glittering
through the dining rooms. The headwaiter signaled us to begin pouring the Mosel, and my
moment came when I saw they’d forgotten to serve the Emperor his wine. I wrapped a
napkin around a bottle, approached the Emperor, and without really knowing how it
happened, I went down on one knee like an acolyte and bowed, and when I stood up,
everyone was looking at me while the Emperor made the sign of the cross on my forehead
and blessed me. Then I poured his wine. The headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek was
standing right behind me. It was he who had forgotten to pour the Emperor’s wine,
and I was nervous about what I’d done, so I searched for our headwaiter Mr.
Sk
ř
ivánek with my eyes and saw him nod to say he
was glad I’d been so observant. I set the bottle aside and watched how slowly the
Emperor ate, how he dipped a piece of cold meat in the sauce and appeared merely to
taste it, how he’d nod and then chew very slowly. Then he laid the fork across his
plate as a sign that he’d had enough, sipped a little wine, and carefully dabbed
his whiskers with a napkin. Next they brought in the soup. Meanwhile the black cooks
were so animated, perhaps because they were still cold and drinking beer, that they had
their snapshots taken with the detectives disguised as cooks while our own cooks were
out in the courtyard slowly turning the stuffed camel over the glowing coals and basting
it with bundles of mint leaves dipped in beer, which was something new the black cooks
thought up. When the soup was over with, all the cooks and maids and maître
d’s and busboys and waiters relaxed, because the black fellows had everything
under control, though they were
constantly pouring beer down their
throats. I was singled out by the Emperor himself, so the interpreter said, for the
honor of continuing to serve him food and drink. Each time, I would first kneel on one
knee in my tuxedo, then serve him, then retire and wait to top up his glass or remove
his plate when he gave the sign. But the Emperor ate very little, he’d only wet
his mouth, savoring the aroma like the chief taster, taking a smidgen of food and a sip
of wine, and then continue his conversation with the Prime Minister. The further the
guests were in rank and order from the host, the more voraciously they ate and drank.
The guests at the tables in the back of the room, and in the alcoves and the adjoining
rooms, ate as if they were insatiable. They devoured all the bread rolls, and one guest
even sprinkled salt and pepper on the flowers of three potted cyclamen plants and ate
them. Meanwhile the detectives stood in the corners and recesses of the rooms looking
like waiters in their black tuxedos, with napkins folded over their arms, watching to
see that no one stole any of our golden cutlery. When the high point of the meal drew
near, the black cooks sharpened long sabers, two black fellows lifted the spit onto
their shoulders while a third basted the camel’s stomach with clusters of
peppermint, and they carried it into the restaurant. The Emperor stood up and pointed to
the barbecued camel and with the interpreter translating said that it was an African and
Arabian specialty, a modest gift from the Emperor of Ethiopia. Two assistants brought
two huge cutting boards into the middle of the dining room, fastened them together with
clamps, set the camel down on this enormous table, and brought in the knives and sliced
the camel in half with
broad strokes, then cut each half in half
again. A stupendous aroma spread through the room. In every slice there was a piece of
camel and antelope, and inside the antelope a slice of turkey, and inside the turkey
some fish and stuffing and little circles of hard-boiled eggs. The waiters held out the
plates and then, starting with the Emperor, we served the roast camel. I knelt down, the
Emperor gave me a sign with his eyes, and I served him his national dish. It must have
been wonderful, because all the guests fell silent and the only sound came from the
clinking of all those golden knives and forks. Then something happened that neither I
nor anyone else, perhaps not even Mr. Sk
ř
ivánek, had
ever seen before. First, a government counselor, a well-known epicure, was so enraptured
with the barbecued camel that he stood up and yelled with an expression of bliss on his
face. But it tasted so delicious that not even that yell was enough, so he did what
looked like a gymnastics routine, then started pounding his chest, then ate another
piece of meat dipped in the sauce. The black cooks stood there, their knives in their
hands and their eyes on the Emperor, but the Emperor must have seen this kind of thing
before because he just smiled, so the black cooks smiled, and the
chieftains—wrapped in those rare and wonderful fabrics with patterns of the kind
my grandmother used to have on her aprons—smiled too, nodding their heads. Finally
the counselor couldn’t contain himself any longer and ran out of the hotel
shouting and dancing and cheering and beating his chest, and then he ran back in again
and there was a song in his voice and a dance of thanksgiving in his legs. Suddenly he
bowed deeply to the three cooks, first bending to the waist in the Russian style, and
then right