The Next in a Continuing Report on this Breaking Story

Great Escape: Food Server Tunnels Way to Freedom

by Peter Torrenti, Tape-beatles News Service

PRAGUE — A while ago, as John Heck, waiter was bustling about in his careless way of keeping a busy appearance, brushing the few stray sugar granules with a swipe of a relentlessly fastidious hand from a recently vacated table on the terrace at Chez Marcel in the lovely city of Prague in the Country Formerly Known as Czechoslovakia, I had the chance to return to ask the waiter himself about what he had been working on lately. But, because the boss was lolling about with ‘un carafe de vin rosé’ at the next table and was within earshot he had to feign small talk and perform the perfunctory hospitality with a ‘straight face,’ but then with equal vigilance he jumped off center stage to throw me an aside, quickly shot a fist-shaped hand into an upward rising motion, and, just when I expected him to say ‘Power to the People’ he extended an index finger and pursed his lips as though he were about to blow through its first joint. If the finger was the hollowed flute of a pan-piper then he was a player for a king. The gesture seemed to suggest that at that moment he didn’t want to talk about what he was doing sincerely, not in front of the man, (à la table à coté de nous) anyway. I didn’t know at that time that it would be the last I would see of him. You see, John Heck, waiter may just have been hollow as a shell, a plastic piece of decorator fruit, or the bamboo frame on a terrace chair, brought up from colonial Africa. A suggestion surfaced recently that he was in fact hollow like common bamboo or that fruit which is good only for the eye, yet, and it is the word ‘surprisingly’ which may perhaps spring to mind when I tell you this; not empty. He may have been, quite frankly, something of a trojan horse filled with seasoned fighting men desperately in want of the imposition of their desires for better lives upon the status. Quo. If there was concern about a force of unhappy little men attacking this outpost in the untamed economy of the wild East, it didn’t show easily on any of the faces of the restaurant generals.

In any event there were signs of something at work there, clues to what was about to transpire, though relatively few may have picked up on them. Within the text of a tape-recorded call to 911, not related to that of a recent kitchen fire, there was revealed an odd clue. Submerged in the room noise of the recorded message was an oblique reference about the trousers of John Heck, waiter. A grueling 12 minute search on a local search engine lead me to food service insider and beverage worker, Miguel Perez, who matter-of-factly let me in on a secret, though he gave it to me in the shape of a riddle: ‘Keep your eye on the cuff of the leg of John Heck, waiter’s trousers and by chance you will ascertain the secret to his perpetually dusty shoes and his slightly ruffled demeanor.’

I was given the key without realizing it when he told me it was also the reason the terrace cobblestone is swept every hour, on the hour. That the owners, managers, cooks, and even the Ukrainian cleaning woman, Miguel says, had not been able to account for the mysterious accumulation of dirt, sand, and small pebbles on the terrace floor or the sheer volume of earth that is daily carried out to the trash bin. They put their heads together on it, they placed, directed, and hurled blame, lambasted, insulted, ranted and cursed about it. It was with a keen eye during a recent afternoon lunch, I managed to spy the source of the great flow of earth, the phenomenon that patrons had come to call ‘le petit Sahara.’ It is with a little shock that I recount the scene: John Heck, waiter approached a group who had recently seated themselves at a cozy corner table. I watched carefully as the veteran server/story teller prepared to take the order for this tableful of visitors. As he reached into his pants pockets for a pen and a dog-eared order pad, some internal mechanism released two small packets of earth. With a step to the side and shake of the shoe, the dirt was blended with cobbled terrace and its cigarette butts, random vegetable matter, and a few stray chicken bones. He kept busy through lunch, never having the time to come over and level with me, as his machine-gun service etiquette made my head spin through the lunch hour and many more dirt packets added to the mounting dunes of ‘le petit Sahara.’ It is with great regret that I couldn’t stay to accomplish the interview, though it was with new eyes that I saw the serious expressions of the management team as they oversaw the hourly leveling of the terrace dunes.

One morning after a daily routine of polishing, sweeping, and mopping was completed with its usual pre-conscious clock-work repetition, the waiter stepped into the locker room to get into costume. The doors would be open soon. He was never to reappear. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that the tunnel he dug leading to a back street and the world was discovered, the entrance to it disguised behind a poster of the great Algerian footballer. One manager, a friend of the owner on vacation from Guadeloupe, dismissed the clear dissatisfaction and subsequent ‘walk-out’ of John Heck, waiter as ‘a prank, a publicity stunt,’ but laughed it off, saying: ‘There will probably be a light romantic Hollywood comedy made from this story, nevertheless. He used many of our soup spoons to dig his tunnel, and we’re not happy about that.’

Since the disappearance of John Heck, waiter, other clues came to light about the anachronistic life he lead. The personal effects left behind included a floppy disk containing e-mail correspondence. The files of primary interest turned out to be an exchange with another writer and photographer, specifically the real Esmond Choueke. Local authorities edited the text for continuity and clarity, and then again to give the sense that participants were speaking to each other within the same room.

—begin text—

SUBJECT: I’M THE REAL ESMOND

The real Esmond Choueke caught up with The Tape-beatles a few months ago for brief interview.

ESMOND: Yes, your web site lists someone named Esmond Choueke, and that happens to be me. I don’t quite understand what it’s all about — would appreciate it if you could let me know, thanks.

LLOYD: John, do you want to deal with this question? It’s your text!

JOHN HECK, WAITER: I will. If you are, in fact, the real Esmond Choueke and not the Peter Torrenti look-alike, who was our unwitting collaborator, let me fill you in. As a member of The Tape-beatles, I was taking my turn at writing a sporadic newsletter for the group. We had a small audience of readers. Since I practice a style of writing which mixes truth, half-truth, and flat-out lies, elements of chance, and events real or imagined, I used your name as I found it, by chance in a magazine, to add to the myth being built around The Tape-beatles. I suppose it has always meant something to me to use real names of real people. Treating you, a real live stranger, as a member of our artificial journalistic squad was a fancy which self-consciously lent a false authenticity to our activities; small jokes wrapped within layers of riddles were meant to be entertaining and, perhaps, humorous. The newsletter, in its proper context, was about our project. My ‘journalism’ is so obviously convoluted that it could never be properly trusted, nor taken seriously.
  In 1992 I could not have imagined that anyone could possibly discover their own name in one of my pieces. If you could let me know how you feel about your inclusion, I would like to know. Did you read the entire article? Did you find it amusing, pathetic, confusing, or a waste of time? Did you read the John Heck, waiter restaurant review in ‘The Expatriot’?

ESMOND: Well John, — is that your real name?

JOHN HECK, WAITER: (nods head affirmatively)

ESMOND: Well, that’s quite a story of how my name came to be used … in fact, I work for several magazines as I’m a freelance writer & photographer. The Tape-beatles saga reminds me a bit of an excellent movie called ‘The Rutles,’ which kind of mimicked The [real] Beatles in a really funny way. It was also a bit like the movie ‘This is Spinal Tap.’ But I couldn’t make all that much sense of your trend(s) of thought … If you want to know how I feel, I guess I’m a bit nervous about the possibility that my name could be used for something spiteful and/or misleading. At first, I was also quite amazed since I thought there was actually someone out there with the same name as mine — which, as you can tell, is a bit of an unusual name. I am wondering what your ‘artificial journalistic squad’ does … are you linked with the university? Actually, why don’t you simply do real journalism??

JOHN HECK, WAITER: There is no connection with the university. Excepting the fact that each member of The Tape-beatles studied there. I took a creative writing course, which was somewhat disappointing in that 8 of 10 students in that class listed Stephen King as one of their three favorite writers. It became a rather long semester once student writers started producing stories aspiring to that rather narrow genre that King does so well. There wasn’t a lot of creative thinking, just a lot style aping. Well, experimental writing and the avant-garde has its problems too, and can often be dull, off target, or simply beside the point. I don’t really expect anyone to be interested in attempts to liberate a form that has such strong traditions as well as its own baggage.
  I tend not to be a journalistic writer, though I enjoy a good journal; especially science journals. How well does freelance work pay? Can you live off your writing?
  As far as trends of thought are concerned, if you have read André Breton, Kathy Acker, Roland Barthes, colorful brochures from oil companies or insurance firms provided at information fairs, you may likely catch a drift. Again, I must say that I don’t see that there was any intentional spite directed at any person specifically (with the exception of Ross Haecker), but rather at groups (self-satisfied doctors), sets of bad ideas, or systems which enslave human minds, and therefore their souls, where well-intentioned precepts have drifted or have been replaced by a succession of bad ideas, the Newtonian/Victorian machine mind which continues to crank and grind regardless of the fact that the people have finally stood up and walked away for good.

ESMOND: Do you actually live in the Czech Republic? And you also went to the U.I.? Quite a varied background. I’m afraid I haven’t read any of the authors you mentioned … I guess I’m not that literary. Whatever happened to your gang of pals? Did they become productive members of society, or what?

JOHN HECK, WAITER: We would like to include our correspondence on our web site, with your approval. We would appreciate any additional criticism of my ‘reportage’ and our project, if you’re interested. I’m not sure if you’re interested in writing criticism, but this situation regarding personal and public issues, I believe, is interesting enough in itself to warrant a web-wide follow-up to the ‘True Uncensored Story Behind the Demise of The Tape-beatles.’ Incidentally, Ralph Johnson and Lloyd Dunn weren’t specifically aware that I had used real names in that article, neither were they surprised. Lloyd Dunn is the editor of the web site. If you feel like you have the time and inclination to participate, there is enough material at our web site to use.
  I temporarily left the fold of The Tape-beatles five years ago to go east and have been living in Prague since, and have traveled quite a bit within the Czech lands and the Balkans. I have Czech ancestry and a desire for frequent life-changes as well as a slight mistrust of things I know too well.
  A productive member of society would be relative to a definition of progress. I would say that my collaborators have succeeded in making the world a richer and more interesting place to live, at least for the persons who have in some way told us so. Before the emergence of the web, which brings people like us together, artists used the post as one way to connect to a larger, broader community than what most of us are confined to; bedrooms, small towns, repressive regimes, the office. The most famous mail-artist was Ray Johnson, of whom you may have heard.

—end text—

I called on Miguel Perez once again to see if he could help me connect this correspondence to the tunnel, his labor, an unresolved element of life. To draw some conclusions — I thought he might even have been in contact with John Heck, waiter, but he couldn’t be found at home. I went to his work place and was told by the operator that he had left. ‘One day during the lunch rush, he simply walked away from his beverage station without a word. We called to him, but there was no answer, he seemed possessed. I found it strange, since it is our policy to pay a minimal wage, keeping the workers like birds with clipped wings, so I can’t understand that he felt free enough to walk away.’

FINIS.

Sequential to The Expatriot no. 7