I Served the King of England Read Online Free Page A

circling her. The boss picked up the envelope on
     the table and said, Go after her, she forgot this. When I ran out, I found her standing
     in the square surrounded by wasps and bees like a booth selling Turkish honey at a
     village fair, but she made no effort to brush them away as they ate the sugary juice
     that coated her like an extra skin, like a thin layer of polish or marine varnish rubbed
     on furniture. I looked at her dress and handed her the two hundred crowns and she handed
     them back and said that I’d forgotten to take them yesterday. Then she asked me to
     come to Paradise’s that evening and said she’d bought a beautiful bouquet of
     wild poppies. I saw how the sun had dried the raspberry grenadine in her hair and made
     it stiff and hard, like a paintbrush when you don’t put it in turpentine, like gum
     arabic when it spills, like shellac, and I saw that the sweet grenadine had stuck her
     dress so tightly to her body that she’d have to tear it off like an old poster,
     like old wallpaper. But all that was nothing to the shock I felt when she spoke to me.
     She knew me better than they knew me in the restaurant, she may even have known me
     better than I knew myself. That evening, the boss told me they’d be needing my
     room on the ground floor for the laundry and I’d have to move my things to the
     second floor. I said, Couldn’t we do it tomorrow? But the boss looked right at me,
     and I knew that he knew and that I’d have to move at once, and he reminded me that
     I had to be in bed by eleven, that he was responsible for me, both to my parents and to
     society, and that, if a busboy like me expected to do a full day’s work, he had to
     have a full night’s sleep.
    The nicest guests in our establishment were always thetraveling salesmen. Not all of them, of course, because some traded in goods that
     were worthless or didn’t sell—warm-water salesmen, we called them. My
     favorite was the fat salesman. The first time he came I ran for the boss, who was
     alarmed when he saw me and said, What’s the matter? Sir, I said breathlessly, some
     big shot’s just arrived. He went to take a look, and sure enough, we’d never
     had anyone this fat before. The boss praised me and chose a room that this salesman
     always stayed in afterward, with a bed that the porter reinforced with four cinder
     blocks and two planks. The salesman made a wonderful entrance. He had a helper with him
     who looked like a porter at the station and was carrying a heavy pack on his back,
     something with straps around it, like a heavy typewriter. In the evening, when the
     salesman sat down to supper, he would take the menu and look at it as though there was
     nothing on it he liked, and then he’d say: Leaving aside the lungs in sour sauce,
     bring me every entrée on the menu, one by one, and when I’m finishing the
     first, bring me the next, until I tell you I’ve had enough. And he’d always
     polish off ten main dishes before he’d eaten his fill, and then he’d get a
     dreamy look on his face and say he’d like a little something to nibble on. The
     first night he asked for a hundred grams of Hungarian salami. When the boss brought it
     out to him, the salesman looked at the plate, then took a handful of coins, opened the
     door, and tossed them out into the street. After he’d eaten a couple of slices of
     salami, he appeared to get angry again, took another handful of change, and tossed it
     out into the street again. Then he sat down again, frowning, while the regulars looked
     at one another and at the boss. All the boss coulddo was get up,
     walk over, bow, and ask, Just out of curiosity, sir, why are you throwing your money
     away? The salesman answered, Why shouldn’t I when you’re the owner of this
     establishment and you throw away ten-crown notes every day, exactly the same way? The
     boss went back to the table and reported all this to the regulars, but that really got
     them going, so