The Doctor with the Tray

For twelve years I ran the banquet hall of the Hotel Kesten on the bank of the Vrbas, and I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. I had a wedding where the bride changed her mind between the appetizers and the soup, and a christening where the godfather fell asleep with his head next to the cake. But when the owner, Mr. Stanislav Gvozdenović, told me in March that in May we were holding a doctoral graduation party and that he wanted a cake in the shape of an open book, with the title in marzipan, I thought he was joking. His son Rastko had studied economics for eleven years, and what he knew best was which club on the embankment stayed open until what time.

Stanislav was not joking. He had a hotel, a construction company and four apartments on the Boulevard, but he did not have what his eternal rival Mirko Šolaja had: a son with a title. Šolaja's son held a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and at every family feast people called him "Doctor," even the waiters. Stanislav had listened to that for three years, and every time he ordered another round, so that no one would notice how hard he was gripping his glass. Then a political party offered to put Rastko on its list for the city assembly, "only it would be good if the young man had something in front of his name." Stanislav decided that Rastko would have something in front of his name. The only question left was who would write it.

The answer wore our hotel's white shirt and black vest and served coffee on the terrace. Lazar Mitrić, from a village above Kotor Varoš, had finished economics as the best student of his year, sent out sixty applications and received two replies, both with the word unfortunately in the first line. Between orders he read books he kept under the bar. One morning Stanislav called him into the office. Lazar told me later that the conversation did not last even ten minutes: twenty thousand marks, half now, half when a plaque reading "Dr Rastko Gvozdenović" was on the door. A dissertation for a private university that operated in the building of a former department store, with Stanislav's old fishing buddy as the supervisor. "You write, he defends, I pay," Stanislav said. "Everybody gets his share."

Lazar wrote for a year, at night, after his shifts. The topic was the economic potential of adventure tourism in the Vrbas canyon. On weekends he went down to Krupa and to the Tijesno canyon, talked with rafting guides, counted kayaks in parking lots, sat with campground owners. The deal was clear: every questionnaire, every survey and every email bore the signature Rastko Gvozdenović, doctoral candidate. Rastko spent that time on Jahorina, then in Budva, then on Jahorina again, and once at the bar he told me rafting was bad for the spine.

At the time I knew nothing about Andrijana. Lazar met her in July, when a kayak he had borrowed to see what he was writing about capsized near Krupa. She pulled him out of the water by the collar, told him he paddled like a man arguing with the river, and asked him his name. He told her the one written on the questionnaires. Later he tried three times to tell her the truth, once on the little bridge by the mills, once in her van and once over the phone, and all three times he gave up, because he would have had to say why as well. He thought he would tell her everything once he got the second half and left the hotel.

By December the dissertation had two hundred forty pages, tables, maps and seventy sources. Rastko learned three pages of the introduction by heart. The defense lasted twenty-two minutes. The committee had two questions, both asked by the supervisor, and he answered both himself. Meanwhile one committee member answered text messages, and another asked afterward whether he could get a discount at the Kesten for his daughter's wedding. In February a brass plaque appeared on the door of Stanislav's office. The second half of the money never arrived. When Lazar brought it up, Stanislav told him he was young, he had time, and from the fall he would be restaurant manager. Lazar stayed a waiter.

The graduation party was set for the last Saturday in May. Invitations went out to two hundred addresses. The deputy mayor came, the dean in his gown, two local TV stations, Šolaja with his doctor son, and half of Gospodska Street. At the entrance stood a portrait of Rastko in a gown, taller than me. The cake waited on its own table, with a marzipan inscription: "Dr Rastko Gvozdenović." Stanislav's wife Ljubinka had ordered five hundred business cards with the title and handed them out even to the women at her hair salon. I drew up the waiters' schedule myself, and since Lazar was the best I had, I put him at the head table. Only when I saw Stanislav go pale as Lazar poured him wine did I realize I had made some mistake. What exactly, I found out half an hour later, like everyone else.

The dean spoke about a young scientist who had turned the Vrbas canyon into a laboratory. Stanislav spoke about sacrifice, about sleepless nights, and about how his son had slept for weeks in a tent near Krupa. The deputy mayor applauded first and loudest, because he too, people said, had earned his master's degree in the same department store. Rastko stood up, thanked "my father, my mother and the Vrbas," and sat down, red to the ears. All that time Lazar stood behind him with a bottle of žilavka and stared at the floor.

Then a young woman appeared in the doorway in a windbreaker and sneakers, tanned like someone who had spent the whole spring on the water. She walked past the portrait, stopped and frowned. "That's not him," she told the security guard, who did not know what to answer. Then she looked toward the head table and shouted: "Rastko!" Rastko Gvozdenović turned around. But she was not looking at him. She was looking at the waiter with the bottle of žilavka.

She walked between the tables straight to Lazar. "The paper says you are celebrating your doctorate at the Kesten tonight," she said. "And not a word to me. And what are you doing with that bottle?" Lazar set the bottle down on the table. The hall went quiet. The dean asked who the young lady was. "Andrijana Bilbija, rafting guide from Krupa," she said. "And Dr. Gvozdenović's girlfriend." She pointed at Lazar. Rastko looked at his father, his father looked at the dean, and Šolaja, on the other side of the hall, slowly took out his phone.

Stanislav stood up and laughed the laugh with which he used to get building permits. "The young lady is mistaken. This is our waiter, Lazar." Andrijana looked at him the way a guide looks at a tourist who has fallen out of the boat and claims he jumped. "A waiter? This man spent the whole summer on the water with me. He measured every rapid from Krupa to Karanovac. I carried his questionnaires from camp to camp, and I read every page before the committee did. His name is Rastko Gvozdenović." Lazar said quietly: "That is not my name."

The dean, who now had to save his own face, turned to Rastko. "Colleague Gvozdenović, tell the young lady how many guides you surveyed in Tijesno." Rastko opened his mouth and closed it. "Forty-seven," Lazar said behind his back, as if talking to himself. "Nineteen of them women. Two men refused because they thought I was from the tax office." Someone in the hall laughed, then someone else, and then the whole hall was laughing, except the head table.

Then Rastko did the only smart thing of the evening. He took off the gown, folded it and handed it to Lazar. "Dad, I told you I didn't want to," he said. "And you said nobody would be able to tell." Then he went to the bar and ordered a beer, and for the first time since I had known him he looked like a man who had taken off somebody else's shoes.

Stanislav grabbed Lazar by the elbow and took him into the kitchen. I was standing by the dishwasher and heard everything. "How much do you want to make this go away?" "The second half," Lazar said. Stanislav reached for his wallet. "And my own name on the cover. Otherwise tomorrow I tell the dean everything, with footnotes." Stanislav was silent for a long time. Then, more quietly, he asked: "And how much would you take to write one for me too?" Lazar laughed, for the first time in a year. He took off the black vest, hung it on a hook by the dishwasher and said: "I don't write under other people's names anymore, boss."

By morning Šolaja's video had two hundred thousand views, under the title "Waiter Defends Doctorate." The university announced that it was opening a review. The brass plaque was taken off Stanislav's door because of renovations, and the party found another candidate for its list, one with a master's degree. From June on Rastko worked at the front desk. He was the friendliest receptionist I ever had, and nobody called him Doctor anymore.

The cake stayed untouched until midnight. When the guests had gone, I cut it up for the kitchen staff. I gave the marzipan "Dr" to Lazar. He broke it in half and gave half to Andrijana, who ate it standing up and said she liked Lazar much better as a name. They drove off in her van toward Krupa, with the gown thrown over the paddles on the back seat.