...of service

In the time before his loss Don Juan actually had taken it for granted that he would be waited on. Every new acquaintance soon came to see himself as part of Don Juan’s worldwide cohort of servants. Without a moment’s hesitation Don Juan would send him to get a book, medicine, some object left behind at a previous way station. No explicit order was required; a mere remark was enough: “I forgot my hat in…” (On the other hand, Don Juan also never asked for anything: his observation simply had to be followed up on.) In the twinkling of an eye he could become the other person’s servant, whether that person was someone he knew or a stranger. And how he could serve, or rather, be of service! Each time it was a wordless and unbidden fetching, hopping to it, and giving a leg up, unobtrusive and without any servile bowing and scraping, and once done, as if in passing, it immediately became anonymous, as he himself took on an anonymous quality as a helper. And his temporary identity as a servant or aide was always noted by the servants without surprise. Or rather, it went almost unnoticed, and likewise elicited no expressions of gratitude, no remuneration. Yet his effect on those he assisted in this way was more than that of a silent servant, incomparably more.

[Don Juan, Handke, P.]