A Castle in the Clouds

by Kerstin Gier

  Okay, so ideally I would’ve liked to do something a bit cooler and more spectacular than an internship in a hotel, but in order to get a job at a cheetah sanctuary in South Africa or work with whale sharks in the Maldives or spend a year as an au pair in Costa Rica, I would have had to be eighteen. In the end, I’d been glad to find something I could get my parents to agree to, which didn’t cost any money and which was still a decent distance away from home.

  A quiet tap on the windowpane interrupted my train of thought. Two black button eyes peered in at me, and I hurried to open the window.

  This was yet another reason why I loved my little bedroom. The windowsill was a favorite perching place for the mountain jackdaws, probably because whoever had slept here before had been secretly feeding them. It was a habit I’d wholeheartedly embraced as soon as I’d moved in, even though it was technically forbidden. But it wasn’t like we were talking about huge flocks of pigeons here. (Apparently there were so many pigeons in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice that they eventually were going to cause the whole city to collapse because they pooped on everything and corroded the marble.) We were only talking about seven jackdaws, and they weren’t doing anyone any harm. To be honest, I’d never even seen them poop. They were exceedingly well-mannered birds that presumably flew off into the woods when they needed to do their business. I’d christened them all Hugo, because at first—with their yellow beaks, shiny jet-black feathers, and intelligent black eyes—they’d all looked utterly identical to me. Over time, though, I’d learned to tell them apart. So now there was Melancholy Hugo, Unbelievably Greedy Hugo (they were all greedy, but Unbelievably Greedy Hugo was just … unbelievably greedy), One-Legged Hugo, Kleptomaniac Hugo (he’d already stolen two of my hair clips and the lid off a plastic bottle, and had nearly made off with my phone charger cable, too, but secretly he was still my favorite), Chubby Hugo, Hopping Hugo, and Suspicious Hugo.

  “Hello, Hopping Hugo! Have you come to visit Super Sophie?” It was a good thing no one could hear me, because I always spoke to the Hugos in baby talk—and what was more, I referred to myself in the third person to help them learn my name. I’d heard that jackdaws were so clever they could actually learn to talk, and I patiently awaited the day when one of the Hugos would look at me and caw “Hello, Super Sophie. I’m very well thanks, and how are you?” That day was probably some way off, though. Hopping Hugo only hopped up and down and gazed at me expectantly.

  The sun was shining less brightly now. The wind had come up, and the bank of clouds drifting across the mountaintops from the west was already starting to break up into scraps of mist that gleamed with a milky light.

  “What do you think? Is it going to snow before it gets dark?” I asked, crumbling up a milk roll and scattering it over the windowsill. According to an online ornithologists’ forum I’d consulted, milk rolls were easy for jackdaws to digest in comparison to normal bread, and unlike sunflower seeds, oats, and nuts, which I’d also tried offering them, the Hugos couldn’t get enough of milk rolls.

  While I carried on getting changed, One-Legged Hugo and Suspicious Hugo landed on the windowsill and helped Hopping Hugo polish off the crumbs. I took a few photos of them on my phone and sent one, of all three Hugos gazing adoringly into the camera, to Delia with the caption: “Yep, this place is full of cute guys. I just didn’t tell you about them before because I couldn’t choose between them. But you can definitely have the brother.”

  I sent the same photo to my mum. “The great outdoors begins right here on my windowsill. And just think, Mum: These birds didn’t go to college and they’re still perfectly happy.”

  Even after they’d vacuumed up all the crumbs, the three Hugos stayed sitting on the windowsill and watched as I wriggled into one of the ten pairs of opaque black support tights I’d recently acquired. Fräulein Müller insisted that we wear black tights with our black uniforms. I’d persevered for a while with thinner tights that didn’t make me look quite so much like a grandma, but they’d all ended up with so many runs that I got sick and tired of having to replace them. To say nothing of their other disadvantages. Woe betide anyone Fräulein Müller caught pulling up a pair of tights that were falling down! So I had to resort to the support tights. Passion-killers they may have been, but once you’d gotten them on, they were supercomfortable and stayed put all day without falling down. And they made my legs look good. Although there wasn’t much leg to be seen, since the black uniform, which I now slipped on under the curious gaze of the three Hugos, came down to just below the knee.

  This so-called “front of house” uniform was a phenomenon: On the hanger it looked like nothing more than a buttoned cotton smock with a white collar, but the moment you did up the buttons at the front it was transformed into a decidedly stylish piece of clothing. High-necked and close-fitting at the top and flaring slightly from the hips, the dress looked as though it had been tailor-made for me, and although it was very simple, the snow-white collar, starched cuffs, little gold buttons, and embroidered crown emblem of the hotel made it look really quite elegant, even when I had a feather duster in my hand. I automatically stood up straighter when I was wearing it. However mad (and sad) it might sound, I’d never been more elegantly dressed than I was in this housekeeping smock and a pair of support tights.

  I glanced in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. Satisfied with my appearance, I pushed a final hairpin into my bun, now free of pine needles, and turned to the three Hugos. “This would be a good moment to whistle appreciatively.”

  They didn’t whistle, but they did manage an appreciative look before flying off when I went to shut the window. I had to, if I didn’t want to come back and find a snowdrift on my bed. I always found it fascinating how suddenly the weather could change here. The sky was a little darker now, and the outlines of the mountains outside my window looked hazy. The bank of clouds had moved a little closer and the wind was picking up. The weather forecast said we were going to have “prolonged snowfall even in low-lying areas” all week, and although that was bound to make it more difficult for the guests to get to the hotel, I couldn’t help but be pleased.

  This was going to be by far the snowiest Christmas I’d ever had.

  And the first Christmas away from my family.

  I’d been expecting to feel homesick at the thought of having to work on Christmas Day and spend it with complete strangers, but in fact all I felt was an excited tingling in my stomach.

  Because one thing was for sure: This Christmas was going to be anything but boring.

  4

  Although pets were expressly forbidden at Castle in the Clouds (in the interests of all our guests in need of rest and relaxation), we checked in no fewer than three dogs that day. Together with the pug belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Von Dietrichstein in Room 310, who’d arrived the day before, that made four exceptions to the rule. They had all been personally approved by Gordon Montfort himself, however.

  “There are guests and there are guests,” he would say. “And for certain types of guest there are no lengths we won’t go to.”

  The Von Dietrichsteins were definitely certain types of guest. Not only were they bona fide aristocrats, but they also worked in the media—he was a photographer; she was a freelance journalist—and for years they’d been granted exclusive coverage of the New Year’s Ball and the various celebrity interviews that went with it. To be fair, the Von Dietrichsteins’ pug wasn’t really an issue when it came to guests in need of rest and relaxation. He was so quiet and placid that the first time I saw him I thought he was a stuffed dog, or an eerily lifelike candy box where you had to unscrew the head to get to the chocolate inside. He didn’t even slobber, which was most unusual for a pug.

  The two poodles belonging to Mara Matthäus, the figure-skating gold medalist, were a lot more lively, but even they behaved themselves impeccably while their owner was checking in. And this was despite the fact that Gordon Montfort, who’d arrived at the hotel a short time before, wouldn’t leav
e them alone and kept ruffling their ears like there was no tomorrow.

  I’d watched the ball hostess arrive from my hiding place in the concierge’s lodge. From here, I had a perfect view of the whole of the lobby and the forecourt beyond the revolving doors. I could hear what was being said at Reception, which was diagonally opposite, but I felt safe behind the wood-paneled counter. If necessary I could disappear from view entirely by taking one step to the left, which I’d done with all possible speed when the hotelier had appeared. Though he tended to ignore me whenever he saw me anyway, to be fair.

  “Champion little dogs, these, just like their champion of an owner,” he said jovially to Mara Matthäus, laughing at his little play on words.

  His son, Ben, at the reception desk, grimaced very briefly, but his face soon regained its bland expression.

  Clearly Ben hadn’t had any time to unpack after he’d fed the horses but had started his shift at Reception straightaway. Either he was unusually conscientious, or his father terrorized him the same way he did his other employees. Still—if it was true that Ben worked for free, then at least Gordon Montfort couldn’t exactly threaten to fire him or dock his wages.

  From my hiding place I’d also witnessed the rather chilly greeting between father and son. Gordon Montfort hadn’t smiled at his son half as warmly as he’d smiled at the two poodles, and Ben hadn’t smiled at all, just looked anxious. He’d walked in to find his father laying into Anni Moser for having had the audacity to cross the lobby.

  “What have I told you?” he’d hissed at her.

  “That you don’t want to see my wrinkly old face anywhere I might alarm the guests?” Anni Moser was the oldest chambermaid on Fräulein Müller’s team—perhaps the oldest chambermaid in the entire world, to judge by the wrinkles on her face and the liver spots on her hands. Anni Moser would never tell anyone how old she was, only that she had no intention of leaving Castle in the Clouds until she was too old to wield a feather duster. Which certainly wasn’t the case yet: Nobody, not even Fräulein Müller, wielded a feather duster as energetically as Anni Moser, nobody climbed ladders more fearlessly to clean curtain rails and cornices, and nobody knew more tricks for getting stains out of carpets and furniture.

  “I’m sorry—it won’t happen again,” she’d muttered, and hurried away under Gordon Montfort’s scowling gaze as he turned to greet his son.

  I hadn’t heard what Ben had said to Gordon, but whatever it was he hadn’t seemed to like it much. He’d continued to scowl, and instead of hugging his son, he’d given him a brief, awkward clap on the shoulder, which Ben had returned just as awkwardly. Then Gordon Montfort had spotted some greasy fingerprints on the glass of the revolving door and flown into one of his frequent rages, complete with bulging veins at the temples. (The fingerprints, incidentally, to judge by how low down they were, belonged to a certain diminutive nine-year-old boy.)

  Ben must have been used to his father’s temper tantrums—he hadn’t batted an eyelash at any rate, when Gordon had started yelling his head off. The new bellhops, on the other hand, had fled in terror to fetch a cloth for the glass. One of them was trembling even now.

  Standing behind the reception desk in his black suit, Ben looked older than he had before, and I was fairly sure he hadn’t had a side part in his hair when I’d first met him, either. He handed Mara Matthäus her room key with a nonchalant smile.

  Castle in the Clouds still hadn’t arrived in the age of digital magnetic key cards—in fact, when it came to locks and keys, it was stuck in the nineteenth century. Some guests found this outlandish and outdated, but most thought the ornate wrought-iron keys, just like the heavy gold tassels that served as key rings, were all part and parcel of the hotel’s ingenious nostalgic decor.

  “Please allow me to personally escort you to your room so I can make sure everything is to your satisfaction,” purred Gordon Montfort, snatching up the key before the (very attractive) Ms. Matthäus could reach for it. “Jakob here will see to your bags.”

  “Jakob here” was in fact Jaromir, an unfamiliar sight in his doorman’s uniform with top hat and braided frock coat. You’d never have guessed it from his stoic expression, but I knew he felt exceedingly uncomfortable in this getup because he’d spent most of the past two days complaining about it. As a result, I’d learned some Czech vocabulary I was fairly sure didn’t appear in any Czech textbooks, as well as the wonderful phrase: “I’m a bloody handyman, not a bloomin’ ringmaster!”

  Jaromir had actually gotten off quite lightly in comparison to Jonas and Nico, two young temps who’d been recruited for the holidays, like Hortensia and her friends, from the hotel-management college in Lausanne. Their bellhop uniforms consisted of funny little waist-length jackets and ridiculous caps. But that was little consolation to Jaromir.

  Only when I’d reminded him of the big tips he was likely to get thanks to his new uniform had he cheered up a little. And that was probably why he tipped his hat to me now and winked as he wheeled the luggage cart toward one of the staff elevators.

  For most of the year, the hotel didn’t employ bellhops, doormen, or porters. When guests arrived, whoever happened to be working at Reception at the time was responsible for greeting them and helping them with their luggage. But over the holidays, when the hotel was full of illustrious visitors, these traditional posts were filled again and the old uniforms were brought out of storage. Weeks ago, in the laundry room, I’d helped Pavel take these precious treasures (most of them old enough to be in a museum) out of their cloth bags. Together we’d steamed the heavy wool fabric and polished the brass buttons. As we worked, I’d learned the aria “Il Mio Tesoro” from Don Giovanni and the lovely word epaulet—which was the name of the fancy shoulder decorations that were stitched onto the uniforms. I’d been waiting for an opportunity to impress somebody with it ever since.

  Once the antique grille and doors of the elevator had closed with their usual clank and rattle behind Gordon Montfort, Mara Matthäus, and the two well-behaved poodles, a collective sigh of relief went through the lobby. I was finally able to emerge from my hiding place.

  Monsieur Rocher winked at me over the top of his glasses. “As long as they don’t bark or chase cats, I have nothing against dogs,” he said. “I just always think it’s such a shame about the nice white snow.”

  I giggled. “That’s true! That’s the first thing my mum ever taught me about snow: Avoid the yellow patches. But in the valley where I live, the snow doesn’t usually last long enough to get peed on.”

  Monsieur Rocher looked at me sympathetically.

  “Especially at Christmas,” I said. “It always rains at Christmas.”

  “That’s terrible! Another marzipan truffle?” As if to console me for my snowless childhood, Monsieur Rocher held out a silver bowl full of chocolates whose outer shells the hotel pâtissière had deemed not perfect enough for the guests.

  “Yes, but this really is the last one!” I closed my eyes in rapture as the chocolate melted on my tongue. Luckily for the staff, who got fed all the chocolates she wasn’t happy with, the pâtissière Madame Cléo was a pedant and a perfectionist. A snippet of grated orange peel in the glaze was enough for her to declare a petit four a failure, and she’d once rejected an entire tray of éclairs because she said they looked like penises.

  “Was your first day as a babysitter as bad as you thought it would be?” inquired Monsieur Rocher.

  “It exceeded even my worst fears.” I rolled my eyes dramatically. “And I only had two kids to look after. But from tomorrow on, I’ll have a trained teacher with me, and I’m sure she’ll know what to do when the children would rather run away and fling themselves in front of cars than build a snowman.” Childcare at Castle in the Clouds worked in the same way as the bellhops and the doormen—for most of the year it wasn’t offered (unless somebody expressly requested a babysitter, and then the hotel would arrange it for them). But during the holiday season, a kindergarten teacher came every day from the nearest
village to entertain all the guests under the age of twelve, from nine in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon, including Sundays and public holidays. And this year she’d have me as an assistant.

  “Hmm.” Nobody said hmm as kindly as Monsieur Rocher. He always sounded so encouraging, never disapproving or doubtful. “If this weather keeps up, you’ll probably have to stay indoors tomorrow anyway. And we can open up the game room if necessary. The key’s just inside, on the ledge above the door. In case anyone tries to escape.”

  “Or break in,” I said, thinking of Don Burkhardt Jr.

  We fell into a companionable silence as we sipped the cappuccinos I’d brought with me. The drinks had gone a bit cold by now but it was such good coffee that it still tasted nice and I could feel myself relaxing as I drank it.

  Monsieur Rocher was like balm for the soul. I had no idea how he did it, but in his presence I always felt calm and confident. Problems didn’t completely disappear, but they suddenly seemed a lot more manageable. And my argument with Hortensia and the nastiness in the bathroom that morning felt so insignificant now, so unimportant, that I didn’t even feel the need to tell him about it.

  It was hard to guess at his age: His long, pale face had hardly any wrinkles, apart from a few smile lines, but his gray hair and grandfatherly wisdom and kindness made me think he was older than his smooth skin would suggest. I’d asked him once how old he was, and he’d looked at me with a rather bemused expression and said, “Oh, you people! You’re always so fixated on numbers.” Which had confirmed my suspicions that he was older than he looked.

  After all the noise and chaos of a few minutes earlier, a soothing sense of peace had descended upon the lobby, and the fact that it was the calm before the storm made me appreciate it even more. Ben was sorting through some papers; Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig from Room 107 sat on the sofa by the crackling log fire, rustling their newspapers now and then; and the two bellhops stood around in the lobby looking slightly lost. In those ridiculous outfits, they looked as though they might be about to launch into “March of the Tin Soldiers” from The Nutcracker at any moment.