What Happens at Night

by Peter Cameron

  After a moment the driver flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the snow at the man’s feet.

  The man realized that the burden of acknowledgment was his. Hello, he said. Do you speak English?

  The driver looked at him with surprised curiosity, as if he had never heard a man speak before. He cocked his head.

  Do you speak English? the man repeated.

  The driver seemed to find this utterance amusing—he laughed a little and lit another cigarette, and dragged upon it contentedly. He scraped an arc in the snow with his dainty slipper-clad foot.

  Confused by everything, the man looked into the warm cavern of the car and saw two stuffed Disney Dalmatians hanging by their necks from the rearview mirror. The incongruity of this sight momentarily suspended the man’s debilitating notions of foreignness and ineptitude. Emboldened, he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out toward the driver and pointed to the words, as if they were not the only words written on the paper.

  Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel Furuhjalli 62

  For a moment the driver did not respond. Perhaps he wasn’t looking at the words, or perhaps he couldn’t read; it was impossible to tell. But then, in an oddly unaccented voice, he spoke the words aloud: Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel. And he pointed toward the road, the only road that left the parking lot, narrowing into the dark forest, like an illustration of perspective.

  Yes, I know, the man said. But we cannot walk. He marched in place for a second and then wagged his finger in the air: Walk. No.

  The driver continued to observe him with silent amusement. He made a little shrug and pointed to the man’s feet, indicating that apparently he could walk.

  My wife, said the man. His hands outlined an hourglass in the air between them, and as he did this he thought of his wife’s emaciated angular body. He pointed toward the station house. My wife, he said. My wife no walk.

  The driver nodded, indicating that he understood. He shrugged a little and toked on his cigarette, as if there were many worse fates than having a lame wife.

  You drive us? The man held an imaginary steering wheel with his hands and turned it back and forth. Then he pointed at the driver. You?

  The driver did not respond.

  I’ll pay you very good, the man said. He removed his wallet from his coat pocket and showed it to the driver.

  The driver smiled and reached out his hand.

  You’ll drive us to hotel? the man asked.

  The driver nodded and tapped his open palm with the fingers of his other hand.

  The man opened his wallet and, holding it so that the driver could not see how much cash it contained, took out two bills. He handed one to the driver.

  The driver pointed to the second bill.

  I get my wife, the man said. Once again he caressed an hourglass and pointed toward the station house. Then he shook the second bill in the air. I give you this at hotel, he said.

  The driver nodded.

  The man ran across the parking lot. He slipped and fell on the snow-covered steps and cut his chin on the edge of the deck: he saw the red bloom on the snow. He removed his glove and gingerly touched the abrasion. His teeth hurt, and he could feel the warm saline seep of blood in his mouth. He stood up but felt dizzy, so he steadied himself for a moment against the wall. When he felt a bit better he walked carefully around to the back of the station house.

  The woman was still sitting on the bench. She was being slowly covered by the snow. It was falling so quickly and thickly that it had already obscured the disruption he had made by dancing on the platform; there was just a ghostly trace of it remaining.

  The woman was so still that for a moment the man thought she was dead, but then he saw the fog of her breath tumble from her half-opened mouth. She was sleeping.

  He stood for a moment, watching the snow settle upon her, watching her breaths condense and unfurl in the cold air. For a moment he forgot about the taxi waiting in the parking lot, and he forgot about the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel. He forgot their miserable endless journey, and the illness that had left her gaunt and mean. She had rested her head against the wall of the station house, and the lamplight reflected softly off the snow, and like a gentle hand it caressed her face and restored to it a beauty her illness had completely eroded. He forgot everything and for a moment remembered only his love for her, and, by remembering it so keenly, he felt it once again, it flooded him, and he could not contain it, this sudden overwhelming feeling of love, it rose out of him in tears, and he dropped to his knees before her.

  The lobby of the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel was dark and seemed cavernous, because its walls could not be discerned in the gloom. They had to cross a vast field of intricately and endlessly patterned carpet in order to arrive at the reception desk, which stood like an altar at the far side of the huge room, opposite the revolving entrance doors. A young woman, wearing an official-looking uniform, stood behind the high wooden counter, on which perched two huge bronze gryphons, each holding a stained-glass iron lantern in its beak. The woman stood rigidly between the two lamps, staring placidly in front of her. She seemed as eerily inanimate as the creatures that flanked her.

  It was the final leg of their journey, this trip across the oceanic expanse of lobby. The man and the woman waded through little islands of furniture—club chairs reefed around low circular wooden tables.

  It was only when they were standing directly in front of the reception counter that the woman behind it lowered her gaze from the dimness above them all and seemed at last to see the two weary travelers who stood before her.

  Welcome to the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel, she said. She did not smile.

  Thank you, the man said. We have a reservation.

  Your name?

  He told the woman his name.

  Ah yes, she said. We’ve been expecting you. Did you have a pleasant journey?

  It’s been a difficult journey, the man said.

  It often is, the woman behind the desk allowed. Your passports?

  The man handed these over and they were duly scrutinized and returned. Then the woman turned around and contemplated a huge warren of cubbyholes, each containing an enormous key. She reached her arm up and plucked a key from one of the highest cells. She turned back to them and laid the large iron key, which was affixed to a heavy tasseled medallion, on the counter.

  Five nineteen, she said. Your room may be chilly, but if you open the radiators it should warm up quickly. The bellboy is away at the moment, but if you leave your bags, he will bring them up to you later.

  I think I can manage them, said the man.

  The woman behind the counter said, The bar is open all night. She pointed toward the far end of the vast lobby, where a faint red light shone through a curtain of glass beads. But I am afraid the kitchen is closed.

  There’s no food? the man asked.

  I’m afraid not. Well, perhaps something inconsequential in the bar.

  I just want to go to bed, the woman said. Let’s go.

  You’re not hungry? he asked.

  I just want to go to bed, she repeated, enunciating each word emphatically, as if it were she who was communicating in a second language, not the woman behind the counter.

  The man sighed and lifted the heavy key off the counter and picked up their bags. In an apse behind the reception desk a grand staircase wound up through the dark heart of the building, and a small wire-caged elevator hung from cables in its center. The man opened the outer and inner gates. There was just enough room for the man, the woman, and their bags in the tiny cage, and the limited space forced them to stand so close to each other they almost touched. Their room was on the top floor—the fifth—and each landing they passed flung a skein of pale golden light through the intricately wrought bars of the elevator, so that a delicate pattern of shadow bloomed and faded, again and again and again and again, across their faces.

  Surprisingly, the dark gloomy grandeu
r of the hotel did not extend into their room, which was large and sparsely furnished. The walls were paneled with sheets of fake plastic brick and the floor was covered with a gold shag rug that crunched disconcertingly beneath their feet. The room was, as the receptionist had predicted, very cold.

  The woman dropped the bags she was carrying and sat upon the bed. She sat rather stiffly, staring intently at the faux-brick wall.

  The man watched her for a moment, and said, How are you feeling?

  She turned away from the wall and lay back upon the bed, gazing now at the ceiling. Fine, she said, given that I’m dying.

  But we’re here, he said. Doesn’t that count for something?

  After a moment she said, Do you want me to live?

  What? he asked. Of course I do.

  Do you?

  Yes, he said.

  I think if I were you I wouldn’t, she said.

  Of course I do, he repeated.

  I think I’d want me to die, she said. If I were you.

  I want you to get better, he said. To live.

  Perhaps you really do, she said. But it seems odd to me. I know what I’ve become. How I am. What I am.

  He sat beside her on the bed and tried to hold her, bend her close to him, but her body remained stiffly upright. He stroked her arm, which felt as thin as a bone beneath her layers of clothing.

  Of course you’re the way you are, he said. Anyone would be that way, under the circumstances. But if you recover, you won’t be.

  But what if I don’t?

  Don’t what?

  Don’t recover. Or what if I recover my health, but don’t recover my—I don’t know. You know: myself. My joie de vivre. She gave a hollow laugh.

  Of course you will, he said. How could you not?

  I think it might be gone, she said. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be like this.

  You’re exhausted, he said. But we’ve made it. We’re here.

  I don’t feel it yet, she said. Do you feel it?

  Yes.

  Perhaps if I take a bath. That always changes things, doesn’t it? At least for me it does.

  The woman got up from the bed and opened the bathroom door. She turned on the light. The bathroom was very large and very pink. The ceramic toilet and sink were pink, as was the large bathtub, and all the floor and all the walls were tiled with pink tiles. Even the ceiling was tiled pink.

  What a lovely pink bathroom, she said. And look at that enormous tub.

  You can have a nice bath in that, said the man. A nice hot long bath.

  Yes, the woman said. A nice hot long pink bath. She smiled at him, a real smile. She entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  The man crossed the large crunching field of carpet and knelt beside the radiator. Praying, he turned the knob. It stuck for a moment and then released itself, and a spire of steam gushed out of the ancient Bakelite valve, like the smoke from a train engine in a silent movie. The coiled intestines of the radiator liquidly rumbled like the bowels of a person about to be sick. He placed his hand against the roughened rusty skin and felt it slowly warm to his touch. He kept his hand there until it burned.

  He stood up and moved around the perimeter of the room, closing the curtains across the dark freezing windows, and then he turned on both bedside lamps, which wore little pink silk bonnets. He walked back over to the door and shut off the calcifying overhead light, and the room looked almost warm, almost cozy. He sat back upon the bed, which was covered by a quilted spread of slippery golden fabric, and listened for his wife in the bathroom, hoping to intuit from whatever he heard some clue as to how she was, but he heard nothing. After what seemed like a very long time the door open and she emerged, wearing only the long silk underwear they had both layered beneath their clothes ever since arriving in this cold country. She had pulled her damp hair back and gathered it into a ponytail. Her hair had grown in much thicker than it had ever been before the chemotherapy—the only good the poison did, she claimed. She looked very clean and fresh, flushed and almost healthy.

  She stood near the bed and looked at him oddly, almost shyly.

  I’ve turned on the heat, he said. He pointed toward the hissing radiator. So it should warm up.

  Good, she said. Thank you.

  He drew back the golden bedspread, revealing the white pillows and sheets it had covered. It was like layers of skin, he thought, one lying atop the other, and somewhere far beneath them all the bones, the blood. He patted the blank space he had revealed. Get in, he said.

  No, she said.

  It’s cold, he said. He could see the blunt points of her nipples interrupting the smooth silk outline of her underwear. You’re cold. Get in.

  No. Wait.

  What’s wrong?

  Nothing is wrong, she said.

  She reached out and touched his face. Don’t you see? We’re here. We made it. So nothing is wrong. Everything is good. This thing we’ve wanted, and planned for, suffered for, this thing we thought we would never have, never share, will soon be ours. I’m amazed. Aren’t you?

  Things could still go wrong, the man said. I don’t want to jinx it.

  No, she said. Don’t think like that. Believe it now.

  I do, he said. I didn’t before, but now I do.

  I love you, the woman said. And I’m grateful. I know I forget that sometimes, but I am. Grateful for everything you’ve done for me. Not just now, not just this, but everything. From the beginning.

  I love you, he said.

  I love you, too, she said. Will you get into bed with me, now? Will you get into bed and hold me?

  Yes, he said.

  She slid into the bed and moved toward its center. He began to get in beside her but she said, No. Get undressed. Please.

  Oh, he said. He undressed beside the bed, aware of her watching him. He let his clothes drop onto the floor, onto the horrible shag carpet. He stood for a moment in his long silk underwear and then began again to enter the bed, but once again she stopped him.

  No, she said. Take those off. I want to feel your skin. Please, she said. It’s warm in the bed.

  Is it?

  Yes. It’s deliciously warm.

  He took off his underwear and slid quickly into the bed beside her. He pulled the sheets and coverlet over him. It was freezing in the bed.

  It’s freezing, he said. You tricked me.

  Wait, she said. Be patient. It will get warm. She pulled him close to her and he held her body tenderly against his own.

  When he was sure she was sleeping he carefully slid out of bed. He stood and watched her for a moment. Sleep was a refuge for her, it returned her to a former, undamaged self, and so he liked to watch her sleep.

  The room was warm now and so he knelt again beside the radiator and twisted the knob, and it sputtered fiercely at his interference, as if he were throttling it. He persisted and twisted it into silence.

  The lobby was deserted; the woman behind the reception desk was gone and the lanterns the gryphons held no longer glowed.

  Because it was now darker in the lobby, the light in the bar that lit up the red glass beads of the curtain seemed brighter than before. The man crossed the lobby and paused for a moment just outside the entrance, and then pushed his hands through the hanging beads and lifted away a space through which he entered.

  The bar was as small and intimate as the lobby was cavernous and grand. It was a long, low-ceilinged wood-paneled room, and for a moment the man felt himself back on the train, for in shape it was exactly proportional to the carriage. The bar itself, which stretched across the length of the room, was inhabited by two people, one at each end, as if carefully placed there to maintain balance. At the end of the bar nearest the door the bartender stood, leaning back against the dimly illuminated shelves of liquor, staring far ahead of himself, although the room was very shallow and there was no distance to regard unless it was inside himself. At the far end of the bar, at the point where it curved to meet the wall, at that last and fi
nal seat, a woman sat gazing down into her drink in the same rapt way the bartender looked ahead.

  The placement of these two people at either end of the bar made clear the position the man should take, and so he sat on a stool midway between them. For a moment neither of them moved, or responded in any way to his presence, and he felt that by positioning himself so correctly he had not upset the equilibrium of the room, and they would all three continue to maintain the quiet stasis he had feared to interrupt, as if he had assumed his given place in a painting, or a diorama. This notion affected him with a debilitating stillness, as if one’s goal in life was simply to find and occupy a particular ordinate in space, as if the whole world were an image in the process of being perfectly arranged, and those who had found their places must not move until the picture was complete.

  He gazed through the regiments of bottles that lined the mirrored shelves behind the bar at his reflection, which peered back at him with an intentness that seemed greater than his own, and for a second he lost the corporeal sense of himself, and wondered on which side of the mirror he really sat. In an effort to reinhabit himself he reached out his hand and patted the copper-topped bar, and the touch of the cool metal against his fingertips flipped the world back around the right way, but the bartender interpreted this gesture as a summons and unfurled his leaning body away from the wall, walked over, and placed a napkin on the bar in front of the man, in the exact spot he had patted, as if were applying a bandage to a wound.

  The bartender was a young man, tall and dark, vaguely Asiatic and remarkably stiff, as if he had been born with fewer joints than normal; he seemed unable, or unwilling, to bend his neck, so he gazed out over the man’s head and spoke to the alabaster sconce on the wall just behind them. The foreign words he uttered meant nothing to the man; in fact they did not even seem like words. He remembered how for a long time as a child he had thought there was a letter in the alphabet called ellemeno, a result of the alphabet song slurring L M N O together (at least in his mother’s drunken rendition).