The Waiter at the Cafe Othello - Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Had he not narrowed his eyes and pushed his tongue out of the corner of
his mouth, she may have finished her cigarette, got down from her
stool, and finally walked out of his life forever.

It was not a deliberate action on his part, but then it never had been.
It was one of those behavioural quirks that we exhibit, asserting our
uniqueness in a world of commonality like the nail in the cornflake
packet.

He always did it when undertaking a problematic task, like reading
aloud to the class or mending the wounded limb of a grass lizard. Here
he was carving a pink fleshy ham using the only sharp knife "business
side" of the counter.

This apparently simple task was made difficult because his left hand
was permanently frozen in a semi-clenched fist, which shook violently.
It gave him the appearance of a man endlessly sprinkling something,
which was useful if you were a farmer but a hindrance if you were a ham
carver.

This disturbing condition was new to her, but the facial expression was
not. She realised that she had waited fifteen years to see it
again.

Despite the habitual nature of Giorgios' tic, her seeing it at that
precise moment was the sort of chance happening that you normally only
read about. No doubt you are familiar with the lovesick princess
kissing the frog, only for it to transform into her handsome prince who
we thought the witch had done away with back in Chapter Two.

But no fairy tale had reunited this pair. The roads they had taken to
arrive at this shabby, faded cafeteria were long and tortuous.

She had been in the city for two weeks, having her life savings bled
from her by the grubby landlord of an even grubbier bedsit with a
blocked fireplace and the ghostly print of rat poison everywhere. She
had tasted the coffee (or travesty of it) of every cafeteria and
counted the chips in every stained formica counter. But now, finally,
she had found him.

She had just been staring out of the window perhaps distractedly
comparing the tattiness of the sunfaded curtains to that of the many
she had seen through over the past fortnight. Then she had noticed the
car - an unusual sight in this quarter, since all of the locals seemed
to regulate their life according to the trams, going to work when it
appeared in the morning and returning home again when it appeared later
on.

The driver of the car looked very ill, she noticed. His small, round
face (almost cherubic, ignoring the pock marks) was pale and sweaty,
and his neck was swathed in a red, woollen scarf, giving him the
appearance of a frog in mid-croak. He must have felt her gaze on him,
for he suddenly turned and stared directly into the cafeteria.

It was as she turned around to avoid his stare that she noticed
Giorgios' face. But how had she not noticed him before? Fifteen years
of torment can do a lot to a face, but the portrait she carried close
to her heart was painted so vividly that surely some part of it could
be recognised here?

Well, his hair was strikingly different - the once long, tousled locks
had been shorn and forced into regimental order. His army years were
behind him, but the old forms still persisted.

His face was fuller and much paler than she remembered. This was
understandable, since it had been a long time since he had exchanged
vital, golden sunshine for the anaemic glare of halogens and
searchlights.

His nose hadn't improved any either, she thought, allowing herself a
rare smile. A few more lines across the fractured bridge, and maybe his
nostrils pinched in a little more, but Calvino's mark on him was still
plain to see.

But they would have time enough to remember those events soon. Just one
more drag on her cigarette to steel her nerves and then she'd -

"Could you hurry up with that sandwich? I ordered it ten minutes ago -
unless you need me to go out and kill the pig myself?"

An innocuous enough statement, you would think, the new-found wit of
the impatient customer, heard anywhere in the world that displays a
sign for 'freshly cut sandwiches'.

Yet there and then these words were enough to make Laurence drop her
still-burning cigarette and panic for her life, and that of the wounded
hero carving ham.