The White Hotel

by D. M. Thomas

  But without difficulty he extricated his fingers when their train pulled into the junction; and in the small train which took them up to the mountains, there was no chance to resume. She sat pressed against him, contenting herself with kissing his fingers, or squeezing his hand against her lap. Their fellow travellers were in high spirits, gasping their wonder as the train pulled them slowly higher and higher into the mountains. “There’s plenty of snow still!” chattered the lady who sat opposite—a baker’s wife, judging by the moist floury smell that came from her body. “I think so.” The young woman smiled back. “I don’t feel sullied in the least.” The baker’s wife smiled vaguely, turning her attention to her young daughter, who was squirming impatiently. The little girl was excited, since this was the first real holiday she had ever been taken on.

  The lake, even in the late afternoon, was a brilliant emerald. They were happy to be alone again, walking the short distance to the white hotel. The vestibule was empty, except for the porter behind the desk; and he was snoring, put to sleep by the stifling afternoon. The young woman, weak after the passion of the train journey, rested against the desk while the young man—who had phoned through from the junction to book a room—looked at the reservations list, unhooked a key from the board of rings, and scribbled a name in the register. On the desk was a bowl of amazingly big yellow peaches, and the young man took one, bit juicily into it, and offered it to his friend to bite. Then he caught hold of her hand and pushed her in front of him up the stairs. The sweet bite of the peach refreshed her, and she almost ran up the stairs; and as they ran he was already sliding her dress up to her waist. The silk whispered. Her hand, sliding round, felt his erection. He entered her and they entered the room, she was not sure in which order; but without pausing to take the room in, she was lying back on the bed, her thighs spread wide, and taking his thrusts. They did not stop their lovemaking while he took off her bonnet, and sent it, skimming, into a corner.

  The young woman felt broken in half, and saw the end of the relationship before it had properly begun; and her return home, split open. A trail of splashes ran between door and bed, and when they had finished she made him ring for a maid to come and wipe it up. While the maid, an Oriental girl, crouched, wiping the peach stains from the faded carpet, they stood at the window overlooking the veranda, enjoying the blue sky of the early evening, in the last minutes before the sun would start to set, changing the sky’s colour.

  The next day brought a renewal of blue, outside their room, but on the second night (she thought it was the second night, but had lost all sense of time) a flint stone, as big as a man’s fist, came hurtling through the open window. It was the wind which had risen during the evening, and now whistled through the larches, breaking the vase of flowers which the maid had placed on their chest of drawers. The young man leapt to the window and closed it. Now the wind threatened to break the window, and they heard a muffled crash, which was the collapsing roof of the summer-house. It was shaped like a pagoda, picturesque but vulnerable, and the fierce wind blew it away. For a long time there was no answer to the bell they rang, but at last the maid came to clear up the broken vase, and the spilt water and flowers. Her eyes were red, and the young man asked her what was the matter. “Some people have drowned,” she said. “The waves are very big tonight. Their boat was overturned.” The maid looked wonderingly at the lump of flint stone, lying where it had fallen. “Leave it,” said the young man. “It will be a souvenir.” She picked it up, though, and gave it to him, and he weighed it in his hand, wonderingly. He could not imagine the force that had torn it from the mountain and impelled it into their room.

  She asked later: “Is my breast softer than the stone?” He nodded, resting his head on it to prove its softness. They heard distinctly, yet distantly, the noises of troubled people scurrying through the corridors; and when they rang for dinner they were told they would have to make do with sandwiches, as all the waiters were helping with the victims of the flood. They were famished, and he asked if they could have some chocolate sent up with the sandwiches. He fondled her breast that was so much softer than the flint, and bent to suck the nipple. The young woman yearned towards the lips that sucked her; the orange nipple was being drawn further and further out. She ran her fingers through his short curly hair as he went on sucking. They heard the sound of something breaking—perhaps a window or crockery—and shouts. The noises of panic. Also they heard guests crying. It reminded her of her baby crying, and she stroked the man’s hair. Her breast seemed swollen like a drum, to three times its normal size. The wind flailed against the window. He took his lips from her breast to say anxiously, “I hope it won’t break.” She directed her nipple again into his mouth and said, “I don’t think so. It swelled like this when I was feeding my son.”

  The hotel was swaying in the gale, and she thought she was on an ocean liner; she heard the creaking of a ship’s timbers, smelt the salt tang through the open porthole, and, from the galley, the faint smell of the evening meal, tinged with seasick. They would have to dine with the captain, and he would ask her to sing in the ship’s concert. Perhaps they would never reach port. She felt close to tears because her nipple was being drawn so far out it began to be painful; pain was concentrating there, and yet in a way the nipple did not belong to her, it was floating away, a raw appendix removed by the ship’s doctor. She wanted him to rest but he would not. To her relief his lips moved to her other breast, and began drawing that nipple out, though it was already quite swollen from its sympathy for the twin. “Are they tender?” he said at last; and she said, “Yes, of course, they love each other.” She heard the porthole in the next cabin along, behind their bunk, shatter.

  With his hand he opened her vagina, and forced his penis in so hard she jolted back. He lifted himself to look down at where he had so mysteriously disappeared into her body. He made himself appear and disappear at will. There was the lightest of light touches on her hair, and when she put her hand there she touched something dry and papery. It was a maple leaf, which must have blown in unnoticed when the storm began, before the stone had been thrown in. She showed it to him, and he smiled, but his smile was caught back in a grimace, from the pleasure of thrusting in and out and of holding himself on the verge of coming. She put her hand behind his buttocks and stroked him with the dry and papery maple leaf. He tensed, and shuddered.

  The light rain had ceased, the wind had dropped; they opened the window and walked out on to the balcony. He held his friend by the waist, and they watched the storm clouds part, revealing stars larger than they had ever seen. And every few moments a star would slide diagonally through the black sky, like a maple leaf drifting from the branch or the way lovers rearrange themselves with gentle movements while they sleep. “It’s a shower of Leonids,” he said softly. She rested her head on his shoulder. Dimly they could see activity down by the lake shore: bodies being brought to land. Some people were wailing; another voice shouted for more stretchers and blankets. The couple went back to bed and lost themselves in each other again. This time she could feel one of his fingers moving inside her, besides his penis; it fluttered her crosswise to the movement in and out of his penis; and quicker. It reminded her of the shooting stars across the sky, and it created whirls and vortices like the stormy lake. Clearly the storm was not over, because a streak of white lightning flashed vertically to the lake; they saw it from the corners of their eyes, bisecting the black window space, and the curtains billowed. “That was fierce,” he whispered; and so she took care to stroke him more gently, with the very tip of her fingernail. At the same time one of his fingers was in her anus, hurting her, but she wanted to be hurt more.

  On the lake, there were a few lights where rescue boats were still searching for bodies. The rescuers were themselves recovering from the rumble of thunder that had crashed round their heads just before, rather than after, the lightning stroke that had turned night into day. The wind rose again, and they made haste to row ashore, because there was n
o hope of finding any more bodies that night. The hotel was alive with excited or demented people; the glass doors kept banging, as more and more bodies were brought in. The flood water in the billiard room, which was in the basement, had risen almost to the level of the pockets, but the army major waded unperturbed round the table, intent on finishing his break. He had taken the last red, and all the colours to pink. It was a difficult straight pot, the whole length of the table, but he struck it cleanly and it slammed into the top pocket. As the water rose to his hips he sipped his beer and chalked his cue. The black nestled against a cushion but he gave the white ball spin to try to make the black cleave to the cushion. It was a beautiful stroke and the black thudded into a watery grave. The major had been playing against himself for the duration of the break, because his opponent, a priest, had rushed out to give the last rites to the dying. With a grim smile of self-congratulation the major hung up his cue and swam out of the billiard room. In a high room the lovers were asleep, despite the blustery wind shaking the windowpane; and as they slept they kept their hands resting on each other, as if scared that somehow they would vanish in the night. A black cat crouched, frightened out of its wits, on the pitching and tossing branch of a fir tree, opposite their balcony. It tensed to jump, but sensed it was too far.

  Not for two days did anyone find out that the cat was stranded in the tree. The young lovers heard a scraping noise outside their window and got out of bed to see what was happening. They saw an army major climbing a long ladder, which was bending and creaking under his weight. From behind gently blowing curtains they watched the difficult rescue operation. The cat arched her back and spat at the man, and clawed him when he stretched out his hand. The soldier let out an obscene word, which made the young woman blush because she was not used to such language. Eventually the major backed down the ladder, the cat clinging round his neck.

  As soon as the young woman had seen the scarlet stigmata spring to the major’s hand she felt the noisome fall of a blood clot through her own body, and told her lover the bad news. It surprised and pleased her that he was not upset. There was a problem, though. She had no luggage whatever. She had left her heavy suitcase in the corridor of the main-line train, and when all the travellers tumbled out at the tiny hamlet in the middle of the burnt plain one of them must have taken her suitcase by mistake. She could not believe it had been stolen. Anyway, it had vanished by the time they came to change trains at the junction, taking with it dresses, underwear, toilet articles, and gifts for her son and her mother.

  They had to ring for the maid. The polite girl, a Japanese student earning her tuition money, had difficulty understanding the young woman’s problem. She had to draw, on a sheet of hotel notepaper, a crescent moon beside a stick-woman. The maid blushed and departed. Fortunately she was herself menstruating, and came back with a towel. Shyly she scuttled away, refusing a tip.

  They lay looking at photographs of his family. She was tickled by the shot of Freud at the seaside, wearing a black-and-white striped bathing suit, which could have been cut out of the same material as her dress. The young man chuckled too; he seemed particularly fond of his younger sister. His smile faded into sadness, looking at her.

  They went down to dinner and he asked her if she felt well enough to dance to the gypsy band. She nodded. As they shuffled around between the tables she leaned on him. “Can you feel the blood falling?” he asked. “Always,” she said. “I fall ill every autumn.” The scent of her cherry lipstick stirred him and he kissed her; the warm sticky flavour of it made him want more. She had to draw away to take breath, but she loved the cherry flavour of her lipstick on his lips and they kissed again, endless brief lip-brushes. She broke away again, saying the music made her want to sing. But already too many dancers and diners were staring at them. He pulled up her dress at the front; weakly she tried to push it down, but her throat ached with pleasure and he insisted: “Please, you must let me. Please.” It was a purr at her ear, mingled with the dart of his tongue. “But you’ll be covered in blood,” she whispered. “I don’t mind,” he said. “I want your blood.” So she put her arm again around his neck and let him do what he liked. The dancing and dining men winked at them, smiling, and they smiled back.

  “Is it rare enough?” he asked, as he cut the fat from his meat. She caught his fingers in hers, and kissed them. “It’s better than I’ve ever known,” she said. “Can’t you tell?” The steak put back the blood she was losing, and afterwards they ran down to the trees, and made love again, on the grass by the lake. Sometimes, when a door was opened, they heard the gypsy music, and always there were the exceptionally large stars. It was not so comfortable making love while she was losing blood, but on the other hand she could let herself go even more because there was no fear of any consequences. When they climbed the stairs after midnight more maple leaves had blown into their room. She said, jokingly, that she could make use of them. She borrowed his toothbrush and as she cleaned her teeth he put his arms round her and gave her nape gentle kisses. There were more lightning flashes; sheet lightning and without thunder, bringing the snowy mountain peaks very close and lighting the trail of debris left by the storm and the flood.

  Postcards from the White Hotel:

  AN ELDERLY NURSE:

  I’ve been doing what I can for a sweet young couple who are both paralysed. It’s very brave of them to come on holiday together. They sit hunched up in their deck chairs sharing a blanket (we’re on a yacht in the middle of the lake). The food is excellent, and Elise is picking up, she sends love.

  A SECRETARY:

  Your last day hope it is warm & dry where you are, where we are it is very hot, there isn’t a cloud, it’s all hazy, we are on a boat on the lake, gnawing chicken bones and drinking wine. Hotel marvellous, better than the brochure and a good class of people.

  A PRIEST:

  I see its three masts as an emblem of Christ’s passion and the white sail as his beloved shroud. It makes me feel less guilty for deserting my flock. Mama, I hope you are keeping fine. The weather is nice. A sweet young Catholic girl drowned in my arms a few days ago. Don’t worry about me. I am reading the little book you sent.

  A JAPANESE MAID:

  Wonder to relate, my lovers (the moon couple) up at dawn’s crack and out on a boat. It means I and my friend must make their bed all day, their bed is undescribable. I no time to write even haiku.

  A CORSETIERE:

  The water seems fearfully cold, but tomorrow I must take the plunge. I am trailing my hand over the side of our boat. I would not like to say where the young man next to me with his girl has got his hand. Well, life must go on. Of course, it’s not the same when your partner is gone, but I must try to enjoy the rest of the holiday for my dear husband’s sake.

  AN ARMY MAJOR:

  It’s more like a troop ship than a yacht. It’s changed since before the war. We’re jammed against one another. I’d like a good Gatling to clear a space. The flood didn’t get rid of enough. Bodies! Everywhere! Dick arrives tomorrow by the first train.

  A WATCHMAKER:

  It went up like an oily rag. One moment we were enjoying the pleasant boat trip, the next, we could see our hotel burning away like plywood. We lost sight of the sun, it was so bright. Well, there goes all our possessions except the clothes we stand up in.

  A BOTANIST:

  It’s heartbreaking. Yesterday I found a very rare specimen of edelweiss. I left it back in the hotel, of course, and now it’s gone up in flames.

  A BANKER’S WIFE:

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was our hotel burning to the ground in front of us across the water, and this young fellow pulled his girl on to his lap and settled her on it! You know what I mean? Like deck quoits! And here were these people screaming all round, some with relations back at the hotel!

  AN INSURANCE BROKER:

  It was just awful to see them jumping out of upstairs windows. They had jets playing on the fire but it didn’t seem to do any good. Elinor, tha
nk God, was with me. I’d tried to get her to rest up in the hotel today. Anyway, we’re safe & sound and hope to see you.

  HIS WIFE:

  Thank the dear Lord Hubert was with me. He wasn’t so keen on a boat trip since we had the flood, but I made him come along. The weather is lovely, tho’ it gets very cool at nights. I feel a lot better for the break, and we’ve met some lovely people.

  A BOY:

  They were hanging from the trees like magic lanterns.

  A PASTOR:

  But the dead shall be raised, I have no fear of that. And this corrupt flesh shall put on incorruptible. The old lady we took the trip with, into the mountains, died in the fire. Yet my soul shall magnify the Lord.

  A HONEYMOON COUPLE:

  It’s clouded our holiday, but just the same we are very happy. This is the lake and the mountains, it is a beautiful place and the scenery is breathtaking.

  A BAKER’S WIFE:

  Our hearts are breaking. Dear mother has died in a terrible fire at the hotel. Thank God we were out in a boat, but we saw it all. It went up like paper. And we could see the room where she was. But she was an old lady, so we mustn’t grieve over it too much. We are trying to keep cheerful for the children’s sake, and you must do the same.

  A SALESMAN:

  One of the bedrooms had had the curtains drawn for a long time but yesterday they were open, and they think this may have had something to do with it, though I can’t see how.

  HIS MISTRESS:

  They think it was probably one of the maids having a quiet smoke when she made the beds. I’ve seen the Japanese maid smoking in the corridor, which looks funny as they’re so lady-like usually. Luckily it was a wing away from where we are, so our things are all right.