Выбрать главу

“All that I’ll tell you is that I found on a little malachite table a long-ish wooden box shaped like a spinet, on which eighty-five black-and-white buttons presented me with a keyboard of an unknown kind.

“As I’m a keen musician and play the piano whenever possible, I immediately sat down and began to play Beethoven, the Pathétique sonata. Scarcely had I reached the Allegretto when I heard a quiet knock on my door.

“A flunky in evening dress appeared. Behind him a darkling crowd of staff awaited my orders. I immediately counted them. There were exactly eighty-five. From that I deduced that the long-ish, spinet-shaped instrument was the keyboard for the system that called the staff, and that by my playing I had — quite unthinkingly — summoned them all. I apologized.

“The more important of them took advantage of the occasion to introduce themselves one by one.

“I was a little surprised. My daytime room waiter resembled Chopin, and the night man, on the other hand, was like Shakespeare himself. My surprise increased immediately because I discovered that there was a certain system in this. The first chambermaid was like Cléo de Mérode,* the second like Marie Antoinette, and the cleaner was the image of Annie Besant, the well-known theosophist.

“My amazement reached its peak, however, when among the large cohort of lesser servants I saw one after the other Eckener, the heroic oceanic pilot,* Rodin, Bismarck, and Murillo, and then a bearded, shy gentleman who reminded me of the late lamented Tsar of Russia much more than his actual portraits.

“That wasn’t all. The hotel secretary looked like Schopenhauer, the chefs in charge of cold and hot menus resembled respectively Torricelli and Einstein, the stockroom manager Caruso, and a pale, sickly errand boy resembled the unhappy Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI who mysteriously disappeared.

“A glittering historical portrait gallery of international notables had come back to life in those worthy members of staff.

“What part the hotel management had in this, and whether they had selected them by virtue of resemblance, as a feature, a delightful idea with which to attract guests, or whether those living wax figures had come together by chance, I had no time to decide.

“I swear, however, by all that is holy, that it was absolutely as I describe. Here everyone resembled someone, and everything resembled something.

“Schopenhauer asked how he might be of service. I asked him to have my dusty shoes cleaned, because I would like to go out into the town and bathe in that swift, blue-watered stream as I had so wished to do from the very first moment I saw it.

“The grim Frankfurt philosopher took my desire as quite natural and human, and assured me that it would be satisfied forthwith.

“As he left he pointed out to me that all the staff spoke several European languages, the least well educated among them at least five, but the night porter spoke fifteen, not to mention Latin and Classical Greek, and so, should I chance to return home in the early hours, I could talk with him about the enjoyable experiences that I had had in my nocturnal excursions.

“With that he left. After that someone knocked. In came Nicholas II. He bowed very low with Slavonic humility, looked into my face, and then subjected my shoes to his spectacles without touching them with his royal fingers.

“The examination continued much as when a general medical practitioner examines a patient and in the process can see that it is a case of a specific and complex disease of some organ which he could in fact treat on the basis of his general medical training, but which it would be much more correct to refer to a specialist who deals exclusively with that sort of thing.

“He did not reveal that train of thought by a single word. He bowed low again and withdrew.

“After a brief interval Bismarck came back with Murillo, Eckener, and Rodin. They also stared at my shoes. It seemed that all five were preparing a diagnosis and recommended treatment. The whole thing was like a conference of doctors at the bedside of a very sick patient.

“They summoned a chambermaid, a new one whom I had not previously met — Fanny Elssler, if I remember correctly.* She announced in ringing tones that this did not “fall within my sphere of influence.”

“Once more everyone left me. Only the faithful Bismarck remained at my side.

“A few moments later, four of the very handsome blond pageboys in red assigned to service in that corridor came into my room and trundled in an ingenious, electrically driven contraption on wheels, which each of them was steering with just the tip of his little finger. Under Bismarck’s expert supervision, my shoes were placed on the contraption with the aid of a tiny crane and, to the accompaniment of deep bows, removed.

“Scarcely an hour and a half had elapsed when the ingenious machine was trundled back. My shoes were now brilliantly clean.

“Stimulated by this excellence, this unaccustomed attention, I went to bathe. I splashed in the stream until evening, returning only for dinner.

“There were a few remaining guests in the dining room. For me a very long table had been laid, such as one would find at a banquet. Naturally I sat in the middle, the place of honor, alone.

“The delicious twelve-course meal was served at once. Most of all I wish to extol the crab, which swam with its marbled pink flesh in a thick, light gray sauce. Otherwise I rather drank. First, my favorite drink, a light beer, the golden nectar whose bitter foam, reminiscent of freshly baked rye bread, and nourishing scent of hops I have adored since childhood. I followed that with wine, Rhine wine and Greek aszú. Finally I settled on champagne. Bottle after bottle came to the ice-bucket, sweet and brut, and cooled slowly among the crystals of artificial snow.

“The fish was brought from the fish kitchen, the coffee from the coffee kitchen. Fresh bouquets were placed in the vases several times so that they should not wither while my eye and nose took pleasure in them.

“After dinner I asked for the bill. The staff clasped their hands and smiled. All meals went like that. They appeared altogether exceptionally willing. If I had asked them to set fire to the town for my pleasure, or to kill their beloved prince and place his head on my table in a silver tureen, cooked as Irish stew, I really believe that they would have done so without the least objection.

“Their courtesy grew and grew. So, however, did their number. This I sometimes estimated at four hundred, sometimes eight hundred. As, however, in my whole stay in the hotel I saw only eight guests, including myself, there were approximately a hundred staff to each guest.

“As I went down the corridor with its sound-absorbent carpet, they stood like silent caryatids along the walls. I only became aware of their existence when they raised their hats and greeted me quietly. Modesty and good manners were second nature to them. They were machines, not people.

“Just once it happened that a waiter was holding a cigarette furtively in his palm and exhaling smoke, but after glancing at me he was embarrassed at succumbing to so vile a passion, and his cigarette vanished at once. Where it vanished to, I do not know to this day. Perhaps he threw it into one of the ubiquitous asbestos-lined airtight ashtrays, or perhaps, pricked by conscience, he took it into his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it, burning tip and all. The latter seems the more likely.

“I repeat, the staff were without equal. Every day they favored me with something. They pressed into my hand announcements printed on wood-free Japanese paper and worthy of consideration as works of art, and marvelously edited and wonderfully informative catalogues. With unflagging zeal they brought to my attention the hotel’s Dalcroze dance school* and its Mensendik gymnasia, its bacteriological laboratory, its copying, shorthand, and typing office, its elegant swimming pool for dogs, its private car tire store, and indeed its lavishly equipped psychiatric institution, in which distinguished psychiatrists gave devoted attention at all hours of the day or night to the hotel’s deeply respected nervous and mental patients.