I Served the King of England Read online

  A glorious event, the greatest honor that could ever have been bestowed on a single hotel and restaurant, took place at the Hotel Paris, and I was lucky enough to be there. A delegation had come to Prague on an official state visit, and the word was that they liked gold. But it was discovered that there was no gold cutlery at the official residence in the Prague Castle, so the President’s head chamberlain and the Chancellor himself began to make arrangements to borrow a set from private sources, perhaps from Prince Schwartzenberg or Prince Lobkowitz. As it turned out, these aristocrats had the cutlery, but not enough of it, and what they did own, every knife and spoon, had their initials and their archducal coats of arms engraved or stamped on the handles. The only one who might have been able to lend the President a gold service was Prince Thurn Taxis, but he would have had to send to Regensburg to get it, because it had been used there a year before at the wedding of a family member who owned not only his own hotels and his own street, but also a whole district of the city, including a bank. At last, after all the contenders had dropped out, the Chancellor came to our hotel in person, and when he left the boss’s office he was in a rage, which was good news for us, because Mr. Skřivánek, who had served the King of England, had read everything in the Chancellor’s face without his knowing it, and then from the face of Mr. Brandejs, who owned the Hotel Paris, and what he learned was that the boss had refused to lend the President his gold service unless the banquet was held here in the hotel. That was how I learned—it practically knocked me down—that our hotel had gold flatware for three hundred and twenty-five people. And so it was decided that the luncheon in honor of the esteemed guest from Africa and his suite would be held here, in our hotel. Then the cleaning began. Brigades of women arrived with buckets and rags and washed not just the floor but the walls and the ceilings too, even the chandeliers, until the hotel was bright and sparkling. When the day came for the Emperor of Ethiopia and his entourage to arrive and take up residence, a truck went around to all the Prague flower shops and bought up all the roses and asparagus ferns and orchids. But at the last minute the Chancellor came in person again and canceled the suite reservations, though he confirmed the gala luncheon. The boss didn’t mind, he simply added all the expenses of getting ready to put the Emperor up, including the cleaning, onto the bill. So we began preparing a banquet for three hundred people. We borrowed the maître d’ and the waiters from the Hotel Steiner, and Mr. Šroubek closed his hotel for the day and lent us his waiters. Detectives from the Castle—the same ones who had taken the Bambino di Praga to the cathedral with me—showed up with three chef’s outfits and two waiter’s uniforms, which they changed into at once so they could rehearse and sniff about the kitchen to make sure no one was trying to poison the Emperor, and they checked the restaurant to pick out the best places to keep an eye on the Emperor. When the chief cook and the Chancellor and Mr. Brandejs sat down to draw up a menu for three hundred guests, it took them six straight hours, and afterward Mr. Brandejs had fifty legs of veal brought to his icebox, six cows for soup, three foals for tenderloin, one dray horse for sauce, sixty swine, none heavier than sixty kilograms, ten suckling pigs, and three hundred chickens, not to mention a doe and two bucks. For the first time I went down into our cellars, with the headwaiter Mr. Skřivánek, and under his watchful eye the cellar manager counted again the supplies of wine, cognac, and other liquors, and it was like being at Oplt’s, the wine and liquor wholesaler. For the first time in my life I saw an entire wall bristling with bottles of Heinkel Trocken and sparkling champagnes, from Veuve Cliquot to Weinhardt’s of Koblenz, walls of Martell and Hennessey cognac, hundreds of bottles of Scotch whiskies of all kinds. I also saw rare Mosel and Rhine wines, and our own Bzenecka wine from Moravia, and Czech wines from Mělnfk and Žernoseky. As he walked from cellar to cellar Mr. Skřivánek would caress the bottle necks fondly, like an alcoholic, though as a matter of fact he didn’t drink, at least I’d never seen him drink, and I suddenly realized I’d never seen him sit down either, he was always standing. As he looked at me in the cellar he read my thoughts or at least guessed them, because suddenly he said, Just remember, if you want to be a good headwaiter, never sit down. If you do, your legs will start hurting and the rest of your shift will be pure hell. Then the cellar manager turned the lights off behind us and we came back up. The very same day, news came that the Emperor of Ethiopia had brought his own cooks with him, and that they were going to prepare an Ethiopian specialty right here in our hotel, because we had the gold cutlery just like the Emperor had in Ethiopia. The day before the banquet the cooks and their interpreter arrived, shiny and black, complaining of the cold. Our cooks were to be their assistants, but our chief cook felt insulted and took off his apron and left in a huff. The Ethiopian cooks began by making several hundred hard-boiled eggs. Laughing and grinning, they then brought in twenty turkeys and put them in our ovens to roast, then mixed dressing in enormous bowls, using thirty baskets of rolls and fistfuls of spices, and they brought a cartload of parsley, which our cooks chopped up for them. We were all dying to see what these black fellows would concoct. When they got thirsty, we brought them Pilsner beer. They took a great liking to it and in exchange offered us shots of their own liquor, which was made from grasses of some sort, and we drank toasts with it, and it was terribly intoxicating and smelled of pepper and freshly ground allspice. We were shocked when they had two antelopes brought in from the zoo, already gutted, and they quickly skinned them and roasted them in the biggest roasting pans we had, with huge chunks of butter and a bagful of their spices, and we had to open all the windows because of the fumes. Then they put the stuffing in the half-roasted turkeys, and the turkeys into the antelopes, and hundreds of hard-boiled eggs to fill in the empty spaces, and they roasted everything together. But no one, not even the boss, was prepared for what happened next. The Ethiopian cooks had a live camel brought to the hotel and they wanted to slaughter it on the spot, but we were afraid to let them. The interpreter pleaded with Mr. Brandejs, and then newspaper reporters showed up and our hotel became the center of attention. They tied up the camel, who was bleating, Noooo, noooo, as if to say, Don’t cut my throat, but one of the cooks cut his throat anyway, with a kosher knife, and there was blood all over the courtyard, and then they hauled the camel up by his hind legs with a block and tackle and took out his heart and lungs and liver and things. Then they had three wagonloads of wood delivered, and while the fire department stood by with their hoses ready the cooks quickly made a huge fire, let it burn down until only the glowing coals remained, then barbecued the camel on a spit supported by tripods. When the camel was almost done, they put into it the two antelopes with the stuffed turkeys inside them, and fish as well, and lined the cavity with hard-boiled eggs, and kept pouring on spices, and because it was still too cold for them, even by the fire, they went on drinking beer, the way brewery wagon drivers drink beer in the winter to keep warm. Now when the guests began to arrive and the doormen were holding open the doors of the limousines, the black cooks were still barbecuing suckling pigs and lambs in the courtyard and making huge cauldrons of soup that used so much meat the boss was glad he’d laid in all those supplies. Then Haile Selassie himself arrived, accompanied by the Prime Minister, all our generals, and all the potentates of the Ethiopian army, everyone of them covered with medals. The Emperor won us all over. He was dressed almost casually, in a kind of white uniform with no medals, while the members of his government or the atamans of his tribes wore colorful robes and some of them carried big swords, but as they took their places it was obvious that they were well behaved and natural. Tables for three hundred guests were set in the dining rooms of the Hotel Paris, and at each place was a set of sparkling gold forks and knives and spoons. Haile Selassie was given a warm welcome by the Prime Minister, and he responded in a barking voice, saying through his interpreter that he had the pleasure of welcoming his guests to an Ethiopian meal. Then a fat man draped in ten meters of cretonne clapped, and we began carrying a
round the hors d’oeuvres the black cooks had made in our kitchen—cold veal with a black sauce so strong it made me gag when I licked a drop of the stuff off my finger. When the waiters elegantly slipped the small plates in front of the guests, I had my first sight of three hundred golden forks and knives raised and glittering through the dining rooms. The headwaiter signaled us to begin pouring the Mosel, and my moment came when I saw they’d forgotten to serve the Emperor his wine. I wrapped a napkin around a bottle, approached the Emperor, and without really knowing how it happened, I went down on one knee like an acolyte and bowed, and when I stood up, everyone was looking at me while the Emperor made the sign of the cross on my forehead and blessed me. Then I poured his wine. The headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek was standing right behind me. It was he who had forgotten to pour the Emperor’s wine, and I was nervous about what I’d done, so I searched for our headwaiter Mr. Skřivánek with my eyes and saw him nod to say he was glad I’d been so observant. I set the bottle aside and watched how slowly the Emperor ate, how he dipped a piece of cold meat in the sauce and appeared merely to taste it, how he’d nod and then chew very slowly. Then he laid the fork across his plate as a sign that he’d had enough, sipped a little wine, and carefully dabbed his whiskers with a napkin. Next they brought in the soup. Meanwhile the black cooks were so animated, perhaps because they were still cold and drinking beer, that they had their snapshots taken with the detectives disguised as cooks while our own cooks were out in the courtyard slowly turning the stuffed camel over the glowing coals and basting it with bundles of mint leaves dipped in beer, which was something new the black cooks thought up. When the soup was over with, all the cooks and maids and maître d’s and busboys and waiters relaxed, because the black fellows had everything under control, though they were constantly pouring beer down their throats. I was singled out by the Emperor himself, so the interpreter said, for the honor of continuing to serve him food and drink. Each time, I would first kneel on one knee in my tuxedo, then serve him, then retire and wait to top up his glass or remove his plate when he gave the sign. But the Emperor ate very little, he’d only wet his mouth, savoring the aroma like the chief taster, taking a smidgen of food and a sip of wine, and then continue his conversation with the Prime Minister. The further the guests were in rank and order from the host, the more voraciously they ate and drank. The guests at the tables in the back of the room, and in the alcoves and the adjoining rooms, ate as if they were insatiable. They devoured all the bread rolls, and one guest even sprinkled salt and pepper on the flowers of three potted cyclamen plants and ate them. Meanwhile the detectives stood in the corners and recesses of the rooms looking like waiters in their black tuxedos, with napkins folded over their arms, watching to see that no one stole any of our golden cutlery. When the high point of the meal drew near, the black cooks sharpened long sabers, two black fellows lifted the spit onto their shoulders while a third basted the camel’s stomach with clusters of peppermint, and they carried it into the restaurant. The Emperor stood up and pointed to the barbecued camel and with the interpreter translating said that it was an African and Arabian specialty, a modest gift from the Emperor of Ethiopia. Two assistants brought two huge cutting boards into the middle of the dining room, fastened them together with clamps, set the camel down on this enormous table, and brought in the knives and sliced the camel in half with broad strokes, then cut each half in half again. A stupendous aroma spread through the room. In every slice there was a piece of camel and antelope, and inside the antelope a slice of turkey, and inside the turkey some fish and stuffing and little circles of hard-boiled eggs. The waiters held out the plates and then, starting with the Emperor, we served the roast camel. I knelt down, the Emperor gave me a sign with his eyes, and I served him his national dish. It must have been wonderful, because all the guests fell silent and the only sound came from the clinking of all those golden knives and forks. Then something happened that neither I nor anyone else, perhaps not even Mr. Skřivánek, had ever seen before. First, a government counselor, a well-known epicure, was so enraptured with the barbecued camel that he stood up and yelled with an expression of bliss on his face. But it tasted so delicious that not even that yell was enough, so he did what looked like a gymnastics routine, then started pounding his chest, then ate another piece of meat dipped in the sauce. The black cooks stood there, their knives in their hands and their eyes on the Emperor, but the Emperor must have seen this kind of thing before because he just smiled, so the black cooks smiled, and the chieftains—wrapped in those rare and wonderful fabrics with patterns of the kind my grandmother used to have on her aprons—smiled too, nodding their heads. Finally the counselor couldn’t contain himself any longer and ran out of the hotel shouting and dancing and cheering and beating his chest, and then he ran back in again and there was a song in his voice and a dance of thanksgiving in his legs. Suddenly he bowed deeply to the three cooks, first bending to the waist in the Russian style, and then right to the floor. A second epicure, a retired general, stared at the ceiling and let out a long ecstatic moan that rose in cadences with each mouthful, and after he took a drink of Zernoseky Riesling he rose and whimpered so that even the black cooks understood, and they cried out happily, Yes, yes, samba, yes! The mood became so exalted that the Prime Minister shook hands with the Emperor and the photographers ran up and took pictures of everything, their bright flashguns popping, and in the light of that fireworks the representatives of our country and Ethiopia shook hands.

  When Haile Selassie left, bowing, all the guests bowed too, the generals of both armies exchanged medals, and the government counselors pinned on the stars they’d been given by the Emperor and they draped the sashes across their chests. And I, the smallest one there, was suddenly taken by the hand and led to the Ethiopian Chancellor, who pressed my hand and pinned a medal with a blue sash on me—the lowest in degree, of course, but the largest in size—for exemplary service rendered to the throne of the Emperor of Ethiopia. When the medal had been pinned to the lapel of my tuxedo, and the blue sash draped across my breast, I lowered my eyes. Everyone envied me, most of all the headwaiter of the Hotel Šroubek, who was supposed to have got the medal. I saw in his eyes that I should let him have it: he had only a couple of years to go before he retired, and had probably been waiting for something like this to come along, because with a medal like that he could open a hotel somewhere in the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains of the Bohemian Paradise district and call it the Hotel of the Order of the Ethiopian Empire. But the journalists and reporters had already taken down my name and snapped my picture, so I walked around with the medal and the blue sash as we cleared the tables and took the plates and the cutlery into the kitchen and worked far into the night. When the women, supervised by the detectives disguised as cooks and waiters, had washed and dried three hundred sets of gold cutlery, our headwaiter Mr. Skřivánek counted them, assisted by the headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek. They counted them a second time and a third time, and then the boss counted the small coffee spoons himself. When he was done, he turned pale—one spoon was missing—and they counted again, and talked it over, and I saw the headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek whispering something to the boss, and they looked surprised. The waiters who were on loan cleaned up, and then they all went into the serving room, because there was so much food left over. The cooks and the waitresses all came too—not to finish the food, but to taste it at their leisure, and watch our cooks, who were analyzing it and guessing what spices went into which sauces and what methods were used to produce dishes so exquisite that the government counselor Konopásek, who used to be the official taster at the Prague Castle, had been moved to yell in ecstasy. But I’d lost my appetite, because the boss wouldn’t look at me, and I could see that he took no joy in my unfortunate decoration. The headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek was still talking quietly with our headwaiter, Mr. Skřivánek, and suddenly I realized they were talking about the missing gold spoon and were thinking that I had stolen it. So I pour
ed myself a glass of the cognac that was reserved for us and took a drink, then poured another and walked up to my headwaiter, the one who had served the King of England, to see if he was angry with me. I told him that I thought I’d been given the medal in error, and that the headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek should have got it, or he himself, or our boss. But no one paid any attention to me, and I could see that even Mr. Skřivánek was staring at my bow tie with the same intense look he’d given me a few days before when he stared at the white tie with the blue dots, as blue as the spots on a swallowtail butterfly’s wings—the tie I had borrowed without permission. I could see in his eyes that he was thinking that if I’d taken the tie without permission I could have taken the gold spoon too. And in fact it was the last thing I’d cleared from the Emperor’s table, I’d taken it and put it right in the sink. I felt covered with shame as I stood there, my glass held out, waiting to drink a toast with a headwaiter I thought the world of, more than the Emperor himself or the President, and he raised his glass too, but hesitated, and I was desperate for him to toast that miserable medal with me, but though he always knew everything, this time he did not know, and he clinked his glass with the headwaiter from the Hotel Šroubek, who was the same age as he, then turned away from me.