Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England, 1990, cover of the English language edition
Top: Walter della Brasserie Lipp a Parigi, c. 1950 circa, photo by Pierre Jahan
"One morning Karel loaded up his tray with twelve main dishes and as usual stopped just inside the door to pinch a bit of sirloin tip and a touch of Brussels sprouts to go along with it, topping it off with a morsel of dressing from the veal. Then he lifted the tray as if the food had given him new strength and with a smile on his face struck out into the restaurant. But a customer who was taking snuff, or had a cold, inhaled abruptly through his nose, and as he inhaled it was as if the force of the intake pulled him straight up by the hair, because he suddenly rose to his feet, sneezing loudly, and caught the corner of the tray with his shoulder. Karel, leaning forward at the waist, had to run to catch up to the loaded tray, which now was sailing through the air like a flying carpet, because Karel always carried his food high. Either the tray was too fast or Karel's legs were too slow, but in any case when he reached for it the tray slipped away from his upturned hand, his fingers scrabbling desperately for it as all of us in the business watched, including the boss, who was entertaining a group from the hotel owners' association. Mr. Šroubek himself was at the banquet table, and he saw what then happened, just as we had foreseen it would. Karel took one more mighty leap in the air and managed to catch the tray before it fell, but two plates slid off one after the other, and first pieces of beef roll à la Puzsta, then dumplings poured over a guest who was just raising his eyes from the menu to ask if the meat was tender and the sauce warm enough and the dumplings light. It all slid off the plates and onto the guest, and as he riose to his feet dripping with sauce, the beef roll à la Puzsta and the dumplings tumbled off his lap and fell under the table. One dumpling remained on his head like a small cap, a yarmulke, the kind a rabbi wears, or a priest's biretta. When Karel, who had managed to save all the other ten plates, saw that and saw Mr. Šroubek, who owned the Hotel Šroubek, he raised the tray even higher, gave it a little toss, flipped it over, and flung all ten plates onto the carpet, demonstrating, as if he were in a play or a pantomime, how disgusted he felt about those two plates. He undid his apron just as theatrically, flung it at the floor, and stomped out in a fury, then changed into his street clothes and went out to get drunk. I didn't understand it yet, but everyone in the business said that if you dropped the two plates like that, the other ten had to end up on the floor too, because of a waiter's honor."
Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England, 1971 (translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson)