A Perfect Waiter [Paperback]

I have to say until about three quarters of the way into this I wasn't sure how much I liked this novel. Now I do not mean I thought it was a bad novel. The writing is beautifully the setting is wonderful but I didn't like the characters of which for a lot of it there are only two. However with the arrival of the third character the plot suddenly speeded up and produced an ending that I hadn't expected at all. Isn't it funny how a character can make you feel about a book? In fact I think that could be a future blog... anyway the book.

The novel begins with Ernest who is work obsessive, he never really speaks to his family, bar his cousin Julia, and isn't particularly friendly with any of his co-workers he likes to keep his life a solitary one (the whole way through I wanted to know what had made him that way) out of the blue he receives a letter from an old friend Jakob. He hasn't seen Jakob for over thirty years since the mid 1930's when he came to work in the same hotel in the Swiss mountains.

What follows is quite a sad and desolate study of love. From when they meet Ernest is uncontrollably taken with Jakob to the point of nearing obsession and when they do become lovers he becomes like an addiction. However we know from the start that suddenly Jakob left what we don't know is why. You need to read the book to find out that part. I found the relationship between the men incredibly well written; I thought the insight as to what it was like to be gay in that era was quite insightful as well. I would have liked to have seen more reaction to it as the book focuses in a very insular way on just the two men at first.

Jakob I have to admit I didn't like to read, I don't know what it was but I couldn't take to him at all. He isn't a particularly nice character however sometimes we all love a good villain. I didn't understand why he was the way he was, in fact that could actually be applied to Ernest and his background too, I wanted to know a lot more about them than I was given. I loved the parts with Ernest's cousin Julia in, but they still didn't open up his past or nature of his character any further which was saddening for me. Three quarters of the way through the book another character is introduced a long with a quite sudden and shocking twist to the plot who is a character with real background and who I enjoyed reading more.

The final quarter of the book is what made me think that this was something special as I had been on the fence with this novel until then. The pace suddenly picks up, I don't know if it's the original or the translation but though the prose is stunning it's actually quite repetitive in parts. I would recommend people give this a go as its something different. I saw a review that this is a gay version of `Remains of the Day' I wouldn't say that by any means (because I haven't read it - shocking I know), I think from what I do know of them, they are quite different. What it is however is a look at how love can go wrong, become obsession and the consequences of that.

With the events in this story-taking place in Switzerland, A Perfect Waiter is a lovely and rather sad study of love, the power of memory, and the potential for an overwhelming and all-consuming desire. The novel begins when the solitary and emotionally shut-down Erneste receives a letter from New York, from Jakob Meier, a man who was his best and dearest friend thirty years ago back in the summer of 1935.

There is no really explanation for why after all these years Jakob is reaching out to his former lover, simply that there are financial problems and he's begging for help and he seems to be unable to take care of himself. But the letter effectively jump-starts Erneste's yearnings, making him relive the weight of loss, and the cruel and hurtful way that the beautiful and seemingly untroubled Jakob had eventually abandoned him for America.

Erneste has spent the last sixteen years working as a waiter at the Restaurant am Berg, the most dependable member of an ever-changing staff, Erneste is almost like a blank slate, shadowlike when he has to be, but also an attentive observer, thoroughly alert and quick on the uptake. Indeed Erneste has never aspired to any other profession and has lived for years in a small apartment.

In that regard nothing had changed since his first job thirty-five years ago. He is free, with the past locked away in his abundant recollections, "like something inside a dark closet," and although the past is precious, the closet remains unopened. But now his thoughts are straying constantly revolving around Jakob's letter and a secret he is unable or unwilling to share with anyone else, "like a hand reaching for him" its pressure is neither heavy nor light."

Even the photos he kept of Jakob are out of reach, as remote as Jakob's breath, and even more remote than the memories of their time together at Giessbach, in 1935 when the young German trainee waiter came from Cologne for a spell of employment in Switzerland in order to being drafted into the Wehrmacht. With Erneste's emotions unequivocal and consequently threatening, he finds himself instantly attracted to Jakob's forthright and open gaze, passing so close to the boy that they almost touch when they first meet on the boat ramp at the foot of the hotel.

Buoyed along by his desires and his need to care for the boy, Erneste shows him everything a waiter needs to know even as he battles with the urge to slip inside him, his illicit desire driving Erneste to supervise him like a child. Jakob of course, proves himself to be alert, adaptable, and coolheaded and before long was past teaching anything anymore as he steadily masters all the tricks of the trade and quickly becoming the perfect waiter.

As this story gravitates between 1935 and 1966, Erneste must wrestle with his longings and desires for Jakob as they suddenly reappear, more steady and more profoundly real than ever. And he's constantly bounded at night by his memories of their clandestine lovemaking in his cramped attic room and their secretive couplings by the shores of the lake. It is these reminiscences that give this novel so much feeling - Erneste's yearnings for the night to come and his longing for ever more physical contact with Jakob.

But their instant attraction and easy intimacy is doomed to fade. Although Erneste is convinced they fit together so perfectly, he never anticipated such an unexpected end even as he harbors a strange presentiment, a vague sense of something incomprehensible, something that lurks behind his excitement, something foolish and distressing in the form of a threat that he wants no part of, a distressing threat that lay behind the happiness and joy that surges through him.

In a world where passion becomes a dangerous slaveholder, Erneste finds himself caught between an outward calm and an explosion that bursts inside of him, dislodging his long pent up feelings - the message these letters ultimately bring him is almost too much for him to contemplate. Inevitably asked to be a go-between, Erneste even flirts with blackmail, his actions an ultimate testament to the enduring power of his love for Jakob.

Alternating between his time periods, Sulzer perfectly encapsulates time and place, his novel a moody and fitting testament to an age where same-sex love was often shrouded in a type of grand and illusive secrecy. Although his themes of lost love and misunderstood desire may be bleak, the novel is also infused with a great beauty. For a short time at least, Erneste's life is filled with all of the possibilities that first love can offer. Certainly the passing years have not impaired the clarity of his memories and now they reappear as fresh and potent as ever, his love for his young friend enduring despite the obvious obstacles and the inevitable passage of time. Mike Leonard June 08.

The main action starts on the first page - a letter arrives from America and we are told that it's from a man that Erneste knew 30 years before - and that person is someone who Erneste has thought of daily for every day of those 30 years. It's clear fairly soon that Erneste is repressed in every facet of his life. He works diligently and perfectly; he has no friends and no acquaintance aside from one cousin who he sees once a year. Soon we slide into flashback and we are in a pre-war summer in "The Grand Hotel" on a Swiss lake. Erneste is sent down to the lakeside to meet a new member of staff - Jakob, trainee waiter - and from the very moment they shake hands, Erneste knows his life will never be the same again.

It wasn't until all four of them were standing on the shore that Jakob shook Erneste's hand and introduced himself. "Jakob Meier," he said simply, and the handshake that accompanied this formal introduction seemed to say: "Here I am, having come here purely for your sake." The little world in which Erneste had so blithely installed himself collapsed under the aegis of Jakob Meier's shadow. He quit that world for evermore- for evermore, he knew it- and gladly, unresistingly left it behind.

We are left in no doubt of Erneste's love - at first, helpless, hopeless passion. He is content, happy to take the handsome 19 year old German under his wing and to teach him to be - as he is himself - the perfect waiter. We are convinced of his devotion, a high church kind of devotion that makes him proud just to be called Jakob's friend and he is convinced that everyone who sees Jakob must be jealous that he, Erneste is his friend, and not they. One of the most touching and erotic scenes is when Jakob goes to be fitted for his uniform. The seamstress measures Jakob, her hands travelling over every part of Jabob's body and Erneste sits and watches, his hands are her hands imagining every muscle, every hair. When Jakob strips down to his underwear - the seamstresses all turn away and Erneste is almost gleeful that as a man there is nothing out of the oridinary for a man to watch another in this act.

Two months into their friendship Jakob instigates a kiss and their friendship turns to the physical. Erneste and Jakob live, love and work in the hotel and Erneste - having no discernible personality of his own, is subsumed by Jakob.

However, it's fairly obvious by the information at the beginning of the book that this love-affair didn't last and as the book slides from past to present and back again we are shown why and how and if Erneste's heart doesn't break on his own account, the reader's does for him as he tucks his emotions back into a safe place.

Back in the present Erneste isn't entirely celibate. Even in clean, calm serene Switzerland in the 60's there were still places where gay men would meet and Erneste indulges his longings by cottaging. It is only after an attack by queer-bashers one night which seem to bring his emotions close enough tot he surface for him to decide to do something about the letters and do what Jakob asks of him, which leads to more truth than he can handle.

The themes of first love-and of anyone hoarding that love so close to them for their entire life, not allowing themselves to live because of it- touched me closely because I understand how one can put barriers up in one's life to prevent hurt happening to one again. But I think it was the fact that Erneste (and the others that Jakob came in contact with too) almost deified Jakob. Erneste wanted to mould him into his own image, others simply wanted to worship at the pedestal of his youth and beauty. It comes as no surprise when Jakob proves to have feet of clay, what is surprising is the depth of deceit that these men maintain - they all blame themselves, when they should be blaming Jakob.

Beautifully written, if the translation is anything to go by at least, this little book is well worth a read. It was rather too frustrating for me - I'm more active than the characters here. I'd fight, I'd make scenes - I find it hard to understand such perfect repression, but for all that - Erneste is never unbelievable and in this way I felt nothing for him but bitter pity.