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Authors: Francine Prose
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all!”
A voice screams and screams inside Landau’s head: The son of a bitch is lying! This lousy café in a death camp was never a gourmet bistro! Its Kommandant never turned up as a waiter in the Catskills! Real life never dabbles in such corny absurdities, such perfect ironies, cheap coincidences…though Landau has to wonder: Who is the cornier writer—Jiri Krakauer, or real life? Probably Jiri got the idea when, like Landau, he saw the older waiters and speculated about what they did during the War. But unlike Landau, Jiri’s pretending that his fantasy happened.
Landau’s on his own here, out here all alone. No one else thinks Jiri’s lying, not the Croatian feminist nor the Toronto critic. The Tel Aviv rabbi must question the Talmud more than Jiri’s story.
“What happened next?” cries Natalie.
“Nothing happened,” says Jiri. “What should have happened? What was I supposed to do? Shoot the guy? Beat the shit out of him? Go directly to jail? Devote my life to bringing him in, testify at his trial? Hey, I’m not Simon Wiesenthal. Please. I’m only a poor struggling writer. What happened? My girlfriend and I ate our bagels and lox. He poured us plenty of coffee.
“Now listen. Here comes the juicy part: the dessert, so to speak. It was our waiter’s, the former Kommandant’s, job to bring round the pastry cart!”
Jiri is sitting up very tall, recovered, alive and then some. He shakes his head and grabs the air, intoxicated by the gorgeousness of this detail. His mitts inscribing the very same curves he made earlier in the conference, encircling the yummy memory of Ottla Kafka’s hips. Hot sun streams in the window, backlighting his thick white hair.
I know who he looks like! Landau thinks. He looks like Kafka’s father, except with longer hair!
“The pastry cart!” says Jiri. “Can you believe it! Maybe the guy asked for that job. He was still a big lover of pastry….
“So I had a little fun. I ordered the lemon cream pie. The Kommandant brought the lemon pie. I took a bite. I waited a minute. Two minutes. Then I asked for the chocolate chiffon. And I took one bite of that. And so on. The banana. The blueberry. The apple. Our table was covered with pies and cakes. My girlfriend couldn’t imagine what the hell was going on.”
“Excuse me,” the Albanian interrupts in a gentle voice, slightly rusty from disuse. “Did this waiter, this Kommandant—did he recognize you?”
Jiri pretends to think about it, as if he’s never wondered, as if he’s never been asked, as if he hasn’t told this story a thousand times before.
“I guess so,” he answers at last. “I think you’d remember the little bastard who fucked your girlfriend! No?”
For the first time, the Albanian laughs from the gut. Ho ho ho, the men love this, the critics, the rabbis, the professors, the scholars, and third-rate poets, they turn to Landau to gather him in this all-male embrace that includes all the men in the room, in the world, even those little bastards who poach on the next guy’s erotic preserve, even the little-bastard lighting director who turned out to be porking Lynn. If that little bastard walked in the door right now, Landau would like to imagine that he wouldn’t give a damn—though he might feel as if he’d instantly grown ten years older and ten pounds fatter.
“We’re dying of hunger!” Jiri cries, alerting the whole café. In another minute he’ll storm the kitchen and fetch the remaining orders himself.
“Please, trust me,” Eva says desperately. “You know this place. It is coming.”
“Damn right I know this place!” Jiri says. “That’s what worries me.”
Just then, a waiter brings Natalie’s food. Landau, Eva, and Jiri stare with curiosity and then longing at her plate of sliced roast pork with a trickle of brown gravy, nicely lumpy mashed potatoes, and some kind of berry relish. Food has come to Natalie, but she doesn’t look happy to see it. While Jiri was
A voice screams and screams inside Landau’s head: The son of a bitch is lying! This lousy café in a death camp was never a gourmet bistro! Its Kommandant never turned up as a waiter in the Catskills! Real life never dabbles in such corny absurdities, such perfect ironies, cheap coincidences…though Landau has to wonder: Who is the cornier writer—Jiri Krakauer, or real life? Probably Jiri got the idea when, like Landau, he saw the older waiters and speculated about what they did during the War. But unlike Landau, Jiri’s pretending that his fantasy happened.
Landau’s on his own here, out here all alone. No one else thinks Jiri’s lying, not the Croatian feminist nor the Toronto critic. The Tel Aviv rabbi must question the Talmud more than Jiri’s story.
“What happened next?” cries Natalie.
“Nothing happened,” says Jiri. “What should have happened? What was I supposed to do? Shoot the guy? Beat the shit out of him? Go directly to jail? Devote my life to bringing him in, testify at his trial? Hey, I’m not Simon Wiesenthal. Please. I’m only a poor struggling writer. What happened? My girlfriend and I ate our bagels and lox. He poured us plenty of coffee.
“Now listen. Here comes the juicy part: the dessert, so to speak. It was our waiter’s, the former Kommandant’s, job to bring round the pastry cart!”
Jiri is sitting up very tall, recovered, alive and then some. He shakes his head and grabs the air, intoxicated by the gorgeousness of this detail. His mitts inscribing the very same curves he made earlier in the conference, encircling the yummy memory of Ottla Kafka’s hips. Hot sun streams in the window, backlighting his thick white hair.
I know who he looks like! Landau thinks. He looks like Kafka’s father, except with longer hair!
“The pastry cart!” says Jiri. “Can you believe it! Maybe the guy asked for that job. He was still a big lover of pastry….
“So I had a little fun. I ordered the lemon cream pie. The Kommandant brought the lemon pie. I took a bite. I waited a minute. Two minutes. Then I asked for the chocolate chiffon. And I took one bite of that. And so on. The banana. The blueberry. The apple. Our table was covered with pies and cakes. My girlfriend couldn’t imagine what the hell was going on.”
“Excuse me,” the Albanian interrupts in a gentle voice, slightly rusty from disuse. “Did this waiter, this Kommandant—did he recognize you?”
Jiri pretends to think about it, as if he’s never wondered, as if he’s never been asked, as if he hasn’t told this story a thousand times before.
“I guess so,” he answers at last. “I think you’d remember the little bastard who fucked your girlfriend! No?”
For the first time, the Albanian laughs from the gut. Ho ho ho, the men love this, the critics, the rabbis, the professors, the scholars, and third-rate poets, they turn to Landau to gather him in this all-male embrace that includes all the men in the room, in the world, even those little bastards who poach on the next guy’s erotic preserve, even the little-bastard lighting director who turned out to be porking Lynn. If that little bastard walked in the door right now, Landau would like to imagine that he wouldn’t give a damn—though he might feel as if he’d instantly grown ten years older and ten pounds fatter.
“We’re dying of hunger!” Jiri cries, alerting the whole café. In another minute he’ll storm the kitchen and fetch the remaining orders himself.
“Please, trust me,” Eva says desperately. “You know this place. It is coming.”
“Damn right I know this place!” Jiri says. “That’s what worries me.”
Just then, a waiter brings Natalie’s food. Landau, Eva, and Jiri stare with curiosity and then longing at her plate of sliced roast pork with a trickle of brown gravy, nicely lumpy mashed potatoes, and some kind of berry relish. Food has come to Natalie, but she doesn’t look happy to see it. While Jiri was
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