The White Hotel (8 page)

A L
AWYER:

The only drawback is, the noise at night. Of course one must have sympathy with them, but we too have had a loss, and it’s no excuse for ruining people’s sleep. We have complained but the manager seems unwilling or unable to control them.

A R
ETIRED
P
ROSTITUTE:

A gentleman complimented me on my good figure, so it obviously doesn’t show. I’m picking up a bit more strength every day and getting more used to it. Just feel a bit weighed down on the left, but I suppose that will pass. I am fortunate, there are many worse off here. The weather is good and the food first-class.

No one felt in the mood to dance. The guests ate their dinner quietly and listened, much moved, to the gypsy band, who played sweet and melancholy tunes. One of their own number, a violinist, had been trapped by the fire in a lift, and burnt beyond recognition. The young lovers, possibly, might have danced, but they did not appear for dinner.

During one of the pauses between melodies, when only the low tone of sombre conversation prevailed, and the politely hushed clink of serving dishes, the army major rose from his table (he always dined alone, at a small table in the corner), walked to the rostrum, murmured something to the plump, sweating band
leader, who gave a nod, and spoke to the guests through the microphone. He said he would like to speak to as many of them as possible, on a matter of some urgency, and would they care to take a drink from the bar, after they had eaten, and assemble in the billiard room. There was silence after he had spoken, then a rise in the level of conversation. Perhaps a third of the guests decided to see what the “mad major” (as he was known to many of them) wanted to speak to them about. When the coffee cups had been drained, and the brandies and liqueurs gathered from the bar, a sizeable crowd made its way down to the billiard room and sat on the rows of seats around the table. The green matt was still drying out from the flood, and shimmered under the spotlight like a rectangular scum-covered swimming pool.

The major, who was English and named Lionheart, stood at the baulk end of the table and waited for latecomers to crowd in at the back. “Thank you for coming,” he began in a firm but resonant voice. “Let me break the ice by saying that I haven’t brought you here to talk about death. Death and I are old acquaintances and he holds no terrors for me. We mourn those who died in the flood and the fire, but this is not what I want to speak to you about. Such things happen. They are acts of God. We should not allow these events to cast too great a cloud over us.” A quiet ripple of assent passed through the guests at these words, and one or two of them looked at the tall and distinguished-looking soldier with a new respect.

The major looked down, stubbing his cigarette, very slowly, as though needing time to marshal his thoughts. There was a deep silence in the billiard room, broken only by the purring of a black cat, the hotel pet (and a great favourite with the guests), who had stolen down with the throng and was curled up, now, in the lap of the watchmaker’s wife, who was stroking her. The
cat had been badly singed in the fire, but luckily had escaped with no great harm done.

“Odd things have been happening, however,” the major went on, crisply. He paused, waiting for his words to sink in. The words had had the ring of military authority. He would have had a good war, thought Henri Poussin, an engineer. A nonentity before, and a nonentity of a different kind after, but when the keynotes of the times were urgency and violence, Lionheart must have been pretty good.

“Would you care to justify that statement, Major?” said Vogel, the German lawyer, sharply.

The major looked at him with scarcely veiled contempt. Vogel was a cynic and a poltroon; he had been caught cheating at cards. “Of course,” said the major quietly. “The falling stars.” The silence of the assembled throng fell into a deeper stillness, with all of them at once—except Vogel—holding their breaths. “Everyone has seen them,” the major went on quietly. “Not just one or two people, but everyone; and not just on one night but almost every night. Large, bright, white stars.”

“Large as maple leaves,” said the salesman’s mistress, in a soft, half-drugged tone. She squeezed her hands together, as if frightened that she had spoken out.

“Exactly,” said the major.

“And the elm leaves are red,” said the watchmaker, springing up, shaking off his wife’s hand. “Has anyone else noticed that?” He looked around him excitedly, and several heads nodded. He was referring to the cluster of elms at the end of the lawn behind the hotel. The people who had nodded dropped their gaze and licked their lips nervously. But other voices agitatedly claimed that this was not true. These voices carried little conviction, and were soon silent. Total silence fell again, and a distinct coldness
had spread in the room. Anxious to avoid a spread of alarm and despondency, the major proposed that they should break off for a few minutes while people went upstairs to recharge their glasses. The major sat down, suddenly tired, and in the hubbub of talking and pushing towards the stairs Vogel glided up to him, his rimless glasses glinting maliciously. “I’m surprised at you, Lionheart,” he said—lightly enough, but with an iron edge of contempt and resentment.

The major leaned back in his chair. “Are you? In what way?”

“Spreading panic among the ladies. Why couldn’t you have kept them out of it? I don’t accept your alarmist ideas for one moment. But just supposing they’re true, why couldn’t you have left them out of it?”

“In the first place, Vogel, you are under-rating the ladies’ intelligence. It’s a habit with people in sedentary occupations—always unwise, and in some cases dangerous.”

Vogel flushed slightly, but he remained controlled.

“In the second place?”

“For their own safety—for the safety of all of us—they’ve got to realize we may be menaced by things we don’t understand. At least,
I
don’t pretend to understand them. But then, I haven’t had the benefit of a German education.”

The lawyer turned away abruptly. The soldier felt annoyed that he had allowed himself to be goaded into a discourteous remark. But he quickly brought his thoughts back to the serious business in hand, as his fellow guests had reassembled with their drinks and were waiting for him to resume the discussion. He got to his feet. Momentarily dizzy, swaying slightly, he gripped the damp cushion of the billiard table.

“The important thing,” he said, “is for us to share frankly what we have seen, or think we have seen; and if possible to find
rational explanations. For instance I don’t know if I’m alone in having seen lightning striking the lake? A livid stroke, absolutely vertical.” He looked around questioningly. After a short, tense silence, an elderly nurse flushed and said quietly, “No, I saw it too.” “And I,” said a gaunt, hook-nosed accountant. His wife, too, nodded her head vigorously. Several others gave subdued, embarrassed gestures of assent, and sipped thoughtful, perturbed drinks. The major asked if anyone else had any odd occurrences to report.

“A school of whales,” said a nice-looking blond young woman, an office secretary. “Yesterday morning, when I went down for an early swim. I thought I was seeing things, or rather
not
seeing things, if you know what I mean, because the lake has no outlet. It’s just not possible. But now you’ve made me think again. I’m sure they weren’t low-lying clouds.”

“Perhaps you were seeing your hangover,” said Vogel, sniggering.

“No.
I
saw them too,” said his pale sister. “I’m sorry, Friedrich,” she added hurriedly, “but I must tell the truth. I had to get up at dawn, for some reason which I needn’t go into, and I looked out of my window.”

“And you saw whales?” pressed the major, with a kind and gentle smile.

“Yes.” She twisted her handkerchief, and Vogel looked at her with contempt and loathing.

It appeared that no one else had seen the school of whales; but no one else had been up at dawn, the previous day, and the painfully honest evidence of Vogel’s sister had been impressive.

“Any other testimonies?” inquired the major curtly. “Odd events, odd sightings?”

Eyes shifted round the room, in the blank silence.

“Then let us consider what we have. Falling stars. Red leaves. Lightning. A school of whales…”

Bolotnikov-Leskov, who had sat watchfully and remote, stroking his short and elegant beard, in the furthest corner, broke in at this point. The voice of such an eminent statesman earned instant respect, even from those who disagreed with his politics. “I can suggest nothing in the way of”—he sighed and spread his hands—“explaining the falling stars, the red leaves, or the lightning. But I
believe
I may have an explanation for the whales. Madame Cottin”—he bowed to the plump, blue-dressed lady, who inclined her smiling face in response—“is a corsetière. And part of every corset is—to speak bluntly—dead whale. It seems to me not impossible that her presence among us—which has so cheered us all because of her exceptional warmth and vitality—has ‘called’ the whales, so to speak. Attracted them, sung to them, lured them home, call it what you will.”

Madame Cottin, fanning her flushed cheeks, said that, indeed, she had known occasions before when ladies had seen whales, when she—Madame Cottin—was near at hand.

Bolotnikov-Leskov nodded at her, gratefully, blushing like a boy.

The rational, or almost rational, explanation for the whales’ appearance cheered the company, and emboldened a few of them to mention phenomena they had witnessed but been too frightened to declare. A Lutheran pastor said hesitantly that he had seen a breast flying through the yew trees when he had strolled up to the church one evening before dinner. “I thought at first it was a bat,” he said, “but the nipple was clearly visible.”

A heavily busted woman with greying hair said that she had recently had a breast removed because of a growth. Major Lionheart thanked her for her frankness, and there was a low murmur
of sympathy. Vogel, looking distinctly yellow, said he
thought
he had seen a petrified embryo floating in the lake shallows, but it could just as easily have been a piece of fossilized tree. His sister, beginning to weep, confessed to an abortion, ten years ago. There was a painful and shocked silence, and it was clear to everyone that Vogel had known nothing of this. The muscles of his face trembled, and the major felt a shaft of compassion for the dried-up German lawyer.

Vogel’s sister was now sobbing uncontrollably. It was a dry, racking sound, almost unbearable to listen to; men who had survived the flood and the fire without flinching were lighting up cigarettes and cigars in an effort to calm their nerves. It was a huge relief when the pastor leaned across Vogel, took the woman’s arm in a kind but firm grip, and led her from the room, threading a path for her between guests and billiard table. While she was being escorted out, the baker’s wife could be seen, by those near, nudging her husband and whispering to him, and he was shaking his head. But when silence had fallen again the baker got to his feet and in a stumbling working-class voice, barely audible, said he had seen a womb gliding across the lake. He had been out alone, fishing. The womb had barely skimmed the surface, and quickly vanished. “Sometimes you do start seeing things when you’re out fishing alone, especially at dawn or dusk. But there was no mistaking this.” He sat down, glancing at his wife for support.

Major Lionheart could not suppress a yellowish-toothed grin at the baker’s comical, low accent, though he tried to pretend he was flexing his cheek muscles; and even Bolotnikov-Leskov, for all his revolutionary ideals, covertly smiled. The major asked if anyone else had seen a gliding womb. In the silence, someone said that possibly he had seen a loaf of bread, and there were tension-easing
chuckles. But then an anonymous male voice, from the corner shadows, cracked out, “Has anyone seen the glaciers? In the mountains.” It wiped all the smiles off and renewed the chill in the room.

There were various attempts by sundry guests to explain the falling stars, the lightning, the red leaves and the glaciers. None of them carried conviction, even to those who put forward the explanations. The major, bringing the meeting to a close, counselled vigilance. Bolotnikov-Leskov thanked the major on behalf of all present—there was another murmur of assent—and proposed that, in the event of anyone witnessing any further inexplicable occurrences, they should straightway inform the major, who would be empowered to call another meeting if and when he thought it necessary. The proposal was carried by subdued acclamation.

As the guests trooped two abreast up the stairs, the baker found himself next to the elderly nurse. She took the chance to tell him that her grand-niece, who had not felt well tonight and so had gone to bed early, had only a month ago undergone an operation for the removal of her womb. “I’ve brought her here to recuperate,” she said quietly, not wishing to be overheard. “It’s very sad, because she’s only in her twenties. I didn’t want to say it in public because it would upset her to have it known. She’s disturbed enough already. But I wanted you and your wife to know.” The baker squeezed her arm, gratefully.

It was several evenings before the young lovers again ventured down to dine. When they did, they found their table had been allocated to new guests. There was simply no end to the stream
of hopeful visitors who turned up at the white hotel, and an empty table was a luxury it could not afford. The head waiter explained this, apologetically, to the young couple, saying that he had assumed they wished to take every meal in their room. He asked them to wait while he went and had a word with a buxom, brassily attractive, artificially blond woman, Madame Cottin, who sat alone at a table for two. Madame Cottin smiled agreement, nodding a welcome to the young couple across the dining room; and the head waiter quickly produced an extra chair, and escorted the couple to the lady’s table. It was a tight squash, and the young man was full of apologies for breaking in on her privacy; but Madame Cottin laughed away all his regrets and shrieked good-humouredly as legs embarrassingly collided under the table.