Read Online A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer - Free Book Online

Jakob’s departure for America.
    While Julie was talking Erneste could remain silent, and his silence absolved her from giving any thought to matters that concerned him—matters she might have found disagreeable had he actually come to speak of them. She had as little wish to embarrass him as he had to embarrass her. This reinforced the bond between them, which had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with their family ties. Those, they felt, were quite fortuitous.
    Erneste enjoyed Julie’s annual visits and her fondness for talking about her life, which differed so much fromhis. He knew that she respected him, which was more than he was entitled to expect from any other person, although her acceptance of his proclivity might only have been the price she paid for his discretion. He never reproached her and was never shocked. It didn’t matter to him whom she met and whom she deceived. She tended to fancy herself the heroine of a grand romance in which Erneste, as he knew full well, played only a walk-on part.
    Julie was like a sister to him. She loved him like an elder brother who had secrets but was reluctant to share them with his kid sister. He didn’t want to burden her unnecessarily. She was far fonder of him than of her husband, yet a certain strangeness persisted between them. They were like two conspirators devoid of a common enemy. They might not have existed at all outside their rare meetings, not even when they sat together in the café drinking coffee, eating pastries, and eying the same men.
    Julie’s indulgence or indifference seemed convincing enough to be genuine. She had no idea how Erneste really lived and no wish to hear any details. She probably guessed that his life was monotonous. In the old days at Giessbach he had staked all he possessed, and everything had come easy to him. Living in Giessbach was like living on an island: what one person did was of no concern to anyone else. There he had believed he was truly alive, alive in every fiber of his body and soul.

    Erneste removed Jakob’s letter and the advertising leaflet from his mailbox. It was no accident, but attributable solely to the nature of the leaflet, that he had a sudden crystal-clear vision of Jakob outlined against a big white airliner, a white airliner with a white cross on its red tail fin. He was standing at the top of the gangway, looking straight ahead without seeming to notice Erneste. He was wearing a white shirt, a dark-red necktie, a pale-blue jacket, and gray slacks with a pale patch at knee height. He was slim, having scarcely aged at all—in fact he had only just reached adulthood. He laughed as he came down the steps, and all was just as it had been in the old days. His eyes were gray, his hair as dark as ever. The passage of time seemed to have been effaced, and so had the rancorous thoughts and feelings of which Erneste had been unable to divest himself for thirty years.
    Jakob hadn’t changed, nor had anything else. The love that filled Erneste was unaltered. His cheeks burned, his eyes brimmed with tears. It was nine o’clock, and he was standing beside his mailbox in the hallway. He was on duty in an hour’s time, he had to go to work, mustn’t stand there thinking. A middle-aged man fighting back his tears in the hallway—a melancholy figure.
    He still couldn’t shake off his waking dream. Jakob was walking casually toward him as if nothing had happened. He emerged from the shadow of the airliner’s fuselage and looked in all directions, but still he didn’t see him, and Erneste hadn’t the strength or courage to attract hisattention. Although Jakob looked through him as if he were thin air, Jakob himself remained the solid, magnetic object he always had been. Now that Erneste could see him as distinctly as if he were really there, he knew he could refuse him nothing. Whatever Jakob wanted, Erneste wanted for him, even if it was to his own detriment. Not