Contango (Ill Wind) (28 page)

“Why?”

“Because she mightn’t have looked, to us, quite so awful as he
made out. I’m not suggesting that she was a beauty, of
course—merely that the peculiar quality of horror that Russell managed
to convey to us may not have been so much in the woman’s body as in his
own mind.”

“Maybe,” said Oetzler. He walked to the window, pulled back
the curtains, and gazed upwards to a string of lights crowning the dark
oblong of a neighbouring skyscraper. He felt very restless. What a bore these
brilliant talkers were apt to be, when you had them all to yourself! He felt,
as he sometimes did when he spent too much time in the atmosphere of his own
newspaper office, the astonishing futility of words. There was a spate of
them now, as never before in history—newspapers, books, the
radio—yet in the whole lot was there as much eternal truth as in, say,
the single statement of the Binomial Theorem? Which, by the way, was as far
as he had ever got in mathematics. He sighed as he thought of his own giant
presses at that moment preparing the word-stream which, in a few short hours,
would suffuse the mentalities of millions of breakfasters and travellers to
business. Never had there been more skilled manipulators of the thousands of
items in the vocabulary; indeed, the game of everlasting permutation and
combination and repetition had reached the dimensions of a giant industry.
Yet was there more truth in the world, or a keener perception of the meaning
of things, than if mankind had been created deaf and dumb?

“Not that that spoils the tale,” Lanberger added, pendantly to
his previous remark. “On the contrary, it’s the interplay of the
first-personal with the third-personal that makes the ‘I’
technique so interesting. I know that well enough, as a novelist. I wonder if
Russell really intends to use the story?”

“I should think he does,” answered Oetzler, with a smile.
“He’s a word-hound like yourself, you know. Well, perhaps not
quite like yourself. He’s one of those writer-men-of-action who go
rooting about the world so that we can all sit in arm-chairs at home and
enjoy their discomforts. Schadenfreude—isn’t that what we
Germans call it?”

“He’s a talented writer, I should imagine.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You say that disparagingly?”

“Not in respect of Russell personally, I assure you.”

“Of writers in general, then?”

Oetzler laughed. “Perhaps a little. As a matter of fact, such an
evening as we’ve just spent puts me in mind of Huxley’s little
illustration about the monkey and the typewriter—do you remember it?
He said that if one were to allow a monkey to fool about with a typewriter
for long enough, sooner or later, according to the laws of probability, the
creature would type out all the books that have ever been written.”

“By pure chance?”

“Yes. That’s mathematically quite sound, I understand. And, so
far as I can see, it seems just as true that, sooner or later, the monkey in
the same way would type out, not only all the stuff that has been written,
but also some equally wonderful stuff that hasn’t. Limiting ourselves a
little, shall we say a sonnet fit for the best highbrow monthly with thick
paper and wide margins?”

“What an amusing idea!”

“Yes, and it’s even more amusing when you reflect that by the
laws of chance this sonnet-phenomenon is just as likely to take place
immediately as a million or a trillion years hence. So that if we were to set
our monkey at work to-night, it’s just possible that we might come down
to-morrow morning to find a genuine addition to literature all
complete.”

“Well, what does it prove?”

“Nothing at all, my dear Lanberger, except that genius, talent, and
all that sort of thing is a little quicker in its results than a chance-
impelled monkey. Quicker, I admit; but I don’t think we can say surer.
And who knows if mere quickness is any particular virtue in a universe where
there seems to be time as well as space enough for everything?”

“I change my mind about your theory being amusing. I think
it’s infinitely depressing.”

“Perhaps. But please don’t call it MY theory—I’m
not nearly mathematician enough. As a matter of fact, I first heard it
advanced—not very seriously—by an Englishman named Elliott who
was over here for the War Debts negotiations in ’twenty-three. He came
here one night and thawed out wonderfully after dinner, as Englishmen very
often do. Interesting fellow—I see, by the way, that he’s just
been given a post in the British Cabinet… Well, well, Lanberger, after all
that I really think we ought to go to bed. Not quite the hour to turn to
metaphysics….”

A few moments later, as they were both on their way to their respective
rooms, Oetzler suddenly decided what he had better write to the girl in
Paris.

All day Paula had been very busy, for the delegations were
due to arrive that evening, and they had engaged the whole of the first and
second floors.

The Hôtel Corona occupied a well-chosen position at the fashionable end of
the city. From its green-uniformed porters who waited at the railway- station
to its lions couchant on either side of the main portico, it radiated a faint
flavour of the pre-War Baedeker. Almost one expected to find its halls
crowded with moustached Englishmen in tweed ulsters enquiring the times of
diligences. It had five storeys, between three and four hundred apartments,
and a dining-room that had at one time or another ministered to the wants of
most Europeans over fifty and possessed of a yearly income exceeding a
hundred thousand francs. Since the War its original air of quite Britannic
majesty had been tinged from a more distant source, and there was now a
cocktail-bar of immense sophistication as well as iced water for the
asking.

Looking at the Hôtel Corona in the spring of 1932, one could not but feel
a tide in the affairs of men that was lapping round it in a new direction,
preparatory, maybe, to leaving it altogether. It still faced the lake like a
starched shirt-front, living to all outward appearances that life of
perpetual evening-dress for which it had been designed. But inside, the
atmosphere was changed. For eighteen months the third and fourth floors had
been closed entirely, and for a year the grand dining-room had been used only
for occasional festivities. The grey-bearded head-porter stood in the lobby
with a forlorn air of waiting for grand-dukes that might arrive at any
moment. But the grand-dukes no longer arrived. The most that were now to be
expected were diplomatists with leather satchels, hustling journalists who
asked for beer at dinner, and that new post-War phenomenon—the typist
cocotte.

Still, the “Corona” survived if it did not flourish, and its
suave proprietor, M. Capel, was by no means disposed to object to the new-
fashioned invasion. On the contrary, he had reopened the dining-room, engaged
extra waiters and chambermaids, arranged special rooms for meetings, and laid
in copious stocks of hotel notepaper. Nor had he shown much agitation when
the president of the Polish delegation had rung him up from Warsaw and
threatened to cancel bookings if the Soviet delegation were to be housed on
the same premises. M. Capel knew that at an international conference such
preliminary roulades were to be expected; and, what was more to the point he
knew that the Polish delegation comprised only thirty odd, while the Russians
numbered over eighty. Hence he had accepted the ultimatum resignedly and had
straightway communicated with the Germans in Berlin and undercut the
quotation of his rival, the Grand Hotel Moderne, along the road.

It was all fixed up, therefore, that the Germans and Russians were to have
the whole of the first and second floors, and Paula Courvier, who was one of
the extra chambermaids, had thus been kept busy from very early morning on
that sunny day in May.

Not only the hotel, and all the other hotels, but the whole city and
district were in a similar froth of excitement. International conferences
were no novelties, but this one promised to be a record both for size and
duration. Which meant that everything and everyone was prepared and
expectant—shops, theatres, newspapers, railways, taxicabs, the post
office—not a trade in the city, from laundries to lung-specialists,
but looked for an augmentation of prosperity. Already during the fourteen
years of the new era a considerable vested interest in peace had arisen, not
dissimilar to that of Essen or Creusot in war; the municipality, indeed,
might well have changed its motto to “Ex Pace Lucellum.” For some
days before the official conference-opening, the advance-guard had been
arriving by every schnell-zug and train de luxe—secretaries,
publicists, interpreters, experts representing various interests, social
hangers-on, and bevies of demi-mondaines from Berlin and Paris who were
prepared to intersperse their pleasantries with trifles of eavesdropping and
minor espionage. Peace had its victories a little less than war, and though
the decorativeness of old- style diplomacy might be lacking, these
morning-coated Metternichs and tweed- suited Talleyrands had their raffish
moments— often of a kind to shock the respectable bourgeois
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Was it really possible that the celebrated
authors of memoranda and draft-protocols were THAT sort of person? Alas, it
was possible; but if one sold malmaisons or had shares in the local brewery,
it was also possible to be tolerant.

So, from the ends of the earth, during those spring days, there gathered
together the hirelings and the subordinates, followed in due course by the
principals themselves. It was a General Council of the new and so far
unestablished Faith—a Faith that had not yet had its Nicća, much less
its Trent. The streets were brilliant with flags and banners, and noisy with
chatter in many languages; a stroll of ten minutes’ duration had much
of the interest and few of the inconveniences of a world-tour. Here an
immaculate Japanese was buying a picture-postcard at a kiosk; there a group
of German journalists, elaborately shabby, sat clinking glasses at a café
table. Finally, towards sunset on the day before the conference-opening, a
train of teak-brown coaches arrived from the east and disgorged on to the
station platform a last consignment of hierarchy. Debonair even after their
long journeys, they spilled into taxicabs and tipped according to the degree
of lavishness with which their governments had endowed them.

By a different train, about an hour earlier, there had arrived the usual
day-mail from Marseilles, and most evenings, towards seven o’clock, it
was Paula’s habit to slip out, if she could manage it, across the road
to the post office and enquire if there were anything “poste
restante” for her. She did so on this occasion, and with the usual
result. When she re- entered the Hôtel Corona by a side-door, the delegations
were just arriving by the front, and all was in commotion. She went up
immediately to attend to her duties on the second floor.

These duties were arduous, but simple. Over her head, as she sat in an
alcove at one end of the long corridor, were eighteen numbered bells,
representing the eighteen rooms under her charge. If there was a ring, she
had to hasten to the corresponding room; but during the often long intervals
of waiting she could read or sew if she cared. In the evenings, however, the
corridor light was so poor that she usually did nothing at all, except fall
into a doze. Her hours were from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and from 2 p.m. until
midnight, on alternate days, and with only short pauses for meals. M. Capel
had known how to drive a hard bargain.

She had been at the “Corona” for just a week, and it was her
first experience of such work. Before that, there had been nightmarish months
of slowly encroaching poverty, as her income as a music-teacher had felt the
full blast of the world-slump. Before that, she had had for a time the post
of governess to an epileptic child; and before even that, she had been the
wife of a casino-croupier, who had finally left her with nothing of any
commercial value except French nationality. And in the days before wifehood
there had been the gradual, bitterly reluctant acceptance of changed times
and facts—the bartering of jewels in back-parlours of shops, the
signing of “Paula Mirsky” with less and less of a flourish as one
came to realise how little it counted. Farthest of all, came those ancient
days before 1917, and still more anciently before 1914—one dreamed of
them sometimes, but one tried not to remember.

Paula was now thirty-three—tall, dark-haired, sombre-eyed,
slender-nosed, always rather pale. Her husband, a swaggering Provençal, had
been consistently unfaithful, but that had not mattered much, because she had
married only in the first panic of finding herself without money. After two
years of him she had had enough of men, and the enoughness was written
genuinely in her face.

As she took her post at the end of the corridor that evening she felt, in
the same genuine way, that she had probably had enough of life as well. Still
no letter from Leon. Still no information about him from anyone. She sat down
on the small, cane-bottomed chair and faced the now familiar vista of doors
and carpet. There was a murmurous stir from below—sounds of voices, of
luggage being moved, of lift-doors clanging, the whine of the ascending
compartments. Soon the noise invaded her own corridor, but it did not concern
her yet; she sat motionlessly, while porters passed her with heavy trunks,
page- boys skipped ahead of men in large travelling overcoats who sauntered
along with their hands searching for small change. The delegations, she
thought, in a kind of daze. Then, inevitably, the bells above her head began
to ring.

For an hour or more after that she was continually busy. There was no
running water in the second-floor bedrooms, and as most of the arrivals
wanted to wash, she had to fill cans of hot water from the tap adjoining the
bathrooms. Some of the men were obvious Germans and looked pleased when she
replied to them in that language, which she spoke fairly well; but her
accommodation had been automatic. She had little interest in personal
identities; they were all no more to her than the occupants of certain rooms.
She felt fatigued and listless; her legs took her backwards and forwards, but
her mind all the time was clogged with wondering about Leon and why he had
not written. In one of the rooms, Number Two-five-seven, a man began some
long story about his luggage having gone astray; he spoke in school-book
French, and had a deep, rather husky voice which somehow did not match his
face, which was very round and red and shining. He went on with his story,
which finally led to a request for some soap. “Soap?” she echoed,
picking up the trail of a speech to which she had not really been listening.
But then he suddenly said: “Pardon, m’mselle, you look ill.
Don’t bother about the soap—I can do without it for the time
being.”