Frau Else’s way of thanking me for my words is to squeeze my hand in a crushing grip.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, pulling away as surreptitiously as possible.
“You should go back to Germany. You need to take care of yourself, not me.”
Upon declaring this, her eyes fill with tears.
“You are Germany,” I say.
Frau Else lets out a laugh—strong, ringing, irresistible—that draws the gaze of everyone in the restaurant. I also choose to laugh heartily: I’m a hopeless romantic. A hopeless sentimentalist, she corrects me. Fine, then.
On our way back I stop the car at a kind of inn. Down a gravel path there’s a pine grove with stone tables, benches, and garbage cans scattered about at random. When we roll down the window we hear distant music that Frau Else identifies as coming from a club in town. How can that be when the town is so far away? We get out of the car and Frau Else leads me by the hand to a cement balustrade. The inn is at the top of a hill, and from up here we can see the lights of the hotels and the neon signs in the shopping district. I try to kiss her but Frau Else refuses me her lips. Paradox-ically, back in the car, it’s she who takes the lead. For an hour we kiss and listen to music on the radio. The cool breeze that comes in through the half-open windows smells like flowers and fragrant herbs, and the spot is ideal for making love, but I thought it best not to steer things in that direction.
Before I realized, it was after midnight, though Frau Else, her cheeks flushed from so much kissing, seemed in no hurry to get back.
On the steps leading up to the hotel we found El Quemado. I parked on the Paseo Marítimo and Frau Else and I got out of the car together. El Quemado didn’t see us until we were almost on top of him. His head was bowed and he was staring distractedly at the ground; despite his broad back, from the distance he looked like a child, hopelessly lost. Hello, I said, trying to radiate happiness, though from the instant when Frau Else and I got out of the car a vague and insistent sadness settled over me. El Quemado raised his sheeplike eyes and said good evening. For the first time, if only briefly, Frau Else remained standing by my side, as if we were a couple, with shared interests. Have you been here a long time? El Quemado looked at us and shrugged his shoulders. How is business? asked Frau Else. Decent. Frau Else laughed her best crystalline laugh, which sweetened the night:
“You’re the last of the season to leave. Do you have work for the winter?”
“Not yet.”
“If we paint the bar I’ll call you.”
“All right.”
I felt a twinge of envy: Frau Else obviously knew how to talk to El Quemado.
“It’s late and I have to get up early tomorrow. Good night.”
From the stairs we watched as Frau Else stopped for a moment at the reception desk, where presumably she spoke to someone, and then moved on down the dark corridor, waited for the elevator, vanished . . .
“What do we do now?” El Quemado’s voice startled me.
“Nothing. Sleep. We’ll play another day,” I said harshly.
It took an instant for El Quemado to digest what I’d said. I’ll be back tomorrow, he said in a tone in which I caught a hint of resentment. He rose in a leap, like a gymnast. For an instant we eyed each other like bitter enemies.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” I said, trying to control the sudden trembling of my legs and my desire to lunge at his neck.
In a fair fight, the two sides are equally matched. He’s heavier and shorter, I’m nimbler and taller; we both have long arms; he’s accustomed to physical exercise; my determination is my best weapon. The decisive factor might be the spot chosen for the fight. The beach? It seems like the right place, the beach at night, but there, I fear, El Quemado will have the advantage. Where, then?
“If I’m not busy,” I added dismissively.
In reponse El Quemado was silent, and then he left. As he was crossing the Paseo Marítimo, he looked back as if to check that I was still on the stairs. If only at that moment a car had appeared out of the darkness, going one hundred and fifty miles an hour!
From the balcony, not even the faintest glow can be seen from the pedal boat fortress. I’ve turned out my lights too, of course, except the one in the bathroom. The bulb over the mirror sheds an aquatic radiance that barely illuminates a wedge of carpet through the half-open door.
Later, after closing the curtains, I turn the lights back on and study one by one the various elements of my situation. I’m losing the war. I’ve almost certainly lost my job. Every day that goes by distances me a little further from an improbable reconciliation with Ingeborg. As he lies dying, Frau Else’s husband amuses himself by hating me, assaulting me with all the subtlety of the terminally ill. Conrad has sent me only a little money. The article that I originally planned to write at the Del Mar is set aside and forgotten . . . not an encouraging panorama.
At three in the morning, I got in bed without undressing and picked up the Florian Linden book where I’d left off.
I awoke a little before five, feeling suffocated. I didn’t know where I was and it took me a few seconds to realize that I was still in the town.
As summer fades (or as the visible signs of it fade), noises begin to be heard at the Del Mar that we never suspected before: the pipes now seem empty and bigger. The regular muted sound of the elevator has been replaced by scratching and races behind the plaster of the walls. The wind that every night shakes the window frame and hinges is more powerful. The faucets of the sink squeak and shudder before releasing water. Even the smell of the hallways, perfumed with artificial lavender, breaks down more quickly and turns into a pestilent stink that causes terrible coughing fits late at night.
One can’t help noticing those coughing fits! One can’t help noticing those footsteps in the night that the rugs never manage to muffle!
But if you go out into the hallway overcome by curiosity, what do you see? Nothing.
SEPTEMBER 19
I wake up to find Clarita in the room. She’s at the foot of the bed in her maid’s uniform, looking at me. I don’t know why her presence makes me happy. I smile and ask her to get in bed with me, though without realizing it, I ask in German. How Clarita manages to understand me is a mystery, but first I prudently lock the door and then she curls up beside me, taking offnothing but her shoes. As during our previous encounter, her breath smells of black tobacco, which happens to be very attractive in a woman-child like her. According to tradition, her lips should taste of sausage and garlic, or mint gum. I’m glad that’s not the case. When I climb on top of her, her skirt rides up to her waist and if her knees weren’t desperately gripping my thighs I’d say she feels nothing. Not a moan, not a sigh. Clarita makes love with perfect discretion. When we’re done, just like the first time, I ask her if she enjoyed herself. She nods her head, and immediately she jumps out of bed, straightens her skirt, puts on her underpants and shoes, and as I head to the bathroom to wash, she begins to tidy the room in workmanlike fashion, careful not to knock any counters on the floor.
“Are you a Nazi?” I hear her voice as I’m wiping my penis with toilet paper.
“What did you say?”
“I asked whether you’re a Nazi.”
“No. No, I’m not. In fact, I’m more like an anti-Nazi. What makes you think that, the game?” On the Third Reich box there are some images of swastikas.
“The Wolf told me you were a Nazi.”
“The Wolf is wrong.” I made her come into the bathroom so I could keep talking to her as I showered. Clarita is so ignorant that I think if I told her the Nazis were in power, say, in Switzerland, she would believe it.
“Doesn’t anybody wonder why it takes you so long to clean a room? Doesn’t anyone miss you?”
Clarita is sitting on the toilet with her back hunched as if getting out of bed brought on a fresh bout of some undisclosed illness. A contagious illness? The rooms are usually cleaned in the morning, she tells me. (I’m a special case.) No one misses her a
nd no one keeps tabs on her. It’s bad enough having to work so hard and earn so little money, without also having to endure constant supervision. Even Frau Else’s?
“Frau Else is different,” says Clarita.
“Why is she different? She lets you do whatever you want? She doesn’t get mixed up in your business? She protects you?”
“My business is my business, isn’t it? What does Frau Else have to do with my business?”
“I meant does she overlook your hookups, your little adventures.”
“Frau Else understands people.” Her sulky voice can scarcely be heard over the noise of the shower. “Does that make her different?”
Clarita doesn’t answer. But she makes no move to leave either.
Separated by the ugly white plastic curtain with yellow polka dots, both of us quiet, both of us waiting, I felt great pity for her and the desire to help her. But how could I help her when I was unable to help myself?
“I’m harassing you, I’m sorry,” I said when I got out of the shower.
My body, partly reflected in the mirror, and Clarita’s body, huddled imperceptibly on the toilet as if it weren’t that of a girl (how old must she be, sixteen?) but the cold body of an old woman, managed to move me to tears.
“You’re crying.” Clarita smiled stupidly. I toweled offmy face and hair and exited the bathroom to get dressed. Clarita was left behind mopping up the wet tiles.
There was a five-thousand-peseta bill somewhere in my jeans but I couldn’t find it. As best I could I scraped together three thousand in change and gave it to Clarita. She accepted the money without saying anything.
“ Since you know everything, Clarita”— I circled her waist with my arms as if I were about to start groping her again—“do you know what room Frau Else’s husband sleeps in?”
“The biggest room in the hotel. The dark room.”
“Why dark? Doesn’t it get any sun?”
“The curtains are always closed. He’s very sick.”
“Will he die, Clarita?”
“Yes . . . If you don’t kill him first . . .”
For some reason I can’t explain, Clarita brings out an instinctual cruelty in me. So far I’ve treated her well; I’ve never hurt her. But by her very presence she’s capable of awakening slumbering images deep inside of me. Quick and terrible images like lightning, which I fear and flee. How to exorcise this power so suddenly unleashed inside of me? By forcing her down on her knees and making her suck my dick and tongue my ass?
“You’re joking, of course.”
“Yes, it’s a joke,” she says, looking down at the floor as a drop of sweat slides neatly down to the tip of her nose.
“Then tell me where your boss sleeps.”
“On the second floor, at the end of the hallway, over the kitchen . . . You can’t miss it . . .”
After lunch I call Conrad. Today I haven’t left the hotel. I don’t want to risk a chance encounter with the Wolf and the Lamb (how chance would it really be?), or the Red Cross worker, or Mr. Pere . . . For once, Conrad doesn’t seem surprised by my call. I detect a hint of wariness in his voice, as if he were afraid to hear precisely what I plan to ask. Of course, he refuses me nothing. I need money and he agrees to send it. I ask for news of Stuttgart, Cologne, the preparations, and he gives a brief account, with none of the pointed and sarcastic commentary that I used to like so much. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to ask about Ingeborg. When I finally work up the courage, the answer just depresses me. I have the dim suspicion that Conrad is lying. His lack of curiosity is a new symp-tom; he neither begs me to come back nor asks when I’m leaving. Don’t worry, he says at some point, by which I gather that my end of the conversation hasn’t been entirely reassuring, I’ll wire the money tomorrow. I thank him. Our farewell is almost a murmur.
I run into Frau Else in one of the hotel corridors. We halt, shaken— in earnest or pretending, what does it matter?—some fifteen feet from each other, hands on hips, pale and sad, exchanging glances that reveal the despair beneath our flurry of activity. How is your husband? Frau Else points at the line of light under a door, or maybe the elevator, I don’t know. All I know is that, carried away by a powerful and painful impulse (an impulse generated in my churning stomach), I stepped forward and drew her to me without fear of discovery, meeting little resistance, wanting only to lose myself in her for a few seconds or for life. Udo, are you mad? You almost crushed my ribs. I lowered my head and apologized. What’s wrong with your lips? I don’t know. Frau Else’s finger on my lips is freezing cold, and I jump. They’re bleeding, she says. After promising her that I’ll clean up in my room, we agree to meet in ten minutes at the hotel restaurant. My treat, says Frau Else, apprised of my new financial straits. If you aren’t there in ten minutes, I’ll send a couple of the toughest waiters to get you. Oh, I’ll be there.
Summer 1943. The English and Americans land in Dieppe and Calais. I didn’t expect El Quemado to go on the offensive so soon. It’s worth stressing that the beachheads he’s won aren’t very strong; he’s got a foothold in France but it will still cost him something to establish a secure position and advance. In the East the situation is deteriorating; after a new strategic retreat, the front runs through Riga, Minsk, Kiev, and hexes Q39, R39, and S39. Dnepropetrovsk has gone over to the Reds. El Quemado has air superiority in Russia as well as in the West. In Africa and the Mediterranean the situation remains unchanged, though I suspect that things will look very different by the next turn. Curious detail: as we were playing I fell asleep. For how long, I don’t know. El Quemado shook my shoulder a few times, saying wake up. Then I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep again.
SEPTEMBER 20
I left the room at seven. For hours I had been sitting on the balcony waiting for dawn. When the sun came up I shut the balcony doors, closed the curtains, and stood there in the dark desperately searching for something to do to pass the time. Taking a shower, changing clothes—these seemed like excellent morning activities, but I just stood there, frozen in place, my breathing agitated. Daylight began to filter through the blinds. I opened the balcony doors again and stared for a long time at the beach and the hazy outline of the pedal boat fortress. Happy are those who have nothing. Happy are those who by leading such a life earn themselves a rheumatic future and are lucky with the dice and resign themselves to living without women. Not a soul was out on the beach so early in the morning, but I heard voices from another balcony, an argument in French. Who but the French raise their voices before seven! I closed the curtains again and tried to undress so I could get in the shower. I couldn’t. The light in the bathroom was like the glare of a torture chamber. With an effort I turned on the water and washed my hands. When I tried to splash my face I realized that my arms were stiffand I decided it would be best to leave it until later. I turned off the lights and went out. The hallway was deserted and lit only at each end by half-hidden bulbs that gave offa faint ocher glow. Without making any noise, I went down the stairs until I reached the first-floor landing. From there, reflected in the huge hallway mirror, I could see the the night watchman’s head resting on the edge of the counter. He had to be asleep. I retraced my steps to the second floor, where I turned toward the back (northeast) with my ears pricked for the familiar sounds of the kitchen in case the cooks had arrived, which was highly unlikely. At the beginning of my journey down the hallway, the silence was complete, but as I walked along I was able to make out an asthmatic snore that, at brief intervals, interrupted the monotony of doors and walls. When I came to the end I stopped. Before me was a wooden door with a marble plaque in the middle, with a four-line poem (or so I imagined) inscribed on it in black, written in Catalan. Exhausted, I set my hand on the jamb and pushed. The door opened without the slightest impediment. There was the room, big and dark, as Clarita had described it. All I could see was the outline of a window, and the air was thick, though there was no smell of medicine. I was about to close the door that I had so boldly
opened when I heard a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A voice of contradictory qualities: icy and warm, threatening and friendly:
“Come in.” The voice spoke in German.
I took a few steps blindly, feeling my way along the wallpaper, after overcoming an instant of hesitation in which I was tempted to slam the door and flee.
“Who’s there? Come in. Are you all right?” The voice seemed to issue from a tape recorder, though I knew that it was Frau Else’s husband who was speaking, enthroned on his giant hidden bed.
“It’s Udo Berger,” I said, standing there in the dark. I was afraid that if I kept moving I would run into the bed or some other piece of furniture.
“Ah, the young German, Udo Berger, Udo Berger, are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
From an unfathomable corner of the room, some murmurs of assent. And then:
“Can you see me? What can I do for you? To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
“I thought we should talk. Get to know each other, at least, exchange ideas in a civilized way,” I said in a whisper.
“Excellent idea!”
“But I can’t see you. I can’t see anything . . . and it’s hard to carry on a conversation like this . . .”
Then I heard the sound of a body sliding between starched sheets, followed by a groan and a curse, and finally, some ten feet from where I stood, the lamp on a night table came on. Lying on his side, in navy blue pajamas buttoned up to the neck, Frau Else’s husband smiled: Are you an early riser or haven’t you been to bed yet? I slept a few hours, I said. Nothing in that face matched my memories from ten years ago. He had aged rapidly and poorly.
“Did you want to talk to me about the game?”
“No, about your wife.”