It happens sometimes that an ancient old lady with the icy, dismissive look that is the consequence of a long, rich and carefree life, with a cane on which she leans, garbed in a matronly dress of dark grey silk, a lustrous pearl necklace (on which the heirs are already waiting) round her wrinkled neck — that this timidly or respectfully treated lady makes straight for the old waiter, and without a word, gives him her hand. Then he will bow deeply and smile distantly. The old and by all indications frosty lady and the waiter have known each other for decades — and she will not always have given him her hand in that time. When they were both still young, the separations of caste stood between them. Now that they have grown old a process of levelling has begun that will end in the equality of death. Already both are preparing for the grave, the same earth, the same dust, the same worms — maybe even, if faith has managed to survive such a long life — the same hereafter.
At one in the morning, the old man gets into the lift — not the service lift, the one for guests — and has himself taken up to the top floor. There he occupies a small room, a grace and favour room. He has never been married, has no children, no brothers or sisters. He was always alone, a waiter in the hotel, a child of the hotel. Never more than a waiter. He has occupied his room for ten years now. He didn’t want to retire. He was no longer capable of braving the street and going home at the end of the day. So, like an old grandfather clock, he stayed in the hotel. One day he will die in his grace and favour room. No question. His body will be carried out through the hotel’s service entrance and loaded into a black car without windows. Because it’s not conceivable that one could transport a body through the lobby of the hotel.
Frankfurter Zeitung, 27 January 1929
42. The Cook in His Kitchen
Of uncommon significance, though invisible, yes, unknown to most, the cook dwells in the underworld of the hotel. Most of the day he spends sitting in the middle of his big kitchen, in a glass-walled pavilion, a little hut, in other words, made entirely of glass, visible from all sides, seeing to all sides. The underworld of the hotel is composed of these three elements: glass, tiles, and a white, silvery, matte metal. A fourth is water, pouring incessantly, quietly, melodiously, over the white tiled walls, continually alert and soothing at the same time, a delicate, glittering veil of bridal-hygienic innocence, precious, prodigal, and in places where the light falls, rainbow-coloured.
Eight cooks and four trainee cooks stand and run about, arrayed in white, with snow-white sailors’ caps on their heads, wooden spoons in their hands, at eight metal cauldrons, from which at irregular intervals silvery steam rises and in whose underbellies a reddish, unreal, theatrical fire glows. A never-ending white silence, comparable to the silence of the Russian taiga, blows over the tiles, the metal, the glass and the cooks, whose movements are inaudible, like those of white shadows, and whose footfall is probably swallowed up by the sound of the rushing water. This, the only sound in the room, doesn’t break the silence, merely accompanies it; it seems to be the audible melody of silence, the song of muteness. Ever so occasionally the vent of a cauldron allows a suppressed hiss to escape which straightaway dies down, shocked and ashamed and soon forgotten in the stillness, like the choked caw, say, of a raven in the white depthless silence of winter.
The kitchen might be the engine room of a modern ghost-ship. The cook might be a captain. The cooks the seamen. The trainees cabin boys. The destination unknown and in point of fact unreachable.
As dreamy as the silence is, that’s how real, bright and alive the cook is in his festive, material, palpable optimism. Just watching him is enough to make one forget all the bad stories one’s heard and exchange them for cheery memories of fairy tales, of Cockaigne for instance, of enchanting, brightly coloured illustrations in books. Here is the creator of the roast chickens that go flying into your mouth. His white brimless top hat of striped canvas, equally reminiscent of a turban, night-cap, and the under-lining of a royal crown, deepens the natural russet of his cheeks, the lustrous metallic black of his dense, bushy eyebrows, and the golden brown of his small, darting eyes, that playfully move over his comfortable cheeks, supervise the sous-chefs, watch the cauldrons, pursue the movements of the long spoons. In its crooked exuberance the hat grazes his red, throbbing, right ear, which seems to manifest an optimism all of its own. His red lips are set in an unvarying smile. The broad soft chin is bedded on a comfortable jowl. The broad nostrils sniff the smells of the dishes and the nuances of the smells. And under the white apron curves his capacious and benevolent belly, where a second and particular heart would find room.
That’s what I call a cook! He seems to step straight out of my childhood dreams, though in reality, as I believe I have already intimated, he is from Czechoslovakia. Of the four nationalities that live in that country, the Czechs, the Germans, the Slovaks and the Jews, he unites all the positive qualities: he has the application of the Czech, the method of the German, the imagination of the Slovak, and the cunning of the Jew. This ideal mixture makes for a contented, kindly man who lives at ease with others and himself, who is even capable of having a harmonious marriage over decades. Absurd, the very idea that he might fly into a temper! Where would rage find a place in somewhere already so filled with peace, contentment and freedom from care! And what would need to happen to knock this man off kilter? On the little table where he mostly sits, there is a large open diary in which he occasionally scribbles a note, and next to it a telephone that rings as often as twenty times an hour. Each time the cook picks up the receiver with the same tranquillity, he picks it up while it is still ringing, lays it carefully on the table, lets it rasp a little longer, and only when it has gone quite still does he lift it with a casual movement of the forearm not to his ear but to the proximate vicinity of his ear. It looks as though he first tames an unruly, noisy creature before agreeing to involve himself with it. He doesn’t, like all the world, speak into the tube, but again only into its vicinity, and he doesn’t raise his voice by half a degree, if anything he lowers it a little, and then the words he speaks to the telephone are all of velvet. Every quarter of an hour or so one of the four kitchen boys comes into the glass pavilion bearing a minuscule sample of food from one of the cauldrons on a small dish. Sometimes it is enough for the cook to cast one of his hurried golden glances at it (as if his eye can taste) and approve the dish with a gentle nod. Often, though, the cook raises the dish to his mouth, licks at it with his tongue, and sends the boy back with a quiet word or two. Why he only looks here and tastes there is his own secret. I imagine he knows the whims of the cauldrons very well and the abilities of the cooks, and also he would do damage to his tongue if he over-exercised it. It is a very precious tongue, it has the versedness of a colossally pampered palate, and also the ability to feed a stomach. Because very often the cook will eat nothing all evening, without feeling hungry. He never eats in the kitchen. He only takes off his white uniform, his roomy white uniform, and then stands there in a dark suit. He takes his hat off, and he has thick, curly hair, and a white smooth forehead. Over his poplin shirtfront, masking his collar, is the small grey silk bow tie with black dots. Its delicate coquettish wings tone down the gravity of his appearance, and give the cook a look of something enterprising, dashing and boyish. He walks into the dining room. A corner table is reserved for him next to the pillar. He is served silently and with élan, he doesn’t even need to order. He is given tiny portions that lie on the plate like so many precious stones. Slabs of meat would offend the cook. He eats gracefully and effortlessly and doesn’t even need to dab his lips with a napkin. After his coffee he takes a small cognac. Before pouring, the waiter shows him the bottle. Sometimes the cook will silently take the bottle from the waiter’s hands and set it down on his table. However tiny the little glasses are, he will only drink a few drops at a time. Then he gets up with effortless grace, not like a man who has been eating and drinking heavily, but as though he had been resting in a forest clearing in the morning, and is now walking out towards the sun. From a thin oval cigarette he blows blue fragrant clouds.