A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer

he had in previous years. He’d failed to convince Jakob how essential it was to continue their joint existence in an attic room at the Lutétia, the Meurisse, or some other Parisian hotel where he could easily have found his friend a job had he wanted one. But Jakob was homesick for Germany. He listened attentively but remained adamant, determined to go home and show off his new-found skills. Now that full employment prevailed in Germany, he said, he would be bound to find a well-paid job at the Domhotel or some otherestablishment in Cologne. And so it turned out: he spent five months working in a senior position at the Savoy.
    So Jakob went back to Germany, where his family and friends were impatient to see him again, or so he claimed. Although the only mail he’d received during his months at Giessbach were two postcards from his mother, which he showed Erneste without comment, he steadfastly insisted how essential it was for him to return to Cologne and be reunited with his mother, his family and friends—friends whom he’d never mentioned and who had never written to him. He’d heard and read so much about the improved conditions in Germany under the new regime, he wanted to see them for himself. Jakob had expressed this sudden interest in the changes back home after picking up one or two details from hotel guests and the newspapers. He had spoken of Hitler and Goebbels and the forthcoming Berlin Olympics, and Erneste had no reason to doubt that his interest was genuine.
    Yet it had seemed to him that Jakob was speaking from behind a mask, telling lies in ignorance of what to conceal. This feeling might merely have been an expression of Erneste’s deep but possibly quite unjustified concern, a symptom of the pain of separation. On the other hand, perhaps his impression really was well-founded.
    So Jakob had struck him, even then, as remote, and this alarmed him. He seemed remote because he was trying to detach himself. Wasn’t that it? Wasn’t that what worried him?
    Erneste, who hadn’t mourned his parents’ death and had little appreciation of Jakob’s homesickness, let him go instead of trying to restrain him. He left him standing on the platform. Had he clung to him, Jakob might well have shaken him off, and that would have hurt more than any other form of separation. Unable to restrain Jakob, he’d had to let him go.
    â€œTill next year. See you at the end of March—late March or early April.” Those had been Jakob’s parting words on the platform, so Erneste had had no need to say them himself. It was clear from Jakob’s tone that he really meant them, and that he hoped to pick up the thread where they had been compelled to leave it. Yes, he was being sincere, and perhaps everything would turn out the way they’d so often envisioned in the foregoing days and nights: nothing would have changed when they saw each other again; their temporary separation would be only a minor obstacle on their way into the future, and no more to be avoided than the future itself.

    Erneste had known he couldn’t count on getting any mail from Jakob, or a New Year’s card at most. One week after New Year’s, if not before, he realized he couldn’t expect even that. It wasn’t the fault of the mails. The fault lay with Jakob himself, with the distractions that were claiming his time, with his friends and family, perhaps with his work. Perhaps it also had something to do withthe turn of the year, which was celebrated quite differently in Germany than in France.
    Although Erneste had already written Jakob several postcards and some letters—which he fervently hoped his mother hadn’t opened—Jakob had never replied. He had no choice but to endure Jakob’s silence patiently. But his patience ran out after only an hour or two. For the rest of the day, not only while at work but even more intensely when off duty, he thought of nothing