I Served the King of England

  Every night the Hotel Tichota was pregnant with expectation. No one came, no car drove up, but the entire hotel was ready to go, like a music box that starts playing when you drop a crown into it, or like a band: the conductor’s baton is raised, all the musicians are ready, expectant, but the baton hasn’t given the downbeat yet. We weren’t allowed to sit down or relax, we had to keep busy, straightening things out or leaning gently against the station table, and even the porter in the spotlit courtyard was waiting, bent at the waist over the chopping block with an ax in one hand and a log in the other, waiting for the sign to set his ax melodically in motion. It was like a shooting gallery with all the springs wound up but no one’s there, and then suddenly customers show up and load the pellets into the airguns and hit the target, those figures cut of metal and painted and jointed with pins, and the whole mechanism kicks into motion if someone hits the bull’s-eye. It also reminded me of the tale of the Sleeping Beauty where all the characters freeze just as they are when the curse comes over them, but at the touch of the magic wand all the unfinished motions are finished and those about to start, start. That’s what happened when a car was heard in the distance. The boss, sitting in his wheelchair by the window, gave a sign with his handkerchief, and Zdeněk dropped a coin into the music box, which began to play “The Harlequin’s Millions,” and the music box or orchestrion or whatever it was was muffled by eiderdowns and felt panels so it seemed to be playing far away, in another establishment, and the porter, looking tired and bent, as though he’d been splitting wood since noon, let his ax fall. I tossed a napkin over my arm and waited to see who our first guest would be. In walked a general wearing a general’s cape with a red lining, and he must have had his uniform made by the same company that made my tuxedo. He seemed despondent. His chauffeur followed him in carrying a golden saber and he set it down on a table and left, while the general walked through the rooms, inspecting everything and rubbing his hands together. Then he stood with his legs apart, put his hands behind his back, and gazed out into the courtyard at our porter, who was splitting wood. Meanwhile Zdeněk had brought a silver wine cooler, and I put oysters and dishes of shrimp and lobster on the table, and when the general sat down, Zdeněk uncorked the champagne, Heinkel Trocken, and poured a glass. The general said, You are my guests as well. Zdeněk bowed and brought two more glasses and filled them, the general stood up, clicked his heels, shouted Prost! and drank. We emptied our glasses, but the general took only a sip from his and made a face, shuddered, and spat out, The devil! I can’t drink this stuff! Then he took an oyster from the plate, threw his head back, and eagerly swallowed the delicate, slimy flesh sprinkled with lemon juice, and again he seemed to eat with gusto, but no, he shuddered and snorted with disgust, his eyes watering. He downed his glass of champagne and shouted, Aaaaaah, I can’t drink this swill! He walked from room to room, and each time he came back he would take a piece of crabmeat or a leaf of lettuce or some salpicon from the plates, and each time he shocked me by shuddering in disgust and spitting out, The devil! This is completely inedible! Then he would come back and hold out his glass for a refill and ask Zdeněk a question, and Zdeněk would bow and tell him about Veuve Cliquot and all about champagne, though he considered what he was offering, Heinkel Trocken, to be the very best, and the general, his interest aroused, would drink again, sputter in disgust, but then he’d drain the glass and walk over to look out into the courtyard, where everything was dark except the floodlit porter and his work and the floodlit walls stacked with pine firewood. Meanwhile the boss wheeled about silently, he’d glide up, bow, and then glide away again, and the general’s mood improved, as if his disgust with the food and drink had somehow whetted his appetite. He switched to brandy and drank a whole bottle of Armagnac, and every time he took a drink he would make a face and swear and sputter in Czech, and then in German: Diesen Schnaps kann man nicht trinken! It was the same with the French specialties. After every mouthful the general seemed on the point of vomiting and he swore he’d never take another bite or drink another drop, and he would roar at the headwaiter and at me: What is this you’re giving me? Are you trying to poison me? Do you want me to die, you swine? But then he’d drink another bottle of Armagnac, and Zdeněk would lecture him on why the best brandy is called Armagnac and not cognac, because cognac comes only from the region called Cognac, and even though the best cognac comes from two kilometers outside the border of Cognac it still has to be called brandy, not cognac. By three in the morning—when the general predicted he wouldn’t last because at two o’clock we had killed him by offering him an apple—he had eaten and drunk enough for five men, but still he complained that it wasn’t filling him up, that he probably had cancer without knowing it, or stomach ulcers at least, that his liver was shot and he was sure to have kidney stones. It was around three in the morning that he really started to get drunk and he pulled out his service pistol and shot at a glass standing on the windowsill, and the bullet went right through the window, but the boss came gliding up on his rubber wheels, smiling and congratulating him, and asked if the general would like to try for the cut-glass teardrops on the Venetian chandelier and said that the last great feat of marksmanship he’d seen here was when Prince Schwartzenberg tossed a five-crown piece in the air, shot at it with a hunting rifle, and hit it just before it fell to the table. The boss rolled away, fetched a pointer, and pointed to a hole above the fireplace where the bullet had entered the wall after ricocheting off the silver coin. But the general said his specialty was cordial glasses and fired away, and no one got upset about it, and when he shot through the window and the bullet whistled past the porter, who was still bent over his block chopping wood, the porter just gave his ear a good shake with his little finger and went on working. Next the general had Turkish coffee, and he placed his hand over his heart and swore he wasn’t supposed to drink this coffee at all, but then he had another cup and announced that if there was a roast capon in the house he’d like to have it before he died. So the boss bowed and whistled and a moment later the chef appeared, looking fresh in his white cap, and brought out the whole roasting pan. When the general saw the capon, he took off his tunic, unbuttoned his shirt and after saying wistfully that he wasn’t supposed to eat chicken, took the capon, tore it to pieces, and ate it. After each mouthful he bemoaned the state of his health and said that he wasn’t supposed to overeat, that he’d never eaten anything so disgusting. Zdeněk told him that in Spain they drank champagne with chicken, and that some El Córdoba might be nice, and the general nodded, then sipped away and nibbled at the chicken, complaining and making a face at each mouthful of food and drink: Diesen Pulard auch diesen Champagner kann man nicht essen und trinken. At four o’clock, after he’d complained his fill, he seemed greatly unburdened, and he asked for the bill. The headwaiter brought it to him with everything itemized and presented it on a small tray in a napkin, but the general made him read out loud how much he’d spent, every item, so Zdeněk read it to him, every item, and the general began to smile, and his smile grew broader and broader until at last he was laughing outright, cackling in delight, and he was quite sober now, he’d even got rid of his cough and seemed to be standing more erect. He spent a while adjusting his shoulders in his tunic and then, looking more handsome than before, his eyes sparkling, he ordered a parcel of food for his chauffeur, paid the boss in thousand-crown notes, rounding it off to the nearest thousand, which seemed to be the custom here, added a thousand for the shooting and the holes in the roof and the window, and asked the boss if that was enough, and the boss nodded that it was. I got a three-hundred-crown tip, then the general threw his cape over his shoulders, red lining out, picked up his golden saber, set a monocle in his eye, and strode out, his riding spurs jangling, and as he walked, he managed to kick the saber neatly out of his way with his boot so he wouldn’t trip over it.

  Next day the general came back, and he wasn’t alone now but with some beautiful young women and a fat poet. This time there was no shootin
g, but they got into such a terrible argument about literature and trends in poetry that they were spitting into one another’s faces. I was sure the general was going to shoot the poet, but eventually they settled down and began arguing about a woman writer, and they kept saying she didn’t know her vagina from an inkwell, and anyone who wanted to could dip his pen in her ink. Then for almost two hours they gossiped about another writer and the general said that if the fellow would treat his own texts the way he treated other people’s vaginas it would be a good thing both for the writer and for Czech literature. But the poet disagreed and said the man was a real writer and that if Shakespeare was the greatest creator next to God Himself then this writer they were talking about was right up there with Shakespeare. As soon as they arrived they made the boss send for some musicians, and a band played for them nonstop while they and the girls drank formidable amounts. The general cursed every mouthful of food and drink, and he smoked a lot, and whenever he lit up he would have a coughing fit, take the cigarette out of his mouth, look at it, and shout, What kind of rubbish are they putting in these Egyptian fags anyway? But he went on smoking and his cigarette glowed in the gloom while the musicians played and drank. Another remarkable thing was that the two guests had the girls sitting on their knees while this was going on, and every once in a while they would retire to a room upstairs and come back fifteen minutes later roaring with laughter. Only each time the general went upstairs, he would slip his hand between the girl’s thighs as she walked up ahead of him and mutter, No, sir, I’m getting too old for love, and then he’d say, You call these real women? But he’d mount the stairs anyway and come back fifteen minutes later, and I could see how satisfied and in love the girl was and that she’d been given the same treatment as those two bottles of Armagnac the day before and the Heinkel Trocken and El Córdoba. Then they’d carry on about the death of poetism and the new trend called Surrealism, which was entering its second phase, and about committed art and pure art, and by this time they were shouting at each other again. Midnight went by, and the girls couldn’t seem to get enough champagne and food, they were so ravenous. Then the musicians said it was over, they couldn’t play anymore and had to go home, so the poet took a pair of scissors and snipped a gold medal off the general’s tunic and tossed it to the musicians, who were gypsies or Hungarians, and so they played some more. Again the general went off with one of the girls, said on the stairs he was all washed up as a man, and fifteen minutes later came back, then the poet went up with the general’s first girl, but before that the musicians started packing up to go home, so the poet took the scissors and cut two more medals off and threw them on a tray for the musicians, and the general took the scissors and cut the rest of his own medals off and threw them on the tray with the others, just for those beautiful young women. We said it was the most audacious thing we’d ever seen, and Zdeněk whispered to me that the medals were the highest English, French, and Russian decorations from the First World War. Now the general took off his tunic and began to dance, and he scolded the girl and told her to take it easy with him, because his lungs and his ticker weren’t what they used to be, and he asked the gypsies for a czardas, and the gypsies started to play and the general started to dance. After he’d coughed and cleared his throat, he began to dance in earnest, and the girl had to dance faster, and the general let go of her and raised one arm up and let the other one drag along the floor like a rooster, and he danced faster and faster and seemed to grow younger and the girl couldn’t keep up now but the general didn’t slow down and he was dancing and kissing her on the throat at the same time and the musicians formed a circle around the dancers and you could see admiration and understanding in their eyes, you could see that the general was dancing for them and they were all joined together by the music, and they played faster or slower according to the dance and the powers of the general, but he was still ahead of his partner, who was flushing red and gasping for breath, and the fat poet and the girl he’d been in the room with were standing above them, leaning on the balustrade. Then the poet took her in his arms, and the first rays of dawn appeared, and the poet carried the beautiful girl down the stairs, past the czardas dancers and through the open doorway, and he held out this half-naked, drunk girl with a torn blouse as an offering to the rising sun.

  In the early morning, as the trains were taking the workers to work, the general’s automobile pulled up, a low, open six-seater Hispano-Suiza with leather-upholstered seats, and they settled the bill and the poet paid out the entire proceeds from his new book, ten thousand copies, like Tonda Jódl’s The Life of Jesus Christ, but he paid gladly and said it was nothing, he would ask for another advance right away and go to Paris and write a better book than the one they had just drunk away. The general was bundled into the back seat, in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone, and fell asleep between the girls, while the poet sat in front, a red rose stuck in his lapel. In his lap, holding the general’s golden saber and leaning her elbows on the windshield, sat the beautiful dancer, wearing the general’s tunic, unbuttoned, its medals cut off, and the general’s cap stuck on top of her long flowing hair. She sat so erect, with those two enormous breasts, Zdeněk said she looked like the statue of the Marseillaise. The group drove down to the station, and as the workers were catching the train, the general’s car drove past the platform toward Prague, and the girl with her breasts hanging out pulled the saber from its scabbard and cried, On to Prague! And so they arrived in Prague and, the way we heard it later, it must have been a wonderful sight, the general and the poet and the girls, especially the one with her blouse ripped and her two breasts thrusting forward and the sword unsheathed, driving down Přikopy and Národní Třida while policemen saluted and the general slumped in the back seat of the Hispano-Suiza sound asleep.

  Here, in the Hotel Tichota, I also learned that the ones who invented the notion that work is ennobling were the same ones who drank and ate all night long with beautiful women on their knees, the rich ones, who could be as happy as little children. I always used to think that the rich were damned, that country cottages and cozy little parlors and sour soup and potatoes were what gave people a feeling of happiness and well-being, and that wealth was evil. Now it seemed that all that stuff about happiness in poor country cottages was invented by these guests of ours, who didn’t care how much they spent in a night, who threw money to the four winds and felt good doing it. I had never seen men so happy as those wealthy industrialists and factory owners and, as I said, they knew how to carouse and enjoy life like naughty little boys, and they had so much time on their hands that they would even play tricks and practical jokes on one another, and then, right in the midst of all the fun, one of them would ask another if he could use a wagonload or two of Hungarian hogs, or perhaps a whole trainload? Or another would be watching our porter chop wood, and all these rich fellows thought the porter must be the happiest man in the world, and they would gaze wistfully at him doing work they had never done themselves, but if they’d had to chop wood, they would have been miserable. Suddenly one of them would say, I’ve got a boatload of cowhide from the Congo sitting in Hamburg, any ideas about what I might do with it? And the other one would say, as if it wasn’t a boatload but a single hide, What percentage will you give me? The first one would say, Five, and the second would say, I want eight, there’s always the chance of worms because the niggers do such a bad job salting them. The first one would hold out his hand and say, Seven. Then they’d look each other straight in the eye for a few moments, shake hands, and then go back to the girls, to place those same hands on naked breasts and slide them down to fondle those neat little mounds of hair under their bellies, and kiss them with open mouths as if they were eating oysters or sucking boiled snails from their shells, because from the moment they’d bought or sold trainloads of pigs and shiploads of hides they seemed twice as young. Some of our guests would buy and sell whole apartment complexes, and at one point a castle and two châteaux chang
ed hands, and a factory was bought and sold, and company directors would arrange shipments of envelopes to the rest of Europe, and negotiate loans to the tune of half a billion crowns for someplace in the Balkans, and two trainloads of munitions were sold, and arrangements were made to deliver enough weapons to arm several Arab divisions. It was always done the same way, with champagne, women, and French brandy, and a view of the courtyard where the floodlit porter was chopping wood, or during moonlit walks or games of tag and blindman’s bluff ending up in the haystacks the boss had put out as part of the landscaping, as ornamentation, like the wood-chopping porter, and then at the first light of dawn they would come back to the hotel, their hair and their clothes matted with straw and dried grass, as happy as if they’d just come from the theater. Then they would hand out hundred-crown notes to the musicians and me, fistfuls of them, with significant looks as if to say, You didn’t see or hear a thing, did you? though of course we’d seen and heard everything, and the boss would bow from his wheelchair, he’d been gliding silently from room to room on his rubber tires, making sure that everything was just so and every whim was satisfied. Our boss thought of everything. If someone felt a sudden urge for a cup of fresh milk or cool cream toward evening, that was available too, and we even had special devices for vomiting in our tiled washrooms, an individual vomitorium with strong chromeplated handgrips on each side, and a collective vomitorium that looked like a long horse trough with a handrail above it, a bar guests would hold on to while they vomited in a group, egging one another on. I was ashamed whenever I vomited, even if no one saw me, but rich people vomited as if it was all part of the banquet, a sign of good breeding. When they were through, they’d come back, their eyes full of tears, and soon they’d be eating and drinking with more zest than ever, like the ancient Slavs.