The Hotel Years

  If you come to the European towns like Scutari, Valona, Korça, towns with stiff collars, cravats, postcards, razor blades, gold fillings, Ford automobiles and lawyers—then you are even less inclined to believe in such a proximity of semi-civilization and epic. Even so, the barber’s brother is a bone fide and quite a successful warlord. When he comes into town, he has himself shaved, drinks coffee, and talks like you and me. We’re all human.

  Urban Albanians are strikingly timid. It takes less courage to shoot here than to speak. An Albanian would rather shoot than say what he thinks. He is afraid of the walls’ ears. He senses a spy in everyone, and he’s half-right. An Albanian “Okhrana” in the sense of the Russian organization doesn’t exist—not least because every urban Albanian is a passionate and spontaneous observer of his neighbours’ comings and goings and doings, takes childlike pleasure in teasing out “mysteries” and finds dangerous secrets in perfectly open and transparent things. This complicates life for the good Albanian people. A stranger does not come in for particular attention, no, everyone watches him with passion and primitive fascination. How often I met Albanians who said to me, with cunning expressions on their faces: “You’re a journalist”—as though I had tried to make a secret of it, and should now feel rumbled. But if I happened to ask: “What’s new then?” or “What does it say in your Albanian newspaper that I can’t read?” then they shrugged their shoulders, because “new” is equated with danger, and anything resembling a “novelty” may give you away. A constant formula is the reply: “I have no news. You tell me something. You know everything.” Then you can be sure that your discreet Albanian will straightaway repair to some interesting place and report: “What he said was . . .” These people’s love of intrigue is as great as their fear of expressing an opinion. Over time, they do so little that they seem to have given up all their own opinions, and only listen to those of others. Why have an opinion merely to suppress it? In place of political convictions there is political partisanship, instead of struggle conspiracy, instead of a word a hint, instead of caution fear. In this land no ruler is safe, and no subject either. A publicly expressed view is an impossibility—even if it were allowed. Over the centuries the Albanians have lost all pleasure in the right to an opinion. Even unambiguous circumstances become secret mysteries in their hands. They have no taste for the absence of danger.*

  Their virtues are courtesy, silence, modesty, gentleness. Their most dangerous quality: love of money. There are places where the farmers bury piles of gold, and continue to acquire more. Perhaps their frugality is half miserliness. They are not so much work-shy as plain feeble. They accomplish vastly less than a European because they are so poorly nourished. Their lack of wants borders on the absurd. Their extreme moderation is sad and oppressive—almost as oppressive as the absence of women in the public life of the towns, where you can go many days without seeing or hearing a single one. Their lives are de-eroticized, love has been degraded to a domestic virtue, and a stroll is as perspectiveless as a Sunday.

  But such a topical part of the world . . . !

  Frankfurter Zeitung, 30 July 1927

  * For an insider’s up-to-date account of this superbly paranoid state of affairs and state, see Ismail Kadare’s The Successor.

  VI

  Hotels

  39. Arrival in the Hotel

  The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, and the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out (shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses) are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering blink out their greeting.* Other men may return to hearth and home, and wife and child; I celebrate my return to lobby and chandelier, porter and chambermaid—and between us we put on such a consummate performance that the notion of merely checking into a hotel doesn’t even raise its head. The look with which the doorman welcomes me is more than a father’s embrace. As though he actually were my father, he discreetly pays my taxi out of his own waistcoat pocket, saving me from having to think about it. The receptionist emerges from his glass booth with a smile as wide as his bow is deep. My arrival seems to delight him so much that his back imparts friendliness to his mouth, and the professional and the human are mingled in his greeting. He would be ashamed to greet me with a registration form; so deeply does he understand the way I see the legal requirement as a personal insult. He will fill in my details himself, later on, when I am installed in my room, even though he has no idea where I have come from. He will write out some name or other, some place he thinks deserving of having been visited by me. He is a greater authority on my personal data than I am. Probably over the years namesakes of mine have stayed in the hotel. But he doesn’t know their details, and they seem a little suspicious to him, as if they were unlawful borrowers of my name. The liftboy takes my suitcases one under each arm. Probably it’s the way an angel spreads his wings. No one asks me how long I plan on staying, an hour or a year, my fatherland is happy either way. The receptionist whispers into my ear: “627! Is that all right?”—as if I could picture the room to myself as he can.

  Well, and in fact I can! I love the “impersonal” quality of that room, as a monk may love his cell. And as other men may be happy to be reunited with their pictures, their china, their silver, their children and their books, so I rejoice in the cheap wallpaper, the spotless ewer and basin, the gleaming hot and cold taps, and that wisest of books: the telephone directory. My room of course never faces the back. It is the room of a “regular”, so it has no facing room and yet looks out over the street. Opposite are a chimney, the sky, and a cloud . . . But it’s not so secluded that the condensed melody of the large nearby square doesn’t reach up to me like an echo of the dear world; so that I am by myself but not isolated, alone but not forgotten, private but not abandoned. I have only to open the window, and the world steps in. From afar I hear the hoarse sirens of ships. Very near are the jaunty ting-a-lings of trams. Car horns seem to call me by name—they greet me, as they might a senator. The policeman at the heart of it orders the traffic. The newspaper boys toss the names of their newspapers into the air like so many balls. And little street scenes enact themselves for me like a series of playlets. A slight pressure on the Bakelite bell-push and a green light goes on in a back corridor, signal for the room-service waiter. And here he is already! His professional eagerness is confined to his tail-coat—in his breast under the starched shirt front is human warmth; preserved for me, kept safe for the whole duration of my absence. When he telephones my order through to the kitchen so many floors below, he doesn’t forget to add who it is for, so that the sound of my name in the cook’s memory may spark some recollection of my particular preferences. The waiter smiles. He has no need of speech. He has no need to check or confirm anything. There is no possibility of any error. I am already so familiar to him that he would be prepared to accept tips from me on credit—at a suitable rate of interest, of course. His faith in the inexhaustible sources of my income is itself inexhaustible. And if I should one day turn up in rags and as a beggar, he would take that for an ingenious form of disguise. He knows I am merely a writer. But still he gives me credit.

  I pick up the telephone. Not to make a call—only to say hello to the hotel telephonist. He puts me through promptly and often. He says I am out, if required. He warns me. In the morning he relays important news items to me from the paper. And when there is money on the way, he lets me know with discreet jubilation. He is an Italian. The waiter is from Upper Austria. The porter is a Frenchman from Provence. The receptionist is from Normandy. The head waiter is Bavarian. The chambermaid is Swiss. The valet is Dutch. The manager is Levantine; and for years I’ve suspected the cook of being Czech. The guests come from all over the world. Continents and seas, islands, peninsulas and ships, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists are all represented in this hotel. The cashier adds, subtracts, counts and cheats in many languages, and cha
nges every currency. Freed from the constriction of patriotism, from the blinkers of national feeling, slightly on holiday from the rigidity of love of land, people seem to come together here and at least appear to be what they should always be: children of the world.

  Before long I will go downstairs—to complete my arrival. The receptionist will come up to tell me his news and to hear mine. His interest is devoted to me as entirely as that of the astronomer in the first hour of a comet’s appearance over the horizon. Have I changed? Can I be said to be the same? His eye, delicate and precise as a telescope, takes in the material of my suit, the cut of my boots—and the assurance: “I’m delighted to see you looking so well, sir!”—refers not so much to my state of health as to the apparent state of my finances. Yes, you’re the same as ever—he might equally have said.—Thank God you haven’t sunk so far that you might have to seek out another hotel. You are our guest and our child! And long may you remain so!

  My interest meanwhile is in everything concerning the hotel, as though I stood one day to inherit shares in it. How’s business? What ships are expected this month? Is the old waiter still alive? Has the manager been unwell? No international hotel thieves, I trust?—In that one fine hour those are my concerns. I should like to be shown the books, and check the reservations for the months ahead. Am I in any way different from a man whom love of country prompts to check the budget of his nation, the political orientation of the cabinet, the health of the head of state, the organization of the police force, the equipment of the armed forces, the number of the navy’s cruisers? I am a hotel citizen, a hotel patriot.

  Before long the moment comes when the receptionist reaches into a distant pigeonhole and pulls out a bundle of letters, telegrams and periodicals for me. A glance shoots out in my direction, in advance of my post. The letters are out of date and nevertheless new. They have been waiting for me for a long time. I know already some of their contents, having been apprised of them by other means. But who knows?! Among the expected letters may be one that surprises me, perhaps unhinges me, or causes my life to change its course? How can the receptionist stand there calmly smiling as he hands me my mail? His equanimity is the product of long experience, of a bittersweet paternal wisdom. He is sure that nothing surprising will come, he understands the monotony of a hectic life; no one knows as well as he does the absurdity of my vague romantic notions. He knows passengers by their luggage, and letters by their envelopes. “Your mail, sir!” he says coolly. And yet his hand, as it delivers the bundle into my keeping, bows, as it were, at the wrist, in accordance with an ancient tradition, a ritual of receptionists’ hands . . .

  I pull up a chair in the lobby. It is home and the world, foreign and familiar, my ancestorless gallery! Here I will start to write about my friends, the hotel personnel. Such characters they are! Cosmopolites! Students of humanity! Expert readers of languages and souls! No Internationale like theirs! They are the true internationals! (Patriotism only begins with the owners of the hotel.)

  I will begin by describing my friend, the receptionist.

  Frankfurter Zeitung, 9 January 1929

  * The hotel’s identity—if it has one, and is not a composite or a dream—is not known. Helmuth Nürnberger conjectures that the gently shelving port city may be Marseilles.

  40. The Chief Receptionist

  In the afternoon “between trains”, when the lobby is quiet and empty and an idyllic golden light floods the reception area, the chief receptionist reminds me of a kind of gold-braid and mobile saint in an iconostasis. To complete the likeness, he folds his hands over the little golden buttons that retain his belly, and commits himself to a profound contemplation of the air, the play of dust motes, and probably a few thoughts on his home life. Eventually he feels a pang at his inactivity in front of his boys, who are standing around in a small group, and in whom the unruliness of youth may at any moment stir, and so he contrives a few activities, in themselves highly superfluous but of a suggestively exemplary nature, to improve morale. He takes the heavy gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket and compares its time with that shown on the electric wall clock, whose great, round, white face hangs there like a hotel moon on two coarsely woven chains, accenting the golden afternoon with its ghostly silver. It is so quiet that each time the big hand marks a minute one hears the tick, almost human in the silence. For a long time the receptionist looks at the two chronometers, as though to catch one out by a second or two. Then with a resolute expression that is the visual equivalent of a sigh, he returns his watch to its pocket. He lays two large books over each other in such a way that their edges are exactly aligned, slides the telephone half an inch closer to the inkwell, with the flat of his hand trundles the pen into its designated hollow, examines a loose button on his cuff, and twists at it, to satisfy himself that it is in no imminent danger of falling off. No one dares disturb him. In this almost meditative hour, his assistants, a couple of fellows in grey, standing silently at the entrance, dare not approach him with a question.

  There are always two different fellows posted by him, and by my reckoning there are six in all. I can’t quite be sure, because I’ve never seen them all at the same time. When one lot arrives, the others are just setting off to consulates, chemists, florists, apartments, all about other people’s business as messengers, agents or servants. For years I have been unable to establish whether they are hotel employees or personal friends of the chief receptionist’s. By all appearances, it is he and not it that is their bread-giver and the dictator of their opportunities. They obey him as hunting dogs obey the master of hounds—and no matter how far away they are on their errands, it’s always as though he had them on invisible, elasticated strings, and could reach them at any moment. He treats them like a kind of decayed relation or hereditary disease. There is undeniably something perplexing about their existence—a life without uniform and without badge. Everyone else here wears the sign of their service and their function, only they have retained the anonymity of mufti, which puts one in mind of the borders of legality, and a sort of frenzy, a pursued pursuit, of police and of forbidden paths.

  But enough of them! In this quiet hour they don’t exist for the chief receptionist, they are less than the air, which he at least deigns to contemplate. He avoids looking at them, even when talking to them. He has the gift of calling down an errand from the elevation of his box without looking at any particular individual. It is as though the lobby is full of minions only waiting for an assignment. Only when a guest steps up to his desk to make an order does he gently incline his head—not the better to hear it, but only to disguise his superiority which guests do not like to have their attention drawn to.

  Because, make no bones about it, he is their superior. I find in his powerful head, the wide white brow, where the hair at the temples is already beginning to silver, the wide-set pale-grey eyes above which the heavy eyebrows form two complete arches, the deep-lying root of the powerful, beaky nose, the large and down-curving mouth, shaded as the eyes by their brows by the curve of the pendulous pepper-and-salt moustache, the massive chin at the heart of which is a lost little dimple that has survived from childhood: for me this face echoes the portraits of great noblemen, a fixed expression of proud aloofness, an aura that spreads over the whole visage like a transparent layer of bitter frost. The face is a reddish brown, as though it came from a life out of doors, a life among wheat, water, wood and wind, the skin is taut—and the handful of deep frown lines above the nose, and the more delicate pleats around the eyes seem not to have come from the daily round of cares, but willingly accepted signs, tattoos administered by life and experience, and performed by wind and weather . . .

  He bends down before the gentlemen but it is not a bow, but a physical condescension. As he accepts an instruction it is as though he were hearing a petition. When he nods in agreement, he reminds one of the merciful judges in American films (which are the only places where one sees merciful judges). The visitor is un
happy about something now. But it looks as though the chief receptionist is thinking about whose responsibility it is. And with a small, utterly tangential question he is plucked from his conscientiousness into a kind of sympathy, and a remissness becomes partiality. As though the gentleman were come to him not to complain about him but to voice a complaint to him. “Oi!” the chief receptionist shouts down to the group of idle boys. “Which of you took 375’s suit to be ironed?”—Silence. It wasn’t any of the boys, but the porter whom the receptionist has just sent on a bus to the station. He very well remembered the porter’s protest, the suit, the particular urgency of the errand. But he doesn’t for a moment feel guilty. I’m not saying he has no conscience, but it is of a different quality. It is more spacious, like a general’s maybe, preoccupied with more important things, full of concern for the whole enterprise. “On your way, and pick up the suit!” he orders. Who would give anything for the boy who ventured to ask: Where is it? Something is aroused now in the eye of the receptionist, something like the crack of the whip in a circus, a drawn poniard, a storm darkening on the horizon . . . The boy doesn’t stop to ask, he runs off straightaway. A brooding silence settles on the remaining boys, a clouded summer sultriness. The master of the gold braid stands all alone in his elevation, and exhales a cloud of pure silent anger into the lobby.