A Perfect Waiter (7 page)

The letter he found reposing in his mailbox on October 5, 1966, sandwiched between a leaflet advertising cheap flights to Paris and London and the local weekly giveaway, had been posted in New York a week earlier, on September 29. Like the first letter, this one had been airmailed. The thin envelope was pale blue in color, the postmark crisply impressed.

Erneste did not possess a telephone, although he might sometimes have felt tempted to check the weather forecast, the latest news, or the time. But whom should he have called? He had no friends, maintained no personal contact with his colleagues at work, and had nothing to say to his fleeting acquaintances except on the rare occasions when he sought their company. He couldn't recall their voices or what they looked like. Once out of sight, each was indistinguishable from the next. His cousin in Paris? Yes, he'd like to have spoken with Julie, but foreign calls were expensive. Discounting Christmas or New Year's, they wouldn't have called each other very often. A telephone was a luxury.

Had he possessed a telephone, Jakob would have discovered his number. Jakob wasn't just sitting there waiting. Having found out Erneste's address, he certainly wouldn't have found it hard to discover his phone number. Had he possessed a telephone, Jakob would have called him long ago. His future was at stake, so saving on phone bills was beside the point. Would the consonants and vowels that assailed Erneste's ear have combined at once into an unmistakably familiar voice?
Would he have recognized it? No, Jakob's voice was unfamiliar to him. He wouldn't have recognized it because, if there was one thing he couldn't recall, it was Jakob's voice. It had utterly slipped his mind. All that he ever heard, and only very rarely, was a whisper in his ear. A faint whisper, and whenever he heard it he gave a start and looked around.

Erneste's considerations differed from Jakob's, that much was certain. Over in America, Jakob obviously didn't think it necessary to put himself in Erneste's shoes. He might be in despair but he wasn't devoid of courage, and he didn't show it even if he was. He would get his way. Even if his wishes weren't met in the end, he would have done his utmost to fulfill them. There was always a way out, and to find it he now needed Erneste just as he had needed him in Giessbach, as he had later needed Klinger, and as he had doubtless needed other people in America. Anyone who helped Jakob was entitled to a few moments of his attention and, with a little bit of luck, to his commendation; anyone unable to help him was dismissed without another thought. Jakob was indomitable, he'd allowed for everything. He was giving Erneste no peace, no time to think.

He'd managed to discover Erneste's address. Having discovered it, he knew that Erneste was still alive, and since Erneste was still alive he could be useful to him. Erneste could approach Klinger on his behalf. He would find some way of helping him out of his predicament, some way of wheedling money out of Klinger, and Klinger, for old time's sake, would surely do all that
was necessary. That was how Jakob had figured it out, and he was probably right. Erneste and Klinger would help him for old time's sake, each after his own fashion. Erneste would play the role he'd always played: that of the scout and trail-blazer. His task was to jog an old man's memory and extract some money from him. His task was to plead Jakob's case with the celebrated Julius Klinger, whom he scarcely knew and who would not, of course, remember him because in those days, like Erneste himself, the great author had had eyes for Jakob alone. Klinger was a globe-trotter who had changed continents as often as other men change their shirts. He had stayed at so many hotels and known so many prominent people, he certainly wouldn't remember a waiter he'd last seen thirty years ago.

Why hadn't Jakob written to Klinger himself? Why did he need a go-between? Was he too embarrassed to solicit Klinger's help direct? Was he afraid of being rejected, and if so why? Klinger possessed a telephone. A world-famous, sought-after man like him must have a telephone, so why hadn't Jakob simply called him? The celebrated author's number was in the book, Erneste had already checked. It was easy enough to find, but Jakob evidently hadn't called him. Was Klinger refusing to speak with him? Had he dropped Jakob the way Jakob dropped other people? Long engrossed in thoughts of Jakob, Erneste still hadn't opened the letter. There was no avoiding it.

Erneste was awaiting the arrival of his cousin Julie. She was the only person he could have discussed Jakob's letters with, the only person who could have advised him—not that he would ask her to. That was unthinkable. The understanding that prevailed between them was based on discretion. Her interest in his personal affairs was only slight.

Julie was coming on her own. She had paid an annual visit to Switzerland for the past twenty years, and for the past twenty years her husband the toy manufacturer had stayed behind in Paris. Their children had already left home. On the pretext of taking the waters for her arthritis, she ostensibly paid an annual visit to Zurzach, where she had actually been only once in order to bone up on the local scenery and the spa facilities. This was in case she was questioned about the place at home, although her husband, who probably didn't even know what the waters at Zurzach were good for, was as uninterested in the scenery there as he was in his wife's state of health. Meanwhile, Julie had for years checked into a small hotel not far from Erneste's apartment, there to meet with her longtime English lover. Her unwitting husband allowed her to go without ever smelling a rat. She hardly ever mentioned him to Erneste.

When Julie and Erneste wanted to talk in private they did so at Erneste's apartment or at a café in the town center. Sunday being Erneste's only day off, their meetings were few and far between, but although they saw each other so seldom, the intimacy between them remained
intact no matter how long it was since their last meeting. Julie discussed things with Erneste she couldn't have mentioned at home, even to her best woman friend, whereas Erneste's affairs were never touched on by either of them. Erneste was content with the role of listener and, since Julie talked a lot, that role had assumed growing importance as the years went by.

Erneste was fond of his garrulous cousin because he could trust her without having to confide in her. Being one who lived a lie, she took no exception to his own way of life, perhaps because her own was not entirely irreproachable. She condoned his proclivity by simply ignoring it.

Julie never tired of discussing the clandestine aspects of her life and all its resulting complications, whereas Erneste contented himself with her obvious endeavor to tolerate his true existence by disregarding it. That was her contribution. It seemed unnecessary to him to broach the subject itself. In any case, there had been nothing to tell since Jakob's departure for America.

While Julie was talking Erneste could remain silent, and his silence absolved her from giving any thought to matters that concerned him—matters she might have found disagreeable had he actually come to speak of them. She had as little wish to embarrass him as he had to embarrass her. This reinforced the bond between them, which had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with their family ties. Those, they felt, were quite fortuitous.

Erneste enjoyed Julie's annual visits and her fondness for talking about her life, which differed so much from
his. He knew that she respected him, which was more than he was entitled to expect from any other person, although her acceptance of his proclivity might only have been the price she paid for his discretion. He never reproached her and was never shocked. It didn't matter to him whom she met and whom she deceived. She tended to fancy herself the heroine of a grand romance in which Erneste, as he knew full well, played only a walk-on part.

Julie was like a sister to him. She loved him like an elder brother who had secrets but was reluctant to share them with his kid sister. He didn't want to burden her unnecessarily. She was far fonder of him than of her husband, yet a certain strangeness persisted between them. They were like two conspirators devoid of a common enemy. They might not have existed at all outside their rare meetings, not even when they sat together in the café drinking coffee, eating pastries, and eying the same men.

Julie's indulgence or indifference seemed convincing enough to be genuine. She had no idea how Erneste really lived and no wish to hear any details. She probably guessed that his life was monotonous. In the old days at Giessbach he had staked all he possessed, and everything had come easy to him. Living in Giessbach was like living on an island: what one person did was of no concern to anyone else. There he had believed he was truly alive, alive in every fiber of his body and soul.

Erneste removed Jakob's letter and the advertising leaflet from his mailbox. It was no accident, but attributable solely to the nature of the leaflet, that he had a sudden crystal-clear vision of Jakob outlined against a big white airliner, a white airliner with a white cross on its red tail fin. He was standing at the top of the gangway, looking straight ahead without seeming to notice Erneste. He was wearing a white shirt, a dark-red necktie, a pale-blue jacket, and gray slacks with a pale patch at knee height. He was slim, having scarcely aged at all—in fact he had only just reached adulthood. He laughed as he came down the steps, and all was just as it had been in the old days. His eyes were gray, his hair as dark as ever. The passage of time seemed to have been effaced, and so had the rancorous thoughts and feelings of which Erneste had been unable to divest himself for thirty years.

Jakob hadn't changed, nor had anything else. The love that filled Erneste was unaltered. His cheeks burned, his eyes brimmed with tears. It was nine o'clock, and he was standing beside his mailbox in the hallway. He was on duty in an hour's time, he had to go to work, mustn't stand there thinking. A middle-aged man fighting back his tears in the hallway—a melancholy figure.

He still couldn't shake off his waking dream. Jakob was walking casually toward him as if nothing had happened. He emerged from the shadow of the airliner's fuselage and looked in all directions, but still he didn't see him, and Erneste hadn't the strength or courage to attract his
attention. Although Jakob looked through him as if he were thin air, Jakob himself remained the solid, magnetic object he always had been. Now that Erneste could see him as distinctly as if he were really there, he knew he could refuse him nothing. Whatever Jakob wanted, Erneste wanted for him, even if it was to his own detriment. Not a day had gone by since Giessbach—not one. He hadn't rid himself of Jakob, who existed and held him captive. Jakob didn't see him, yet Erneste had eyes for him alone. The image vanished after a few seconds. Jakob was fifty, he himself fifty-two. A shadow flitted past him in the hallway. Later he wondered if he'd passed someone on the stairs. All he could remember was a shadow, but perhaps it had been his own.

Erneste continued to stand in front of his mailbox and stare at the advertising leaflet, which he was holding in his right hand: an airliner above the clouds on a white background. He picked up Jakob's letter. Although it didn't burn his hand, the threat inherent in it was undiminished. He put it in his trouser pocket and shut the mailbox.

He was as incapable of shutting his eyes to this letter as he had been to the first, but this time he wouldn't wait three days before reading it. He had a pretty fair idea of what lay in store for him. He clung to the banisters, for every step that led to his apartment brought him nearer the real Jakob. Had he not opened the first letter, it would be unnecessary to open this one, but if he didn't open this one and then do as Jakob asked, the next letter wouldn't
be long in coming. A week, two weeks? It might be already on its way.

Jakob, who knew him better than he knew himself, should have found it easy to make friends in New York. Was he as short of friends there as Erneste was here? How vast New York must be, and what a tiny speck in it Jakob must represent, for him to have turned to him, Erneste, for help. Jakob could have told him about this, but he had written only of his immediate concerns and would surely do the same in this second letter—not what sort of life he led, nothing about New York or the people he knew that lived there. The patrons of the Restaurant am Berg included businessmen who had visited New York. Erneste could have asked them about it, but he would never, of course, be so presumptuous as to ask them questions of a personal nature. He never asked personal questions even of his few acquaintances. There was no objection to asking questions anyone could answer without having to make personal disclosures, but what form should those questions take?