A Perfect Waiter Read Free Page B

know much about politics in 1935 to guess what was to be expected from Germany if Hitler remained in power there. You had only to open one of the newspapers displayed in the hotel lobby or overhear some German or Austrian visitor talking. No matter what attitude individual guests adopted toward the new German regime—whether they endorsed or condemned it, whether they sought to understand or excuse, belittle or oppose it—everything indicated that the cataclysm of which so many people spoke had not been consummated by Hitler’s accession to power but was really still to come. The fire had been kindled but had not yet burst into a blaze. The word “war” was on everyone’s lips. It was said that
    German policy would inevitably result in chaos and another millionfold bloodbath.
    Erneste could still picture certain hotel guests after thirty years. A few names and faces had lodged in his mind. He pictured them in the morning, when they appeared in the breakfast room looking bleary, dazzled by the light and often unwashed. He pictured them, too, wide awake in the evening, when they entered the spacious dining room overlooking the Giessbach, eager for attention and recognition and thirsting for adventure where little or none was to be had, or, when the temperature permitted, sinking into the softly creaking wickerwork chairs on the terrace overlooking the lake, lighting their cigars or cigarettes or having them lighted if a waiter was nearby, ordering their cocktails, putting glasses filled with ice cubes to their lips, and broaching a preliminary bottle of wine, white before red. The waiters were run off their feet, and if several guests were seated at a table, further bottles would be opened as the evening wore on.
    The guests dined and talked, drank and laughed, hailed new arrivals and took note of those who contrived to draw attention to themselves, scanned the room for acquaintances and waved to them. But it was considered bad form to change tables during dinner or even thereafter, so they remained seated. One could always meet up later on the terrace or in the hotel bar.
    Particular interest was devoted to those who ate alone, especially on the first night of their stay. It was tactless tostare but impolite to ignore them. Those who benefited from a good vantage point could tell their table companions a great deal about such new arrivals. The majority of them were on the elderly side. Some drank nothing but water in a positively defiant manner, others visibly overindulged themselves in port or sherry, many skimmed through newspapers or books before or after the meal or between courses, and most were at pains to make a nonchalant, abstracted impression. But few of them succeeded in grandly ignoring the other guests’ surreptitious glances, and many such loners became more and more obviously insecure in the course of a meal. Hauteur made but a frail suit of armor when a person had to eat in solitary state.
    The wealthier the guests, the more attention they were entitled to demand and the more attention people devoted to those aspects of their existence that should definitely have been exempt from public scrutiny. The private lives of some unaccompanied guests were a trifle disreputable. People suspected them of hiding something, so they never took their eyes off them. Thus, Erneste became acquainted with the characteristics of the beau monde, the social class that was wont to relax, untroubled by politics or business, in the hotel’s luxurious ambience. It did not, however, escape him that few of the guests came from the very highest reaches of society, for the Grand Hotel’s great days were over. Any aristocrats still to be seen in Giessbach were of junior status only.
    Guests tended to keep to themselves. Some consideredthemselves superior to others and let them feel it, the more unobtrusively, the more effectively. Within this setting, which was also populated by sundry eccentrics and