Her less hefty companion burst through the waiters, daubing at the
stained area of her bosom and throwing bits of lettuce with every
swipe. She made a beeline for the ladies' room--followed by her
smeared, stentorian colleague, whose hat was full of dill and parsley.
This commotion had hardly died down--Jay had no more than managed to
clear the carpet, dispatch the wreckage on the table, send out the
chairs for purging, and bite back the last traces of his mirth--when
another oddity got under way.
"I want," said a man seated beside Paul, "a baked apple."
"But there are no baked apples." Fred, the waiter, said this.
"Go and tell the chef I want a baked apple."
"I did, sir. There are none."
"Explain to him that I always have a baked apple, here."
"There is applesauce--sir."
Fred is Viennese. His sorrowful, wise eyes meandered over to meet mine.
They were expressionless. But the fact that they had moved toward me
was, in itself, communication.
"I do not like applesauce. Slippery pudding! Go and tell the chef I
want my usual baked apple."
The churl who spoke was familiar to me by sight. An Englishman--a VIP
during the war--who had often stayed at the Astolat. A medium-sized
man of sixty with a red face and eyes like gray gas. A brittle British
voice, snotty in every particular. An iron-gray Kaiser Wilhelm mustache
and a way of smacking his lips underneath it, when he was in a temper,
that shook its points.
He was always accompanied by his wife. As a rule, they ate
quietly--talking together now and then, and more often just swilling
in food. She was a lank, vapid woman with a toadstool's complexion,
a chin like a fist, and hair tormented into little knobs--as if she
absent-mindedly had cooked it, rather than coiffed it--and burned it in
the process. Lumpy, burned hair, a disgusting dish of it--and a voice
like claws, to match her master's.
She stared, now, at her empty plate, and said nothing. She did not seem
to be ashamed, or embarrassed, or to be waiting for a storm to subside.
She was a woman born without the knack for yielding or apology. She
merely looked at her plate because she would be God-damned if she cared
to look at anything or anybody else.
Fred came back. He put on a sympathetic expression. "The chef says he
is very sorry. He says that this is not the time of year for baked
apples."
"The stands are loaded with apples," the Englishman snorted. "Seen 'em
myself!"
"I know. But they're eating apples. Not baking apples. They come later
in the fall."
The Englishman doubled his fist and lightly thumped the table. "I said
I wanted a baked apple! All I wanted was a baked apple."
"I have explained."
"With cream. A baked apple with cream."
I have seen Englishmen by the dozen go through this sort of routine.
With the exception of certain Germans, some of them are, I believe,
the rudest people on the earth. Badly brought-up babies--these empire
builders.
This one was insulting the waiter and his wife, in the bargain--but I
have rarely seen an Englishman who minded insulting his wife by making
scenes. When crossed in matters like baked apples they seldom consider
wives, children, strangers, decorum, or the reputation of Britannia.
They merely behave like twirps.
Fred had said nothing.
"I suppose," the Englishman at last went on, shivering his mustache,
"you mean to tell me I am not to have a baked apple--?"
"Perhaps for dinner--one of the eating kind could be baked--"
The Englishman suddenly hurled his napkin on his plate. He stood. "No
baked apple," he said. "Well!"
He intended to stalk from the room.
However, Paul--who had at first been chortling over the slow-spilled
tray and later watching the Englishman with intent, even exaggerated,
care--now interposed, to my great surprise.
He sat next to the Britisher--on the same banquette. Thus when the
infuriated man surged upright he stood alongside Paul and between our
two tables.
Paul stretched out his foot, rested his shoe on the corner of the
Englishman's table, and untied the lace.