I Served the King of England (7 page)

Every night the Hotel Tichota was pregnant with expectation. No one came,
no car drove up, but the entire
hotel was ready to go, like a music
box that starts playing when you drop a crown into it, or like a band: the
conductor’s baton is raised, all the musicians are ready, expectant, but the baton
hasn’t given the downbeat yet. We weren’t allowed to sit down or relax, we
had to keep busy, straightening things out or leaning gently against the station table,
and even the porter in the spotlit courtyard was waiting, bent at the waist over the
chopping block with an ax in one hand and a log in the other, waiting for the sign to
set his ax melodically in motion. It was like a shooting gallery with all the springs
wound up but no one’s there, and then suddenly customers show up and load the
pellets into the airguns and hit the target, those figures cut of metal and painted and
jointed with pins, and the whole mechanism kicks into motion if someone hits the
bull’s-eye. It also reminded me of the tale of the Sleeping Beauty where all the
characters freeze just as they are when the curse comes over them, but at the touch of
the magic wand all the unfinished motions are finished and those about to start, start.
That’s what happened when a car was heard in the distance. The boss, sitting in
his wheelchair by the window, gave a sign with his handkerchief, and Zden
ě
k dropped a coin into the music box, which began to play
“The Harlequin’s Millions,” and the music box or orchestrion or
whatever it was was muffled by eiderdowns and felt panels so it seemed to be playing far
away, in another establishment, and the porter, looking tired and bent, as though
he’d been splitting wood since noon, let his ax fall. I tossed a napkin over my
arm and waited to see who our first guest would be. In walked a general wearing a
general’s cape with a red lining, and he must
have had his
uniform made by the same company that made my tuxedo. He seemed despondent. His
chauffeur followed him in carrying a golden saber and he set it down on a table and
left, while the general walked through the rooms, inspecting everything and rubbing his
hands together. Then he stood with his legs apart, put his hands behind his back, and
gazed out into the courtyard at our porter, who was splitting wood. Meanwhile Zden
ě
k had brought a silver wine cooler, and I put oysters and
dishes of shrimp and lobster on the table, and when the general sat down, Zden
ě
k uncorked the champagne, Heinkel Trocken, and poured a
glass. The general said, You are my guests as well. Zdeněk bowed and brought two
more glasses and filled them, the general stood up, clicked his heels, shouted
Prost!
and drank. We emptied our glasses, but the general took only a sip
from his and made a face, shuddered, and spat out, The devil! I can’t drink this
stuff! Then he took an oyster from the plate, threw his head back, and eagerly swallowed
the delicate, slimy flesh sprinkled with lemon juice, and again he seemed to eat with
gusto, but no, he shuddered and snorted with disgust, his eyes watering. He downed his
glass of champagne and shouted, Aaaaaah, I can’t drink this swill! He walked from
room to room, and each time he came back he would take a piece of crabmeat or a leaf of
lettuce or some salpicon from the plates, and each time he shocked me by shuddering in
disgust and spitting out, The devil! This is completely inedible! Then he would come
back and hold out his glass for a refill and ask Zden
ě
k a
question, and Zden
ě
k would bow and tell him about Veuve
Cliquot and all about champagne, though he considered what he was offering, Heinkel
Trocken, to
be the very best, and the general, his interest aroused,
would drink again, sputter in disgust, but then he’d drain the glass and walk over
to look out into the courtyard, where everything was dark except the floodlit porter and
his work and the floodlit walls stacked with pine firewood. Meanwhile the boss wheeled
about silently, he’d glide up, bow, and then glide away again, and the
general’s mood improved, as if his disgust with the food and drink had somehow
whetted his appetite. He switched to brandy and drank a whole bottle of Armagnac, and
every time he took a drink he would make a face and swear and sputter in Czech, and then
in German:
Diesen Schnaps kann man nicht trinken!
It was the same with the
French specialties. After every mouthful the general seemed on the point of vomiting and
he swore he’d never take another bite or drink another drop, and he would roar at
the headwaiter and at me: What is this you’re giving me? Are you trying to poison
me? Do you want me to die, you swine? But then he’d drink another bottle of
Armagnac, and Zden
ě
k would lecture him on why the best
brandy is called Armagnac and not cognac, because cognac comes only from the region
called Cognac, and even though the best cognac comes from two kilometers outside the
border of Cognac it still has to be called brandy, not cognac. By three in the
morning—when the general predicted he wouldn’t last because at two
o’clock we had killed him by offering him an apple—he had eaten and drunk
enough for five men, but still he complained that it wasn’t filling him up, that
he probably had cancer without knowing it, or stomach ulcers at least, that his liver
was shot and he was sure to have kidney stones. It was around three in the morning that
he really
started to get drunk and he pulled out his service pistol
and shot at a glass standing on the windowsill, and the bullet went right through the
window, but the boss came gliding up on his rubber wheels, smiling and congratulating
him, and asked if the general would like to try for the cut-glass teardrops on the
Venetian chandelier and said that the last great feat of marksmanship he’d seen
here was when Prince Schwartzenberg tossed a five-crown piece in the air, shot at it
with a hunting rifle, and hit it just before it fell to the table. The boss rolled away,
fetched a pointer, and pointed to a hole above the fireplace where the bullet had
entered the wall after ricocheting off the silver coin. But the general said his
specialty was cordial glasses and fired away, and no one got upset about it, and when he
shot through the window and the bullet whistled past the porter, who was still bent over
his block chopping wood, the porter just gave his ear a good shake with his little
finger and went on working. Next the general had Turkish coffee, and he placed his hand
over his heart and swore he wasn’t supposed to drink this coffee at all, but then
he had another cup and announced that if there was a roast capon in the house he’d
like to have it before he died. So the boss bowed and whistled and a moment later the
chef appeared, looking fresh in his white cap, and brought out the whole roasting pan.
When the general saw the capon, he took off his tunic, unbuttoned his shirt and after
saying wistfully that he wasn’t supposed to eat chicken, took the capon, tore it
to pieces, and ate it. After each mouthful he bemoaned the state of his health and said
that he wasn’t supposed to overeat, that he’d never eaten anything so
disgusting. Zden
ě
k told him that in Spain they drank
champagne
with chicken, and that some El Córdoba might be nice,
and the general nodded, then sipped away and nibbled at the chicken, complaining and
making a face at each mouthful of food and drink:
Diesen Pulard auch diesen
Champagner kann man nicht essen und trinken
. At four o’clock, after
he’d complained his fill, he seemed greatly unburdened, and he asked for the bill.
The headwaiter brought it to him with everything itemized and presented it on a small
tray in a napkin, but the general made him read out loud how much he’d spent,
every item, so Zden
ě
k read it to him, every item, and the
general began to smile, and his smile grew broader and broader until at last he was
laughing outright, cackling in delight, and he was quite sober now, he’d even got
rid of his cough and seemed to be standing more erect. He spent a while adjusting his
shoulders in his tunic and then, looking more handsome than before, his eyes sparkling,
he ordered a parcel of food for his chauffeur, paid the boss in thousand-crown notes,
rounding it off to the nearest thousand, which seemed to be the custom here, added a
thousand for the shooting and the holes in the roof and the window, and asked the boss
if that was enough, and the boss nodded that it was. I got a three-hundred-crown tip,
then the general threw his cape over his shoulders, red lining out, picked up his golden
saber, set a monocle in his eye, and strode out, his riding spurs jangling, and as he
walked, he managed to kick the saber neatly out of his way with his boot so he
wouldn’t trip over it.

Next day the general came back, and he wasn’t alone now but with
some beautiful young women and a fat poet. This time there was no shooting, but they got
into such a
terrible argument about literature and trends in poetry
that they were spitting into one another’s faces. I was sure the general was going
to shoot the poet, but eventually they settled down and began arguing about a woman
writer, and they kept saying she didn’t know her vagina from an inkwell, and
anyone who wanted to could dip his pen in her ink. Then for almost two hours they
gossiped about another writer and the general said that if the fellow would treat his
own texts the way he treated other people’s vaginas it would be a good thing both
for the writer and for Czech literature. But the poet disagreed and said the man was a
real writer and that if Shakespeare was the greatest creator next to God Himself then
this writer they were talking about was right up there with Shakespeare. As soon as they
arrived they made the boss send for some musicians, and a band played for them nonstop
while they and the girls drank formidable amounts. The general cursed every mouthful of
food and drink, and he smoked a lot, and whenever he lit up he would have a coughing
fit, take the cigarette out of his mouth, look at it, and shout, What kind of rubbish
are they putting in these Egyptian fags anyway? But he went on smoking and his cigarette
glowed in the gloom while the musicians played and drank. Another remarkable thing was
that the two guests had the girls sitting on their knees while this was going on, and
every once in a while they would retire to a room upstairs and come back fifteen minutes
later roaring with laughter. Only each time the general went upstairs, he would slip his
hand between the girl’s thighs as she walked up ahead of him and mutter, No, sir,
I’m getting too old for love, and then he’d say, You call these real women?
But he’d
mount the stairs anyway and come back fifteen minutes
later, and I could see how satisfied and in love the girl was and that she’d been
given the same treatment as those two bottles of Armagnac the day before and the Heinkel
Trocken and El Córdoba. Then they’d carry on about the death of poetism and
the new trend called Surrealism, which was entering its second phase, and about
committed art and pure art, and by this time they were shouting at each other again.
Midnight went by, and the girls couldn’t seem to get enough champagne and food,
they were so ravenous. Then the musicians said it was over, they couldn’t play
anymore and had to go home, so the poet took a pair of scissors and snipped a gold medal
off the general’s tunic and tossed it to the musicians, who were gypsies or
Hungarians, and so they played some more. Again the general went off with one of the
girls, said on the stairs he was all washed up as a man, and fifteen minutes later came
back, then the poet went up with the general’s first girl, but before that the
musicians started packing up to go home, so the poet took the scissors and cut two more
medals off and threw them on a tray for the musicians, and the general took the scissors
and cut the rest of his own medals off and threw them on the tray with the others, just
for those beautiful young women. We said it was the most audacious thing we’d ever
seen, and Zden
ě
k whispered to me that the medals were the
highest English, French, and Russian decorations from the First World War. Now the
general took off his tunic and began to dance, and he scolded the girl and told her to
take it easy with him, because his lungs and his ticker weren’t what they used to
be, and he asked the gypsies for a czardas, and the
gypsies started
to play and the general started to dance. After he’d coughed and cleared his
throat, he began to dance in earnest, and the girl had to dance faster, and the general
let go of her and raised one arm up and let the other one drag along the floor like a
rooster, and he danced faster and faster and seemed to grow younger and the girl
couldn’t keep up now but the general didn’t slow down and he was dancing and
kissing her on the throat at the same time and the musicians formed a circle around the
dancers and you could see admiration and understanding in their eyes, you could see that
the general was dancing for them and they were all joined together by the music, and
they played faster or slower according to the dance and the powers of the general, but
he was still ahead of his partner, who was flushing red and gasping for breath, and the
fat poet and the girl he’d been in the room with were standing above them, leaning
on the balustrade. Then the poet took her in his arms, and the first rays of dawn
appeared, and the poet carried the beautiful girl down the stairs, past the czardas
dancers and through the open doorway, and he held out this half-naked, drunk girl with a
torn blouse as an offering to the rising sun.

In the early morning, as the trains were taking the workers to work, the
general’s automobile pulled up, a low, open six-seater Hispano-Suiza with
leather-upholstered seats, and they settled the bill and the poet paid out the entire
proceeds from his new book, ten thousand copies, like Tonda Jódl’s
The
Life of Jesus Christ
, but he paid gladly and said it was nothing, he would ask
for another advance right away and go to Paris and write a better book than the one they
had just drunk away. The general was
bundled into the back seat, in
his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone, and fell asleep
between the girls, while the poet sat in front, a red rose stuck in his lapel. In his
lap, holding the general’s golden saber and leaning her elbows on the windshield,
sat the beautiful dancer, wearing the general’s tunic, unbuttoned, its medals cut
off, and the general’s cap stuck on top of her long flowing hair. She sat so
erect, with those two enormous breasts, Zden
ě
k said she
looked like the statue of the Marseillaise. The group drove down to the station, and as
the workers were catching the train, the general’s car drove past the platform
toward Prague, and the girl with her breasts hanging out pulled the saber from its
scabbard and cried, On to Prague! And so they arrived in Prague and, the way we heard it
later, it must have been a wonderful sight, the general and the poet and the girls,
especially the one with her blouse ripped and her two breasts thrusting forward and the
sword unsheathed, driving down P
ř
ikopy and
Národní Třida while policemen saluted and the general slumped in the back
seat of the Hispano-Suiza sound asleep.