I Served the King of England
THE
KING
OF
ENGLAND
BOHUMIL HRABAL
TRANSLATED FROM THE CZECH BY
PAUL
WILSON
A NEW DIRECTIONS CLASSIC
A Glass of Grenadine
When I started to work at the Golden Prague Hotel, the boss took hold of
my left ear, pulled me up, and said, You’re a busboy here, so remember, you
don’t see anything and you don’t hear anything. Repeat what I just said. So
I said I wouldn’t see anything and I wouldn’t hear anything. Then the boss
pulled me up by my right ear and said, But remember too that you’ve got to see
everything and hear everything. Repeat it after me. I was taken aback, but I promised I
would see everything and hear everything. That’s how I began. Every morning at
six, when the hotelkeeper walked in, we were lined up like an army on parade, with the
maître d’, the waiters, and me, a tiny busboy, along one side of the carpet,
and along the other side the cooks, the chambermaids, the laundress, and the scullery
maid. The hotelkeeper walked up and down to see that
our dickeys were
clean and our collars and jackets spotless, that no buttons were missing, and that our
shoes were polished. He’d lean over and sniff to make sure our feet were washed,
and then he’d say, Good morning, gentlemen, good morning, ladies, and after that
we weren’t allowed to talk to anyone.
The waiters taught me the proper way to wrap the knives and forks in
napkins, and every day I emptied the ashtrays and polished the metal caddy for the hot
frankfurters I sold at the station, something I learned from the busboy who was no
longer a busboy because he had started waiting on tables, and you should have heard him
beg and plead to be allowed to go on selling frankfurters, a strange thing to want to
do, I thought at first, but I quickly saw why, and soon it was all I wanted to do too,
walk up and down the platform several times a day selling hot frankfurters for one crown
eighty apiece. Sometimes the passenger would only have a twenty-crown note, sometimes a
fifty, and I’d never have the change, so I’d pocket his note and go on
selling until finally the customer got on the train, worked his way to a window, and
reached out his hand. Then I’d put down the caddy of hot frankfurters and fumble
about in my pocket for the change, and the fellow would yell at me to forget the coins
and just give him the notes. Very slowly I’d start patting my pockets, and the
dispatcher would blow his whistle, and very slowly I’d ease the notes out of my
pocket, and the train would start moving, and I’d trot alongside it, and when the
train had picked up speed I’d reach out so that the notes would just barely brush
the tips of the fellow’s fingers, and sometimes he’d be leaning out so far
that someone inside would have to
hang on to his legs, and one of my
customers even beaned himself on a signal post. But then the fingers would be out of
reach and I’d stand there panting, the money still in my outstretched hand, and it
was all mine. They almost never came back for their change, and that’s how I
started having money of my own, a couple of hundred a month, and once I even got handed
a thousand-crown note.
Every morning at six and again in the evening before bedtime the boss
would come around, checking to make sure I’d washed my feet, and I had to be in
bed by twelve. So I began to keep my ears open and not hear anything and keep my eyes
open and not see anything. I saw how neat and orderly everything was, and how the boss
didn’t like us to be too friendly with one another, I mean, if the checkout girl
went to the movies with the waiter, they’d both be fired on the spot. I also got
to know the regular customers who drank at a table in the kitchen, and every day I had
to polish their glasses. Each of the regulars had his own number and his own special
insignia, a glass with a stag and a glass with violets and a glass with the picture of a
town, rectangular glasses and round bulbous glasses and an earthenware stein all the way
from Munich with HB stamped on it. Every evening this select group would show
up—the notary public and the stationmaster and the vet and the director of the
music school and a factory owner named Jína—and I’d help them all out
of their coats, and when I served them beer, the proper glass had to go into the proper
hand, and I was amazed at how rich people could sit around for a whole evening talking
about how just outside the town there was a footbridge and right beside the footbridge,
thirty years back, there was a poplar
tree, and then they’d
really get going. One of them would say there was no footbridge there at all, just a
poplar tree, and another would say there was no poplar tree and not even a proper
footbridge, just a plank with a handrail. They’d keep this up, drinking their beer
and talking about it and jeering and shouting insults at one another, but it was all a
show, because soon they’d be on their feet yelling across the table that the
footbridge had been there but not the poplar tree, and the other side would yell back
that the poplar tree damn well was there and the footbridge damn well wasn’t. Then
they’d sit down again and everything was all right, and you could see they’d
only been yelling at one another like that to make the beer taste better. Or
they’d start arguing about which of the local Bohemian beers was the best, and one
swore by the beer from Protivín and another by the beer from Vod
ň
any and a third by the beer from Plze
ň
and a fourth by the beer from Nymburk and Krušovice, and pretty soon they were at
it again. But they all liked one another and only shouted like that to make the evening
eventful, to help kill the time. Or when I was handing him his beer, the stationmaster
would lean back and whisper that the vet had been seen at Paradise’s, with
Jaruška, in a private room. Then the principal of the municipal school would
whisper that he’d been there all right, but on Wednesday not Thursday, the vet, I
mean, and with Vlasta not Jaruška, and then they’d talk about the girls at
Paradise’s for the rest of the evening, and who’d been there and who
hadn’t, and I lost all interest in whether there was a poplar tree and a
footbridge on the outskirts of town or just a footbridge without the poplar tree, or the
poplar tree alone, or whether the beer from Braník was
better
than the beer from Protivín. All I wanted to hear was what it was like at
Paradise’s. I worked out how much I would need and then sold those hot
frankfurters so I could make enough money to go to Paradise’s, and I even learned
how to cry real tears at the station, and the customers would wave their hands and tell
me to keep the change because they thought I was an orphan. And a plan took shape in my
mind that one night, after eleven, after I’d washed my feet, I’d sneak out
the window of my tiny room and pay a visit to Paradise’s.
On the day I picked, things got off to a wild start at the Golden City of
Prague restaurant. During the morning a group of well-heeled, well-dressed gypsies
walked in, tinkers they were, and sat down at a table. Everything they ordered was the
best, and each time they ordered something else they made sure we knew they had money.
The director of the music school was sitting by the window, but the gypsies were
shouting so loud that he moved back into the middle of the restaurant, still reading his
book, which must have been pretty good because he kept his nose buried in it when he got
up to move three tables over, and he was still reading when he sat down again, feeling
around behind him for the chair. I was polishing the regulars’ beer mugs, holding
them up to the light, and we were still serving breakfast, just soups and goulashes to a
handful of customers, and of course all the waiters were supposed to keep busy even if
there was nothing to do, which is why I was polishing the glasses so carefully and the
maître d’ was standing by the sideboard straightening the forks and the
waiter was rearranging the cutlery all over again. Anyway, as I was looking through a
Golden Prague mug, I saw
some angry gypsies run past the window, and
the next thing I knew they had burst into the restaurant, and I suppose they must have
pulled their knives out in the hallway, and then something awful happened. They rushed
up to the tinker gypsies, but the tinker gypsies apparently were waiting for them
because they jumped to their feet and backed off, dragging the tables, keeping the
tables between themselves and the gypsies with the knives, which didn’t help
because two of them ended up on the floor with knives sticking out of their backs
anyway, and the ones with the knives hacked and stabbed away, and soon the tables were
covered with blood, but the director of the music school, with a smile on his face, went
right on reading while the gypsy storm whirled around him, and they bled over his head
and his book, and twice they stuck their knives into his table, but the director went on
reading. I was under a table myself and crawled into the kitchen on my hands and knees
while the gypsies screamed, and the knives flashed and reflections of sunlight flew
around the Golden Prague like golden flies, then the gypsies backed out of the
restaurant leaving an unpaid bill and blood all over the tables, two men on the floor
and on one of the tables two severed fingers, an ear, and a chunk of flesh. When the
doctor came to see the wounded, he said the chunk of flesh on the table was a slice of
muscle from someone’s arm, near the shoulder. The director simply put his head in
his hands, his elbows resting on the table, and went on reading his book. All the other
tables were jammed together at the entrance in a barricade to cover the tinker
gypsies’ escape, and the boss could think of nothing else but to put on a white
vest with a honeybee print, post himself outside the restaurant,
hold
up his hands, and tell the customers that there’d been an unfortunate incident and
we wouldn’t be open till the next day. It was my job to deal with the tablecloths
covered with bloody handprints and fingerprints. I had to carry everything into the
courtyard and fire up the large boiler in the laundry, and the laundress and the
scullery maid had to soak everything and then boil it. I was supposed to hang the
tablecloths out to dry, but I was too short to reach the clothesline, so the laundress
did it while I handed her the wet, wrung-out tablecloths. I only came up to her breasts,
and she laughed and used the chance to make fun of me by pushing her breasts into my
face as if it were an accident—first one breast, then the other, right into my
eyes until the world went dark and everything was scented. When she leaned over to take
a tablecloth out of the hamper, I could see down between her swinging breasts, and when
she stood up and the breasts went horizontal again, she and the scullery maid laughed
and asked me, How old are you? Have you turned fourteen yet, sweetheart? And when will
that be? Then it was early evening, and a breeze came up, and the sheets in the
courtyard made a screen, the kind we’d put up for weddings or private parties, and
I had everything in the restaurant ready and spanking clean again, with carnations
everywhere—they brought in a whole basket of flowers each day, depending on the
season—and I went to bed. When it was quiet and I could hear the tablecloths
flapping in the courtyard as if they were talking to one another till the yard was full
of rustling muslin conversation, I opened the window, climbed out and slipped between
the tablecloths past the windows to the gate, then I swung myself over and walked down
the
narrow street, edging along from lamppost to lamppost. If anyone
approached, I would wait in the shadows until he was gone, and then from a distance I
saw the green sign saying Paradise’s.
For a while I just stood outside and waited, listening to the faint
jangling of a mechanical music box coming from deep inside the building, then I mustered
my courage and went in. There was a wicket in the hallway that was so high I had to pull
myself up by my fingers, and Mrs. Paradise herself was sitting there and she said, What
can I do for you, my little man? I said I’d come to be entertained, and she opened
the door and I went in and there was a young woman with jet-black hair combed out
sitting and smoking a cigarette. She asked me what I’d like. I said I’d like
to have dinner and she asked, Would you like it here or in the bar? I blushed and said
no, I wanted it in a separate room, and she stared at me, let out a long whistle, and
then, already knowing the answer, she said, With anyone in particular? I pointed at her
and said, With you. Shaking her head, she took me by the hand, led me along a dark
corridor lit with soft red lamps, and opened a door. There I saw a small couch, a table
and two plush chairs, and a light coming from somewhere behind a valance swept across
the ceiling and down the walls like the branches of a weeping willow. I sat down, and
after I’d patted my money I felt braver and said, Would you have dinner with me?
And what will you drink? She said champagne, so I nodded, and she clapped, and a waiter
arrived with a bottle, opened it, carried it over to an alcove, and filled two glasses,
and when I drank it the bubbles tickled my nose and made me sneeze. The young woman
drank one glass after another,
then introduced herself, Jaruška,
and said she was hungry and I said, Fine, bring on the best, and she said she loved
oysters and they were fresh today, so we ate oysters and had another bottle of champagne
and then another. She started stroking my hair and she asked me where I was from, and I
told her from a village so small I’d never seen real coal until last year, and she
thought that was funny and asked me to make myself at home. I was feeling hot, so I took
off my jacket, and she said she felt hot too, and would I mind if she took off her
dress? So I helped her out of it and folded her dress neatly across the chair, and then
she unbuttoned my fly, and that was when I knew that at Paradise’s it was not just
nice or wonderful, but like paradise, and she took my head in her hands and pressed it
between her breasts, and her breasts smelled sweet, and I closed my eyes and practically
fell asleep, so intoxicating was her smell and her shape and the softness of her skin,
and she pushed my head lower and lower, and I could smell her lap, and she sighed. It
was all so wonderful and forbidden that I wanted nothing more in this world, and I
resolved to save eight hundred and more a week selling hot frankfurters, because at last
I’d found a beautiful and noble aim. My father used to say that if I had an aim in
life I’d be all right because then I’d have a reason for living. But that
was only half of it. Jaruška quietly slipped off my trousers, pulled down my
underpants, and kissed the inside of my thighs, and suddenly I was so distracted by the
thought of what went on in Paradise’s that I began to tremble and I curled up into
a ball and I said, Jaruška, what are you doing? And she stopped, but when she saw
me she couldn’t help herself and took me into her mouth,
and I
tried to push her away, but she seemed possessed and held me in her mouth and moved her
head faster and faster till I stopped trying to push her away but instead stretched out
to my full length and held her by the ears and felt myself gushing out, remembering how
different it was from the times I used to do it to myself, because the girl with the
beautiful hair drank the last drop from me, her eyes closed—drank what I had
always tossed away with disgust into the coal bin in the cellar or a handkerchief in
bed. When she got up, she said in a sleepy voice, And now for love. I was too shaken up
and too limp, and I said, But I’m hungry, aren’t you? I was thirsty too, so
I took Jaruška’s glass, and she rushed at me but couldn’t stop me from
drinking, and I put the glass down, disappointed, because what was in it was not
champagne but some kind of pale fizz. She’d been drinking it from the start and
I’d been paying for champagne. I laughed and ordered another bottle, and when the
waiter brought it I opened it myself and filled our glasses. Then we ate again, and the
music box tinkled away in the bar, and after we’d finished the bottle I felt tipsy
and went down on my knees again and put my head in her lap and began to poke about with
my tongue in that lovely muff of hair. But because I was light, the girl took me under
my arms and lifted me onto herself and spread her legs. As smooth as butter, I slipped
into a woman for the first time in my life, the very thing I’d been wanting and
here it was. She held me tightly against herself and whispered, Hold back, take as long
as you can, but I only moved twice, and the third time I gushed into her warm flesh, and
she arched her back so that she was touching the couch with just her hair and the soles
of
her feet, with me on the bridge of her body right to the very
end, before I got soft, and stayed there between her legs until finally I unwound and
lay down beside her. She took a deep breath, fell back on the couch, and began to stroke
and caress my body as if she knew it by heart. Then came the time for getting dressed,
and the time for saying good-bye, and the time for paying, and the waiter added up this
and that and handed me a bill for seven hundred and twenty crowns, and as I left I took
out another two hundred crowns and gave it to Jaruška, and when I left
Paradise’s, I leaned against the first wall I came to and just stood there,
leaning against the wall in the dark, dreaming, because now I knew what went on in those
marvelous places where the young women are, and I said to myself, That was your lesson,
now you’ll come right back here tomorrow and be the gentleman all over again.
I’d impressed them all, I’d come as a busboy who sells hot frankfurters at
the station, but when I left I was bigger than any of the gentlemen who sat at the
regulars’ table at the Golden Prague, where only the rich, the upper crust of the
town, are allowed.