A Perfect Waiter (6 page)

While she was preparing to take his measurements, Erneste sat down beside the window, where he could watch the three needlewomen as well as Jakob and Frau Adamowicz. One of them rose and went over to the
cutting table, picked up a pencil and bent over the ledger.

Although physical contact with Jakob was an unavoidable part of the measuring process, Frau Adamowicz went about her work in a characteristically easy, experienced manner. Without any misplaced shyness, she did whatever she had to do to give the new trainee waiter a spruce appearance. Erneste, seated on his chair, found it easy to put himself in her place. He watched her without blushing, following her practiced, authoritative movements with rapt attention. He stared spellbound at the slowly moving image, his eyes tracing the course of her hands as they traveled across Jakob's body. No one asked why he didn't leave the room. None of the others did.

Frau Adamowicz started at the top. She encircled Jakob's neck with the tape measure and tightened it until there was room between it and his throat for her forefinger, nothing more. Her assistant noted down the collar size in the employees' measurement book.

Frau Adamowicz's instructions were unmistakable, although she didn't speak particularly loudly. “Spread your arms,” she said, and Jakob promptly did as he was told: he stretched out his arms at right angles to his body. Little patches of sweat had formed under his armpits. As he spread his arms, the cuffs of his soft shirt rode up and exposed his wrists. One of the needlewomen looked up. The one who was taking down the measurements stared intently at the ledger and waited. Her forefinger exerted so much pressure on the pencil that the lead snapped.

When Frau Adamowicz came to measure Jakob's chest, he involuntarily deflated it a little. “No, don't,” she said. It seemed she'd been expecting him to do just that because everyone reacted in the same way. “Stand up straight, absolutely straight, and look straight ahead,” was all she said, and Jakob resumed his upright stance. She stood on tiptoe and leaned forward a little, put the tape measure around his chest, and tightened it over his breastbone. “Breathe in. Now breathe out.” Her assistant, who had meantime sharpened the pencil, jotted down two figures under the heading “Chest Measurement”. The two women seemed to be trying to outdo each other in conscientiousness.

“That was for shirts, vests, and jackets.” Frau Adamowicz probably said that to every candidate at this stage of the proceedings. If so, each of her three assistants must have been expecting to hear the words at precisely that juncture. She had said the same thing to Erneste, too, when he first arrived. Next, she applied one end of the tape measure to Jakob's left shoulder and measured the length of his left arm, first to the elbow, then to the wrist, first extended, then bent. After that she measured his right arm in the same way. No two arms are identical, Erneste reflected, and Jakob was probably thinking the same at that very moment.

Jakob's armpit hair felt silky. It was moist and somewhat fairer than the hair on his head. Erneste couldn't see it now, but he had seen it that morning, while Jakob was washing. He was sitting twenty feet away, but he could distinctly feel it on the back of his hand.

Before going down on her knees, Frau Adamowicz stooped and put the tape measure around Jakob's waist, hips and buttocks. She called out a series of measurements, which were noted down and, on one occasion, erased and rewritten in short order. “Spread your legs a little,” she said, and Jakob's rubber soles squeaked as he complied. A moment later he was standing there with his legs apart, just as she wanted—but not too far apart, because he froze when she abruptly called, “Stop!”

The two men's eyes met as Frau Adamowicz applied the tape measure to the inside of Jakob's left thigh, exerting gentle pressure on it with her thumb. She ran the tape down to his knee, then to his ankle, called out a figure and then, to be on the safe side, repeated the process in two stages, from the top of the thigh to the knee and from there to the ankle. She shifted her weight onto the other knee and turned to the left slightly in order to measure Jakob's right inside leg. Erneste, still holding his gaze over the top of her head, flushed suddenly. Jakob lowered his eyes: he had understood. Frau Adamowicz straightened up, and the blood slowly receded from Erneste's cheeks. What had Jakob grasped that he hadn't known already?

Frau Adamowicz had now taken all his measurements, but he wouldn't, of course, get a tailor-made suit. None of the Grand Hotel's employees got tailor-made suits, nor would any of them have dreamed of expecting one; you contented yourself with what you were given. Four efficient women were at work here, so you could rely
on their producing a good job—one in which you would look presentable. Only senior employees who had seen something of the world possessed suits of their own, for instance Monsieur Flamin and the
chef de réception
, who had worked in Cairo, Paris, and London.

Frau Adamowicz turned and disappeared into the clothing store, from which she soon emerged bearing one of the waiter's outfits customarily worn at Giessbach's Grand Hotel: black tails, vest, and shirt with a starched dickey. The system that prevailed in the clothing store enabled Frau Adamowicz, who never allowed things to get out of hand, to locate them quickly. She hung the garments in Jakob's size over a chair and stepped back. The assistant who had entered Jakob's measurements in the ledger had returned to her place and was removing pins from the hem of a chambermaid's dress draped over her knees and trailing on the floor.

Frau Adamowicz asked Jakob to try the things on, so he started to undress. She turned away and her three assistants concentrated on their work. Erneste and Jakob might almost have been alone in the room. Jakob continued to undress while Erneste looked on. Frau Adamowicz, who had discreetly turned her back, was facing in Erneste's direction, but he refused to be deterred by her gaze. What, after all, could she see, other than one young man watching another just as he
might have watched himself undressing in a mirror? However talented she might be at putting herself in another person's place, she couldn't read his thoughts. His face was expressionless.

Jakob unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, and tossed it onto a chair. He was wearing an undershirt, darned in several places, the sleeves of which came down to his elbows. He stooped to undo his shoelaces, removed his black shoes and put them under the chair that was serving him as a clothes rack. He smoothed his hair down with his right hand as he straightened up, and the sleeve of his undershirt rode up far enough to expose his upper arm. It was slender but muscular, even though he wasn't accustomed to manual labor. He unbuckled his belt and undid his fly buttons. He pulled the belt out of his waistband with a snap, then pulled his trousers down over his buttocks and thighs with both hands, raised his right leg, bent forward, gripped his right trouser leg by the cuff and slid it over his calf, ankle, and foot. He climbed out of the other trouser leg in just the same way—just as Erneste himself would have done. Any man would have done the same in Jakob's situation. It was the most natural series of movements in the world, but to Erneste it was something special.

Jakob was quite unembarrassed. Erneste found this remarkable, because he was naturally entitled, if not duty-bound, to display at least a hint of embarrassment. But he didn't seem to mind being watched while undressing. Erneste sat there without moving, anxious not to miss a
single phase of the process. Jakob was still holding his belt, which dangled against his leg and brushed the floor. He wound it around his right hand and deposited it on the chair, where the leather coil loosened a little like a spring unwinding.

Jakob looked good in his underwear. Erneste almost wished the four women could see his friend as he was now, as he himself was seeing him, but they didn't look up and continued to concentrate on their work. They must surely have been under instructions not to embarrass the men who came to try on clothes by watching them. Erneste counted himself lucky to be a man. Being a man, he could watch.

He went over to help Jakob try on his waiter's outfit. He handed him the trousers, but Jakob wanted the shirt first. Erneste took it from the chair and unfolded it. Since Jakob made no move to take the garment, Erneste unbuttoned it for him and went around the back to help him on with it. Jakob, who was slightly taller than Erneste, stooped and bent his left arm behind him. He missed the sleeve opening, so Erneste grasped his wrist. Jakob didn't recoil at his touch. His skin was cool and firm, smooth and hairless. Trembling a little, Erneste guided Jakob's left arm into the sleeve. Then he did the same with the right arm. This time Jakob made no attempt to find the opening. He left it up to Erneste, submitted to his guidance, bent his arm behind him and waited for Erneste to grasp it. Erneste did so. He tightened his grip on Jakob's wrist and guided it into the sleeve. The hand did
not pull away, it tensed. It was the hand of a man, a resolute man.

While Jakob was buttoning up the shirt, which smelled faintly of starch, Erneste smoothed it down for him. As he patted it down over his shoulders and back with both hands, he could feel what lay beneath them: little protrusions and hollows, shoulders, shoulder blades and armpits, alternations of firm and soft. But he could sense that Frau Adamowicz was growing impatient. One last touch, and he detached himself from Jakob's shadow and came and stood in front of him, passing him the trousers, belt and vest in turn. He stood in front of Jakob, only inches from him, and watched his legs disappear into the black trousers at close range, and while Jakob was buttoning them up he looked into Erneste's eyes, and when he smiled Erneste knew that he was lost: that he had gained something and forfeited it at the same time—that the profit he had made would be his loss. He had a strange presentiment, a vague sense of something incomprehensible, something that lurked behind his excitement as if concealed by a bright façade and was trying to signal its presence by means of unintelligible signs; something foolish and distressing, some threat he wanted no part of, some foolish, distressing threat that lay behind the happiness and joy that surged through him. Erneste couldn't swim, but he wouldn't have drowned had he jumped into the lake at that moment; he would have swum far out, unafraid of failing to reach the opposite shore. But he also knew that he would be happy only while Jakob was
happy too, and that he must make him happy to preserve his own happiness. He had captured Jakob's attention—succeeded in doing what he hadn't dared to hope for. He didn't possess Jakob yet; he was obsessed with him.

But time was passing and they had to be quick. Erneste continued to stand beside Jakob until he was fully dressed. Then he took two paces to the rear. The tails were an almost perfect fit. Frau Adamowicz, who had turned around by this time, took a piece of tailor's chalk and marked the minor alterations to be made to the trousers. “Germans are always the tallest,” she said, and Jakob grinned. “Yes,” Erneste said with a proud smile, “you're right.”

On October 5, 1966, three weeks after Jakob's first letter, almost to the day, Erneste received some more mail from the States, same sender, same address. Unlike the first letter, however, this one left no room for hope. It merely confirmed Erneste's worst fears. He had counted on getting another letter, it was true, but he hadn't expected it so soon. Jakob was hurrying him along.

Although he'd secretly hoped that the problem would go away if only he ignored it, closer inspection proved that it had always existed. It wasn't going away; it was too palpable to be brushed aside. His abiding nightmare, the one from which he never awoke, featured a high wall—one he could neither clear nor skirt around.

Nobody asked why he was looking so overtired. People always practiced restraint where Erneste was concerned, deterred from coming too close by his aura of dignified gentility. His colleagues at the Restaurant am Berg left him in peace, and he never saw anyone else during the day.

He had put Jakob's first letter away somewhere, hoping that it would get mislaid. No matter where it was,
however, Erneste could never have brought himself to destroy it. He waited. Although he had been expecting another letter, he winced when he found it in his mailbox. There was nothing he could have told Jakob, so he hadn't written to him. But Jakob obviously had no time to lose. He didn't trust him. He thought him capable of failing to reply, and he was right.

So Jakob had written again, and if he didn't write back, more letters were bound to follow. Jakob was in a bad way. He was in a hurry because his problem brooked no delay, so he was pestering Erneste. Having taken it into his head to obtain something, he was forcing the pace. Jakob's future, his wellbeing in America, was at stake. Jakob himself was at stake.

Erneste felt cornered. What he had wrapped up and stowed away in the corner of his mind was threatening to reappear, as fresh and potent as ever. It hadn't been wrapped up carefully enough, and the pain was unendurable. Possibly unaware of his cruelty, Jakob had ripped the parcel open at a stroke. If you don't open it, he was saying, I'll open it for you, and its effect was as potent as a snakebite. Its venom had reached Erneste from thousands of miles away. A letter. Letter after letter from New York addressed to him, who very seldom left Switzerland. His memories of Giessbach, which he had believed buried by Jakob's persistent silence since the end of the war, were still alive. The passing years had not impaired the clarity of those memories. His wounds hadn't healed; they were open and smarting.