Explore "Adam's Breed" by Radclyffe Hall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
By half-past one the Capo was crowded. The Padrona took dish after dish from the lift that came up with a bump at the back of the bar, and passed them across to Mario and Schmidt, who grabbed quickly and disappeared. In between times she served out whisky and brandy, filled glasses with beer from the nickel-plated tap, produced cigarettes, cigars and liqueurs, shouted orders down the lift shaft, opened bottles, stacked up glasses, and surreptitiously powdered her nose with a puff in a pink silk handkerchief.
Gian-Luca watched Mario with the bright, alert eyes of a dog who expects an order; he was anxious to study the celebrated manner that Mario employed to the clients. Mario had said: "You assert yourself, but with grace -- you expatiate on the food. " And Gian-Luca, who was there on his first day to learn, waited, growing ever more anxious. He remembered all the things that Mario had said about tempting the appetite; his words regarding the handling of dishes -- only that morning he had spoken of a flourish, and remarked that a plate should appear out of space, quickly but without noise. He had begged Gian-Luca to watch all his movements, and not only to watch but to copy -- and yet now Mario was doing none of these things, and moreover he was making a noise. Schmidt, on the other hand, could carry four dishes and two plates with never a sound, but when Mario did likewise the pyramid slipped; and once a truly dreadful thing happened, for Mario upset a large dish of salad right on to the shoulder of a client. Gian-Luca dashed forward to the rescue with his napkin, but he only rubbed in the mayonnaise; the client, a fat business man, objected; the Padrone was called to apologize, and Mario, pale, with goggling eyes, stood there doing nothing at all. Of course after that Mario may have been nervous, for a number of small things happened; an irate lady was given a chop when her order had been for chicken; a coffee cup was broken; some clients were kept waiting unduly long for their food.