The Electric Hotel: A Novel

by Dominic Smith

  Kaufer felt compelled to whisper a translation as Bessler came closer.

  —The odds that the bomb is still alive, the chances that you will drop it to find out, the probability that you expect to be killed. I’d rather not shoot you, but by now we have enough good footage and you’re not the only person in Belgium who can glue strips of celluloid together. I’d also rather not explode into a million tiny pieces …

  The muzzle of the gun was now a few inches from Claude’s right temple.

  —Wenn auf dem schmalen Stege, Der Wandrer bebt …

  Kaufer murmured:

  —When on the narrow bridge, the traveler trembles …

  Only Claude was not trembling. His hands were steady. He was aware of the weight of the shell, of the sunlight on the back of his neck.

  —Please set the shell down very gently. We will all drive away and wait for the ordnance corps to arrive and nothing will be mentioned in my report to Berlin. Don’t think America will risk the Kaiser’s wrath over an Alsatian with two passports. If the sack of Louvain didn’t force them into the war, then what will?

  Claude felt the château floor drop away. He was ten years old, standing beside his father with the open bible, leafing between pressed wildflowers.

  —Wildblume, he said, fleur sauvage.

  —He’s gone quite mad, Bessler said to Kaufer.

  * * *

  The muzzle of Bessler’s pistol was now touching Claude’s temple, and for an instant, when he saw the expression on Kaufer’s face, he thought that he’d been shot, or that he’d entered the cramped dark foyer of a tiny blackout. But Bessler had said something low and menacing and the lance corporal took a step closer to lift the shell out of Claude’s cradled arms. The first sign that Claude had acquiesced was the uncanny sight of the banded metal shell resting on the sun-glossed lid of the white grand piano.

  * * *

  Everything was different now. Claude was confined to the basement and to the pantry darkroom, Kaufer and two officers taking shifts to guard him, even when he showed his progress on The Victor’s Crown for Bessler. Kaufer no longer brought him sweets concealed on the meal tray. Instead, he looked at his boots, ignoring the fact of Claude’s existence.

  * * *

  One afternoon, Claude said to him:

  —When we were in the field with the flamethrower, I saw you through the Pathé, after you’d moved the French soldier into position. You were weeping, very softly. You walked away from us, from where Bessler and I were standing on the hill, to make sure nobody would see. I saw you wipe your eyes with the back of your sleeve, filmed it in fact.

  Kaufer refused to look over at him, and Claude turned back to editing the footage. The room was drowning in acetone. Finally, Kaufer said:

  —After the film shows in Brussels, they intend to send you to a work camp in Königsberg.

  * * *

  By October, The Victor’s Crown was ready to screen. In the Brussels district of Sint-Gillis, Bessler commandeered a movie theater, the Diamont Palace, and invited an audience of occupation officials, German high command, a handful of foreign journalists from neutral powers, the American Legation, and the Commission for Relief in Belgium. He told his men that he wanted to show the world that Germany had conducted an orderly, humane annexation of Belgium, that across the three administrative zones trains were running, bridges were being repaired, and paraffin lamps were burning.

  * * *

  In his filming and editing instructions to Claude, he’d been careful to exclude anything that would suggest troop movements or strategic positions. And the fighting scenes tended to show the afterglow of victory rather than the terror of battle. Bessler had even deliberated about whether or not to include a shot of poisoned Belgian carrier pigeons lying limp in their wire cages. In the end, he asked Claude to take the frames out.

  * * *

  The Brussels cinema was a Moorish auditorium walled in by ornate stalls and balconies, the proscenium flanked by an enormous trompe l’oeil. Kaufer showed Claude to the projection booth—a narrow white room perched at the back of the auditorium—and promptly bolted the door behind him. Claude set down his leather suitcase and metal box of reels.

  * * *

  They had arrived several hours early so that he could become familiar with the projection equipment and they could rehearse the thirty-minute film with a live military band. A dozen Austrians—the Alpenkorps—were going to play Blankenburg marches while the action unfolded. No improvisation would be permitted, so the military band needed to time their sheet music against the action on-screen. They had also arrived early, Claude suspected, to ensure that he didn’t interact with any of the American delegates or journalists who might attend the screening.

  * * *

  Behind two glass viewports, the projection booth walls were yellowed from years of carbon arc lamps burning through a nitrate fog. There was a bank of heavy metal filing cabinets, each one full of canisters and spare projector parts, and a small exhaust vent positioned above two hulking German projectors. Claude opened the projectors to take stock of their moving parts. Each one had a Maltese cross mechanism that spooled and shuttered the frames.

  * * *

  He unpacked two reels from the metal case and two from the suitcase. Each was a thousand feet long, roughly fifteen minutes, labeled A, B, C, and D. The A and B reels were Bessler’s official footage, carefully edited according to his mandates. These would be loaded, one in each projector, for the rehearsal with the military band. When a cue dot appeared at the end of reel A, Claude would start the second projector and unspool reel B. When it was time for the live performance, he would swap B for C, which contained three minutes of alternate footage right at the very end. Reel D was a copy of reel C, and Claude decided to stash it in the space behind the exhaust grate above the two projectors. He couldn’t imagine who would find it, or how, and now he wished he’d buried the copy in the ground at the château. Before the incident with the bomb, he might have sent the backup copy into Louvain with the Flemish gardener.

  * * *

  He sat on the projectionist’s wooden stool and waited for the band to arrive. Lately, there were entire minutes where he felt loosed from his body and mind. He studied an offcut of celluloid curled on the floor and suddenly saw himself emulsified into the filmstrip. There were four closed doors in a hallway and he stood knocking on one of them. When there was no answer, he opened the door to see Sabine Montrose reclined in a copper bathtub, her eyes smeared with kohl, the head of a Bengal tiger mounted and hovering in the darkness behind her.

  * * *

  He closed the door and continued to the next room, where a neatly made cot stood under an open window. The sun was setting outside and the raking light projected up behind an orchard, spangling the branches and leaves onto the walls and ceiling. He stepped inside the room, closed the door, and lay down on the bed to stare up at the tree crowns floating and tessellating above his head. In the daydream, he watched himself fall asleep.

  * * *

  When he heard the band arrive he stood up and slid open one of the glass viewports. In their pike-gray uniforms and calfskin boots, the Prussians held their instruments delicately between white-gloved hands, flugelhorns and trumpets and highland snare drums. It was hard to imagine the Alpenkorps engaged in anything but musical combat. Bessler consulted with the feather-hatted, brass-medallioned conductor, a man dressed for a coronation.

  * * *

  Music stands assembled, sheet music splayed, the band tuned their instruments with brassy innuendoes and syncopated riffs. Bessler stood to the side to give them some room as they assembled below the lip of the stage, the silk movie screen a floating field of white above their heads. The Oberstleutnant gave in to a jaunty smile when the first Blankenburg march started up. Soon he received a demure nod from the conductor and Bessler waved up at the projection booth. Claude turned on the first projector, heard the prickle of the arc lamp as it blanched the first frame.

  * * *<
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  The rehearsal went perfectly. They opened with “Unter Kaisers Fahnen” (Under the Emperor’s Banner) and closed with “Adlerflug” (Flying Eagle). For a year, Bessler had heard this upbeat, martial arrangement in his head as they filmed and edited. The march through the streets of Antwerp, the waves of kettledrummers and cavalrymen, it all seemed choreographed to the music. Thirty minutes before showtime, the band went outside for a cigarette and Claude swapped out the reel in the second projector.

  * * *

  Bessler unbolted the projection booth door and came inside with two champagne flutes just as Claude was closing the projector hatch. Claude couldn’t remember the last time they’d stood together without Kaufer’s speculative translations between them.

  —What did you think of this arrangement? Bessler asked.

  —Suitable.

  —I agree so, too. Would you like some champagne? I have some for you.

  —No, thank you.

  Bessler shrugged and set down the second champagne flute on top of a filing cabinet.

  —I consider this a night of celebration. All our hard work leading us here. I feel myself happy and content.

  * * *

  Without Kaufer to even out his phrasing, Bessler sounded sentimental and dithering. Then Claude remembered the Oberstleutnant’s eyes when he’d touched Claude’s temple with the cold muzzle of his pistol—they were like two chips of ice at the bottom of a scotch glass. Later, when the commotion had passed, even with the guards stationed outside the pantry darkroom, Bessler acted as if nothing had happened. The ordnance corps discovered the bomb was dead and carted it off and it was never mentioned again. But standing in the projection booth, Bessler’s breath smelling of gherkins and champagne, Claude realized there was no way to undo the chill kiss of gunmetal against his pulsing forehead.

  —The projectors are sent from the factory in Leipzig. How do you like him?

  —So far so good.

  —C’est bon?

  Claude said nothing.

  —You must miss Französisch. I cannot imagine cutting out my mother tongue like you.

  * * *

  Bessler paced the booth a little, contemplating something as he sipped his champagne.

  —I will let you in to a little secret. We receive a word that Herbert Hoover is in town from London and will be attending tonight’s performance. Der Kaiser is not happy with the coal baron at all. He lets the relief commission distribute their food every month to the locals, but he thinks it’s sending the wrong message. As you know, the Belgians are perfectly, ah, fähig, for feeding themselves if they could organize and tend the fields in orderly fashion. We have seen it with our own eyes!

  —The camera sees the truth.

  —Precisely. Did you know they have their own flag?

  —Who?

  —The Commission for Relief in Belgium.

  —I didn’t know.

  —And their own fleet of ships as well.

  * * *

  From out in the lobby, the sound of boot heels on marble. Bessler threw back his champagne flute and drained his glass.

  —Our guests are beginning to arrive. I must scuttle. Viel Glück!

  He closed the door, sliding the bolt into place, and Claude moved two of the filing cabinets in front of the entranceway.

  * * *

  The audience was mostly military men in full regalia. The few women—wives of high-ranking bureaucrats—looked underdressed beside so many feathered brigade hats and ribboned medals. From the projection booth, Claude tried to discern the foreign journalists and American delegates. He saw a group of men in workaday suits, some with cameras and notepads, doffing their homburgs and fedoras as they shook hands with the Germans. Through the open viewport, he heard snippets of Dutch and Swedish and English. When everyone was seated with a glass of champagne, Bessler and Kaufer took to the stage.

  * * *

  Kaufer translated Bessler’s welcome speech for the English speakers in the audience, a concession to American neutrality. One hand on his scabbard, the other between the brass buttons of his tunic, the Oberstleutnant told the audience that Germany had been a reluctant occupier, that it had acted in self-preservation.

  —In cities like Liège and Louvain, we discovered that the so-called neutrality was a mask for Flemish hostility toward Germany. Tonight, as we will demonstrate in the language of cinema, the German army is a benevolent and necessary occupier. In the words of the Kaiser, We must pray for the triumph of our weapons and prove this oath to the last drop of blood. This film is our prayer and our proof. We hope you enjoy!

  * * *

  Bessler gave a nod up to the projection booth, Claude uncapped the light from the first projector, and the Alpenkorps leaned into a Blankenburg march. They sounded like a municipal brass band on a Sunday afternoon as German infantrymen lined up at a goulash cannon, tin plates held plaintively in the dawning light. Then a Bavarian engineering corps labored on a train trestle, plying pneumatic drills and welding torches, while a procession of pigtailed young Belgian girls delivered cans of coffee and plates of butterbrot.

  * * *

  There were scenes of Prussian cavalrymen helping a farmer recapture his herd of dairy cattle, and soldiers filling bags of sand. Images of Belgian soldiers were noticeably absent until a sequence opened on a work camp, where a group of bearded prisoners performed calisthenics against a backdrop of northern woods in high summer.

  * * *

  The march through Antwerp, even at reduced speed, was a display of choreographed military might. The army gendarmes and the uhlan lancers on horseback, martial and glowering, the singing infantrymen with their cheap cigars, the field artillery and the cannoneers serene as Tibetan lamas. The signal corps on bicycles, uncoiling telephone wires through the empty streets.

  * * *

  A general and his officers standing in the cavernous dining room of an abandoned abbey. Their bowls and dinner plates pushed to one side as they confer around the edges of a map with wax pencils. Bessler wanted it to show their methodical planning, a moment of topographical reverie, but on closer inspection the map was upside down from where the general stood. And at the edge of the frame there was a plate of Strassbourg goose livers, anchovies, and rum chocolate, bright packets of tinfoil and cardboard on display. Other signs of decadence followed, a bottle of Eiswein at the edge of a gingham tablecloth. Claude watched the back of Bessler’s head in the front row, nodding slowly, a fraction behind the marching beat.

  * * *

  After the cue dot, the second projector hummed and spooled. From behind the glass viewport, Claude watched the serried trenches, the impromptu visit of a chaplain inside a muslin-covered triage unit gouged into the mud, the German wounded on stretchers, the flamethrower unit coming over the parapet, the dead Frenchman, reclined and tendriled in smoke, his scorched face bathed in twilight.

  * * *

  The swapped-out footage was three minutes of desolation and cruelty. It began with Lance Corporal Kaufer wiping tears from his eyes on the Flammenwerfer battlefield before cutting to a barn in Louvain. A priest, naked except for his clerical collar, was being hoisted by his wrists up to the rafters. Below him, German soldiers assembled and lit a bonfire. The theme of incineration continued with a mound of burning books and an abbey being plundered by Prussian lancers hurling sulfur lozenges. To maximize the impact, Claude had glued together a series of cuts that showed a woman’s bayonetted body, a young girl being dragged by her hair by a German officer, the men of a village being hauled away at gunpoint. A stretch of barren no-man’s-land widened back to reveal a field of human limbs in ribbons and tatters of blue fabric.

  * * *

  From behind the closed viewport, Claude saw the reaction of the Germans as a pantomime of outrage. Bessler was up onstage, trying to pull the trompe l’oeil over the screen, and Kaufer was running toward the back of the auditorium with his hands in the air. A German officer removed his revolver and took aim at one of the projection booth v
iewports. Claude remained standing at the glass and waited to either be shot or see the improvised intertitle he’d filmed with his notebook:

  A message from the projectionist:

  My name is Claude Ballard.

  I am an American citizen being held against my will.

  Claude stared down into the blue-lit ocean of the auditorium and waited for the bullet. The Alpenkorps was somehow still playing through the uproar, a silent underwater symphony through the glass viewport. Bessler had removed his dress sword and used it to slash at the projection screen while the filmstrip continued. Some of the foreign journalists flashbulbed the pandemonium with their cameras, strobing the German bureaucrats as they rushed for the exits with their wives.

  * * *

  When Claude heard them ramming at the metal door of the projection booth, he thought the filing cabinets would slow them down or deflect the first few bullets. He turned off the second projector and sat on the floor, the machine ticking and cooling against his back. He closed his eyes, brought his knees in to his chest. The flurry of voices at the door began to separate into layers and strands—a wide swath of incensed High German, some Dutch glottal concern, then a narrow strip of reasonable American English, insistent and low and modulated.

  * * *