Hotel Iris

  “I suppose it’s a souvenir of sorts, even though it took his wife from him. Eventually, he disappeared, and by the time I heard the story, no one knew where to find him. But we met up again by chance the year I entered university. He seemed delighted to have found me, and he spoiled me rather shamelessly. Even though, as you’ve seen from my story, he had been willing for me to die that day long ago.”

  “Are the stories he tells about you as a child true?”

  “I told him all those stories; he exaggerates a bit. It’s another form of penance, I suppose—to erase that one moment in the past. He knows it’s pointless, but he can’t help himself. As soon as he sees me, he falls back into the pattern … sometimes grateful that I can’t talk.”

  He had written so much I began to worry that he would run out of paper. My worrying grew almost uncontrollable— there was still so much more I wanted to know about the translator, if only his nephew could go on handing me notes forever.

  The setting sun illuminated his profile. His lips remained tightly sealed. The chain around his neck glistened with sweat.

  It suddenly occurred to me that he would be old one day, just like the translator. I tried to picture him with wrinkled skin, slack muscles, and thinning hair, but no image came to me. No matter how carefully I studied him, I could not find the shadow of age on his body.

  I looked at my watch. The bus would arrive in less than ten minutes.

  “When are you leaving?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Your uncle will be sad to see you go.”

  “No, he’ll be happy to get back to his normal routine.”

  “And will you come back next summer?”

  “I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’m going to study in Italy this fall.” He touched the paper to be sure the paint had dried and then closed his sketchbook. He put away his brushes in the paint box and tipped the cup of water into the sea. The waves carried away the cloud of colors.

  “Does it seem strange to you?” I asked. He stopped for a moment and turned to me with a questioning look. “The fifty-year difference in our ages. You couldn’t call it normal.”

  “It doesn’t seem strange to me. I’m happy for both of you. And I’m happy I got to meet you.” I didn’t know how to respond, so I helped him replace the caps on the tubes of paint. “I’ve been coming to this town for years now, but you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to other than my uncle.”

  “But I worry sometimes. We have no future together, and I’m afraid everything will end with summer.”

  “Everything will work out,” he wrote. “Don’t be afraid of breezes and scarves.” He pressed this last note into my hand, which was overflowing now with his words. We started to stand up, but our footing on the rock was unsteady and we nearly fell into the sea. Then, suddenly, we were embracing. I’m not sure whether I stumbled and he reached out to steady me, or whether we were embracing even before I lost my balance. I felt as though the waves had stopped.

  We kissed. Our lips met without hesitation, as though we had each decided long ago that it would happen. My hand still clutched the sheaf of notes. The pendant dangled against my chest, a cool thing between our warm bodies.

  When I asked him to come with me to the Iris, he couldn’t answer; his pendant was trapped between us. But he blended in with the two groups of guests I met at the bus stop and followed me up to the hotel. It was an adventure. He played the part of a mute young man on a trip to do some sketching. I put one of the groups in 204 and the other in 305. Then I gave him the key to 202—the room the translator and the prostitute had used. In the register it had been stamped with the red cancellation mark.

  Some children were running around the lobby, ignoring their parents’ attempts to calm them down. Another group of guests had spread out a map on the front desk to look for a restaurant. He took advantage of the confusion to slip up to the room.

  The light was dim in Room 202, the windows clouded with steam from the processing plant next door. The sound of the machine that mixed the fish paste was barely audible. The beds were made up. The Bible and the telephone were on the night table, a box of tissues had been set in front of the mirror, a corkscrew and a chipped glass were arranged on top of the refrigerator—everything in its appointed place. But the people who were supposed to stay here tonight had called to cancel this morning.

  He was in no hurry. Nor was he made anxious by the sound of voices in the hallway or footsteps on the stairs. He took his time as he touched me. The sketchbook and paint box lay abandoned under the bed.

  He did not tie me up; he did not hit me. Nor did he give me a single command. I did have trouble breathing, as I had with the translator, but this time it was from the weight of his broad chest pressing down on mine. His fingers ran over my body as skillfully as they scrawled the characters in his notes. His hip bones were hard against my thighs.

  The bed groaned so loudly I worried that they would be able to hear it downstairs. Someone was gargling in the room above us. The bell on the front desk rang. The warmth of his body filled me.

  He let out a muffled cry, and I knew it was over. I was certain it was his voice. The faintest cry, lodged deep in his chest, suddenly escaped through his parted lips.

  “Would you show me your tongue?” I asked. He climbed back into the T-shirt and pants he had discarded on the other bed, and then he put his pendant back around his neck.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took hold of my shoulders and then cautiously opened his mouth. It was dark inside—no tongue, just a black cavity. The darkness was so deep that I felt dizzy staring down into it.

  Just at that moment, there was an irritated cry from the lobby.

  “Mari! Mari! Where are you?” It was Mother. Footsteps came running up the stairs and then down the hall toward our room. In an instant, I had grabbed the sketchbook and paint box and pushed him ahead of me into the closet. The box clattered against the wall. My body stiffened and I clung to him. Mother knocked on the door of Room 201.

  “I’ve come to change the quilts,” she called. Her voice seemed to be right outside the closet. I pushed even closer, and he wrapped his arm around me. “Housekeeping!” Mother called out, this time taking the master key from the pocket of her apron and fitting it in the door of 202.

  My heart was pounding and my chest contracted, exactly as it had the day I skipped school and hid in Room 301. The same pain as when the translator strangled me with the scarf. The smell of varnish in the closet stung my eyes.

  Mother walked around the room, passing in front of the closet to check the lock on the window. Then she drew back the curtains. I couldn’t keep from peeking through the crack in the closet door, even though I had the feeling I would be safer if I shut my eyes. The vibrations from Mother’s swollen feet came to me through the floor. I was terrified by everything—by Mother, and by the nephew and the things he had done to me, but especially by the thought that the translator knew nothing of all this.

  Mother’s fingers brushed the nightstand where he had set his pendant, checking for dust. Then she straightened the cover on the bed where we had been a moment before. I was afraid that she would feel the lingering heat from our bodies, or that she would find a hair—she would know it was mine.

  Our hearts were beating together, and my ear was damp from his breath. His hair smelled of the sea. Mother looked around the room once more, frowned disapprovingly, and then closed the door behind her. I could hear her steps retreating down the hall.

  The strength drained from my body and I slipped from his arms, collapsing to the closet floor. The sliver of light from the crack in the door only made it seem darker, and when I looked up, I could barely see him. He seemed to retreat further into the shadows each time I blinked.

  T W E L V E

  After we crawled out of the closet, we had been so worried Mother would find us that he immediately slipped out the back and ran off. The next day, I
’d thought he might stop at the Iris before leaving town, but he never came. The only people who appeared in the lobby that afternoon were an elderly couple who had called to reserve three months in advance and a man selling dustcloths. At some point I realized that the last bus had left town, and I would never have any more notes to add to the ones in my pocket. But now I had the translator to myself again.

  A strange quiet had descended on the town. The beach was nearly empty except for the gulls, and even at noon there were plenty of seats on the restaurant terraces. Everyone seemed idle, from the ticket sellers at the seawall and the rental boat piers to the women at the snow cone stands, even the taxi drivers. Though it was still midseason, some of the souvenir shops had already decided to close. On sunny days, the light on the deserted shore road seemed even brighter than usual.

  That day, however, it was overcast for the first time in weeks. Midday was no lighter than dawn. Layers of steel blue clouds obscured the sun—the same color as the sea. It was an ominous color. Not beautiful but somehow pure, like the steady pulse of calm breathing. A narrow strip of sky showed at the horizon, but the clouds seemed to weigh down on it, threatening to crush it at any moment. A gull looked up from a rock, as if hesitant to fly.

  We were standing on the deck of the excursion boat, looking out at the sea. The crowd that had pressed against the railing until so recently was nowhere to be seen. A nurse from the sanitarium who had apparently been shopping in town was sleeping against the window in the cabin. The man who ran the coffee stand had left his post and was smoking a cigarette at the bow of the boat. The deck was empty except for a few groups of tourists out to escape the monotony of town.

  “So he’s gone home?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “Yes,” the translator said. For some reason, it seemed strange to receive an immediate answer to a question without a moment of silence for the opening of the note case, the ripping of the paper, the scrawl of the pen. I was still in the rhythm of conversation with his nephew.

  “The week seemed so short,” I said.

  “He can never stay long. He doesn’t want his mother to know he comes here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Most children that age have secrets from their mothers.”

  “Everyone who comes to your house has secrets.”

  “That’s true,” he said, turning to me with a thin smile. “Perhaps the island would sink if they were ever revealed.”

  The boat’s engine vibrated under our feet. The wind was stronger than usual, and our skin was damp. My hair was still pinned up, but some wisps hung down on my forehead. He had reached out several times to brush them back, but it was useless as long as the wind was blowing.

  “When will he visit you again?”

  “I’m not sure. I never know until the last minute when he’s coming.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he knew that his nephew was going to study in Italy, but I decided not to mention it. I didn’t want to tell him what had happened at the Iris, so it seemed best not to mention our encounter on the rocks or anything else about that day.

  The translator was wearing the same brown suit with wide lapels he had worn the day we went to the circus. I remembered seeing the paisley necktie when I had searched the wardrobe. He washed the ice cream stain from his pants.

  “What strange weather!” I said. Threatening clouds loomed low over the boat. There was a breeze, but the sea was calm. There was no sign of the sailboats or fishing trawlers that would normally have ventured offshore. “Do you think it will finally rain?”

  “Yes, it could be quite a storm,” he said.

  “We haven’t had rain in over a month. I’ve almost forgotten what it looks like.” I leaned against the rail and stared at the horizon, trying to guess where the rain would start. But there was no rain, just a blue veil that covered the sea, the translator’s face, and my hands in front of me. The clouds seemed to be bearing down, swallowing everything around us.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, wrapping his arm around my back. “You’ll remember right away.” He was clumsy and hesitant at times like this, as though even the slightest contact with my body was somehow momentous and complex. Which struck me as strange, so different from his nephew’s self-assured kiss on the rocks. And yet the translator had seen me in the most shameful positions.

  I turned to look back at the shore, but the town was no longer in view, and the tide had covered the seawall. The gull that had been hesitating on the rail finally opened its wings and flew away, vanishing almost immediately into the low clouds. The vortex from the boat’s propeller sucked up flotsam from the sea—driftwood, seaweed, empty cans, bits of Styrofoam, fishing line, plastic bags. …

  The nurse who had been sleeping in the lounge woke for a moment, rubbed her hand on the window, and peered out at the weather. But she went right back to sleep. The windowsill had left a red mark on half her face. A middle-aged couple with a video camera walked past. They paused in front of the man from the coffee stand, who was sitting on a bench on deck.

  “How long do we stop at the island?” the wife asked. “I’d like to have a look around.” I couldn’t hear the man’s answer, perhaps because he was facing into the wind. After the couple moved on, he lit another cigarette. He looked over at us from time to time, but when I met his glance he looked quickly away and puffed at his cigarette.

  As the boat turned slowly to the left, its foghorn echoed in the distance. Between the clouds and the sea, the island appeared.

  I sat on the couch and watched the translator work. Sitting bolt upright at his desk, he traced a line of Russian characters with his left hand while his right wrote down the translation in his notebook. From time to time he would pause to flip through a dictionary, or fiddle with his reading glasses, or stare thoughtfully into space.

  He had been asked to translate a letter that had come from Russia to the neurosurgery department at a university hospital. He pulled a medical dictionary from the very bottom of his bookshelf, explaining that the project was particularly difficult because of the technical terminology. Marie’s novel had been put away in a drawer.

  He had shown me his books with obvious pride. “You have a dictionary for everything, don’t you?” I said.

  “Indeed I do. Philosophy, logic, mechanics, music, art, computers, cinema … one for every field of human endeavor.” The dictionaries were thick and impressive but badly worn, the titles on their spines almost illegible and the bindings tattered. Each time he turned a page of the medical dictionary, there was an odd ripping sound, as if the whole volume were about to come apart. But the translator handled the books tenderly, reminding me of the way he had unfastened my blouse button by button, or how his fingers had searched between my legs for the tender spot.

  I sipped the tea he had made for me. It was delicious, and the pot was full. The wind had been blowing harder since the boat docked, and the branches of the pine trees that lined the bluff above the cove were nodding to the west. The windows rattled continually, and during one particularly strong gust, I wondered whether the house might be blown away.

  It was not raining, but the clouds covered the whole sky now, all the way to the horizon. Their blue light reached deep into the room, even through the drawn curtains.

  “Is it difficult?” I asked quietly, having waited for a moment when the wind was less deafening. He did not turn to look at me, and his pen continued to move over the page. “Do you take notes first and then write out a clean copy? … Do you have much more to do?” He turned and put his finger to his lips to silence me. Then he went back to his work. I said nothing more.

  The room had reverted to its original state after the departure of his nephew. The house was once again filled with foreboding—no more radio, cheerful meals, or hibiscus.

  I tried to remember how the nephew had looked sitting on this very couch, but I could not. The touch of his lips on the rock and even the single word he had uttered on the bed at the Iris seemed like som
ething from the distant past, long before I had met the translator. Now my mind was filled with memories of a cord, pain running through my body, stern commands. Even the rhythm of the conversations with the nephew that I had found so intimate, even that had been blown away with the wind.

  The translator underlined a sentence in the letter. His finger hovered over a spot in the dictionary. He coughed, sat up straighter, and then continued writing, paying careful attention to each character.

  I had to be patient until he finished translating the letter. But I knew that soon he would be paying such careful attention to me. Only with me did his old, withered body come to life. The fingers clutching the pen would grasp my breast, the lips pursed in thought would probe between my ribs, the feet hidden under the desk would trample my face.

  I took a sip of tea without taking my eyes off him. The boards of the terrace creaked. The wind pushed an empty flowerpot across the lawn. But the surface of the sea was as smooth and flat as ever.

  What would he say when he finally turned to look at me? That was my only concern at the moment. Would he call me a filthy sow? Or tell me to lick the floor? Or to spread my legs?

  He took hundreds of pictures. He set the flash, adjusted the lens, changed the roll of film. I had no idea he was so skilled with a camera. For my part, I assumed every imaginable pose—amazed at the number of shapes a human body could take. He needed more cord than usual to create all of these positions, but he had bought extra for the occasion.

  First, he undressed me. That was always the most important thing. When, at the very end, he stripped away my underpants, I could see how ugly I was.

  Then he tied me to a chair—the one he had been working in a moment earlier. It was a sturdy wooden chair with a leather seat. He pulled my arms behind my back and bound my wrists, then ran the cord again and again around my ribs. Now I would have to carry the chair with me everywhere I went. It was heavy, and I teetered under the weight. When I lost my balance, the cord cut into my breasts. I groaned, but he paid no attention and ordered me to lock the kitchen door, to clear away the teacups, to remove the quilt from the bed.