I first became aware
of the Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal a few years ago, when I was, as was my
habit, then, browsing through the fiction section of the local Waterstone’s.
Two of his novels were prominently on display, and, importantly, were available
for the price of one. On the front page was endorsement by Julian Barnes, who
had described Hrabal as a ‘superb writer’. The combination of a bargain and
recommendation from Julian Barnes was too much to resist, and I bought both the
novels. They were entitled Closely Observed Trains,
and Loudness
of Solitude. I added the two novels to the ‘to-read’ list and forgot
about them. Sometime ago, in an Oxfam book shop, I came across another novel by
Hrabal(The Little Town Where Time Stood Still) and bought it (£1.99,
another bargain). I have yet to read this novel as well.
The only novel of Hrabal
I have actually read is I Served the King of England, and I
borrowed it from the local library.
The narrator of I
Served the King of England is a diminutive waiter called Ditie (the
meaning of which is ‘child’, apparently). Ditie’s ambition is inversely
proportional to his size. He may be a munchkin, and he may be a waiter, but he
does not want to remain a waiter (although he would, forever, remain
pocket-sized). He wants to open his own hotel and become a millionaire. Ditie
works in various hotels, starting with Golden Prague, then The Trichota, and
finally Golden Paris. Along the way he meets some memorable characters, such as
a co-waiter at hotel Trichota, called Zdenek. As the second world war looms and
the country comes under German occupation, Ditie marries a German woman. While
Czech patriots are being detained and hanged, Ditie serves the Nazis in various
hotels and retreats. After the war he becomes rich by selling rare stamps his
wife (who dies during the war) has stolen from the Jews who were sent to their
deaths in the concentration camps. With the ill-gotten money Ditie finally
achieves his ambition and opens a hotel—the Hotel in the Quarry—and becomes a
millionaire. Ditie’s fortunes nosedive with the 1948 Communist takeover of the
country, although he does not quite see it that way. As the novel ends Ditie
has ended where he began all those years ago: penniless doing manual job in a
remote corner of Sudetenland; and indescribably happy.
I Serve the King of England has a picaresque, anecdotal feel to it. The
novel, as it moves from one section to the next, seems more like a shaggy-dog
story with which some old codger might regale his listeners over a pint of ale
(or whatever the preferred alcoholic beverage in Bohemia was in the middle part
of the twentieth century). The novel is more than a story; it is a story of
stories. And all the stories—whether sunny or dark (and they do get darker as
the novel progresses and the Germans invade Czechoslovakia) are fantastical in
their tone, be they of the bandmaster uncle of Zdenek, the headwaiter at the
Hotel Tichota, or the bets between Ditie and the maître de at the Golden Paris
Hotel (who actually served the king of England). It is almost as if reality is
filtered through a prism which adds a magical dimension to everyday, mundane,
happenstances. The writing is not stream of consciousness, but it takes the
form of apparently unorganized juxtaposition Ditie’s perceptions and images as
he trundles through life. Yet, as in a collage, it somehow comes together to
form a whole that is more than a sum of its part.
Ditie, the narrator
and protagonist of I Serve the King of England, comes across, at the beginning of
the novel, as a man who is unequal to the task of viewing the world without
frivolity. He is a man incapable of looking underneath the surface of things.
Ditie is a hedonist. He also emerges as a man, as the novel progresses, lacking
in conscience. While working in Hotel Paris in the 1930s Ditie starts learning
German. Soon, he is practically the only waiter left in the hotel who would be
prepared to serve Germans. The reader is not surprised when a German woman, ‘as
short as’ Ditie and with sparkling green eyes, falls in love with him; and
Ditie, forever in search of pleasure, marries her. Soon Germans invade the
country and the novel enters a darker phase. As the Czech patriots are tortured
and Jews are boarding the trains to concentration camps, Ditie subjects himself
to the deranged Nazi project of producing ubermensch
Aryan children (and produces a son who is mentally retarded). After the war
ends Ditie makes his million, but his ‘German past’ continues to haunt him, and
he remains persona non grata amongst his old acquaintances. Slowly, but surely,
Ditie turns away from his obsession about material wealth and achieves (you
hope) inner peace.
I Serve the King of England (the title is a bit of a mystery, as the
narrator and protagonist, Ditie, never serves the king of England; he serves
Haile Selassie, though, the exiled king of Ethiopia; it is Ditie’s boss at the
Hotel Golden Palace, a peripheral character in the novel, who has served the
king of England) is a bawdy, rumbustious and, at places, dark satire, which is,
at the same time, a commentary on the mid-twentieth century Europe. Via his
apparently unscrupulous narrator—who is funny precisely because he refuses to
take anything and anybody, least of all himself—seriously— Hrabal is commentating
on the emptiness of our existence, which is comic in a macabre way. The
language is combative, at times hyperbolic, at times alarming. An intriguing
novel.
