Motherland Hotel

by Yusuf Atilgan

The other took up his book and opened it. A blessing he wasn’t a talker. The Dentist, now…. The Dentist would burst if he had to stay alone half an hour. Zeberjet had felt a certain affinity toward the R.O. since the previous night. Just back from eating, the man had stopped for a word. “You’ve only been out once in the past six days. Do you always sit here?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s my job.”

  “Not an easy job. You hold up well.” Was his job really a hard one? When Faruk Bey had raised the prices five years ago, and along with them Zeberjet’s and the maid’s wages, he’d been abashed and looked down at the floor. That was Faruk Bey’s second appearance, the first being in 1955 when Rüstem Bey died. In dividing up the legacy the elder sisters had let him have the hotel. “Would you like to look around upstairs?” Faruk Bey was two years old when the family moved away to Izmir, but as a child had been brought here several times by his father. On that one night he had stayed in Room 1, leaving the next morning. The Retired Officer had the book in his left hand, a cigarette in his right. As Zeberjet was about to get up and make some tea the door opened. It was a fairly young man who came over with a glance at the Retired Officer and leaned across the desk.

  “Hello,” he said softly, “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Please do.”

  “I was planning to take the train to Izmir with a lady, but it’s three hours behind time. I wonder if we could spend the night here. We’re in a spot. And we’d rather not wait at the station.”

  “Where’s the lady?”

  “At the station.”

  “All right, you’re welcome to stay.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  When he had left, the Retired Officer turned to Zeberjet.

  “Who was that?”

  “I don’t know. He asked if … if he could bring someone to the hotel.”

  “Asked after someone, you say?”

  “No, he’s bringing someone.”

  The R.O. had turned pale, perhaps because of the liquor in him. When the door opened, it was the man who had reserved a single. A dark, spare face…. Suddenly Zeberjet remembered. Two years ago, this man had left still owing for his one night, and had promised to come back and make it up later. Now he stood at the desk.

  “Are you the one who shows me the room?”

  “We take payment in advance, sir.”

  “Why? I’ll pay tomorrow when I check out.”

  “I’m sorry. You owe us for one night.”

  “What? I owe you?”

  “That’s right. It was two years ago. You said you’d pay later.”

  “There’s some mistake. I’ve never been here before.”

  “I don’t think there’s any mistake.”

  “This is ridiculous. I can’t stay here if you won’t trust me.”

  “As you wish.”

  The man laughed. “Funny place,” he said, and left. The Retired Officer gathered up his book and newspapers. He seemed to be in pain, his face sallow as he approached the desk. Was he sick? Zeberjet gave him the key with a “Good night, sir.”

  The man looked him in the eye and suddenly burst out as if swearing.

  “You’re very strong!”

  Zeberjet recoiled in his chair and blanched, and the man turned to walk away. He wanted to call out after him, ask him not to go up yet. But how could he? When the door had closed upstairs the main door opened. It was a young woman with a handbag and the young man who had just been there. They were anxious. As the man approached the desk the woman stopped at a distance, her eyes to the floor. Zeberjet took the key to Room 6 from its hook.

  “I’ll give you a double bed.”

  “Just one bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you have a room with two?”

  “Of course, but you’ll be more comfortable here.”

  The man turned to his companion.

  “What do you think?”

  She shrugged, and said, “I don’t know.”

  “All right, give us the double bed.”

  Zeberjet handed the key over.

  “Third floor, first room on the left. Number six.”

  He watched them go up the stairs. Wearing flats, she was as tall as he was, with a compact butt and good, straight legs. The man had said they were in a spot. Perhaps both of them were married. Would they embrace the moment they were inside? She’d want the door locked first.

  Half an hour after the train from Ankara went through he locked and barred the main door. It was two hours late tonight instead of three. He turned off the lights and went into the room. Tuesday he had oiled the hinges. Last night he’d stayed for only a very short time, turning away decisively as he was about to reach for the towel. Now he walked over to the bedside table. On the bed that night she had been sitting precisely in this spot. Her black sweater, the necklace of large silver balls…. And she’d looked up. The teapot, strainer, and tea-glass, the small dish with its five lumps of sugar. He had brought six. Could he know for certain she had drunk one glass with the missing lump? She might even have held it in her mouth to drink three. His hand hesitated. Yet he had to know how she took her tea. Bending down, he lifted the lid of the pot and saw that it was more than half full. She’d drunk a single glass. With the lid back on the pot, he picked her glass up and turned it in the light. A faint smudge at the rim showed where her lips had touched. There was another, smaller smudge that might be her fingerprint. A creaking came from the room overhead. For some time he stood with the glass lifted, his face to the light. A blackened sip of tea remained in the bottom. Closing his eyes he brought the glass down, caught the stagnant odor of stale tea, and where he thought her lips had been he kissed the glass. A sudden crash overhead strained the ceiling and he jumped, dropping the glass on the floor, where it shattered. He stared, his flesh crawling. The Retired Officer must have fallen out of bed. He heard running water above, followed by a creaking that must have been the man lying down again. When his heartbeat returned to normal Zeberjet let go of the bedstead and took a backward step, surveying the bits of glass on the floor. The room had been violated. Now she would not come back. Leaving, he turned off the light, which had been burning for a week.

  FRIDAY

  It was past seven when he came downstairs. As he was making tea in the pantry, after first unlocking the entrance, a door opened and closed above. Placing the teapot on the lowered flame he came out and sat in his chair, just as the R.O., small leather suitcase in hand, was coming down. He looked tired, washed out, swarthier. And he hadn’t shaved.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning. What do I owe?”

  “Seven days, that makes a hundred and five liras.”

  The man took a handful of bills from his back pocket and counted a hundred and twenty liras out onto the desk. The remainder went into his back pocket, and he picked up the suitcase.

  “Keep the change.”

  He was obviously feeling low. Almost at the door, he halted when Zeberjet called out, “You’re running along, then.”

  The man’s shoulders hunched painfully. Then, without turning, he continued on out, closed the door softly behind him, and was gone. Had he realized the woman wasn’t coming? “She won’t be back, but I still have to wait,” Zeberjet had wanted to say. Who knows, the man might have been waiting for someone else. He’d stood up pretty well, all things considered.

  After breakfast Zeberjet came with broom and dustpan into the woman’s room and switched on the light. He swept up the broken glass to the right of the bed and poured it into the wastebasket, then took a damp rag to the tea stains on the linoleum. Then he went to the pantry with the rag, washed his hands and brought his breakfast tea-glass—in which he had left one sip—to her room to substitute for the broken one. Now if she came back there would be nothing to notice. But he, of course, knew. He turned off the light and went out, locking the door. He sat in his chair. The whistle was blowing at the textile mill and he checked the clock. Two minutes to eight. This alarm clock
lost two minutes a day. Had he forgotten today to set it after winding it up? He’d check at noon when they shot off the cannon. At two minutes past eight last Friday he had knocked. “That’s fine, I’m getting up.” Was it only a week ago? He took cigarettes and matches from his lefthand pocket. That he had let her sleep an extra minute or two was not so important, but certain details did matter. Her not carrying an ID, the forgotten towel, the two half-smoked cigarettes. All this meant she was absent-minded, unsure, even if it didn’t show. You’d expect a woman going to see her brother for the week to be more at ease. Possibly there was someone else in that village, someone she knew from Ankara.

  He was stubbing out his cigarette when the couple from last night came down. The man had been frank. They could easily have passed themselves off as married. She had too much make-up on. He looked pale. “Don’t forget,” he said, and stopped at the desk. The woman smiled and continued on out.

  “Good morning. All right if I wait a while?”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  The man was looking out the door; he shifted, took out a pack of cigarettes, offered it.

  “Like to smoke?”

  “I just did. Some other time. Were you comfortable last night?”

  “The room was perfect. Thanks.”

  He lit his cigarette and sucked at it.

  “We may want to come back again.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The man switched the cigarette to his left hand and drew a fifty-lira bill from his back pocket.

  “Goodbye,” he said, leaving the bill on the desk.

  The man walked away as Zeberjet opened the cash drawer. “Just a minute. Your change….”

  But he went out as though he hadn’t heard. Zeberjet took the R.O.’s fifteen liras from the drawer and put it, together with the bills he already held, in his back pocket. Had he turned away that deadbeat (was it really the same man?) in order to give this couple Room 6? Going up to bed at night he had stopped to listen at the R.O.’s door, and had been considering a knock when the creak of bedsprings, coupled with a blanket-stifled cough, sent him on up to the third floor. There he had leaned to the dark keyhole of Room 6. The words of a quiet conversation came through the door, indistinguishable. Perhaps they were only resting. There was a creak. “Smoke?” “All right,” said the woman. Zeberjet had gone to his room.

  NIGHT

  Long after the 6:40 had passed through he was pacing between the door and the stairs, hands clasped behind his back. The door opened and a youngish man of medium height appeared.

  “We’re full up, sir.”

  “Really? Fair enough.”

  The man left. Early that evening Zeberjet had told two other people the same thing. The maid had swabbed the lobby floor that afternoon, when the upstairs cleaning was done, and had stood with her pail at the door of Room 1.

  “Does this one need swabbing, agha?” “No, it’s clean.” Was it? He went into the pantry, brewed some tea, and came back to sit in the corner armchair. The large copper ashtray was empty. Was this the final night? The old manor house, after all its years of childbirth, living and dying, was ready now. The train had not brought her; he would wait another hour. Until eleven. The door opened and he saw a blonde prostitute who occasionally spent the night. She was with a middle-aged man. Zeberjet didn’t bother to get up.

  “There’s no room,” he said.

  “Wha…. Why ever not? This is where we’ve always stayed.”

  “Let’s go,” said the man.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do? The third-floor room….”

  “We’re full tonight.”

  The man grasped her arm.

  “Let’s go.”

  They left. Wednesday night she’d come with a different man. Room 6 showed Saliha Alakash and Ahmet Alakash. He shut the register and put the same names down for 6 on the day’s form. Then he searched for a name to give the man who had been in before these two. In all these years not one Zeberjet had come in. He put down Zeberjet Gezgin for Room 5. There was a sputtering in the pantry and he ran to turn off the flame. The tea had boiled, it would be undrinkable. After washing the pot he came out to sit in the R.O.’s chair. By eleven, four more people had come, two at a time, looking for rooms. He’d sent them away. Now and then a car would speed by outside.

  Towards midnight he got up, barred and locked the front door, and turned out the lights. After taking a piss in the second-floor john he went into the room where the woman off the Ankara train had stayed. In the dark he leaned back against the door. ‘Do you think I could have some tea?’ The tea was spoiled. He switched the light on. Everything was in order, even the tea-glass. Was it on the wall hook to the left of the bed that she’d hung her thin brown overcoat? Coming in with the tea tray he had seen it on the bed. She may have laid it across the chair later; then her sweater and skirt…. He went to stand by the bed. The bed he was born in. Its maroon satin quilt had belonged to the manor house. Did she lie naked under it? Switching on the bedside lamp, he turned the other light off. Now he removed his shoes and socks, put the slippers on, undressed, hung his clothes on the hook, washed his feet. When he had dried them with the hotel towel he climbed into bed and pulled up the quilt. He drew the long pillow to him and embraced it. “I’d have died if you hadn’t come,” he said aloud. He smelled the pillow and kissed it. His cock was stiff. He felt hot inside and his hands were sweaty. Sitting up he pushed the quilt back. His chest had little hair. His face was off color, strained. From the bedstead he took the towel she had forgotten, with its broad red and yellow stripes and narrow black ones. He spread it in the center of the sheet with one end of the flat pillow underneath, and lying down embraced them. Again he said aloud, “I’d have died if you hadn’t come.” Apparently she had asked something; he answered yes. His arms were thin and hairy. There were pimples among the hair on his butt. Steadily he rose and fell. Lifting his face from the pillow he said, in a high voice that tried to sound like hers, “Aah, don’t let go, don’t. Bite my nipples.” He slid down somewhat to bite the pillow. He moaned. Legs and back tensed, he rose and fell, faster, more. And stopped. In a high, tired voice, as though it were being murmured in his ear, he said, “Ahh, how I’m yours.”

  TUESDAY

  It was the fifth night. He rose to his knees on the bed and bunched up the towel. With a dry spot he wiped the sticky wetness from his genitals and belly, then hung the towel on the foot of the bed. He’d been shaking it clean before getting in, scraping off any clinging flakes with his fingernails. But the yellow stripes, especially in the center, had nevertheless begun to take on a thicker cast. He shoved the pillow back in place and lay down under the quilt. For the past five nights he’d been sleeping in this bed. On Friday night he had brought down his watch, pale green sweater, and shaving kit. The next morning he’d gone to Room 6 for the table, which now stood by the sink. On it was the shaving kit, which he was using every other day. Mornings he would sleep in, and after waking up he would lie there for a while as he used to when his father was alive. No one was at the hotel anyway. Whoever came was sent off; “No room.” He’d put all the keys in the drawer. Monday there’d been some difficulty getting rid of the livestock dealers. One of them had muttered in leaving, “… whole hotel? Never heard….”

  The past four mornings he had not woken the maid. She’d been rising around noon, mostly. “Why aren’t they coming, agha?” she asked when she brought down his supper Monday evening. “Don’t know. They’ll be back.” That day she washed a bit of laundry after lunch and hung it in the shed to dry. It had been raining. Today she had come down at one point and stood by the stairs. “Should I go, agha?” “Go? Go where?” “I don’t know. The village.” “Why?” “There’s nothing to do.” “Well good. You can rest a little.” “Nobody comes.” “Go back upstairs. They’ll come again soon.” She ought to have felt freer, more at ease this way, but clearly the change in routine, after ten years, had disturbed her. He had told her that people would start
coming again soon. Did he really mean to take guests in? He didn’t think so. Whenever he turned someone away he’d put a name down on a form, transferring these names to the register the following morning. Then, when the newsboy was gone, he would pay the hotel envelope from his own. This morning he had told the newsboy not to deliver the paper any more, no one was reading it, and he had paid the twenty-nine days’ bill. It was Republic Day. When he opened the door around nine in the morning there had been automobile horns, and trumpets playing somewhere, an all-schools parade. One important item in the paper: clocks would be set back tonight. He’d forgotten.

  He sat up, reached to the bedside table, and set his pocket watch back an hour. It was twenty minutes to twelve. After bringing down his watch, sweater and shaving kit on Friday night he had removed the tea tray. The copper ashtray was still there. At one point he had finished one of her cigarettes, lying back on the bed to smoke it. Was he still waiting? The hardest thing was the vacillation he’d fallen into. How many times had he changed his mind over going out this evening? In the end he had told the maid he’d be downtown and not to open to anybody. Still, he had waited for the train to go through. Then, eating out for the first time in ten years, at a small, simple place near the shopping district, he ordered a single shot of raki. He left without finishing it. There was celebrating in the broad square by the Government Building, with fireworks, music, and dancing. The edge of the square was crowded. Zeberjet had never been able to fathom the people in public places. They seemed different from those who came to the hotel. Two men were arguing because of a remark, or pass, made at some woman. Others were joining in. Zeberjet moved off. On the corner, between a man and a woman who stood outlined against the bars of a bank door, was a young girl, tall and dark and wearing a black sweater. He glanced at her in passing, and she looked away. Farther on he leaned up against a tree and watched them stroll toward the bridge and enter a one-storied house. He came back to the hotel through streets he had never seen before. It was dark.

  He turned over on his left side. The bedside lamp cast a shadowy illumination on the painting. For years the woman had been lying there ornately framed. “Would you come awake, girl?” he said softly. Closing his eyes he saw her sit up, stretch, and throw aside the gauzy fabric that covered her as she rose from the fancy couch. She sent the negro girls away, held to the sides of the frame, and leaned out. Her hips and breasts shrank as she grew taller and stepped into the room, walking toward the bed.