Atlantic Hotel

by João Gilberto Noll

  Other titles by João Gilberto Noll available from Two Lines Press:

  Quiet Creature on the Corner

  Hotel Atlântico

  © 1989 by João Gilberto Noll

  Translation © 2016 by Adam Morris

  Two Lines Press

  582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.twolinespress.com

  ISBN 978-1-931883-61-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955682

  Cover design by Gabriele Wilson

  Cover photo by Cardinal/Getty Images

  Typeset by Sloane | Samuel

  13579108642

  This book was published with the support of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture / National Library Foundation (obra publicada com o apoio do Ministério da Cultura do Brasil / Fundação Biblioteca Nacional) and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Contents

  Atlantic Hotel

  I went up the front steps of a small hotel on Nossa Senhora de Copacabana, almost on the corner of Miguel Lemos. As I ascended I heard nervous voices, somebody crying.

  Suddenly, a bunch of people appeared at the top of the stairs, mostly men who looked like cops, perhaps some military police. And they started coming down with a gurney.

  On it was a body covered by a patterned sheet.

  I halted on a single stair, glued to the wall. A woman with a bleach-blonde dye job was coming down the stairs, crying. She had that tic—jerking her mouth in the direction of her right eye.

  I regretted having walked into that hotel. But as I stood there, retreat only seemed another cowardly act I’d have to shoulder on my journey. So I pressed ahead.

  When I found myself standing in front of a girl behind a counter, who was attending to guests, I couldn’t contain a sudden burst of laughter. I hadn’t guffawed like that since I was a kid. The girl surely must’ve thought I was some kind of relative or friend of the corpse, laughing from shock, and with a look of dismay she waited for me to finish cackling.

  Someday I’ll end up in a coffin, too—so I took the girl’s hand as soon as I stopped laughing and kissed it. With her hand still between mine, she slackened her face, as if a gesture like a kiss on the hand were completely commonplace and even natural at a hotel reception desk. Her long expression opened into a faint smile: “Would you like to speak with a guest, sir, or would you like a room?”

  “A room with a bathroom, double bed, TV, and a desk where I can lean on my elbows and think.”

  “I have just the thing,” she said, her gaze already completely intoxicated.

  “It wouldn’t be the room where the crime…” I ventured.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, sir…” She looked at my hands and asked, “Your bags?”

  “I stored them at the airport.” It was the first thing that came to me.

  “Oh, well, for guests without bags we ask for a three-day deposit,” she explained, with courtesy that tingled the back of my neck.

  I filled out the registration card, lying that I was married—I pictured a woman waiting for me someplace in Brazil, and ventured that having her waiting would awaken the receptionist’s curiosity about me.

  The girl at the reception desk had black hair, thick bangs; her hair came down past her ears. She looked like a flapper. And black eyes, big.

  She pressed a bell and a boy appeared. The boy was dressed in a gray uniform with gold buttons. She asked him to take me to room 123.

  Then she gave me one last disarming look. That was when I really started to get interested.

  The boy guided me through a long, poorly lit hallway, stopped in front of number 123, opened the door with a certain gravity. I commented on the murder. He barely let out a humph. Asked if I had any baggage. I repeated that my bags were stored at the airport.

  The boy closed the door. When I sat on the bed, I heard a hoarse moan, as deep as an animal’s.

  Then came another moan, so I took a pillow and smashed it against my ears. I thought maybe I was just jumpy, full of palpitations. Then I tossed the pillow away and shook my head violently.

  The moaning kept on. It was masculine and coming rhythmically. I touched myself—a little bit excited. I picked up the phone and waited for reception to answer. The flapper picked up.

  “I’m the guy that just checked in, and I’d like a whiskey neat—but I’d like you to bring it yourself.”

  She told me she’d be at my room in two minutes.

  When she came into the room with the bottle of whiskey and a glass, I said I’d fallen for her in a matter of seconds. She said she didn’t believe me. I asked her to touch me and see for herself. She took hold and told me it had been a long time since she’d met somebody so ready to go. I was already unbuttoning her blouse.

  As soon as I had her undressed, she got down on all fours atop the filthy green carpet immediately. I kneeled behind her. My mission: to mount from outside her field of vision. No touching above the waist, just anonymous haunches seeking each other out pathetically.

  Late that night I went out to find someplace to eat. I raised the collar of my blazer and went whistling a made-up song. The month of June was ending and an incredibly cold wind blew through Copacabana.

  On the corner of Barata Ribeiro, a newsstand displayed the paper with a headline about the extraordinary cold in Rio that year. As soon as I read the headline, I realized I’d lost my appetite and that a sort of nausea had installed itself inside me.

  I went up the hotel stairway feeling an immense fatigue. Now the person at reception was a boy, who was listening to a battery-powered radio. I remembered to ask if they figured out who the killer had been in the murder at the hotel. He told me they’d given a suspect on the radio, a Uruguayan doctor.

  Upon entering my room I noticed a nearly invisible bloodstain on the carpet. I crossed over it and threw myself on the bed with all my clothes still on. I didn’t even take off my shoes.

  I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned; I stared at the light already peeking through a slit in the curtains. I thought about my departure, about how long I would last.

  I got up and opened the curtain. What I saw wasn’t dawn, but fully ripened daylight. I hoisted the sash. The window looked out on the backs of various buildings. In one of the windows a woman was filing her nails. The smell of coffee in the air. Leaning on a sill, a boy watched a pigeon’s short flight. The pigeon landed in a gap in the wall meant for an air conditioner. I noticed there was a nest there, with a little baby pigeon inside. The pigeon that just landed, which must have been the mother, pecked her baby with her beak.

  I drew the curtain. A countdown was in progress: I needed to get going.

  But I decided to go back to bed. I kicked off my shoes. I felt that I was repressing a sense of hopelessness inside myself, because I had to get going soon—so I pretended to be calm, very calm.

  If I feigned madness, or maybe numbed amnesia, the world would rush to commit me.

  And isn’t that the same thing as going away? But with the advantage of not having to expend any effort, such as coming and going from dumps like this one. If I went crazy, they’d have me doped all day and night, asleep as soon as my head dropped in a haze.

  I leaned over the edge of the bed. The almost invisible bloodstain was still there. A gunshot… why not?

  Yes, I would kill too, and earn a cell and free board from the state. Maybe resume drawing, which I gave up in adolescence. Draw all day long if the other prisoners let me. At night I’d fall asleep so that the next morning I could awaken and continue the interrupted line from the day before.

  Maybe that way I’d get back to finding joy in just killing time. Eva, a blonde I’d been mixed up with for the last few months, wa
s always telling me, “What you need is a normal occupation.”

  When alone with myself, in front of the mirror, I’d started saying, “Unoccupied, that’s what they call you.”

  “Unoccupied!” I shouted inadvertently.

  And my heart beat faster, fearing the whole hotel had heard and would come knocking on my door with that human curiosity I usually did whatever I could to avoid.

  A few minutes passed and nobody knocked. I picked up the phone. The woman at reception had already arrived. With a languid tone, suggesting complicity, she asked what I wanted. I said I wanted her; I was dying of stress.

  “I beg you to come to my room this instant.”

  “Sure, I’ll come take a look to see what’s going on, sir…and what should I call you, sir?” she asked.

  “Love. Call me Love, the Word Incarnate,” I replied.

  It wasn’t long before she was there, unbuttoning her blouse, offering me her plump breasts, which I began to gobble, bite, taste. I said that this time I wanted to fuck her face-to-face and, lying on top of her, suck those magnificent tits.

  “This time I’ll get you pregnant, and as soon as you give birth I’ll come get the kid and take him with me,” I said breathlessly.

  By the time I finished speaking she was sitting on the edge of the bed; I was standing. As she brought me closer to her mouth, with ravenous flair she said, “No, no, our son is this right here.”

  “All right, go ahead, be good to him,” I said, dripping from every pore.

  When the receptionist left the room, I sat down on the bed. I felt as if she’d taken something from me. I felt flatter, half-scared, one small noise was enough to send me to the bathroom to see if there was somebody hiding there. On my way into the bathroom I saw how panicked I would look to any intruder.

  I left the bathroom slowly, trying to normalize my breathing. I opened the curtains, looked up, and saw a bit of the sky of that blue day. I took off my blazer.

  I turned to face the room. Once again I noticed the bloodstain on the carpet. I switched on the radio. A friend from adolescence, one I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years, a singer, was talking about his passion for Schubert. Then he sang one of Schubert’s Lieder. When it was over, the interviewer tried to ask something but the singer said no, he had nothing else to say, only that he owed his decision to become a singer to Schubert. I sat back down on the bed.

  I glanced at the time: eight thirty. It took some effort to get up; my legs hurt. I slipped my blazer on and went to the bathroom, steadying myself on things, feeling a sort of disability—the image of a convalescent getting ready to leave the hospital came to mind.

  In the mirror I saw deep circles under my eyes, skin all scaly, parched lips. I slid my tongue along an inflamed cavity in one of my teeth, figuring it wasn’t doing me any good to stay here enumerating the signs of my body’s deterioration. The time to leave had come.

  I turned on the faucet, splashed water on my face, hair, neck. An alarm clock rang in the distance. Right after that, a school bell rang. The nervous horn of a car. And in the background, the muffled rumble of Copacabana.

  When I appeared before the woman at reception, I noticed that something intrigued her. She squinted and asked why I’d suddenly taken on this aged look.

  “Well, in fact,” I replied, “I can’t hide that a few minutes ago something happened that left me this way.”

  “What was it?” she asked, startled.

  “Look, my angel, I think I’m about to go find out,” I replied, trying to recompose the swaggering air I usually maintain around women I’ve taken for a roll in the hay.

  She gave me back the money corresponding to the two days I’d advanced for arriving without bags. I said goodbye, and told her we’d see each other again one day, feeling completely ridiculous.

  I went down the hotel steps half stooped, my legs and back were killing me. When I got to the door I put one of my hands against the wall to hold myself up, and with the other I pressed against the pain in my lower back. Maybe I should go back to my room? I wondered. Maybe I should stay, give up? Maybe I should marry the flapper from reception? Maybe I’ll be content with the company of a woman?

  I’m old, I thought. Old at barely forty. Traipsing around would be madness. Legs, weak. Irregular heartbeat, I know. And my rheumatoid posture…

  There, stopped in the hotel doorway, I felt vertigo. Foggy vision, out of breath…

  But I needed to get going. I stepped down from the stoop and leaned against the wall of the building. Lots of people were passing along Nossa Senhora de Copacabana, just like every morning, some brushed against me, touched me inadvertently, coughed.

  I felt on the verge of fainting but avoided the idea of asking for help. Resorting to another person’s assistance would be the same as staying, and I needed to go.

  Then I thought about getting a taxi. So I went looking for one. I walked by moving one leg at a time, steadying myself on other people like a drunk. Until my feet stepped into the dark puddle in the gutter. I hailed a cab and it stopped.

  I told the cabbie I was going to the bus station. I got in the back, curled up, lying down on the seat. The driver asked if I was sick. With what remained of my voice I said I was only tired. Bus station, I repeated. The cabbie kept talking, but I couldn’t follow.

  At one point I understood he was talking about the cold. I said: Oh, the cold, as cold as the Russian steppes. He told me: The Russian steppes are cold as death. This I heard quite clearly.

  I returned to my senses. The traffic. The cabbie commenting on the smog in the Rebouças tunnel. I leveraged my hands against the seat back and managed to bring myself upright. The car was emerging from the tunnel.

  I was almost better, just a tremble in my hands.

  “How come you’re so tired?” the cabbie asked.

  “I was partying all night,” I replied.

  He laughed. I showed him my hand and said, “Look how I’m trembling, it’s alcohol tremors.”

  “You’re an alcoholic?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to a treatment center in Minas,” I replied.

  He shook his head, gave a little snort of assent, and said, “I have a brother-in-law who drinks. He was in rehab three times.”

  Suddenly, the cabbie said we’d arrived at the bus station.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Great,” I replied, almost startled.

  I watched the commotion at the bus station and saw the hour of my departure had arrived, the way someone going under for surgery witnesses the anesthesiologist’s first procedure.

  I took a wad of money from my pocket, opened my hand, and gave it to the cabbie. He asked if I wanted change. I inquired if he knew where to find the ticket counters for the buses to Minas. He smiled, gave me a look, and said he had no idea.

  “I’m sorry.” I said it full of a sudden shame.

  “Sorry for what, man?” he asked.

  “Sorry for being who I am,” I replied, closing the car door softly.

  I got on the escalator going up. The one coming down was jammed with people. Between the up and down escalators there was a long concrete staircase. People in a hurry were going up and down, skipping steps.

  On the escalators everyone seemed totally immersed in what they were doing. Noticing this relaxed me. I too would manage: travel, take the bus, arrive somewhere else.

  There were long lines at the ticket windows. A lot of people were milling around. Many others sat on benches. A man and a woman kissed shamelessly at a lunch counter. A man left the pharmacy looking at his watch.

  I sat on a bench, way at the end. The rest of the bench was full. I stretched out one of my legs a bit, without letting my heel come off the floor. My leg looked a bit pitiful. Maybe it was the crumpled up unwashed sock, the fleck of mud on my shoe. A pitiful state I’d done everything I could to disguise. I brought the leg back over beside the other.

  Now I was looking at nothing except the dirty floor on the
upper deck of the bus station. Gazing at that dirty floor, I had nothing else to think about. Maybe a vague yearning for a child’s intimacy with the floor.

  It struck me that my journey might bring me back to that intimacy. A voice inside me said, between excitement and apprehension, Who knows, maybe I’ll end up sleeping on the ground.

  I took out the ball cap I always carried in the pocket of my blazer. I put it on my head in the position I liked, a little to the right side. I no longer needed a mirror to be sure the cap was placed in exactly that position.

  The cap obeyed, loyal. My hands had memorized the way to execute their task. As always, when the task was completed, I gave a little tap on the cap’s brim to see if it was really on right.

  I ran my hands down my body as though searching for something and felt a bulk in the blazer’s other pocket. It was a thick piece of paper folded several times—a map of Brazil I’d bought two days earlier.

  I looked around, making sure there was room to open the map all the way. I put my legs over the armrest of the bench. Now, with nobody on either side, I could extend my arms.

  As I opened the map I remembered what I’d said to the cabbie. That I’d be going to alcohol rehab in the Minas countryside.

  On the map, the Minas countryside looked like a swarm of little towns. My gaze descended a little, crossing into São Paulo State and stopping on Paraná.

  I was thirsty. I thought about getting a mineral water. I folded the map, discreetly tucked it under my butt. Then I got up and walked away.

  I didn’t even make it five steps. A woman seated on the bench facing mine called out, “Hey, sir, sir, I think you forgot something there.”

  I looked back, toward the spot where I’d been sitting, saw the paper folded on the bench seat, turned to the woman, and shook my head, saying, “It’s not mine.”

  I decided to buy a ticket to Florianópolis after I saw the name of the city on a ticker above one of the counters. Why not try out an island? It was a situation that interested me. And besides, I’d never been there before. I lifted the collar of my blazer, which had slipped back to its normal position. I touched my cap. I needed to consider how cold it would be down south.