I was always lucky in my bad luck.
This novel belongs to what should by all rights be recognized as the original genre of that particular literary form: the picaresque novel. All novels effectively trace back to Don Quixote as the originator of what we recognize as a kind of storytelling that isn’t epic poetry and isn’t a stage play. Cervantes really set the template for what the novel could do that those other literary forms could not: tell a huge story across a broad canvas starring characters who weren’t royalty or warriors or mythic heroes in any sense. Luck is the residue of all heroes of picaresque novels because their stories demand it in order to the thing moving from episode to the next. And because they must find themselves in situations that eventually must be gotten out of, it also stands to reason that their luck must be a strange hybrid of good and bad. This quote could come from any of a thousand different protagonists of similar novels.
When I saw myself in the mirror carrying the bright Pilsner beer, I seemed different somehow. I saw that I’d have to stop thinking of myself as small and ugly. The tuxedo looked good on me here, and when I stood beside the headwaiter, who had curly gray hair and looked as though a hairdresser had done it, I could also see in the mirror that all I really wanted was to work right here at this station with this headwaiter who radiated serenity, who knew everything there was to know, who paid close attention to everything, who filled orders and was always smiling as though he were at a dance or hosting a ball in his own home.
This passage packs of a lot of information into a short amount of space. The image of the narrator looking at himself in the mirror and musing over whether he should stop seeing himself in such a dark and negative self-image is an essential element to the psychology of the character. He is obsessed with the view of statue and physical appearance not rising even to the level of merely commonplace so much that he has developed a severe inferiority complex which impacts everything about his life. His attachment to the headwaiter as a sort of mentor perhaps facilitating his movement from low esteem to a greater confidence will become another example of how his luck never seems to always run along parallel lines of good and bad.
I must be something rare, a true student of the headwaiter, Mr. Skrivanek, who served the King of England, and I had the honor to serve the Emperor of Ethiopia, who decorated me for all time with this medal, and the medal gave me strength to write this story for our readers, this story of how the unbelievable came true.
The ironic thing about the story is that the title does not actually refer to the narrator and protagonist at all. It is that headwaiter who so impressed him and wield such a great influence over him who actually could say he served the King of England. But he does come close when the Emperor of Ethiopia arrives to dine at the hotel. Alas, that singularly high moment of his life immediately enjoins with another case of bad luck stepping all over things. The service, the commemoration of the medal for that service and the manner in which things came to a tragic end all represent in total the sum of his life. It is a series of up and downs, stops and starts, great success and horrific failure. It is a story worth repeating and a story repeating is a story worth writing down.
