The Kohlern Hotel
He arrived at the hotel around nightfall. The roads were covered in snow, and his shoes and socks were wet. The receptionist didn’t have to ask his name. Rogier van Zeeuwen had been coming to the Kohlern Hotel to celebrate Christmas in solitude for three decades now. The hotel was located high up in the mountains, next to a small church where the villagers gathered on Christmas Day: farmers in their Sunday best, their daughters negotiating the snow in heels.
He’d seen the place change from a family-run business to a hotel that was largely run by an Eastern European workforce. It was still owned by the Schrott family, though; a yellow Italian sports car occupied the best parking space. The grandson who was now in charge welcomed him ahead of his first dinner. They had the same brief conversation every year.
‘Good evening, Herr Van Zeeuwen. We’re thankful to have you with us again this Christmas. On behalf of our staff, I’d like to wish you a pleasant stay.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Rogier van Zeeuwen remembered a time when he addressed the grandson informally. The little boy had been crazy about fire engines and racing cars. In fact, Rogier had given him a model car once: a silver-coloured Mercedes-Benz 190SL from 1955.
It was all sir and madam now. There were no more easygoing interactions.
His hiking boots were waiting for him in his room. Years ago, he’d had them delivered to the hotel, and they were usually taken up by the chambermaid. Anna, her name was. That’s all he knew about her; that’s all she’d let slip. They were large, lumbering shoes, but they kept his feet dry and stopped him from slipping on the icy roads around the hotel. Rogier van Zeeuwen wore them five days a year. The rest of the time he walked around in Santonis. He’d worked in property. It had started with a warehouse on an industrial estate, but offices and homes soon followed. Limited partners didn’t hesitate to shell out large sums of money for a share. Thanks to him, entire neighbourhoods had been erected. Nearly all of it had been sold. And although the holding still existed, the rents were now collected by an external contractor.
He went for a short walk in the snow. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and further still, another dog responded. Rogier van Zeeuwen looked at the white meadows and the frozen gardens outside the farms. He’d never been to Kohlern in summer. It was beautiful, he’d been told: grey horses, grazing cows, silver drops hovering in the late afternoon sky when the grass was being irrigated.
Three hours later, he was having dinner. It was the evening before Christmas Eve and not all the tables were occupied. Tomorrow, the hotel would be full. Most of the guests were elderly couples, but there would be a few young families, too, with fathers trying their best not to lose their patience. Everybody always stared.
Everybody stared at him, too. The first year, they would have seen a self-assured young man, tall and handsome, with dark blond, slicked-back hair. There was something enigmatic about him, elusive. Who spends Christmas alone in a hotel in the mountains? For ten years, they would have seen the same man, the waiters, the other guests, the elegant families who came to dine on Christmas Day. They would have seen an impeccably dressed gentleman, his hair gleaming in the candlelight. Then, gradually, the youthfulness faded; first it left his way of walking, then his cheeks, and finally his eyes. That’s when people started seeing something else, too: loneliness. Now it was all they saw.
He ordered Franz Haas, Manna 2007. Manna was the pet name of the winemaker’s wife, the sommelier had told him in a whisper, as if sharing a secret. He’d instantly forgotten the grape varieties — he wasn’t interested in details. Likewise, he’d always had staff take care of the small print in participation agreements.
It was an excellent white wine, but he used to enjoy it more. He thought back to bygone evenings in other countries, in big cities. Le Procope in Paris: enormous mirrors, chandeliers, polite conversation; joie de vivre and gorgeous women. He’d looked at their long legs while quaffing champagne and returned to his hotel with a woman ten years his junior. Rogier van Zeeuwen couldn’t remember her name, but he did recall her skin, which was smooth beyond belief and almost luminous.
After dinner, he drank twelve-year-old Armagnac by the open fire. Every year, the bottle was ordered in especially for him: there were some things he still managed to get done, not with his looks, but with money. After three glasses, he headed back to his room. Noise could be heard behind one of the walls — a man’s voice, a sudden yell, and then laughter. He walked to the window, and when he opened it the cold night flooded his room. Stars shone faintly in the sky. Something in his life had gone wrong, and it was too late to turn things around. It had nothing to do with the short days, or indeed winter. His thoughts had been dark and unrelenting for some time now, like weeds that keep coming back.
He knew it: he looked old, even though he wasn’t. Or at least not ancient. Maybe the melancholic in him had finally surfaced — the grandpa he’d always been, deep down, which is why he’d seen things differently, at more of a remove, even at a young age.
He’d never been a cheerful child. ‘Don’t forget to smile,’ his mother used to remind him, pinching his side. Over time he’d learned to be convivial, generous, and quick to laugh. As a result, his customers invited him to birthdays, and he got to attend second and third weddings abroad. Now the party was over, though; the lights had been extinguished. The silence was settling in, and he forgot to smile more and more often.
He was the first down for breakfast. The view was magnificent, with the mountains looking like a Caspar David Friedrich painting. Kitsch, almost. His espresso was served by a woman with dyed hair. Her face looked extremely young. He turned his head, watching her as she returned to the bar. But it was futile. He’d been expelled from Eden.
Outside, tiny snowflakes swirled through the air. He felt like sticking his tongue out, but was self-conscious. It was quiet, and he was sure nobody could see him. Yet, with each step he felt the urge to look over his shoulder, to check if something was following him. An animal: a fox or a roe deer, perhaps. Not that he was scared. Rogier van Zeeuwen had never been scared. He knew the area; he knew which farm lay just around the corner and that he’d be greeted by barking dogs there.
Now and again he’d see faces behind a window: old women who were busy cooking. In fact, they were always up and about, doing something or other with a broom or an iron. In summer they’d be stooped over in the garden; in autumn they’d be tying bundles of kindling together with long branches. They retired at half-past eight in the evening and started the day before sunrise. Ageless women — that’s to say, women whose ages he couldn’t quite work out. What use was old age anyway, what was the point?
When the wind got up, Rogier van Zeeuwen turned around and walked back to the hotel. He skipped lunch, since there’d be a six-course meal in the evening. In his room, he tried to read a novel, but gave up after only a couple of pages. He’d never been much of a reader, and books were more of a performance for the outside world. He brought out a book in the hope that it would evoke some of the mystery that had surrounded him in the old days. Bulgakov makes a man more interesting, in the same way that a man who gifts model cars is liked better.
It was quiet in his room. Rogier van Zeeuwen was the only guest who was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The hotel boasted a sauna as well as an outside whirlpool. The German guests went in naked, the Italians wore their swimming trunks or bikinis. There was something comical about it: two camps, poles apart.
He had never stood on the duckboard terrace stark naked, with steam billowing off him. That’s just not the sort of man he was.
Halfway through a memory, he fell asleep. He had been thinking of a golden cornfield in Emilia-Romagna, bare feet, and in the distance, on top of a hill, the villa that once belonged to a prince of the House of Pignatelli.
During dinner, he observed a mother and daughter at the table next to him. He noticed the gu
lf between them, but both were trying hard to make it a pleasant evening. Their conversation dried up halfway through the second intermediate course: wild duck with beetroot. That’s when a mobile phone appeared on the table. Every now and then the screen lit up, but the daughter didn’t answer. The mother commented on other guests.
Rogier van Zeeuwen hadn’t seen his daughters for more than fifteen years. Jolien, the eldest, had called him an arsehole in a restaurant in Dordrecht. A few days later, he’d received a letter from his other daughter. She didn’t want to talk to him ever again.
He’d left his first wife for an artist. At least, that’s how he introduced her to his friends. In reality, she’d graduated from art school two years earlier and had been unemployed since. But she was a classic beauty, with long, blonde curls, a wide forehead, and Tatar eyes. He bought a convertible and drove to France with her. It made him feel liberated. Her body in the afternoon, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on the bedside table — heady days. He didn’t think of the mess he’d left behind: his first wife at home with two young children, one barely three years old and the other, eight months.
His marriage to the artist didn’t last long. It had been a mistake to marry her so quickly, so impulsively. It was an episode, the first of many, except the rest would be without weddings. Rogier van Zeeuwen bought and sold business premises, and kept expanding with limited companies, sister companies in Ireland and Germany, a holding in Panama. He flew long-haul regularly, and spent little time at home. Sure, every now and then he forgot to smile, but those were fleeting moments in a sea of time.
‘Don’t you ever long for peace and quiet?’ his first wife had asked him. They were having lunch in a brasserie, talking about things without a lawyer present. That was possible again. Jolien was off to university. He looked at his ex-wife. Beauty was a ship sailing away from her. But she’d weathered the storm. ‘Wouldn’t you like some peace and quiet?’ she asked a second time.
Maybe that was the difference between men and women: men can’t accept that they only live once.
Christmas was the only time of the year he withdrew. The crowded shopping streets, the atmosphere of goodwill and harmony — he couldn’t stand any of it. He also felt detached from all the paraphernalia: the Christmas trees, the stars, the silver angels. At the Kohlern Hotel, only the waiters wished him a merry Christmas. It was done without a smile, cordiality Eastern European style. Rogier van Zeeuwen tipped them lavishly.
He was still generous, although he no longer saw the point of it. The weeds were shooting up all over the place. Suddenly he couldn’t see himself travelling back to the valley, back home, his home. He could picture it — the white bricks showing through the bare branches, the dark blue shutters, the gravel on the garden path — but his thoughts swamped everything, not only his property, but also the cars in the garage, the catamaran he could take out to sea, and even his smaller possessions: the sofa, the TV, the kettle.
The following morning, he was woken up by the church bells. Villagers were gathering in front of the entrance. The sky was blue, and children were making a snowman. A little later, singing could be heard in the church. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant! O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem! By then, Rogier van Zeeuwen was already walking along the icy path that wound its way through part of the forest and past the farms. Nobody was home. Only the dogs were barking.
The path led up, and he kept walking. His fingers were tingling since he wasn’t wearing gloves, so every now and then he blew into his fists. It had to be gorgeous in summer: calves in the meadows, raspberries in the farmers’ gardens. He’d even seen a swing dangling from a large tree.
Maybe he ought to head back. They’d seat this melancholic man beside the warm fire, serve him a glass of Armagnac, and then he’d be fine again. But no, he kept walking, on and on and on. The snow, which was as soft as foam, gradually deepened. There was that sense of being watched again; a gaze so strong it made him stagger. It felt as if he had a lifetime’s worth of eyes on him: the beautiful, sparkling eyes seen at parties, the twinkling eyes; the bleary irises of intoxicated women; the look of betrayal in his wife’s eyes; the green eyes of his personal assistant with Danish blood. They all watched him walk away.
He knew he’d be found; he’d be missed at dinner. They’d be able to track him in the snow, see the footprints left by the sturdy shoes that made sure he didn’t slip.
The memory returned when he sat down. His trousers became wet, and he felt his legs and buttocks grow colder and colder. The sun was already setting. Up in the mountains, the winter days are shorter than anywhere else. But Rogier van Zeeuwen’s mind was on the long days of summer: the summer of his first honeymoon, with the sun high above a cornfield somewhere in Emilia-Romagna. In the distance, the house on the hill. He could see them sitting up there, a man and a woman, their hands intertwined.
The temperature fell, the mountain tops disappeared. He tried not to be scared.
Vineyard
The dog’s name was Stella. Paul Barendse had been given her twelve years ago by the winegrower. She was a bastard, her mother a Shepherd, her father’s breed unknown. Even now, she’d still scamper off every so often, to chase a hare among the vines, or a roe deer in the surrounding woods. The lead would make a whooshing sound as it lengthened and tightened. When she couldn’t go any further, Stella would jump up and bark at the creature. Paul was pretty sure that he’d go before her.
It was October and mild. The sky was blue, the afternoon sun warm. The end of the year seemed a long way off. As did the other end — the big one. His life had revolved around literature. He had more than ten novels, three short-story collections, a novella, and a bundle of essays to his name. His best-known titles — reprinted every other year — still sold, but there was no new novel in the pipeline. Not that he didn’t try. Some mornings he’d sit down at the small table in front of the window, looking out across the valley, the rising dew, and the apple orchards left and right of the river. His wrinkled hands with the smooth fingertips moved slowly across the keyboard. He’d describe the light over the mountains, the colours of the leaves on the pear trees, the children who once played beneath them. One hundred words, he’d write, sometimes a bit more. A paragraph would suddenly stop — a beginning without a follow-up. He was probably going on instinct.
In the evenings, he’d walk to a small church with Stella. The first stretch was uphill, along the sandy path between the vines. The grapes had been picked three weeks ago. Blauburgunder. The wine was mild, but its bouquet of cherry and oak was powerful. Every year the farmer gave him a jerrycan.
Paul sat down in the lingering autumn sun, to look at the light over the mountains before it disappeared. Stella lay down at his feet. She knew they’d be heading back home once the church spire was shrouded in dusk. As so often, Paul thought back to the time when he wrote every day, with his sleeves rolled up, young and self-assured.
When he lived in San Genesio, he wrote in the slaughterhouse. The butcher had let out a small space that wasn’t being used. He wanted to go to work like the rest of the village: set off early in the morning, come home in the evening. He was keen to prove himself. His neighbour was a car mechanic whose hands were black. Other men were roofers, locksmiths, and bricklayers. He worked with his hands, too, but he didn’t get them dirty. On his first day at the slaughterhouse, the butcher had walked into his room and asked, ‘You’re writing?’ He could barely believe it. Writing was something abstract; it had nothing to do with work. Books were filled by the breath of ghosts.
He never heard the animals themselves, unlike the large hoists with the chains that were used to strip the cows’ hides; the metal implements on the stone floor; the electric saw hanging from the ceiling; the bones. But he managed to write, usually with classical music, sometimes with both Mahler and hacking sounds in the background.
Stella stretched when Paul rose to his feet. He stood still for a mom
ent and looked at the valley. He wondered if loving nightfall more than the dawn made a man morose. Even though Paul Barendse was a shadow of the man he used to be, he didn’t brood. He had no regrets.
They walked back at a snail’s pace. There was no need to hurry. Every once in a while, the dog quickened her step and then slowed down again, as if she realised there was no point in walking faster. She’d seen her owner grow older, not to mention slower and quieter. Back in the day, his voice could often be heard around the vineyard, and then she’d always run over at once. Now they were like an old couple stuck with each other.
The house came in sight — a farm with natural stone walls, about a metre thick. The animals had long gone. The small stable was used for storing firewood, and a fig tree grew through the window of the chicken coop. A broken tractor was parked underneath the house.
Paul had fallen for the farm at first sight. He remembered the climb up from the village where his girlfriend’s parents lived. They were invited over by the family sitting outside, at a wooden table, with large glasses of lemonade. The flavour of mint and lemon was refreshing. A friendship developed: long evenings, the stars bright in the sky, conversations about the faraway places the man and woman had been to and about the life that didn’t come to a standstill, that just moved in ever smaller circles.
The placenta of their first child was buried in the west-facing garden. On top of it they’d planted an apricot tree. The fruits were dark orange, with a reddish glow on the sunny side.
The rural lifestyle appealed to them. In summer, they house-sat when the family went up into the mountains. He’d water the vegetable garden in his underpants, while she picked tomatoes and laid the wooden table. A photograph showed her against the backdrop of the hill behind the farm, tanned legs sticking out from under a pink dress, meadow flowers in her hand. She was exceptionally beautiful.
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