“Aren’t you allowed to drink?” Clerfayt asked.
“It isn’t absolutely forbidden, but it’s simpler this way.” Hollmann thrust the flask back into his pocket. “We get to be pretty childish up here.”
A sleigh stopped in front of the door. Clerfayt saw that it was the one he had met on the road. The man in the black fur cap got out.
“Do you know who that is?” Clerfayt asked.
“The woman?”
“No, the man.”
“A Russian. His name is Boris Volkov.”
“White Russian?”
“Yes. But just to vary things, not a former grand duke, and not poor. I gather that his father opened a bank account in London at the right time and was in Moscow at the wrong time. He was shot. The wife and son got out. The story goes that the wife carried emeralds the size of walnuts sewed into her corset. In 1917 women still wore corsets.”
Clerfayt laughed. “You’re a regular detective agency. How do you know all that?”
“Up here you soon know everything about everyone,” Hollmann replied with a trace of bitterness. “In two weeks the skiers leave, and this village goes back to being a gossip society for the rest of the year.”
A group of short people pressed by behind them. They were dressed in black and were talking animatedly in Spanish.
“For a small village, you seem to have a pretty international set here,” Clerfayt said.
“That we have. Death hasn’t got around to being chauvinistic yet.”
“I’m no longer so sure of that.” Clerfayt looked around toward the door. “Is that the Russian’s wife?”
Hollmann glanced around. “No.”
The Russian and the woman came in. “Don’t tell me those two are also sick,” Clerfayt said.
“But they are. They don’t look it, do they?”
“No.”
“It’s this way. For a while, the patients look as though they’re brimming over with life. Then that stops; but by then they’re no longer running around.”
The Russian and the woman lingered near the door. The man was saying something insistently to the woman. She listened, then shook her head vehemently and walked swiftly toward the back of the lobby. The man waited a moment, watching her; then he went outside and climbed into the sleigh.
“They seem to be quarreling,” Clerfayt said, not without satisfaction.
“That sort of thing is always happening. After a while everyone here goes a little off his rocker. Prison-camp psychosis. Proportions shift; trivialities become important and important things secondary.”
Clerfayt scrutinized Hollmann. “Does that happen to you, too?”
“To me, too. It’s this business of forever staring at one point. No one can endure it.”
“Do the two of them live in the sanatorium?”
“The woman does; the man lives out.”
Clerfayt stood up. “I’ll drive over to the hotel now. Where can we have dinner together?”
“Right here. The place has a dining room where guests can come.”
“Good. When?”
“Around seven. I must go to bed at nine. Like school.”
“Like the army,” Clerfayt said. “Or before a race. Remember how our manager in Milan used to come and shoo us up the stairs of the hotel like chickens?”
Hollmann’s face brightened. “Gabrielli? Is he still around?”
“Of course. What would happen to him? Managers die in bed—like generals.”
The woman who had entered with the Russian came back. At the door she was stopped by a gray-haired matron who seemed to be reprimanding her. Without replying, she turned around. Indecisively, she stood still—then she caught sight of Hollmann and came over to him. “The Crocodile doesn’t want to let me out any more,” she said softly. “She says I shouldn’t have gone for a drive and she’ll have to report me to the Dalai Lama if I do it again.…”
She stopped. “This is my friend Clerfayt, Lillian,” Hollmann said. “I’ve told you about him. He’s paying me a surprise visit.”
The woman nodded absently. She seemed not to have recognized Clerfayt, and turned to Hollmann again. “She wants me to go to bed,” she said angrily. “Just because I had a little fever a few days ago. But I’m not letting her keep me locked up. Not tonight! Are you staying up?”
“Yes. We’re eating in Limbo.”
“I’ll come, too.”
She nodded to Clerfayt and Hollmann, and left.
“It must sound like Tibetan to you,” Hollmann said. “Limbo is our name for the room where guests can eat. The Dalai Lama is the doctor, of course, and the Crocodile the head nurse.…”
“And the woman?”
“Her name is Lillian Dunkerque. Half Belgian, half Russian. Lost both her parents in the war.”
“She seems awfully worked up about nothing.”
Hollmann gave a shrug. Suddenly he looked weary. “I’ve told you that everybody here is a little off his rocker. Especially when there’s been a death in the place.”
“There’s been a death?”
“Yes, a friend of hers. Just yesterday. It doesn’t really concern the rest of us, but something of ours always dies, too. A bit of hope, probably.”
“Yes,” Clerfayt said. “But that’s so everywhere.”
Hollmann nodded. “People start dying here as spring approaches. More than in winter. Odd, isn’t it?”
Chapter Two
ABOVE THE FIRST FLOOR, the sanatorium no longer looked like a hotel; it was unmistakably a hospital. Lillian Dunkerque stood in front of the room that had been Agnes Somerville’s. She heard voices and noise, and opened the door.
The coffin was no longer there. The windows were wide open, and two cleaning women were going over the room. The floor was wet; everything smelled of Lysol and soap; the furniture had been pushed into one corner, and the electric light fell with an even glare over every feature of the room.
For a moment, Lillian thought she had entered the wrong room. Then she noted the small plush bear which had been the dead woman’s mascot. It was lying on top of a wardrobe. “Has she already been taken away?” she asked.
One of the cleaning women straightened up. “She’s been moved to Number Seven. We have to clean up here. They need it for a new patient tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
Lillian closed the door. She knew Number Seven; it was a small room next to the freight elevator. The dead were put there because they could then be conveniently carried down in the elevator at night. Like luggage, Lillian thought. And behind them, their last traces were washed away with soap and Lysol.
There was no light burning in Number Seven. Nor were there any candles. The coffin had already been closed, the lid pushed down over the thin face and vivid red hair, and screwed tight. Everything was prepared for removal. The flowers had been taken away from the coffin; they lay in a canvas wrapper on a nearby table. It was a special canvas for this purpose, equipped with rings and cords for bagging up flowers. The wreaths lay alongside, piled one on top of the other, like hats in a millinery shop. The curtains had not been drawn, and the windows were open. It was very cold in the room. The moon shone in.
Lillian had come to see her dead friend once more. It was too late. No one would ever again see the pale face and brilliant hair that had once been Agnes Somerville. Tonight the coffin would be carried down secretly and transported by sled to the crematorium. There, under the assault of the fire, it would begin to burn; the red hair would crackle once and spray sparks; the rigid body would heave up once more in the flames, as though it had come to life—and then everything would collapse into ashes and nothingness and a little faded memory.
Lillian looked at the coffin. Suppose she is still living, she thought suddenly. Could it not be that Agnes had returned to consciousness once more in this inexorable box? Didn’t such things happen? Who could say how often it happened? Only a few cases were known, it was true, when the seemingly dead were found to be alive; but
how many might not have silently suffocated because no one came to their rescue? Could it not be that now, right now, Agnes Somerville was trying to scream in the narrow darkness of rustling silk, trying with parched throat to scream, incapable of producing a sound?
I’m crazy, Lillian thought; I shouldn’t have come into this room. Why did I? Out of sentimentality? Out of confusion? Or out of that horrible curiosity that makes one stare into a dead face as if it were an abyss from which we hope to dredge some kind of answer? Light, she thought; I must turn on the light.
She started back toward the door. Suddenly she stood still and listened. She thought she heard a rustling noise, very low, but quite distinct, like nails scratching on silk. Swiftly, she pressed the light switch. The strong illumination of the bare bulb on the ceiling drove back night, moon, and horror. I’m hearing ghosts, she thought. It was my own dress, my own fingernails. It was not the last feeble flicker of life stirring one last time.
She stared at the coffin. No, this black polished box with the bronze handles, standing there in the glare, contained no life. On the contrary—enclosed within it was the darkest menace known to mankind. It was no longer her friend Agnes Somerville who lay there motionless in her white dress, with halted blood and rotting lungs; nor was it any longer the waxen image of a human being slowly beginning to be destroyed by its own enclosed fluids. No, in this box lurked nothing more than absolute zero, the shadow without shadow, the incomprehensible nothingness with its eternal hunger for that other nothingness that dwelt within all life and grew, that was born with everyone and that was also silently growing in herself, Lillian Dunkerque, consuming her life day after day, until it alone would be all that was left and its shell would be packed into a black box just as this one was, consigned to decay and disposal.
She reached behind her for the door handle. As she touched it, it turned sharply in her hand. She suppressed an outcry. The door opened. An attendant stood there, staring at her as wild-eyed as she stared at him. “What the hell!” he stammered. “Where did you come from?” He looked past her into the room, and at the curtains fluttering in the draft. “The room was locked. How did you get in? Where is the key?”
“It was not locked.”
“Then somebody must have—” The attendant glanced at the door. “Oh, the key’s still in the lock.” He wiped his hand over his face. “You know, for a moment I thought—”
“What?”
He pointed to the coffin. “I thought you were it and—”
“I am,” Lillian whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
The man took a step forward into the room. “You didn’t get me. I thought you were her in the coffin. Whew! Sure made me jump.” He laughed. “That’s what I call a scare. What are you doing here, anyway? We’ve already screwed the lid down on Number Eighteen.”
“Who?”
“Number Eighteen. I don’t know the name. No need to. When it comes to this, the finest name does no good.” The attendant turned off the light and closed the door behind them. “Be glad that you’re alive and kicking, Miss,” he said genially.
Lillian dug some change out of her bag. “Here’s something for the scare I gave you.”
The attendant saluted, and rubbed the bristle on his face. “Thank you, Miss. I’ll share it with my assistant, Josef. After a little job like this, we can always use a shot with a beer chaser. Don’t take it so to heart, Miss. Sooner or later we all have our turn.”
“Yes,” Lillian said. “That’s a comfort. It really is an enormous comfort, isn’t it?”
She stood in her room. The central heating hummed. She had all the lamps on, as well as the ceiling light. I’m crazy, she thought. I’m afraid of the night. What shall I do? I can take a sedative and go to sleep with the lights on. I can call up Boris and talk with him. She moved her hand toward the telephone, but did not lift it off the hook. She knew what Boris would say. And she also knew that he would be right; but what good was it being right? The meager rationality of human beings was there to show them that they could not live by reason alone. People lived by feelings—and being right was no help, as far as feelings went.
She crouched in an armchair by the window. I am twenty-four years old, she thought, the same age Agnes was. I’ve been up here for three years. And before that there were nearly six years of war. What do I know of life? Destruction, the flight from Belgium, tears, terror, my parents’ death, hunger, and then this illness caused by malnutrition and homelessness. Before that, I was a child. I scarcely remember what cities used to look like in peacetime. The sparkling lights and the radiant world of the streets—what do I remember of them? All I know are blackouts and the rain of bombs from the merciless dark, and then occupation and dread and hiding and cold. Happiness? That glorious word that once inspired so many splendid dreams—how its meaning had shriveled! Happiness had been a room even without heat, a loaf of bread, a cellar, a place that was not under fire. Then she had come here. She stared out of the window. Below, at the entrance, stood a sled in which supplies were brought to the sanatorium. Or perhaps it was the sled for Agnes Somerville, already come. A year ago, Agnes had arrived at the main entrance to the sanatorium, laughing, wrapped in furs, holding flowers; now she was secretly leaving the building through the delivery entrance, as though she had not paid her bill. Six weeks ago, she had been talking with Lillian about plans for departure. Departure—the phantom, the mirage that never came true.
The telephone rang. She hesitated, then lifted it. “Yes, Boris.” She listened. “Yes, Boris. Yes, I am being sensible—Yes, I know it happens everywhere—Yes, I know that many more people die of heart attacks and cancer—I’ve read the statistics, Boris—Yes, I know that it only seems so to us because we live so close together up here—Yes, many are cured—yes, yes, the new drugs—Yes, Boris, I am being sensible, certainly. No, don’t come—yes, I love you, Boris, of course.”
She laid down the telephone. “Sensible,” she whispered, staring into the mirror. Her face stared back at her, a stranger’s face with a stranger’s eyes. “Sensible!” Good God, she thought, I’ve been sensible far too long. What for? To become Number Twenty or Thirty in Room Seven beside the freight elevator? Something in a black box that horrifies people?
She looked at her watch. It was shortly before nine. The night loomed dark and endless before her, filled with panic and boredom, that mixture peculiar to hospitals—the panic in the face of disease, and the boredom of a regimented existence—which together became intolerable because they led to nothing but a feeling of utter helplessness.
Lillian stood up. She couldn’t be alone now! There would certainly be a few people downstairs—at least Hollmann and his visitor.
Aside from Hollmann and Clerfayt, three South Americans were still sitting in the dining room: two men and a fat, stocky woman. All three were dressed in black; all three were silent. They sat hunched like dark little mounds in the center of the room, directly under the chandelier.
“They come from Bogotá,” Hollmann said. “The sanatorium wired them. The daughter of one of the men—the one with the horn-rimmed glasses—was dying. But since they came, the girl has taken an upturn. Now they don’t know what to do—fly back or stay here.”
“Why can’t the mother stay and the others fly back?”
“The woman isn’t her mother. She’s the stepmother; she’s the one who has the money that pays the sanatorium bills. None of them really wants to stay, not the father either. Back home in Bogotá, they’d almost forgotten Manuela. She wrote them a letter once a month, they sent the check regularly, and that was that. So it went for five years, and as far as they were concerned it could have gone on that way forever. Until Manuela decided to become a nuisance by dying. Then, of course, they had to fly over, or else what would people think? Complications arose; the woman wouldn’t let her husband fly over alone. She’s older than he, and, as you see, not terribly good-looking. She’s jealous and won’t let hi
m out of her sight. For reinforcement, she took her brother along. Back in Bogotá, people were saying that she’d forced her stepdaughter out of the house. She wants to show them now that she loves Manuela. So it’s not only a question of jealousy, but also one of prestige. If she flew back alone, the talk would begin all over again. So all three sit here and wait.”
“And Manuela?”
“They were terribly loving to the girl when they arrived; after all, she might die any moment. Poor Manuela, who had never known love, was so overwhelmed that she actually began to get better. By now, her visitors are impatient. Besides, they suffer from nervous hunger, so they stuff themselves with the famous local confectionery, and get fatter by the day. Another week and they’ll be hating Manuela for not dying quickly enough.”
“Or else they’ll take a fancy to the village, buy the confectioner’s shop, and settle down here,” Clerfayt said.
Hollmann laughed. “You have a macabre imagination.”
“On the contrary. Only macabre experiences. But how do you know all this?”
“I’ve told you there are no secrets here. Nurse Cornelia Wehrli speaks Spanish, so the stepmother pours out her heart to her.”
The three black figures stood up. They had not exchanged a word with one another. With somber dignity, they walked in single file to the door.
They almost collided with Lillian Dunkerque, who came in so quickly that the fat woman was startled and jumped to one side, with a high little cry. Almost running, Lillian went straight to the table where Hollmann and Clerfayt were sitting. Then she turned around and looked at the South Americans. “What made her shriek?” she said. “I’m not a ghost, after all. Or am I? Already?” She fumbled in her handbag for her mirror. “I seem to be frightening everybody tonight.”
“Who else?” Hollmann asked.