A Perfect Waiter (16 page)

After thirty-seven minutes the train stopped for the sixth time. Erneste got out and the train continued on its way. He studied the timetable. Trains back to Giessbach left every hour.

He needed a drink before he set off for Klinger's place, so he walked past the ticket office and into the little station restaurant. He was feeling weak. His hands were trembling, but he knew how to cure this. He had time for a brandy.

He pushed open the heavy glass door, the handle of which was sticky to the touch. The airless room contained a sprinkling of eating, drinking, smoking lunchtime customers, each of whom was contributing to the stale and stuffy atmosphere. An elderly woman with unwashed gray hair looked up as Erneste came in and eyed him over the top of her glasses. The waitress looked half asleep, but she was quick off the mark. Three minutes later he was sitting in front of a lukewarm, leathery-tasting
cognac
maison
. The little tray was adorned with a complimentary “dead man's leg”, one of those rock-hard hazelnut cookies the locals liked so much. Erneste picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp, then paid and left. He hadn't removed his raincoat. None of the Restaurant am Berg's patrons would have recognized him in this setting, nor, in all probability, would he have recognized them—if any had strayed here, which was most unlikely.

Qu'il était beau, le Postillon de Longjumeau
…

The melody had been going around and around in his head ever since he emerged from the restaurant. There was no cab rank, and it appeared from the bus-stop signboard that buses drove straight along the lake to the next village without halting en route. And so, rather irresolutely, he set off inland, hoping to meet someone he could ask for directions. His gamble paid off. Before long he met a man walking a big black dog. Not only was the man able to direct him, but the equanimity with which he did so conveyed that it certainly wasn't the first time he'd been asked the same question. The locals must be used to strangers asking them the way to Klinger's house, Erneste reflected. Everyone here must know who he is and where he lives.

The man asked Erneste if he was a journalist, but it was courtesy, not curiosity, that prompted the question. Erneste said he wasn't. “There aren't any taxis here,” the man said. Erneste said he hadn't expected there to be any and would walk. “You can't go wrong,” the man said. “The village is small—you can't miss it. Carry on up the
hill, turn right after three or four hundred yards, then straight uphill again and make another right. You'll see, you get the finest view of the lake and the mountains from there.” That terminated the conversation, and Erneste set off again.

Perhaps the man was a little curious after all, he told himself. He thought he could sense his eyes on his back, but he didn't turn around. Perhaps he was mistaken. The dog, which hadn't made a sound before, emitted a hoarse bark, but not at him. Perhaps the man had encountered someone else walking a dog, but that wasn't his concern.

Qu'il était beau, le Postillon de Longjumeau
…

A quarter of an hour later he was standing outside Klinger's gate. The house was almost obscured by a tall, dense yew hedge, so its size could only be guessed at. The gate was low enough, however, to reveal that a narrow path flanked by shrubs and rose bushes led up to the front door. Everything made an overgrown, neglected impression. The wilted roses had not been removed, the gate was coated with a thin film of lichen, and there was a tile lying smashed outside the front door, having presumably fallen from the roof of the porch. There was still time to turn around, and for a moment Erneste was tempted to do so. His failure to show up would probably pass unnoticed; Klinger must receive so many visitors that it would be of no consequence. Beyond this gate, beyond these unseen walls, lay a world in which he had no business and nothing to gain. He knew this as certainly as if he really knew that world, but he knew it only from the outside, as an
observer, in his capacity as a waiter. Seen from the outside it possessed no appeal for him. If he rang the bell now, he would be doing it for Jakob. The only thing he could do for him was to try to speak with Klinger. Perhaps they would come to terms, perhaps not. Klinger was a famous man whose sole connection with Erneste was that he had blighted his insignificant life over thirty years earlier, or at least rendered his insignificant life a little more insignificant than it already was.

The bell was on the right of the gate. Erneste stared at the button and the brass plate engraved with Klinger's initials, which was weatherworn and tarnished. He'd been expecting a more impressive reception. He put out his hand and pressed the button three times. Before long a buzzer sounded, the gate gave a click and swung back a few inches. He pushed it open and walked up to the house. The front door opened.

He recognized the housekeeper who had joined the Klingers in the summer of 1936 and then accompanied them to America. Frau Moser stood in the doorway, waiting for him to climb the five steps that led up to the dilapidated porch. She greeted him in a low voice, her face expressionless, and he got the feeling that she never raised her voice or registered any emotion. Although she wasn't wearing an apron, it was obvious that she wasn't a member of the family. The fact that she didn't introduce herself wasn't the only indication of her subordinate status.

Frau Moser stepped aside, took Erneste's coat, and asked him to wait in the anteroom. Then she withdrew,
leaving him alone. She knows everything, he told himself, but she would never talk about it to anyone else. The door remained ajar. The house made a deserted but not unoccupied impression.

Erneste found himself standing in a room filled with books. It wasn't an anteroom, as Frau Moser had called it, but a library. In the center was a library table with two deep armchairs drawn up to it. The walls were lined with ceiling-high bookshelves, and between them stood display cabinets housing
objets
and mementos, gifts and souvenirs from distant lands. They included things Erneste had never seen before: Etruscan clasps, Chinese porcelain, Indian fabrics, pre-Columbian arrows, African figurines, Stone Age tools and countless fossils. Any space on the walls not occupied by books was given over to framed butterfly collections,
vedute
, drawings and sketches, copperplate engravings, a naked athlete, and copies of old masters. In one corner was a house plant whose pale-green tendrils brushed the ceiling and proliferated over the bookshelves.

The source of the curiously warm glow in which the room was bathed seemed natural, but it couldn't have been because the sun had gone in. Although the house looked rather rundown and depressing from the outside, what Erneste could see of the interior made a tranquil, cheerful impression. Every object and piece of furniture in this private paradise, from which the outside world had been banished, was of the finest quality. To have compared this paradise, even for a moment, with his own little apartment
would have been inappropriate in the extreme, for everything in it defied comparison with anything he'd ever seen. So Jakob had spent a part of his life surrounded by beautiful objects like these—exactly how long, Erneste had no idea, and it occurred to him that Jakob and Klinger might have parted after only a short time. So what was Klinger supposed to pay Jakob for—what did he owe him? Like so many turns of phrase in Jakob's letters, the significance of that one
—He owes me, it's only right
!—still eluded him.

Klinger suddenly appeared in the doorway through which Erneste had entered the room a few minutes earlier. Since the door was ajar and Erneste was sitting with his back to it, Klinger took him by surprise—indeed, he startled him, and for an instant Erneste thought he'd done so on purpose. Klinger cleared his throat and Erneste jumped up. An invisible man had suddenly become visible, a rear view turned into a frontal view, a frozen image started to quiver. What it represented was unexpectedly coming to life. The scene that had etched itself into Erneste's memory on the afternoon of July 28, 1936, capable of being conjured up afresh at any time, often after an interval of years, became irrelevant for a few moments. Klinger had aged, that was unmistakable, but Erneste recognized him at once.

Equally unmistakable was the almost instantly suppressed dismay in Klinger's eyes at the sight of what remained of the treatment to which Erneste had been subjected a few days earlier: the traces of the savage
beating that had prompted him to get in touch with Klinger after previously deciding, only a short while before, to let Jakob stew in his own juice and avoid all further thought of him. Klinger's deep-set eyes were in surprising contrast to the rest of his appearance. He had the impenetrably remote, self-absorbed look of an owl. His deliberately nonchalant manner failed to conceal the fact that he was on his guard.

He came over to Erneste. He was taller than Erneste remembered, and didn't look his age. He would be seventy-eight in a few weeks' time.

Then Klinger did something Erneste hadn't expected, although it was quite natural: he shook hands. He held Erneste's hand longer than necessary, looking him in the eye as if to gauge his sincerity. At that moment the image of Klinger that had poisoned his memory for so many years returned, and he involuntarily withdrew his hand, convinced that the other man must know what was going through his mind. Despite himself, he saw him again as he had seen him on that day in July of 1936, when he, Erneste, had made his unheralded appearance—when he had been inadvertently but all the more cruelly compelled to acknowledge that his hold over Jakob was no more, and that he had probably lost it a long time ago. Klinger possessed the power to dominate others, body and soul.

Even before they sat down at the table and Frau Moser came in with a laden tray, Klinger surprised Erneste by saying, “It's a long time ago, but I do remember you. You were Jakob's young friend. Ah well, we were all young
once.” The casual way he spoke conveyed that Erneste had played no great part in his memories of those days. All that surprised Erneste was that Klinger remembered him at all.

“You were a self-effacing young man—a perfect waiter. Better than Jakob ever was, discreet and … It might have been better if I'd taken you with me instead of him.” Klinger fell silent while Frau Moser was putting the tray on the table. After she had gone he went on in the same tone: “Please help yourself to tea or coffee. Frau Moser baked the cake herself, she's an excellent cook. Frau Moser”—who was presumably waiting next door, ready to be summoned at any time—“is the only person I have left from the old days. Nearly everyone close to me is elsewhere or dead. My wife, my son—nearly everyone.” Klinger never took his eyes off Erneste. “My daughter remained in the States. She has a family, in fact she's a grandmother herself.”

Although he made a forthright impression, Erneste didn't feel bound to repay candor with candor. Later, perhaps, but not now. Did Klinger hope that his forth-rightness would elicit confidences and help him to attain his goal as quickly as possible—was he simply interested in learning as much about Jakob as he could? Erneste was unentitled to ask questions of him and had no right to any answers, but he would dearly have liked to know why Klinger was being so communicative. The morose, exhausted old man of his expectations had turned out to be a person with a constitution of a sixty-year-old. Klinger was
neither morose nor exhausted but talkative and clearly in good health. Erneste had the impression that the man he had come to ask something of was really asking something of him: the truth about Jakob. But what truth? Klinger wasn't to know that Erneste didn't know it himself. He knew as little of Jakob as Klinger, but at least he had news of him in the shape of two letters.

Klinger was used to determining how he spent his time, so it was only natural that he should also determine how those who took up his time should spend theirs, no matter what they wished to discuss with him. Although he didn't devote long to courtesies, he remained approachable—or at least, he did his utmost to create that impression. Erneste had little time left in which to think. He had no plan, so he abandoned the idea of proceeding methodically. He helped himself to some coffee and a slice of cake—it was too late to decline. He wasn't hungry, but he would finish the cake, every last morsel of it.

Klinger took neither tea nor coffee nor cake. He leaned back in his chair and sat there without moving for a while. Then, quite suddenly, his hand shot out with the forefinger leveled at Erneste. “Up there in the room that time—” he said. “It must have been awful for you.” Erneste hadn't expected that either.

The scene that met his eyes on July 28, 1936, which was to imprint itself on his memory forever, was of two men in
the following position: one standing with his legs apart, facing the door and the beholder, the other kneeling on the floor, so close to him that there could be no doubt what was going on. The older man was bending so low over the younger man, who could have been his son, that his forehead was almost touching his shoulder. The man crouching on the floor was naked, whereas the other man had removed only some of his clothing. One was Klinger, the other Jakob. Klinger was wearing gold cufflinks bearing his initials.