Atlantic Hotel

by João Gilberto Noll

  “Where are we?” I insisted, a bit impatiently.

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t know that Arraiol is in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,” he said, pretending to scold me, infantilizing me in that way of people who treat the gravely ill.

  I stared at him. I focused my attention on the contrast between his very dark skin and his very white nurse’s uniform.

  “Are you from Arraiol?” I asked.

  “I’m from a village far from here, called Sobroso. You?” he asked.

  “I was born in Porto Alegre and lived there until my twenties.”

  “Do you go to Porto Alegre much?”

  “I’ve never been back.”

  “You don’t know anyone there anymore?”

  “No,” I replied.

  Then Sebastião told a joke to cheer me up. The main character in the joke was a Danish woman in a dentist’s chair. He ended the joke by letting out a raucous laugh.

  I laughed. I noticed that the force of my laughter didn’t hurt too much.

  “Tomorrow I want to get up, sit in a chair,” I said.

  “The man in charge around here is Dr. Carlos. He makes all the decisions,” Sebastião said.

  Sebastião spoke in a way that made it clear he didn’t like Dr. Carlos one bit.

  I was sleeping less now—the intervals between one nap and the next much longer. At first I wasn’t pleased that my sleep ratio—as Dr. Carlos called it—was decreasing.

  The enhanced wakefulness left me fearful. As though I’d completely lost confidence in any other use of time but sleep.

  I could still look around, and that’s how I managed to pass the time I remained awake: I saw the Sacred Heart of Jesus in front of me; I saw the appearances of the people who came to look at the legless actor; I saw Dr. Carlos’s bright bald head. And at times I regretted that, in addition to my leg, I hadn’t also lost my sight.

  Sebastião woke me one morning, saying the day had come for me to try to get around a bit in a wheelchair.

  “Today we’re going to get out of that bed,” he repeated several times.

  I drank coffee with milk and refused to eat anything, excited by the idea of getting out of bed for a while, seeing new things beyond that room. Besides that, I was getting sores on my back from spending so much time in bed.

  Sebastião told me Diana would be coming soon. They’d given him the order to give me a special bath.

  Then he gave me a sponge bath, and, for the first time, dusted me with talcum powder from my head to my only foot: my genitals, my behind, my back, my armpits. Dressed me in a pair of pajamas. Gray pajamas with wine-colored trim on the collar and cuffs.

  Diana arrived a little after nine—in a green knit dress buttoned up the front. She smiled at me. Kissed me on the lips and gave a sigh. I took her hand, which was still as cold as the first time I touched it. Sebastião came into the room pushing a wheelchair.

  He picked me up, one arm as my seat and the other arm as my backrest, and sat me in the wheelchair. During this entire procedure Diana was close, holding my hand.

  She kissed my hand and started to push the wheelchair toward the corridor. It was a long corridor: some convalescents were wandering down it, steadying themselves on the walls.

  From behind me, Diana was speaking softly and slowly, as if trying to hold my attention. Telling me it was a special day for her father—the launch of his campaign for mayor of Arraiol. It was the first election in Arraiol. The town had just been incorporated a few months prior.

  “My father fought the hardest for Arraiol’s autonomy,” she confided in my ear.

  Out in the street, fireworks had begun to go off. Diana said—still pushing me along the corridor—that Dr. Carlos’s motorcade, as they called it, was on its way. Of course it was going to pass by the hospital, and we’d watch the motorcade from the hospital balcony.

  When we got to the balcony Diana straightened the blanket over my leg. Down below, a band was passing. Diana told me it was one of Rigoletto’s arias put to marching time—her father’s favorite opera.

  Diana was now telling me her father’s candidacy was a coalition of three parties. The name of the coalition, written on a number of banners, was the Municipal Alliance. Wherever the name Municipal Alliance was written, the name of their candidate—Dr. Carlos—also appeared. Never with his last name. Diana made sure to tell me her father was known that way across the whole region. Nobody called him by his last name.

  I discerned the figure of Dr. Carlos round the corner, approaching on the back of a truck, waving to the people standing on the curb.

  Suddenly a guy with the name of the newspaper—Arraiol Daily—on his chest scaled the hospital wall and snapped a photo of me with Diana on the balcony. Then Diana grabbed my hand, just as the guy snapped another photo.

  When Dr. Carlos passed in front of the hospital, he gave us a lingering wave. Diana waved back emotionally. People were either looking at him or at Diana and me. They clapped for us.

  “It’s the soap opera actor whose life the future mayor saved,” I murmured, knowing I must look completely foolish.

  “What’s that?” Diana leaned down to ask, clapping continuously.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said, almost yelling over the loudspeakers.

  After the motorcade went by, Diana took me through the hospital corridors. We didn’t speak to each other. I heard only her panting.

  “Would you like to see the hospital chapel?” she asked.

  “Diana, Diana, anything you want,” I replied.

  The chapel was in the hospital courtyard. A ramp led up to the chapel door. Diana pushed the wheelchair harder to make it up the ramp. The door was closed. Diana pulled her dress away from her chest, and drew a key from inside.

  “I have the key,” she said.

  And she opened the chapel door. She took me through the door, then closed it and turned the key.

  She pushed my wheelchair up to the last row of pews in the chapel. Leaning down, she embraced me.

  I asked her to open the buttons of her dress. I touched one of her breasts. It was so small that it fit almost entirely in my mouth.

  She pulled out the other breast, told me I could do that one too. This breast tasted a little bit sweeter.

  I put my hand on the crotch of my pajamas: I could tell I only had a partial erection.

  Seated in the wheelchair, I could look out the window of my hospital room and see springtime arriving early. Flowers were already blossoming at the tops of trees.

  I’d never taken off the gray pajamas. They now had faint stains only I noticed.

  They’d given me wooden crutches, the kind that go underneath each arm, cushioned at the top. With the crutches I could sometimes wander around the room, but not farther.

  Dr. Carlos hadn’t come to check on me for about two weeks. He sent orders through Sebastião: I should do such and such exercises with my leg; I should try to walk so many minutes on my crutches down the corridor outside the room; I should drink less fluids.

  Sebastião confided to me that he was going to leave the hospital to look for work as a nurse in another city.

  “Very far from Arraiol, if possible. So far that I never hear any news from here.”

  “Take me with you,” I said, laughing.

  “You’ll end up married to Dr. Carlos’s only heiress,” he said, letting out a laugh that was suddenly interrupted by a thought that silenced him.

  Sometimes he’d take me for a stroll around the hospital courtyard. I liked the firm way he drove my wheelchair.

  I still hadn’t gone outside the hospital. One afternoon he insisted I make it all the way to the courtyard on crutches.

  Under the open sky and without the wheelchair, I’d hardly crossed the threshold into the courtyard—the last step I’d taken with Sebasião’s help—before I made a fool of myself. I lost my balance and fell into a bed of chrysanthemums.

  At that time of day the courtyard was empty, so nobody besides Sebastião witn
essed my fall. He pulled me out of the flowerbed and let me rest on the ground for a while, propped against a tree. He asked my forgiveness. I said I’d need to get used to falling from now on.

  Then he picked me up and sat me on a low wall at the edge of a little pond in the middle of the courtyard.

  There was a fountain in the pond. Little red fish swam around. A hunk of bread bobbed in the water. I felt a droplet hit my forehead.

  “I’m going to call Diana,” I said.

  I thought calling would prevent me from becoming too despondent over my fall. The person who answered the phone was Dr. Carlos.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Better, Dr. Carlos.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes, Dr. Carlos, I’d like to speak with Diana, please.”

  When Diana came to the phone she said, “My love, I dreamed of you all night.”

  “Then come and see me.”

  “On my way,” she responded, breathless.

  Except for these moments with Diana, or my conversations with Sebastião, the hours dragged on—nothing I got my hands on was worth reading. One day it was a book on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. It started with him already a saint. It didn’t say anything about his childhood, his youth, how he’d arrived at saintliness. The book began with Francisco already haloed.

  I asked Sebastião to get rid of it.

  He told me the hospital was like that, books just found their way to the patients, and a lot of times even to the hospital staff, without anybody knowing where they’d come from or why they ended up in certain hands and not others.

  “You were sent The Life of Francisco. Can you guess who sent it?”

  “Dr. Carlos?” I asked.

  Sebastião stared at me without saying anything, his gaze completely absorbed.

  “Okay, Sebastião, I already asked once, but please take me with you when you leave this place!”

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I said all this is bullshit.”

  “That’s right, so we’ll plan our escape,” he said.

  The fall I suffered in the hospital courtyard put me in a bad funk. I didn’t want to walk on crutches anymore. For most of each day I only wanted to be in bed, hesitating even before agreeing to the wheelchair.

  Even in the wheelchair, I didn’t want to go to the courtyard anymore. I felt even more disabled under the open sky.

  In the days after the fall I realized the only thing I was in the mood for was talking to Sebastião. Even Diana—always ready to offer me her firm breasts—wore me out as much as anything else. She was always going on about her father’s greatness—the man who had taken away my leg.

  At certain times, especially when Sebastião wasn’t nearby, I calculated that the right time for going insane had arrived. I reflected: suppose the psychiatrist perceived I was feigning madness, he’d still end up sending me to an asylum, because to him feigning madness would be a sure sign of insanity.

  When Sebastião reappeared, my desire to escape at all costs relaxed a little. I’d made it a habit to give whatever he said my full attention—something rare for me, as I’d always had trouble following people.

  What Sebastião would say was exactly what I needed to hear to keep clinging to the meager life surrounding me.

  Sebastião would sometimes relate mystic scenes so vividly that I didn’t have to imagine anything, only listen to him.

  One day he came into the room saying he’d seen a ghost. He told me this with the utmost composure—he’d seen something moving in the middle of a bush, oval-shaped, bright and luminous, radiating great protection.

  Sebastião finished the story as he gave me an injection. He said I’d feel sleepy, and to give in to it.

  “Give in to it,” was the last thing I heard. And I slept wonderfully, one of those slumbers that destroys all traces of fatigue.

  That’s what kind of sleep it was, and when I came to the surface, the first thing I saw was rain against the windowpane. I felt sluggish, without any motivation, and if I could have done anything, it would have been to ask Sebastião to put me back to sleep.

  Sebastião wasn’t in the room. The rain beat against the glass, and it was that rain and that glass I watched when my eyes refused to close again.

  I was awakened by Sebastião.

  “How’s it going, buddy, should we have dinner?”

  “Sebastião, take me with you,” I demanded sleepily.

  “I’ll take you, but wake up first, eat a little, and later we’ll discuss our escape.”

  Sebastião carried me to a little table that stood to the left of the window. He sat me in a chair next to the table. On the table was a bowl of soup and a spoon, as well as a glass of water. I looked out the window and saw night was falling. It did me good to see that the day was ending and that I hadn’t participated in it whatsoever. With this absence I felt myself getting even with the day.

  The soup was chalky and pasty. I looked back to see if Sebastião was still in the room. No, he’d left.

  The rain had let up somewhat—the streetlight outside could be seen clearly now. When I put another spoonful of soup in my mouth I felt that it was already cold. I’d gotten distracted, had forgotten to keep eating my soup. That’s what Sebastião said: “You forgot there was a plate in front of you again.”

  “Yeah…” I said, staring at my plate with my head down.

  “Is there so much to think about?” Sebastião asked.

  “You know, Sebastião, if I make an effort I’m also capable of seeing a ghost.”

  “Ghost or no ghost, you have to eat every day, my friend!”

  “Nothing changes?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Sebastião replied.

  A bubble formed in my right nostril and immediately popped. My head was hanging, as if it were heavy.

  Sebastião wiped my nose with a piece of toilet paper. He asked me to try to keep my head upright. For now I shouldn’t go back to sleep.

  Sebastião was stretching sheets over my bed. He asked if they were changing my linens regularly. I said I didn’t recall, but I’d make an effort to remember.

  “The question is: has the hospital changed your bedsheets or not?” Sebastião said, snapping his fingers close to me so I’d pay attention to what he was saying.

  “Why, Sebastião?”

  “Because your sheets aren’t clean, just look!”

  He showed me a yellow stain, urine, which left me totally humiliated. I lowered my eyes, and said sincerely, “Look at what I’ve come to.”

  Sebastião agreed that it was troubling that things had come to this—to the point of staining my clothes and pissing my sheets.

  I laughed heartily. I thought Sebastião had great power over me. Turning everything into a joke, he was the person who traversed each day with me in that room.

  If it rained, or was sunny, if it was springtime and nightfall was starting to come later—everything out the window was worthy of comment.

  I was no longer intrigued by Dr. Carlos’s prolonged absences. Let him stay away—I’d have time to make plans.

  I hadn’t decided anything about my future life, where I’d go, if I’d return to Rio or not. Everything was complicated now, very much so: I was mutilated.

  One afternoon Diana turned up in my room. In a rather seasonal spring dress, yellow, two or three frills. She came close and said she wanted me to take her virginity today. We should go to the chapel—the safest place, according to her.

  I was honest with Diana, and informed her that she’d be better off not waiting for me to recover from this phase. I was still very weak. But she’d caught me on a day I felt like trying at least. She kissed me right in my ear.

  In the chapel we spent a while trying to situate ourselves on the seat of a pew. Finally, we got into the tried and true position—she on her back with me on top, everything open just right for me to get inside.

  I could tell later, however, that I was like a lead weight on Dia
na, because that position, I didn’t understand why, left me in a state of prostration from the stomach on down. Diana’s body had turned into a sort of receptacle for the weight of my mutilated carcass. She was moaning because she couldn’t breathe. Desperate, she pushed me onto the floor.

  She left me alone in the chapel.

  With considerable effort I managed to get up on the pew. Then I laid down on the seat and fell asleep, exhausted.

  When I woke it was nighttime, everything dark. I saw a stained glass of the Resurrection lit by the moon. It didn’t take me long to discover where I was.

  I sat up on the chapel pew trying to feel my way. I couldn’t see anything. Up front there was a little lantern. The flame trembled.

  In the dark I had a hard time with the wheelchair, but managed to get it all the way to the door of the chapel, which wasn’t locked.

  There wasn’t anybody in the courtyard. It was a cold night. When I opened the door to my room and turned on the light I saw Sebastião sleeping in my bed.

  I turned out the light and went to the window in the wheelchair. The glass was all fogged up. I wrote my name on the glass with my finger.

  I opened my eyes, lifted my head, and faced the window, which displayed a beautiful morning. I was still in the wheelchair.

  There was a banner on the other side of the street that said VOTE FOR DR. CARLOS.

  I supposed it was Sunday, because a bunch of kids were in the street holding pennants suggesting they were there for Dr. Carlos’s big rally, which was scheduled to take place at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday.

  Without a doubt, it was that very Sunday, because I could already hear the first chords of the marching band.

  Sebastião yawned behind me. When I turned to look he was rousing himself.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  He sat up in bed. I asked if he could hear the marching band from Dr. Carlos’s motorcade.

  He looked back at me, scowling.

  Then I asked him to give me something that would put me to sleep.

  He got up and said he’d bring an injection.

  While he shot the injection into my vein he told me he’d already asked to be relieved at the hospital. He had some savings and would use them to try to get work as a nurse in another city.