by Muriel Spark
Lise has started reciting her list over again from the beginning, when the maid does appear with a question-mark on her face. Lise puts down the receiver rather loudly and points to the light which the maid tries for herself, then, nodding her understanding of the case, makes to leave. ‘Wait!’ says Lise, first in English then in French, to neither of which the maid responds. Lise produces the glass with its Alka-Seltzers nestled at the bottom. ‘Filthy!’ Lise says in English. The maid obligingly fills the glass from the tap and hands it to Lise. ‘Dirty!’ Lise shouts in French. The maid understands, laughs at the happening, and this time makes a quick getaway with the glass in her hand.
Lise slides open the cupboard, pulls down a wooden hanger and throws it across the room with a clatter, then lies down on the bed. Presently she looks at her watch. It is five past one. She opens her suitcase and carefully extracts a short dressing-gown. She takes out a dress, hangs it in the cupboard, takes it off the hanger again, folds it neatly and puts it back. She takes out her sponge-bag and bedroom slippers, undresses, puts on her dressing-gown and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door. She has reached the point of taking a shower when she hears voices from her room, a scraping sound, a man‘s and a girl’s. Putting forth her head from the bathroom door, she sees a man in light brown overalls with a pair of steps and an electric light bulb, accompanied by the maid. Lise comes out in her dressing-gown without having properly dried herself in the evident interest of protecting her hand-bag which lies on the bed. Her dressing-gown clings damply to her. ‘Where is the tooth-glass?’ Lise demands. ‘I must have a glass for water.’ The maid touches her head to denote forgetfulness and departs with a swish of her skirt, never to return within Lise’s cognizance. However, Lise soon makes known her need for a drinking-glass on the telephone to the concierge, threatening to leave the hotel immediately if she doesn’t get her water-glass right away.
While waiting for the threat to take effect Lise again considers the contents of her suitcase. This seems to present her with a problem, for she takes out a pink cotton dress, hangs it in the cupboard, then after hesitating for a few seconds she takes it off the hanger again, folds it carefully and lays it back in her case. It may be that she is indeed contemplating an immediate departure from the hotel. But when another maid arrives with two drinking-glasses, apologies in Italian and the explanation that the former maid had gone off duty, Lise continues to look through her belongings in a puzzled way, taking nothing further out of her suitcase.
This maid, seeing laid out on the bed the bright-coloured dress and coat in which Lise had arrived, inquires amiably if Madam is going to the beach.
‘No,’ says Lise.
‘You American?’ says the maid.
‘No,’ Lise says.
‘English?’
‘No.’ Lise turns her back to continue her careful examination of her clothes in the suitcase, and the maid goes out with an unwanted air, saying, ‘Good day.’
Lise is lifting the corners of her carefully packed things, as if in absent-minded accompaniment to some thought, who knows what? Then, with some access of decision, she takes off her dressing-gown and slippers and starts putting on again the same clothes that she wore on her journey. When she is dressed she folds the dressing-gown, puts the slippers back in their plastic bag, and replaces them in her suitcase. She also puts back everything that she has taken out of her sponge-bag, and packs this away.
Now she takes from an inside pocket of her suitcase a brochure with an inset map which she spreads out on the bed. She studies it closely, finding first the spot where the Hotel Tomson is situated and from there traces with her finger various routes leading into and away from the centre of the town. Lise stands, bending over it. The room is dark although it is not yet two in the afternoon. Lise switches on the central light and pores over her map.
It is marked here and there with tiny pictures which denote historic buildings, museums and monuments. Eventually Lise takes a ballpoint pen from her bag and marks a spot in a large patch of green, the main parkland of the city. She puts a little cross beside one of the small pictures which is described on the map as ‘The Pavilion’. She then folds up the map and replaces it in the pamphlet which she then edges in her hand-bag. The pen lies, apparently forgotten, on the bed. She looks at herself in the glass, touches her hair, then locks her suitcase. She finds the car-keys that she had failed to leave behind this morning and attaches them once more to her key-ring. She puts the bunch of keys in her hand-bag, picks up her paperback book and goes out, locking the door behind her. Who knows her thoughts? Who can tell?
She is downstairs at the desk where, behind the busy clerks, numbered pigeon-holes irregularly contain letters, packages, the room-keys, or nothing, and above them the clock shows twelve minutes past two. Lise puts her room-key on the counter and asks for her passport in a loud voice causing the clerk whom she addresses, another clerk who sits working an adding machine, and several other people who are standing and sitting in the hotel lobby, to take notice of her.
The women stare at her clothes. They, too, are dressed brightly for a southern summer, but even here in this holiday environment Lise looks brighter. It is possibly the combination of colours — the red in her coat and the purple in her dress — rather than the colours themselves which drags attention to her, as she takes her passport in its plastic envelope from the clerk, he looking meanwhile as if he bears the whole of the eccentricities of humankind upon his slender shoulders.
Two girls, long-legged, in the very brief skirts of the times, stare at Lise. Two women who might be their mothers stare too. And possibly the fact that Lise’s outfit comes so far and unfashionably below her knees gives an extra shockingness to her appearance that was not even apparent in the less up-to-date Northern city from which she set off that morning. Skirts are worn shorter here in the South. Just as, in former times, when prostitutes could be discerned by the brevity of their skirts compared with the normal standard, so Lise in her knee-covering clothes at this moment looks curiously of the street-prostitute class beside the mini-skirted girls and their mothers whose knees at least can be seen.
So she lays the trail, presently to be followed by Interpol and elaborated upon with due art by the journalists of Europe for the few days it takes for her identity to be established.
‘I want a taxi,’ Lise says loudly to the uniformed boy who stands by the swing door. He goes out to the street and whistles. Lise follows and stands on the pavement. An elderly woman, small, neat and agile in a yellow cotton dress, whose extremely wrinkled face is the only indication of her advanced age, follows Lise to the pavement. She, too, wants a taxi, she says in a gentle voice, and she suggests to Lise that they might share. Which way is Lise going? This woman seems to see nothing strange about Lise, so confidently does she approach her. And in fact, although this is not immediately apparent, the woman’s eyesight is sufficiently dim, her hearing faint enough, to eliminate, for her, the garish effect of Lise on normal perceptions.
‘Oh,’ says Lise, ‘I’m only going to the Centre. I’ve no definite plans. It’s foolish to have plans.’ She laughs very loudly.
‘Thank you, the Centre is fine for me,’ says the woman, taking Lise’s laugh for acquiescence in the sharing of the taxi.
And, indeed, they do both load into the taxi and are off.
‘Are you staying here long?’ says the woman.
‘This will keep it safe,’ says Lise, stuffing her passport down the back of the seat, stuffing it down till it is out of sight.
The old lady turns her spry nose towards this operation. She looks puzzled for an instant, but soon complies with the action, moving forward to allow Lise more scope in shoving the little booklet out of sight.
‘That’s that,’ says Lise, leaning back, breathing deeply, and looking out of the window. ‘What a lovely day!’
The old lady leans back too, as if leaning on the trusting confidence that Lise has inspired. She says, ‘I left my passport in the hotel,
with the Desk.’
‘It’s according to your taste,’ Lise says opening the window to the slight breeze. Her lips part blissfully as she breathes in the air of the wide street on the city’s outskirts.
Soon they run into traffic. The driver inquires the precise point at which they wish to be dropped.
‘The Post Office,’ Lise says. Her companion nods.
Lise turns to her. ‘I’m going shopping. It’s the first thing I do on my holidays. I go and buy the little presents for the family first, then that’s off my mind.’
‘Oh, but in these days,’ says the old lady. She folds her gloves, pats them on her lap, smiles at them.
‘There’s a big department store near the Post Office,’ Lise says. ‘You can get everything you want there.’
‘My nephew is arriving this evening.’
‘The traffic!’ says Lise.
They pass the Metropole Hotel. Lise says, ‘There’s a man in that hotel I’m trying to avoid.’
‘Everything is different,’ says the old lady.
‘A girl isn’t made of cement,’ Lise says, ‘but everything is different now, it’s all changed, believe me.’
At the Post Office they pay the fare, each meticulously contributing the unfamiliar coins to the impatient, mottled and hillocky palm of the driver’s hand, adding coins little by little, until the total is reached and the amount of the tip equally agreed between them and deposited; then they stand on the pavement in the centre of the foreign city, in need of coffee and a sandwich, accustoming themselves to the lay-out, the traffic crossings, the busy residents, the ambling tourists and the worried tourists, and such of the unencumbered youth who swing and thread through the crowds like antelopes whose heads, invisibly antlered, are airborne high to sniff the prevailing winds, and who so appear to own the terrain beneath their feet that they never look at it. Lise looks down at her clothes as if wondering if she is ostentatious enough.
Then, taking the old lady by the arm, she says, ‘Come and have a coffee. We’ll cross by the lights.’
All perky for the adventure, the old lady lets Lise guide her to the street-crossing where they wait for the lights to change and where, while waiting, the old lady gives a little gasp and a jerk of shock; she says, ‘You left your passport in the taxi!’
‘Well, I left it there for safety. Don’t worry,’ Lise says. ‘It’s taken care of.’
‘Oh, I see.’ The old lady relaxes, and she crosses the road with Lise and the waiting herd. ‘I am Mrs Fiedke,’ she says. ‘Mr Fiedke passed away fourteen years ago.
In the bar they sit at a small round table, place their bags, Lise’s book and their elbows on it and order each a coffee and a ham-and-tomato sandwich. Lise props up her paperback book against her bag, as it were so that its bright cover is addressed to whom it may concern. ‘Our home is in Nova Scotia,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘where is yours?’
‘Nowhere special,’ says Lise waving aside the triviality. ‘It’s written on the passport. My name’s Lise.’ She takes her arms out of the sleeves of her striped cotton coat and lets it fall behind her over the back of the chair. ‘Mr Fiedke left everything to me and nothing to his sister,’ says the old lady, ‘but my nephew gets everything when I’m gone. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when she heard.’
The waiter comes with their coffee and sandwiches, moving the book while he sets them down. Lise props it up again when he has gone. She looks around at the other tables and at the people standing up at the bar, sipping coffee or fruit-juice. She says, ‘I have to meet a friend, but he doesn’t seem to be here.’
‘My dear, I don’t want to detain you or take you out of your way.
‘Not at all. Don’t think of it.’
‘It was very kind of you to come along with me,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘as it’s so confusing in a strange place. Very kind indeed.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be kind?’ Lise says, smiling at her with a sudden gentleness.
‘Well, I’ll be all right just here after we’ve finished our snack. I’ll just take a look round and do a bit of shopping. I won’t keep you, my dear.’
‘You can come shopping with me,’ Lise says, very genially. ‘Mrs Fiedke, it’s a pleasure.’
‘How very kind you are!’
‘One should always be kind,’ Lise says, ‘in case it might be the last chance. One might be killed crossing the street, or even on the pavement, any time, you never know. So we should always be kind.’ She cuts her sandwich daintily and puts a piece in her mouth.
Mrs Fiedke says, ‘That’s a very, very beautiful thought. But you mustn’t think of accidents. I can assure you, I’m terrified of traffic.’
‘So am I. Terrified.’
‘Do you drive an automobile?’ says the old lady.
‘I do, but I’m afraid of traffic. You never know what crackpot’s going to be at the wheel of another car.’
‘These days,’ says Mrs Fiedke.
‘There’s a department store not far from here,’ Lise says. ‘Want to come?’
They eat their sandwich and drink their coffee. Lise then orders a rainbow ice while Mrs Fiedke considers one way or another whether she really wants anything more, and eventually declines.
‘Strange voices,’ says the old lady looking round. ‘Look at the noise.’
‘Well, if you know the language.’
‘Can you speak the language?’
‘A bit. I can speak four.’
Mrs Fiedke marvels benevolently while Lise bashfully plays with crumbs on the tablecloth. The waiter brings the rainbow ice and while Lise lifts the spoon to start Mrs Fiedke says, ‘It matches with your outfit.’
Lise laughs at this, longer than Mrs Fiedke had evidently expected. ‘Beautiful colours,’ Mrs Fiedke offers, as one might offer a cough-sweet. Lise sits before the brightly streaked ice-cream with her spoon in her hand and laughs on. Mrs Fiedke looks frightened, and more frightened as the voices of the bar stop to watch the laughing one; Mrs Fiedke shrinks into her old age, her face dry and wrinkled, her eyes gone into a far retreat, not knowing what to do. Lise stops suddenly and says, ‘That was funny.’
The man behind the bar, having started coming over to their table to investigate a potential disorder, stops and turns back, muttering something. A few young men round the bar start up a mimic laugh-laugh-laugh but are stopped by the barman.
‘When I went to buy this dress,’ Lise says to Mrs Fiedke, ‘do you know what they offered me first? A stainless dress. Can you believe it? A dress that won’t hold the stain if you drop coffee or ice-cream on it. Some new synthetic fabric. As if I would want a dress that doesn’t show the stains!’
Mrs Fiedke, whose eager spirit is slowly returning from wherever it had been to take cover from Lise’s laughter, looks at Lise’s dress and says, ‘Doesn’t hold the stains? Very useful for travelling.’
‘Not this dress,’ Lise says, working her way through the rainbow ice; ‘it was another dress. I didn’t buy it, though. Very poor taste, I thought.’ She has finished her ice. Again the two women fumble in their purses and at the same time Lise gives an expert’s glance at the two small tickets, marked with the price, that have been left on the table. Lise edges one of them aside. ‘That one’s for the ice,’ she says, ‘and we share the other.’
‘The torment of it,’ Lise says. ‘Not knowing exactly where and when he’s going to turn up.
She moves ahead of Mrs Fiedke up the escalator to the third floor of a department store. It is ten minutes past four by the big clock, and they have had to wait more than half an hour for it to open, both of them having forgotten about the southern shopping hours, and in this interval have walked round the block looking so earnestly for Lise’s friend that Mrs Fiedke has at some point lost the signs of her initial bewilderment when this friend has been mentioned, and now shows only the traces of enthusiastic cooperation in the search. As they were waiting for the store to open, having passed the large iron-grated shutters again and again in their amb
les round the block, Mrs Fiedke started to scan the passers-by.
‘Would that be him, do you think? He looks very gaily dressed like yourself.’
‘No, that’s not him.’
‘It’s quite a problem, with all this choice. What about this one? No this one, I mean, crossing in front of that car? Would he be too fat?’
‘No, it isn’t him.’
‘It’s very difficult, my dear, if you don’t know the cast of person. ‘‘He could be driving a car,’ Lise had said when they at last found themselves outside the shop at the moment the gates were being opened.
They go up, now, to the third floor where the toilets are, skimming up with the escalator from which they can look down to see the expanse of each floor as the stairs depart from it. ‘Not a great many gentlemen,’ Mrs Fiedke remarks. ‘I doubt if you’ll find your friend here.’
‘I doubt it too,’ says Lise. ‘Although there are quite a few men employed here, aren’t there?’
‘Oh, would he be a shop assistant?’ Mrs Fiedke says.
‘It depends,’ says Lise.
‘These days,’ says Mrs Fiedke.
Lise stands in the ladies’ room combing her hair while she waits for Mrs Fiedke. She stands at the basin where she has washed her hands, and, watching herself with tight lips in the glass, back-combs the white streak, and with great absorption places it across the darker locks on the crown of her head. At the basins on either side of her two other absorbed young women are touching up their hair and faces. Lise wets the tip of a finger and smooths her eyebrows. The women on either side collect their belongings and leave. Another woman, matronly with her shopping, bustles in and swings into one of the lavatory cubicles. Mrs Fiedke’s cubicle still remains shut. Lise has finished tidying herself up; she waits. Eventually she knocks on Mrs Fiedke’s door. ‘Are you all right?’