J. Jones: The Third Place

It was his place. All 148 seats, 37 tables and three stations – Austerlitz, Wagram, Koniggratz.

Herr Karl was an Austrian patriot; it was not his fault his favorite tactical battles resulted in crushing defeats for Austrian forces.

He deployed his lesser waiters Napoleon-like to these stations, caring for every whim of their prized clientele.

Yes , his place. Even though Herr Regierungsrat Wolfgang Mintz owned the Cafe Burg, Herr Karl was its lifeblood.

He had spent his career here, beginning as a youth. While men like the customers he now served were busily studying calculus, Latin and romance languages in their adolescence, Herr Karl had left school early and toiled as a scrub in the vast kitchen of the cafe.

But he had progressed over the years, venturing into the main hall when he was thirteen, clearing and wiping tables, straightening chairs, even being allowed to replace newspapers on the giant rosewood display rack by the front entrance. Then at sixteen he exchanged the full apron for a half one, a cutaway black suit and the white shirt and tie of an under-waiter. That was the life, he thought. Never mind that at that time the Herr Ober, the head waiter and majordomo of the Cafe Burg, Herr Siegfried, was a tyrannical ogre.

Herr Karl liked that description; it was muttered by a steady customer the day Herr Siegfried gave him an Ohrfeige – a slap – for dropping cutlery and disturbing the clientele.

‘An ogre,’ Herr Bergstrom had said under his breath, yet loud enough for Herr Siegfried to hear and for his face to redden.

That had been a wonderful day for Herr Karl. The beginning of his real profession, truth be told. And the beginning of the end for Herr Siegfried.

Herr Karl had nothing against the man, to be sure. Herr Obers were meant to be autocratic, to command the respect of those under them. He learned a good deal from Herr Siegfried, particularly in regard to his physical bearing.

‘One must look the part of Herr Ober to be Herr Ober.’

That was Herr Siegfried’s motto. Herr Karl had taken it to heart and also taken to doing a routine of vigorous calisthenics each night after work: sit-ups, trunk twists, pull ups on the door frame. By the time he was eighteen he could do several hundred sit-ups at a time, and he could feel it in his body, sense it in his movement – cat-like, yet assured. Quiet authority began to ooze from him, he felt.

Herr Karl was just twenty-six when Herr Siegfried died of apoplexy; the man had the good manners to do so at his home and not at the cafe. Despite his relative youth, Herr Karl was catapulted to the exalted position of head waiter. No longer simply addressed by his surname, Andric, but as Herr Karl.

And thus he had been addressed for the past thirty-two years.

Ach, where has the time gone? he wondered.

Flown away, as have the customers for the day, he told himself.

Time to close. The under-waiters had done their tallies; the night crew was on the premises, ready for the cleaning, preparing the cafe for the morning. Time for Herr Karl to leave as well.

He looked at the standard clock above one of the hat racks. Not quite ten yet. If he hurried, he could get home with enough time to finish painting the last of the French troops in their royal-blue uniforms and black tricorn hats.

Herr Karl, like many men who had never served in the army, who had never fired a shot in anger at another, was fascinated by all things military.

Perhaps Frau Polnay would serve him some warm milk upon his arrival on this bitterly cold March evening. A very thoughtful landlady was the frau. They shared a kinship of sorts; a kinship of service to others.

Other Herr Obers, on their monthly get-togethers at the Waiters’ Association, would voice surprise when they learned that Herr Karl was still in rooms and did not have his own place. But Herr Karl was pleased with the arrangement; a perennial bachelor, he had no use for more than a pair of rooms.

He tipped his hat to Kleinman, the supervisor of the cleaning crew, bidding him good night. He turned up his collar of his heavy coat against the chill wind off the Danube Canal. The sidewalk was treacherous, for the local merchants were forgetting their duty: they had not salted their patch of sidewalk in front of their shops as Herr Karl had in front of the Cafe Burg.

Well, as he had directed the young under-waiter Falk, it should be done this afternoon when the temperature began plummeting. There was a boy who would never make Herr Ober, he thought. Can’t even learn to brush his hair properly, leaving a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders of his black cutaway as if he lived in perpetual winter. He’d had to give the youth a dressing down just the other day for forgetting a cloud burst – the extra glasses of water – to Herr Bergstrom, their oldest regular, still with them after all these years.

Herr Karl hurried out of the Inner City, reaching the broad expanse of the Ringstrasse, virtually empty at this time of night.

Once away from the cafe, he allowed his mind to dwell on the matter at hand.

What a most unpleasant man, he thought. And what a fund of information he had. It gave Herr Karl a slight shiver to think that the man had tracked him so thoroughly and was so conversant with all his little schemes with the cafe suppliers and his workers. Very unpleasant. The fellow had calmly sat there across from him this afternoon in the cafe with his strange hands occasionally appearing on the table; the little fingers of each poked straight out while the hands were clenched.

The man had given no name and it finally dawned on Herr Karl that he was actually performing a bit of extortion on him, demanding that he convince his friend to add a name to his list. Even had the name scrawled on a slip of paper he passed to Herr Karl.

Failing that, Herr Karl’s employer would be informed of his little schemes, the man warned in his odd little accent.

Nothing for it. He had called Johann at his office and set up a meeting for tomorrow. Johann was none too happy about it, either, but the meeting was arranged.

The stranger was a horrible man with a face as devoid of emotion as a corpse.

Herr Karl took his usual shortcut through the green space separating the twin museums, passing under the watchful eye of Maria Theresa mounted atop her bronze memorial. He could remember the unveiling of that monument only fourteen years earlier. Herr Karl had taken a special day off for the occasion: Maria Theresa was a personal favorite of his. If only Franz Josef would reinstate her Chastity Commission, they would not have to shoo away the ladies of a certain profession every day who gathered about the entrance to the Cafe Burg, hoping for a well-appointed customer on his way home from afternoon coffee and cards.

There was a place for such women, he thought, and it was not in front of his cafe.

From above, Maria Theresa’s outstretched hand always seemed to offer a personal benediction and salutation to Herr Karl. He saluted her on high as he passed.

His arm did not finish the salute, however, for a blinding light and searing pain exploded in his head, the back of his skull shattered by a blow so extreme, so well placed, that he could not even let out a moan as he crumpled to the frozen ground.

The assailant quickly lifted the body, slamming the back of the head against one of concrete pillars surrounding the monument and through which an ornamental metal chain was looped.

There was a hollow plonking sound as of a pumpkin being split open.

The killer left Herr Karl sprawled half on the icy path and half at the base of the monument. Those who later discovered the body would surmise that the unfortunate man had slipped on the unsalted ice and cracked his head.