Call Me Servant! (Novel)

Please Call Me Servant

a novel by Milena Oda (An excerpt) 

My name is Servant.

            Call me Servant, I ask most sincerely, I am and am named Servant. A person need not have a first and last name. My name is Servant. “What is your first name, your surname?” they ask me obtusely, then I turn around and do not want to hear it. The ladies and gentlemen don’t get it? How else should servants demonstrate their servant’s existence? They are amazed, shake their heads, look at me and cannot understand it. “I cannot assist you, sir, with an answer.” They ask me again, to unnerve the servant: “Your name is Ervin Servant?” No, my name is Servant. To questions such as “Why do you call yourself Servant?” I have no explanation. I have always been the soft background music to the loud main melody: as a chestnut vendor, newspaper dispenser, curator in the armory museum, porter, doorman. I began as a lackey and want to end as one, too.

          I always point to my vocation. They don’t see a servant? They don’t discern my splendid livery?          

My livery, that is my greatest possession and pride. I am the owner of three magnificent liveries, all three are distinctive mixed breeds, as I am myself.

Today I am serving in my scarlet and black livery. A black tailcoat with golden buttons in the style of a Danish servant’s coat, each button engraved with “Numquam servari” shined each morning, broad gold cuffs and bands on each arm, with millimeter-wide green stripes that run across the coat from breast to seam, scarlet-black Dutch trousers, a white shirt, scarlet bowtie, pristine white gloves, scarlet-black socks complete my fit-for-service persona, how ingenious this little nuance is – “Your imagination delights me, Servant,” says my affectionate master, who is always ready with praise for his good servant. A wonderful master!

            I always have my livery on, except during my morning and evening toilet, so no one has any reason to (still) call me Leonard. I always request a long reprieve when I have to hear or speak the name “Leonard.” I’m not Leonard, indeed I don’t want to be Leonard to anyone anymore, not even to my mother. And certainly not when I’m standing before someone in my livery.

I have hung a sign on the wall in every room: “As a servant in my livery, I feel like a weighty and useful person who respects his duties and is always ready to be at his master’s service, with tenacious loyalty and obedience, in his livery!” I repeat: In my uniform I feel like a person, as I never do in civilian clothing. I hate normal trousers, a normal pullover. They suffocate me. I suffer from a bacterial allergy when I must wear everyday clothes. My livery, that is my perfect self. 

            Submission and servantly bondage captivate me with the allure of self-restraint and selflessness. I have an unindependent mind, a servantly mind, so that I neither can nor want to experience freedom. Any awareness of freedom is unbearable to me. I avoid every sort of freedom, every free moment. I go into a panic when I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can only do what is ordered of me. I want to shed the burden of selfhood, of being a free individual. I freely don the leash. By day and by night I want to stand at my master’s disposal like a thing, for the master founders on daily tasks that only his servant can and wants to handle. The servant is air. The air his master needs to breathe.

            I stand before my master in my livery in an upright servant’s pose and call him “Master.”

            I am a true representative of the old values of a traditional servant. I embody the epitome of the most courteous (courtly) servant’s noble servantliness in this century. Such a servant enjoys a singular success when his master’s day runs smoothly and the servant fulfills his master’s wish long before he utters it.