A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer

Author:Alain Claude Sulzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

At first Erneste took them for what they also were, of course: two quite unexceptional guests. A newlywed couple on their way to Italy, they were spending a few days beside the Lake of Brienz because many people regarded a stay in the Swiss Alps as essential a part of a honeymooner’s itinerary as a visit to Venice. If Erneste noticed anything about these newlyweds, it was that they bore a startling resemblance to each other—indeed, they looked so alike they might easily have passed for brother and sister had it not been for their newly acquired marital status and the purpose of their trip. In other respects they were indistinguishable from the big batch of guests who checked in the same afternoon, three days after Klinger’s arrival. There was no reason why the young couple should have attracted any more attention than the day’s other new arrivals.

Erneste was supervising the transfer of luggage from the steamer to the cable car and up to the hotel, so he had little time to pay more than the requisite attention to individual guests. He hurried his assistants along and reassured anyone who had mislaid pieces of luggage.

Three days after her arrival in Giessbach, Erneste ran into Madame Jolivay, as the young woman who bore such a resemblance to her husband was called, in the corridor outside her room on the second floor. She was alone and dressed for going out, with a peacock feather in her hat. Was it chance, or had she contrived this encounter? Erneste had seen her in the interim, but only at a distance, and they hadn’t exchanged a word before. It was Madame Jolivay who seized the opportunity to accost him.

She asked his name. It had scarcely escaped his lips when she cried: “C’est toi, je n’ai pas tort! Erneste, mon petit Erneste! Ämschdli! C’est toi! Dü bisch es!” At that moment, of course, he recognized her, his cousin Julie from Erstein. In defiance of all the conventions he embraced her in the middle of the dimly lit corridor, in which no other guest or member of staff could be seen. The two cousins hugged each other like a pair of lovers after a long separation, and they remained in that position until Julie gently pushed him away and scrutinized him more closely. She screwed up her eyes and put out her right hand to touch his shoulder, then slowly let it fall. Erneste followed the gentle movement with his gaze.

“Julie, Julie,” he said, “how long is it since we saw each other last?” And Julie said, “A long time. Ten years? No, it must be even longer!” They weren’t speaking French now, of course. Being as drunk on memories as they were, they had lapsed into Alsatian German, the language they’d spoken together as children, which Erneste had never forgotten.

Erneste hadn’t seen Julie since he was eleven, because that was when she and her parents had moved from Strasbourg to Paris. In spite of her promise

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