A Castle in the Clouds

by Kerstin Gier

  “Oh please! At least tell me your name. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be your real one. Something French, perhaps?” The way he was standing there in the alcove with his arms crossed beside the severe-looking lady in the pearl necklace, he looked almost like a painting himself.

  “Fine.” Time for the unglamorous truth. “My name is Sophie Spark, and I’m the intern here. I’m currently working as the hotel babysitter.”

  If Tristan was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Shame I’m not a baby anymore, then.”

  “How old are you?” I blurted out. I’d already taken a few steps away from him. Still facing him, though.

  “Nineteen, as you quite rightly guessed. And you? I mean your cover identity, of course?”

  “Seventeen. It was nice to meet you.” I finally succeeded in turning around. Now I just had to move my legs and walk away. It really wasn’t all that hard.

  “Enjoy the rest of your stay at Castle in the Clouds,” I said over my shoulder. As I strode down the corridor between the two elevators, I felt his eyes on my back. Well, I thought I did, anyway. Why I had to choose that moment to remember that Delia always said I walked like a boy, I don’t know. At the door to the women’s staff quarters, I turned to look back. But the alcove was empty. Tristan was nowhere to be seen.

  I blinked, bewildered. Perhaps I’d just imagined him. Perhaps I’d just imagined everything that had happened in the past hour. Perhaps I was actually still lying in bed and I’d dreamed the whole thing. I didn’t have a fishy taste in my mouth, the hotel wasn’t bankrupt, there was no suitcase full of dirty money, and I hadn’t behaved like a complete idiot in front of probably the hottest guy on the planet.

  But then the door opened from the inside, and the door handle banged into my hip so hard that I was pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming.

  I was most definitely awake.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to.” One of the temps from the kitchen squeezed past me with an apologetic smile.

  “My bad,” I replied, slipping through the door.

  And all before 7 a.m.! Unbelievable, the things you see as an early bird.

  8

  “You already knew?” I looked at Monsieur Rocher in amazement. I’d been wondering all day whether and how I should tell him about the conversation between the two Montfort brothers, and now that I’d told him he wasn’t even surprised. Nor was he outraged or horrified. He just listened quietly and attentively till I’d finished, and looked as though he felt sorry for me. And I’d been so worried about how he would react and how I was ever going to console him. This was his hotel. For him, Old Stucky, Anni Moser, even for Fräulein Müller and all the others, Castle in the Clouds wasn’t just their place of work; it was their home. I’d been expecting more of a reaction.

  “I know I’m just the concierge, but it’s obvious from the dwindling number of guests that the hotel isn’t making a profit anymore,” said Monsieur Rocher calmly. “It’s been spending more than it can afford to on staff and maintenance for a long while now, and the loans it’s taken out are no longer enough to cover its costs. The idea of bringing in an investor has been in the cards for a good few years.” He straightened his glasses. “A very sensible idea, if you ask me. If the right investor could be found.”

  “Yes, and Burkhardt certainly isn’t the right investor! He wants to set up a golf shop in the library. Which wouldn’t make much sense without a golf course. And they were talking about chairlifts, parking lots, and cable cars, too.” In my indignation, I forgot to keep my voice down.

  But Ben, who was standing at Reception talking to a late arrival (the British actor—I wouldn’t have recognized him, incidentally), didn’t seem to have heard me. I’d have loved to ask him whether he knew about his father’s plans and what he thought of them. So far, I hadn’t had the opportunity, and, to be honest, I didn’t really know how to go about it. I’d run into Ben in the laundry room earlier when I’d popped in to deliver Pavel’s apple and cinnamon cake and pick up Gracie’s cat hat. Thanks to Pavel, the hat now looked as good as new. Ben had been sitting cross-legged with a sandwich in his hand on top of Bertha, who was merrily rumbling away. It had all looked wonderfully cozy. Pavel had been singing the bass aria from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and I—momentarily overcome with Christmas spirit—had taken the part of the solo trumpet. The machines were making such a racket that all our musical inhibitions melted away. Ben had thought my impromptu trumpet impression was hilarious, and without further ado he’d turned Tired Bertha into a giant drum. For a few minutes we’d sung, drummed, and trumpeted with joyous abandon. But then Ben had jumped down off Bertha, excused himself, and dashed out of the room. Lifelong interns didn’t get proper breaks in their contracts, it seemed.

  “Joyful shepherds, hurry, oh hurry!” Pavel had sung after him.

  “Yes, the plans do sound rather worrying,” said Monsieur Rocher now, smiling at me reassuringly, “but they’re still only plans.”

  I didn’t know how he could be so calm.

  “In the late seventies, there was talk of using the mountain as a ski resort and building a cable car. But people soon went off the idea.”

  “But Gordon Montfort seems to be hell-bent on selling the hotel as quickly as possible. And he doesn’t care what Burkhardt does with it.” I lowered my voice a little. “They mentioned a suitcase full of dirty money.”

  Even this didn’t seem to surprise Monsieur Rocher. “The waste disposal industry appears to be a shady but very lucrative business.” He sipped his cappuccino, which I’d managed to wangle out of the kitchen staff even though it wasn’t officially coffee-break time. I hadn’t wanted to turn up at the concierge’s lodge empty-handed when I was the bearer of such bad news.

  My babysitting shift had finished at four thirty and, apart from the half ton of glitter I’d had to shake out of my hair afterward, it had been uneventful and drama-free. This was probably due to the fact we’d seen neither hide nor hair of Don Burkhardt Jr. all day, not even when we’d gone around the hotel showing off the unicorns the children had made. I’d started to hope the Burkhardts might have checked out and gone home, but it turned out Don was just suffering from a stomach bug. If it was anyone else, I’d have felt sorry for them. But this was clearly karma in action.

  “It’s not the first time Mr. Burkhardt has closed a deal with a suitcase full of cash, incidentally,” Monsieur Rocher confided after a moment’s pause.

  “Seriously?” I whispered.

  Monsieur Rocher nodded. “But until now, as far as I’m aware, he’s only ever invested in incineration plants, recycling firms, landfill sites, and nuclear-waste repositories—a hotel would be a completely new line of business for him. He obviously wants to try his hand at something different.”

  But this hotel wasn’t a millionaire’s plaything! If Burkhardt was so set on getting into the hospitality business and if he was so keen on modern facilities, then why, of all the hotels he could have bought, had he chosen this one with all its nooks and crannies, alcoves, bay windows, turrets, and architectural flourishes? Couldn’t he start off with a simpler project? “Gutless … er … the younger of the Montfort brothers said Burkhardt wants to make a hundred rooms out of the thirty-five we’ve got now.”

  “That would be possible, in theory, if you factored in all the empty rooms in the attic and if you didn’t provide staff accommodation at the hotel anymore.”

  “But that’s terrible!” I said, far too loudly. This time, Ben looked over at me and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. I shot him a quick smile. Poor Ben. If my suspicions were correct, his time as a lifelong intern at the hotel was almost at an end.

  “He loves this place,” his uncle Gilbert had said.

  I loved this place, too, and I’d only been here since September—how much more must Ben love it, having known it his whole life?

  “Those are the Smirnovs, by the way, from the Panorama Suite.” Monsieur Rocher cocked his chin at the couple now walking toward us. Having missed t
heir arrival the night before, I was particularly curious about the Smirnovs. I gazed at them as I pushed our cappuccino cups discreetly out of sight behind the little postcard rack and took a few steps backward to blend unobtrusively into the rear wall.

  Mrs. Smirnov looked to be in her early thirties, a strikingly attractive woman with smooth skin and meticulously styled shiny brown hair that tumbled over the fur collar of her fitted jacket. She was wearing a pair of incredibly high heels that she didn’t seem to have any trouble walking in. She crossed the lobby with the long strides of a catwalk model, flicked her hair off her shoulder with her right hand, and elegantly swung a handbag in her left. Her fingernails were painted a deep red to match her lipstick. Not until she put the handbag down on the desk did I realize there was a small dog inside it. The smallest dog I’d ever seen. It looked like a fluffy white teddy bear with black button eyes, and even its bark sounded artificial, like a cartoon dog.

  “Is emergency,” the dog’s mistress declared in English, with a strong Russian accent. “My husband says zere is no boutique here, no shop, no perfumery. Is zis true?”

  “That’s right, Madam,” Monsieur Rocher replied. “But we do try to get hold of anything our guests require as quickly as possible. What can I do for you?”

  “Clive Christian.” Mrs. Smirnov waved her hand in an extremely dramatic fashion. “I cannot live wizout.”

  That sounded bad. But who was Clive Christian? Monsieur Rocher didn’t seem to know, either, and sounded slightly confused as he asked, “I beg your pardon?”

  Now Mr. Smirnov approached the desk. He was considerably older than his wife, in his late forties or early fifties at least, and unlike her he was dressed quite plainly, in a gray sweater and loose-fitting trousers. He was slim and very good-looking in a melancholy, long-nosed, bald-headed sort of way. On his shoulders sat a little girl of perhaps three or four, who was holding onto her father’s bald head with both hands and staring at us in wide-eyed silence. She had cute curly hair and was wearing a little two-piece dress that looked a bit like a waistless version of her mother’s outfit (fur collar included).

  “This man does not understand me,” said Mrs. Smirnov accusingly to her husband, and then added something in Russian that sounded irritable and not entirely complimentary.

  The man smiled at Monsieur Rocher in a friendly way. “I’m sorry! She dropped a perfume bottle in the bathroom and is very upset about it.” His pronunciation was much better than his wife’s.

  “Yes, is emergency!” she cried. “As I say! Clive Christian No. 1. If I cannot wear, I feel naked. How soon can you get for me?”

  Monsieur Rocher opened his mouth to reply, but Mr. Smirnov beat him to it. “No, Stella,” he said softly but firmly. “It’s the weekend, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and out there it is chaos with the snow. You saw yourself how far away we are from the nearest town, and for this special perfume they might have to travel even as far as Geneva. And since you do not want to put anyone to such trouble, you can use one of your other perfumes.”

  Mrs. Smirnov looked at him in consternation. She said something in Russian that sounded very sulky, something about “Chanel,” and turned on her heel. “And he is ze one who always says my ozzer perfumes give him headache! What have I done to deserve zis? All our friends are in Saint Moritz or the Caribbean, but we must come to zis strange place far away from civilization. Zis year of all years!” She flounced off angrily in the direction of the staircase. The handbag barked in agreement.

  “Please excuse my wife’s behavior.” Mr. Smirnov smiled sadly at Monsieur Rocher. His daughter chirped something and stretched her hand out toward the gold stars and little birds hanging from the garland of fir branches above the desk. “She sometimes needs a little time to get used to a situation.”

  “I’m sure the peace and quiet and the fresh mountain air will do her good,” Monsieur Rocher replied.

  Mr. Smirnov went up on tiptoe to help his daughter reach the garland. Instead of grabbing at them, as I’d feared she might, she gently stroked one of the little birds.

  “I came here once as a boy, you know, and I have wonderful memories of this place. You might even say it saved my life. I was twelve years old then,” said Mr. Smirnov. He paused and looked expectantly at Monsieur Rocher, but Monsieur Rocher said nothing. I could hardly bear the suspense, and in his shoes I’m sure I would have blurted out the question: How could this place possibly have saved a little Russian boy’s life?

  But Smirnov went on without being prompted. “I am very glad to see how little has changed here. As if time has stood still. For thirty years. Even the telephone is still the same. And you—you haven’t changed at all. Although that can’t be right. It must have been your father who helped me?”

  Helped him with what, for goodness’ sake? Couldn’t he be a little more specific? I was dying of curiosity here.

  Monsieur Rocher laughed softly. “Anyone over thirty probably looks ancient to a twelve-year-old. But thank you for the compliment, Mr.—er—Smirnov.” The hesitation before the name, and the pointed emphasis he placed on it, were very unusual for Monsieur Rocher. Usually all the guests’ names, along with their details and personal information, were engraved completely and indelibly upon his memory as soon as he’d added them to his list.

  Smirnov smiled wistfully. “Of course you don’t remember me. I’m sure I was just one child among the many you had to comfort over the years. But I will never forget you. You told me nobody can take away your home if you are at home within yourself. And that we have everything inside us that we need to be happy, wherever we are.”

  Yes, that sounded like Monsieur Rocher. He was always coming out with pearls of wisdom like that. It often made me want to run off and fetch a notebook so I could write down what he’d said.

  “There was a big change ahead of me in my life back then, which I was very afraid of,” Smirnov went on. “I hated everything and everyone, and I’d had enough of the world. But by the time we left this hotel, in some strange way I was ready for the changes and for anything else life might throw at me.”

  And today he was a multimillionaire with a fleet of private jets, a beautiful little daughter, and a bodyguard. His life was going pretty well, I’d say. It was only his choice of wife that left a little to be desired.

  “Yes, this place can work wonders, sometimes,” said Monsieur Rocher lightly, and turned briefly to me.

  Smirnov nodded. He patted his little daughter’s legs, which were dangling on his chest, one over each shoulder. The girl stroked the stars on the fir garland contentedly. “That’s why I was determined to bring my family here so they could get to know the hotel, too. I hope they’ll feel something of the magic I felt back then. And take something of the strength of this place away with them.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they will.” Monsieur Rocher glanced at his list. “And I’m sure they’ll enjoy the sleigh ride tomorrow. Dusk is always the loveliest time for a sleigh ride. I can have the kitchen prepare you a flask of hot chocolate to take with you and perhaps a few cookies.”

  The little girl clapped her hands and cried, “Loshadka!” or something along those lines, and Smirnov laughed. It made him look ten years younger.

  “That’s right, Dasha, horses! Horses pull the sleigh. I always think she doesn’t understand any English, then she goes and surprises me.”

  “I hope you all have a wonderful stay at Castle in the Clouds,” said Monsieur Rocher.

  “Thank you,” Smirnov replied. “Thank you so much for everything.” As he reached the staircase, he turned back. “It’s incredibly reassuring to see that time hasn’t changed you or this hotel.”

  Time hasn’t, I thought as I watched him go. But people with suitcases full of dirty money and crazy refurbishment plans certainly will.

  My eyes met Ben’s—he’d clearly been listening from his post behind the reception desk. For a couple of seconds, we looked at each other earnestly, and I was almost sure he was thinking the same thing I was.
Then his phone rang, and he smiled apologetically.

  I’d try and talk to him later.

  “Can you really not remember Mr. Smirnov as a little boy, Monsieur Rocher?” I asked.

  “Oh, Sophie.” Monsieur Rocher looked at the clock on the wall behind me. Strictly speaking, it was three clocks. But only the one in the middle showed Central European Time; the other two showed the time in New York and Tokyo. “Doesn’t your evening shift in the spa start at six?”

  “Yes,” I exclaimed in surprise and headed straight out the door. It was 5:59. I would just about make it.

  9

  Officially, of course, double shifts were not allowed, but unofficially everyone at the hotel worked many more hours than the legal limit and didn’t always take all the breaks they were entitled to. Pierre, for example, not only worked the early shift in the kitchen but was also on the bartending rotation, meaning he worked almost nonstop from six thirty in the evening until eleven thirty the next morning. Pavel practically lived in the laundry room—he always wanted to be on the spot in case anything went wrong with the machines—and Monsieur Rocher was at his post in the concierge’s lodge from early in the morning till late at night, seven days a week. Even Fräulein Müller seemed to be constantly on duty. In all the months I’d been here, I’d never seen her out of uniform. Which was why it would never have entered my head to complain about my work schedule.

  Anyway, my shift in the spa was so easy it could scarcely even be called work. All I had to do was keep the shelves stocked with clean white towels, pick up any used towels I found lying around, and fill up the drink dispensers and fruit bowls. As well as discreetly cleaning up after the guests, mopping up puddles of water, and popping my head into the sauna occasionally to check no one had locked themselves in or fallen asleep there (both of which I presumed must have happened before).