A Perfect Waiter (18 page)

Klinger gave an almost imperceptible start.

“Five francs, don't you remember? Jakob got 5 francs a time. You used to put the money on the bed. You knew his terms—you knew he didn't love you, not for an instant. He did what he did of his own free will but not for nothing. Every time you needed him you had to give him 5 francs, I know that for a certainty because he kept a record of his takings—I saw the book myself. His attentions weren't a gift, they were services rendered in return for payment received. You paid him in advance, didn't you? You trusted him implicitly, and I'm sure he never bilked you. Jakob wasn't just perfect, he was unique. You paid cash and got Jakob. You got him only at a price.”

While the words were escaping from Erneste's lips almost as fast as the thoughts running through his head, Klinger began to emerge from his state of petrifaction. For a moment Erneste thought he would break in, but he waited. Then he said slowly, “I told you, you had the advantage of me in every respect, but I still didn't realize that. I was convinced of my own importance.”

“You had to go on paying him until his passage to America was signed and sealed,” Erneste continued. “And even after that, perhaps?” Klinger said nothing. “Up to the
time I caught you together in our room, you'd paid him a total of 45 Swiss francs for his services. I checked that carefully, and I still remember it because I haven't forgotten a thing, unfortunately. You knew what you were buying and he knew what he was being paid for. By the time I burst in on you, he'd already put himself at your disposal nine times.”

“Perhaps.”

“Jakob knew what he was worth. He knew his price. I felt I had a right to know the truth, so I went through his things and found his cashbook in the wardrobe we shared. I immediately came across your initials and the row of figures, all fives, nine of them: nine blow jobs at 5 francs apiece. But they were a good deal for you as well as him. You got Jakob on the cheap, really, a handsome youngster like him. And then you held out the prospect of America and freedom.”

“Yes,” said Klinger, “he couldn't be accused of lacking a head for business, but I'd have paid a great deal more to acquire him. He had only to ask and he'd have gotten it all, he knew that. I realized he didn't love me, but I needed him. Not his conversation, not his understanding, not even his affection. All I needed was that young man, his smell, his body, his absence of constraint—the fact that he did what I wanted when it suited him, that he was at my disposal, that he was willing: the sheer ownership of that body. I couldn't have cared less how that inestimable treasure came into my possession, I wanted to have it and keep it. I had to pay him for being the first to offer me a
chance of what I'd craved for so long but had been too afraid to ask for. I wanted something”—Klinger hesitated—“I'd never had before. For years I'd waited, gnawed by a calamitous desire that sapped my strength and had to be assuaged. A frenzied god was crying out inside me for release. I was nearly fifty. I couldn't have gone on living like that any longer, I had no choice. I needed Jakob in order to survive—Jakob, my fire-bringing, life-giving Prometheus—before I myself became a Prometheus whose innards were daily devoured anew. For a while he enabled me to forget that my youth was over, that I'd missed out on nearly everything I'd longed for since my early days. That yearning, which had steadily intensified in recent years, became physically perceptible during those last few turbulent months in Europe. It was a nightly yearning that scorched and froze my body in turn. I couldn't and wouldn't die without doing what had obsessed me for as long as I could remember: I had to touch a man, and for that no price was too high. I appeased the god raging inside me with a vice I managed to conceal from others. Had Jakob demanded it of me, I would genuinely have prayed to him—kneeled down before him like a worshiper before an altar. I was demented and done for. Jakob fulfilled me entirely. All I could think of was: ‘To America, quickly. To America, our Promised Land.' ”

Erneste left the attic room soon after Klinger. He might have said he needed some fresh air because he genuinely did, he couldn't remember. Meantime, Jakob remained silent. He didn't attempt to find words to explain his behavior, which seemed self-explanatory in any case. Instead of rendering the situation slightly less irredeemable, he left it in the air by saying nothing. He didn't apologize or attempt to justify himself. At length he got to his feet, frozen-faced and seemingly at a loss, with reddish patches visible on his knees. And because Erneste couldn't endure his own distress or the sight of Jakob's reddened knees and helpless expression, he turned tail. He turned on his heel and went out because nothing could prevent him from taking flight, which was possibly the worst thing he'd ever done. Instead of forgiving Jakob, he left him on his own. He felt he was suffocating, in need of air.

In search of some task that might have taken his mind off things, he wandered through the hotel but failed to find anyone who needed his services. The kitchen and terrace were deserted, the bar was closed, and there was no one in the lobby but the receptionist. He left the building by a side entrance, plunged straight out into the sunlight and started walking. It was just after two. In the last few minutes his life had been turned inside out like a glove. The pain was relentless; it became more intense with every breath, every step, every memory. He hadn't been mistaken: Jakob hadn't been the same for a long time. He was a different person since returning from Germany in the
spring. Jakob didn't need him anymore. He'd been going his own way ever since then.

Erneste had left the hotel in his waiter's outfit although staff were requested always to wear plain clothes off the premises, but he took care not to run into anyone, not wanting to be seen and compelled to talk. Without debating which way to go, he headed down through the woods to the lake, stumbling occasionally because he was walking too fast. He passed the spot where they had kissed for the first time and came to a halt in the middle of the path, abruptly convulsed with despair. Then he continued on his way to the lakeshore, where he spent a long time gazing at the water. When a steamer laden with passengers approached he turned back.

Jakob was gone by the time he returned to their room. It was now three o'clock. Too late, nothing to be done, it was over. He suddenly felt so dizzy from the heat and his exertions, he had to lie down. He pulled off his dusty black shoes. The thing he'd sometimes dreamed of had happened. It wasn't a nightmare, it had happened precisely where he was at this moment. He had only to look around to confirm that.

For two days they didn't exchange a word. They couldn't always avoid each other, but their different working hours were a boon when it came to taking evasive action. Erneste held his breath and pretended to
be asleep when Jakob entered their room in the small hours, and he hardly dared swallow when Jakob lay down beside him. They didn't even exchange a glance for two whole days, though they couldn't help meeting in their room in the afternoons.

Erneste felt as if he was walking through a wall, and it cost him an effort to make out the objects in the room. Incapable of lucid thought, he was equally incapable of speaking out. Although he had a pretty clear idea of how this endless torment could be ended, he didn't end it. They lay there mutely side by side.

Erneste felt sure that Jakob was continuing to see Klinger, but the indirect confirmation of his suspicions exceeded all his worst fears. On the third day Jakob informed him that he'd spoken to Herr Direktor Wagner and handed in his notice. Those were the first words that had passed between them after two days of silence. They were said by the by, so to speak, just as Erneste was about to leave the room. He let go of the door handle. No words could have hit him harder.

Jakob had sat up in bed. The baneful announcement was brief and to the point: “I spoke to the manager today. I've quit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm leaving. I'm off to America in a few weeks' time.”

“America? Why?”

“Klinger needs a manservant. I'm going with him.”

“I see. You'll make a good manservant.”

“I think so too. I've got to get away from here.”

“Away from me.”

“Away from here. If there's a war, and there will be, I'd have to go back to Cologne. Everyone says so—Klinger says so. And I don't want to go back.”

“Klinger says so, and you're going with him. He's rescuing you.”

Jakob nodded. “Yes, he's helping me.”

Outwardly composed but without grasping the significance of the words, Erneste said, “And I'll stay on here and wait for the war to end. Everything will sort itself out in due course.”

He had been prepared for anything, but not for the fact that Jakob's future had long been settled behind his back without a moment's thought being given to the possibility that this might determine his future too.

Nothing could prevent Jakob from leaving him for good. Klinger had already made arrangements to do as Jakob wished. Jakob had opted for Klinger because he knew that Klinger would opt for him. Klinger could be helpful to Jakob, that was undeniable. Jakob would accompany him and his family to America as a lover in the guise of a manservant. When Erneste envisaged the full extent of this upheaval, he thought he was losing his mind. But the condition didn't last. He didn't lose his mind. He went on working as if nothing had happened.

“When passion becomes a slaveholder,” said Klinger, “it becomes dangerous. Jakob didn't love me, whereas all I wanted was to possess him to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Knowing this, he exploited it and despised me for it. His own role he ignored—he didn't think it contemptible at all. Later on, not long after the war, I wrote a novella,
The Wound
, which presented a veiled account of our liaison. It was a thorough failure because my treatment of what I ought to have written about was deficient in the extreme. I made no attempt to write the truth, I lacked the courage, so everything remained superficial. I described the disastrous love of an older man for a younger woman who drives him insane, not the love of one man for another man who reduces him to a cipher and almost obliterates him. I never even tried to be truthful in
The Wound;
I simply skirted around the truth regardless of any loss of veracity. I lacked courage, so I became a liar. All I produced, alas, was a repetition of something far from unique in literature, yet my little novella was regarded as verging on the scandalous, so it attracted a lot of publicity. What an uproar it would have caused had I written even a fraction of what I
could
have written! But it was even filmed—perhaps you've heard of the picture. It was just another step down the road to obfuscation. My due reward for abusing the truth was a second-rate cast, a mediocre director and an opportunistic scriptwriter. My novella ends with a murder. The film begins with a murder and is one long justification of that murder. The murderer's guilt is relativized and, thus, excused.
My story, the true story, ended quite differently. That's the story I should have written, but I couldn't—I never even tried because the time isn't ripe for such stories. Mark my words, though, in twenty or thirty years' time it may be possible to write a story like that. If I'd kept a diary, which I never have, alas, the story of my dependence on Jakob would be documented in every detail and available for everyone to read: an account of what a man can suffer and what can be done to him. Sadly, it was not to be. You, Monsieur Erneste, are the only person I've ever told. I didn't devote a single word to Jakob in my memoirs. They break off when I emigrate to America, and there won't be a sequel. It would be nice if I could say I shall die in peace, at one with myself and the story of my life, but that isn't so. And I fear my story doesn't interest you particularly. On the other hand, I can only tell it to someone who knows it but is utterly indifferent to it. Because, of course, I mean absolutely nothing to you.”