Levadski stepped to the window. On the opposite side of the street the comforting Phoenix Pharmacy sign glowed above the archways of a building. And beneath it, in small unassuming lettering: since 1870. Two streetcars drove past each other. Levadski looked at the streetcars that blocked his view of the pharmacy. The driver who sported an imposing potbelly appeared to be dozing in the darkness of his cabin. Catch the Beat. House of Music was written on the white roof of the streetcar.
The other streetcar stopped immediately in front of Levadski’s window. It was of modern construction, black-red-gray-dark gray, the interior glaring brightly. An old lady with a gigantic white poodle on her lap was sitting at the front, in the area for pregnant women and the disabled. The poodle, glassy eyed, stared out the window at an even whiter dog floating behind it in the form of a little cloud of smoke – a ghost, a drowned twin brother, a hushed up doggie mishap. Slowly the streetcar swam by.
Levadski winced. They weren’t singed banknotes, after all, but wilted leaves which swept across the street. A white paper cup was being kicked by the wind’s invisible foot. Peace, an unbelievable peace, like after a clap of thunder, suffused Levadski’s slight body. Bitter and terrifying. Dizzying. A transparent onion skin in the diluted soup of Levadski’s life.
I should really be feeling awful, thought Levadski, it’s called a small cell bronchial carcinoma, the animal I have been bitten by. It put its whole lousy soul into the bite. In principle, an admirable and selfless deed. Levadski dropped onto his canopied bed, fell asleep and dreamed he was in a baroque church at an organ recital. The music makes him cry. He sobs like a child. Through the tears, Levadski sees how the music creates movement, how it rolls the glittering molecules of air towards the altar, like billiard balls. The golden angels whirring around the altar fall to the ground. Saint Peter, the cross in his sinewy hand, leaning over the abyss, falls in. Clouds of silver and gold come crashing down after hundreds of years. Levadski, listening to the organ, drenched in tears, is covered by a cloud of dust.
A coughing fit woke Levadski in the middle of the night. He reached for his wallet on the night table and extracted a piece of paper, the bill from the laboratory, which had arrived shortly before his departure flight. He had absolutely no intention of paying it. Beneath the stated balance, an impudent laboratory technician had permitted himself to comment on Levadski’s condition: inoperable, chemotherapy and radiotherapy recommended for prolongation of life (a few months). Medication: polychemotherapy.
“Pure nonsense,” Levadski scolded. He put the note back on the night table. “The stuff doesn’t seem as anodyne as nonpareils.” He tossed and turned in bed until dawn, anticipating the symptoms of the illness. The more he concentrated on the wet embrace of his nightshirt, the more he perspired. It’s happening, thought Levadski, now I’m getting the night sweats.
A chambermaid must have rung and entered on silent paws while Levadski was shoving his ball-retained dentures into his mouth in front of the bathroom mirror, like a bread roll that was far too big. Levadski was startled and apologized for still being in his bathrobe, but he was sweating so profusely. The chambermaid reckoned this was due to the air-conditioning that was heating his room to an incredible seventy-seven degrees. She adjusted a dial on the wall. It would get cooler soon, she promised, and besides, the air-conditioning switched itself off automatically if you opened one of the windows. So, no symptoms after all, Levadski registered with disappointment.
“Where are you from?” The wiry chambermaid, who was already on her way to the door, turned around, beaming. Her hands, much too ungainly for her arms, appeared to flutter. She must be a laundry woman, thought Levadski, with hands like that. Or a gray heron. She was from the south of Serbia. Near Novi Pazar. Alarming, thought Levadski, how embarrassingly touching someone else’s pleasure can be, how easy it is to awaken it! Even with a mundane question which you ask only so as not to be silent. Alarming.
“Novi Pazar is beautiful. Village too. Here my home.” The short-haired woman pulled a light pink cell phone from her apron and after pressing several times on the buttons, pointed at a photo, in which Levadski could see nothing but a neglected building site in the middle of a gentle hill surrounded by woodland.
“My heart is my house. Green,” the chambermaid smiled in the direction of Levadski’s suspicious eyebrow. “I finish build, when back. Here finish work, there finish build. Here,” with one finger, the chambermaid traced a circle in the emptiness that lay beyond the periphery of the picture, “sister’s house. We nine children. Two sisters dead. Here!” The chambermaid let Levadski look at a picture of two gravestones and then cheerfully clicked on. In an overexposed photograph a boy was hugging a girl on a children’s bicycle. “Children of my brother. And here me.” In the midst of sprawling bushes Levadski recognized the chambermaid. She was wearing a shirt covered with oversized raspberries. “Raspberries back there. Jam, juice, own products, in Novi Pazar we have everything. Here letter for you. From reception. Almost forgot. I go now.”
Levadski took the letter. The simple solemnnity of the moment drove a tear into his eye, but the remarkably firm handshake of the chambermaid with the raspberry garden and the unbuilt house instantly cheered him up again.
Dear Mister Levadski,
As you made use of our butler service yesterday, we would like to advise you that you are most welcome at any time to avail yourself of the services of our butlers throughout your sojourn at our hotel. If you are interested in a personal butler, please call reception.
Levadski was chewing a banana when the telephone rang. “Come in,” Levadski called in the direction of the door. He was annoyed that a piece of banana fell out of his mouth and onto the carpet when he did so. The telephone rang several times more before Levadski’s gaze gave up on the door. Rocking and wheezing, he got to his feet, trotted over to the desk and picked up the receiver.
The concierge wished Levadski a very good morning. Levadski wished the concierge the same. He had just read the letter and would be interested in the butler from yesterday. The concierge acknowledged this wise decision with a pregnant pause. The butler service would be deducted from Levadski’s credit card at the end of his stay, together with the extras, the concierge said. “What extras?” Levadski wanted to know.
“Telephone, internet, minibar, breakfast, hotel bar, restaurant, barbers,” the concierge-voice rattled off.
And funeral, thought Levadski, giggling into the receiver.
“Do you see the butler button on your telephone? Above it there is a button with a picture of a man in a black bow tie with a coffee cup,” the concierge said. Levadski saw it. All he had to do was press the button once and the butler would come.
“When I press the button, I would like Habib to come.”
“But of course, sir. Habib will be informed immediately.”
This is what things have come to, thought Levadski, an oriental youngster serving an old Ruthenian. From a Ruthenian to a Bohemian, he rhymed.
Levadski dressed himself for breakfast. Buying a new suit, along with the resolve to await death pleasurably in a grand hotel, had been one of the best ideas of his too-long life. Although, thought Levadski, it all seems to have been a little on the short side. This snippet of time I have grappled with. A tiny puddle! Levadski tied his favorite bow tie with the red-billed choughs and marveled at the strange expression. Why was he thinking about a tiny puddle? In the gigantic mirror, an elegant gnome held its silence.
On the sea I was born
On the sea I was raised;
Swore unto the sea did I
To take her as my eternal bride:
To drown therefore my lot would be
As a sailor on the sea,
sang Levadski, to himself. It was as if his life had been a dream of a future and resolute being, of an ultimately irrational being and a sophisticate, of someone whose existence had been worthwhile. And now he was perfect and his life would step outside of him and stand before him, to ma
rvel at him: you have become useless, Levadski. Pah!
Smartly dressed and feeling slightly hungry, Levadski stepped out into the corridor. The elevator came almost immediately, opening its golden chest. From all sides Levadski could see a small bald dandy staring back at him. This hotel is a ship, thought Levadski stepping into the elevator, a ship, and I am a black-headed gull on deck.
E
AUSGANG / EXIT
HALLE / LOBBY
RESTAURANT / CAFÉ / BAR
A BLACK-HEADED GULL ON DECK. LARUS RIDIBUNDUS. Larus, Larus … the name sounds like an invocation. I chose the suit well, true to myself … Here I stand, my breath and I, I and my pathetic little soul. How flat the buttons with the floor numbers are! G for ground, M for Maisonette Suite and my suite, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. A black-headed gull on deck. Poppycock, it can’t be on deck. The black-headed gull can do nothing but follow a ship. It follows the giants of the ocean that slowly set out from harbor. It catches everything the sailors throw to it: flowers, potatoes, nails. It does! With the chocolate-colored hood it displays during the breeding season it can easily be distinguished from other types of gulls, assuming you know which one it is. I know which one it is. But I would, however, like to seriously question my own corporality at this moment in time. So comforting are the lights here in the golden cabin, so dull any memory of pain, so dim. I can prolong or curtail the flight at any time and enter another dimension. Go to the fifth and last floor for example. But now it is time to hover.
The elevator opens its chest. To step onto the carpet, to dip your foot noiselessly into the softness, is a revelation. Levadski’s delight gives way to astonishment: in a display cabinet in front of the entrance to the café there is a gleaming black and gold lorgnette with an elegant plaited chain twining around it. In the display cabinet next to it, dazzling, pristine white pillows with the initials of the grand hotel, napkins, starched bed linens. Levadski bows in front of the inconspicuous treasures shown to such advantage by the cabinet lighting. Through the pane of glass he admires a china doll wearing a chambermaid’s outfit, holding a tiny feather duster in her hand. The door of the hotel café creaks, perfumed ladies go in and out, their steps swallowed by the carpet, their stilettos taking revenge on the marble in the spacious lobby for the brief hardship endured.
The door creaking behind him, Levadski strides through the soft chandelier light of the café, where the sound of the piano bathes his old carcass. A waiter with a menu in hand emerges from the musical backdrop and shows the guest to one of the tables near the grand piano. Everything is in perfect harmony, the lighting with the carpet, the muted tinkling with the soft glow of the mirror. Only Levadski and the waiter stand out from this somnolent lava for as long as they are in motion. Levadski is already seated. The waiter too, who flits back and forth between the tables, soon becomes part of the furniture. Even in such a small room a person becomes a blur, Levadski is astonished to find, as if the room itself possessed so much soul that we, its true animate souls, suddenly are drowned in it.
The pianist mops his brow and with an encouraging nod and barely audible snort plunges into the keys. I Did It My Way. Levadski wants to polish his eyes, which are two dull buttons. The pianist’s friendliness is genuine, but it’s also pure discrimination. Levadski returns the smile. He deserves it. He who has observed so much. So many waterfowl, nocturnal raptors, diurnal birds of prey, coliiformes, totipalmates and waders, antbirds, the blue cuckooshrike, even calm and sociable Nordic birds such as waxwings, with their beautiful crests. Levadski has observed them, too. He would have given all the fruits of his garden, which he did not own, in exchange for the tinkling warble of the waxwing. Levadski opens the dessert menu. If they eat constantly it is believed there will be a harsh winter. Which is pure nonsense – birds always eat constantly. It is just like breathing. Like thinking.
Semolina dumplings “Old Viennese style” with toasted apricots, 13 euros. The bird eats because this is its way of communicating. Without thought or malice. It talks to the trees through the fruits it eats.
Tarte tatin of apple and pear with walnut brittle ice cream, 14 euros. It talks to the bushes and flowers through the seeds it devours.
Valrhôna chocolate tartlets with cherry sorbet and Mon Chéri, 15 euros. It whirrs along in the perpetual cycle. Harsh winter, either way.
The pianist appears to have found in Levadski an addressee for his noble feelings of pity. In recognition he squints over at him and plays Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Iced “Mozart dumplings” with Amaretto foam, 12 euros. The piano player’s button eyes flash contentedly during some bars of music, as if there weren’t a care in the world. But, my God, it is true: a person who knows music can never be unhappy.
Tiramisu with basil foam and baked raspberries, 14 euros. My mother was in the habit of happily saying. She did not say it to me or to anyone else, but to herself, sighing deeply down at me.
The savory alternative: A selection of local and imported cheeses with nuts and grapes, 15 euros. I too was once no higher than a dining table. What about Beethoven, I could have asked her, how could he be happy as a deaf man?
Levadski orders the chocolate cake. In a matter of minutes it arrives. His memory of it is different. That is, if he remembers it at all. Levadski sinks his fork into the fragile shell of his slice of cake and notices that he feels hot and dizzy. As if a sticky sweet claw were rummaging inside his chest, soft as butter. Suddenly he is a boy, sitting in a church in Lemberg during the midday prayer service. Whimpering, he is sitting on a hard pew, letting the tears roll freely down his stony face. He doesn’t dream of wiping them away. He is sitting in the Catholic church like in a jewelry box. He is here to cry in safety until he is exhausted, until he is totally cleansed and free from care. Madly in love, he believes he will die, become crippled and impoverished. Levadski bathes his young face in tears and in self-pity. “Oh Lord, we confess, we are sinners. We are all sinners before you,” the priest mumbles. Levadski blows his nose. “And do not turn away from us,” the priest prays. Covered in tears, the little martyr looks up towards the ceiling. The Holy Spirit is directly above him, frozen, soaring in perpetuity. Levadski imagines that this dove also has an eye on him, he cannot be lonely, and he cries all the more. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, we pray of you, Holy Mary, we pray of you.”
With a sense of elation, Levadski once again turns his attention to his slice of cake. This madness must have gotten into him on that day of the church service. What was the girl’s name again? Dunia? Apolonia? Seraphina? Could well be. Not even a name any more. Just these palpitations. What’s in a name anyway?
A corpulent gentleman with white combed-back pomaded hair throws his napkin on the table with a dull thud. He wants to pay. He pays and leaves.
“She is in Cyprus playing bridge,” an older waiter whispers to a younger waiter in passing.
“Good for her,” the young colleague exclaims, without turning around. A tiny piece of silver foil is stuck to his striped trousers. When he turns the corner with a laden tray, the foil is snatched away by a gust of air and washed up beneath one of the tables.
Levadski’s eyes wander around the room. The great-aunts sat over there with me, sometimes mother joined us. Over there, where a young couple are toasting each other with champagne glasses filled to the brim. How deeply they look into each other’s eyes – disgusting. The world surrounding the two is a gently rippling lake, and they themselves are a boat adorned with flowers. A sinking one. An embarrassing one. A moving one. The only possible and genuine boat at this moment in time. Any second now the young man will notice the waitress’s calves and destroy the pastoral.
We sat over there, as well, in one of the window niches. The blue-cushioned seating areas must have only recently sprung out of the walls. There used to be leather armchairs, and the coffeehouses smelled of a world to be taken seriously. Glamorous creatures with feather boas would float past the tables. And I ate my cake and was one of these angels, by virtue of
the exquisite breath created by their boas. I was one of them.
“I am accidentally in heaven, I don’t eat anything, I don’t drink anything … A little … I read a good book. I read a good book, and already I am accidentally in heaven …” The voice belongs to a lady with red painted nails. The lady’s hand is vibrating like a bough of a mountain ash as she tells her story. She must be my age. Very elegant, her fringe, that hides the wrinkles of her brow. Very clever. And the black arches of incredulous eyebrows. “Hair across his eyes, he always wanted his hair across his eyes, but I cut it off during the night.” Dark red shred of a mouth. I wonder if she is talking about her son? The way she talks, my God! A stream filled with smoothly sanded pebbles. What a beauty. Levadski orders a tea.
“Green or black?”
“Black, please.”
The sight of this gently gesticulating herbarium flower in the circle of her family makes Levadski thirsty. The flower throws back her head and laughs. Crowns of precious metal gleam in her wet mouth. My goodness. What a woman! Levadski drinks and sweats. The son or son-in-law pours the diva some water. Rapt, slightly melancholy faces surround her, while for the hundredth time she tells one of her old stories from times gone by. How she glows! Then she leaves. She is helped into her coat. She throws back her head once more, once more the sight of precious gleaming crowns. Charming soliloquy on the way to the door. The son or son-in-law leads the way, stumbling behind him is the rest of the clan. At the tail end, a child with a short-haired dachshund on a leash.
Who Is Martha? Page 8