The White Hotel

by D. M. Thomas

  Our life has been quite hectic these past few weeks. Kolya started school and enjoys it, after a few miserable days. He’s such a little dreamer thought! One day he wandered home in the middle of the morning—he’d thought it was dinner time when it was only the morning break! Walked home through the streets all on his own! He’s growing like a fern, and it’s difficult to keep up with his needs. Clothes of course are expensive, and not always easily obtainable. But we manage all right, we’re really very fortunate. Victor grumbles now and then about feeling old, which is nonsense, I tell him, because he’s healthy, and young at heart. He’s been producing a new opera, about building a dam, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It has some nice tunes. They had a panic about getting the costumes ready in time, so for two weeks I went along and did my bit, sewing and stitching. It was very good fun, working against time, and sharing a laugh with the girls. And I have two very good pupils, who come to the apartment three times a week. So the time just flies.

  Just two weeks before the new opera was due to start, we got news that Victor’s mother had died, and we had to rush off to Tiflis for the funeral. It was of course not unexpected, she had lived to a ripe old age and had been ailing for some time, but it’s a blow whenever it comes, and it’s a good thing he’s been so busy, it’s helped to take his mind off it. Some friends of ours looked after Kolya. We were only gone a few days, but we missed him, and I think he was very glad to see us back.

  It is a shame you have not been well enough to take that trip to visit with Hannah, nor she with you, but nice of her to telephone you on your birthday. (I’m glad our gift arrived in time.) The telephone is a wonderful thing. I keep meaning to write to her, if only to tell her how much I appreciate her superb teaching, now that I have pupils of my own! Give her my very best wishes, when you write.

  Yes, it would be lovely if we could take tea together. You are always in my thoughts. I hope the gold treatment has a good effect. It is a blessing that your eyes are clearer. I hope you like the handkerchiefs I embroidered—a little bit of the Ukraine. Now it has begun to snow—the first of the winter—and I must put on my coat and hat to go out and fetch Kolya from school. Our love, and the season’s greetings, to you all.

  Affectionately,

  Lisa, Victor and Kolya

  5

  The

  Sleeping

  Carriage

  He awoke, for about the tenth time that night, and groaned to himself when he realized it still wasn’t dawn. He listened to the sounds of rustling in the wall. He would never hear those sounds again. His mouth was dry with excitement; he wanted to command the sun to rise, so they could start out on their journey. The first time he had “moved house,” it had only been a matter of crossing the city; and a miserable change it was too. This place was a dump. But today they would be crossing borders, deserts, mountain ranges—and it would go on and on. Tomorrow night he would be sleeping in a train! He couldn’t wait for it to start. Surely it must be nearly morning and he would hear his mother stirring soon?

  They would play cards on the train, Pavel and he. Yet it was a pity the others weren’t coming because you could have a more exciting game with four. Pavel was all right, but not much fun on his own. He would miss the rest of the gang. There were several things he would miss: the scavenging around, seeing what you could pick up without getting caught; and not having to go to school. Yes, that would be awful, having to go to school again, though it would please his mother. Not that she didn’t keep him busy enough as it was; but after a couple of hours she got tired, fortunately, and let him go out of doors. Would he miss this room? Yes, a little, because although it was a dump it was home. But there’d be plenty of things to make him forget it very quickly.

  He would miss Shura, though. Shura was really his best friend. Though he wondered if Shura perhaps liked Pavel better. He would not admit it but he was a little jealous. His mother said that probably the other children would be allowed to follow on, later. He would miss visiting Shura’s home, because there was always some food there. He liked Shura’s mother; she was young and lively. He wished his own mother wasn’t so old. It was embarrassing to have an old woman for a mother. She also had that very bad cough, which went on and on, and he hoped she wouldn’t die. He heard her coughing now, on the other side of the curtain. Good, that might mean it was nearly time to get up.

  The strange thing about sleeping was that you had no idea what time it was. You could sometimes get an idea from looking at the window, but with the curtain drawn across his bed he couldn’t see the window. It was pitch-dark. He had the horrifying thought that it might be only about midnight! Surely it couldn’t be! It felt late in the night, somehow; and he knew they were going to get up very early, before dawn.

  He turned over in bed, and tried to make the time pass by imagining the place where he was going. The only help to his imagination was the Bible stories his mother told him sometimes; but they weren’t much help. They were also boring. It was better to fix his thoughts on the journey. He liked trains. The first time he’d travelled on one he’d been sick, his mother said, and a great nuisance—that was when he was only a baby. He didn’t remember it. The longest journey he’d taken was all the way to Leningrad. That was when he had slept in a room of what used to be a real palace. He had been only five or six, but he remembered quite a lot of that holiday. There was an old man and a younger man; and when he looked over the window sill he was surprised to see water. He remembered also being on a ship once, but it was very vague. Yet memories were strange, because he actually thought he remembered his first birthday party. He recalled being held in his granny’s arms to blow out the candle on the cake. Yet that was much earlier than when his mother and father had taken him on the ship. Perhaps he only imagined he remembered his first birthday because there was a photograph of it in the album. His grandmother was holding him up to blow out the candle, and his father was there too, smiling.

  He imagined the sound of the train wheels taking them to Leningrad and back, and mixed it up with the rustling of the cockroaches in the wall. It made a strange tune. He liked listening to different sounds; and especially at night trying to hear sounds in the silence, or remembering sounds. He had been nearly last in his class in music at school, and he’d told his parents he hated music; which had disappointed them. And it was true, in a way; the kind of music he was made to learn. All those boring notes. But (and this was a big secret) he was going to be a composer when he grew up. That would be a shock to his mother. If she lived till then. He stirred uneasily.

  His father was old too; but nothing mattered as long as he came back. He recalled his last sight of his father—when he was still half asleep, being kissed and hugged by him and told he must be a good boy and take care of his mother. That was the worst memory of his life, just as the holiday in Leningrad was the best. Not just that night, but the weeks after, when the other children bullied him and called him names, saying his father was a traitor. That was even before some of their fathers had been put in prison; afterwards, it was even worse. He’d got beaten up. That was when they’d had to move. But he was sure his father was no traitor. His mother was sure too. He couldn’t understand why his father should have been put in prison for having travelled abroad, years and years ago, or for putting on an opera about a cruel Tsar. Surely the prison, wherever it was, would be overrun soon; and when his father came back he would come looking for them—and they wouldn’t be here! Suddenly it didn’t seem a good idea to be going away. He had a picture of his father knocking on the door, and then turning away with a sad face.

  He heard his mother coughing again, and it was clear that she was wide awake. Soon she would get up, light the fire, and make breakfast. Now he snuggled down and enjoyed the warmth of the bed. She stopped coughing, and there was silence again; as if she was making up her mind to get up. He waited for the familiar sounds: the squeak of the bed, the creaking floorboard, the sigh, the swish and rustle of her clothes being put on, the scrape of
her shoes. But they didn’t come; only his mother’s occasional cough; and he drifted half asleep again, and dreamt his father was back and all three of them were riding in a sleigh, through snowy streets.

  The old woman lay thinking of the many things she still had to do. Then she climbed out, shivering, for it was a chilly autumn morning, and still dark. Rising so early, they would be in time to get seats on the train. She listened for sounds of stirring upstairs, but the Shchadenkos were not up yet. She dressed slowly, and felt a little warmer, though still she shivered. It was uncertainty and apprehension, she knew, more than the cold night; for she had saved up some warm clothes for just such an emergency, and had likewise put by some warm underwear for Kolya, which she had laid ready on his bedside chair. They would be travelling for one or even two nights on the train and it might get very cold indeed. She shuffled around in her stockinged feet, because she didn’t want to waken Kolya with the clump of her shoes. Let him sleep till the last minute. He would be tired enough after his travels.

  She lit the candle which she had been saving for Christmas; then kindled a fire in the stove with the last of the wood shavings. By the glow of the fire and the candle you could see she was not such an old woman, in spite of her grey hair and stiff movements—probably no more than fifty. She only seemed old to Kolya and—most of the time—to herself. When the fire was well alight, she slipped into her shoes, pulled a coat round her shoulders, quietly lifted the door latch, and felt her way out into the yard. She pulled open the door of the privy. As she crouched over the hole, trying not to breathe in the foul smell, she heard a rustle behind her, and a long grey blurred form slid past her feet and flashed out through the door, which she had learned to leave ajar for just such an exit. Shuddering, feeling still the rat’s soft brush against her ankle, she tore off a piece of Ukrainskoye Slovo, wiped herself quickly, stood, and pulled down her dress. When she was in the yard again, she took a deep breath. It was still not fresh air, for the Podol breathed a perpetual scent of rancid fat and rotting matter from the rubbish heaps; but she had grown used to it and, compared with the privy, it was pure and sweet. Then she returned indoors.

  Keeping as silent as possible, she took off her coat, unbuttoned her dress, and poured some of the water from the bucket into the bowl, making sure there was enough left over. Water was precious: one of them had to go every day to the Dnieper to fetch it. Pulling her dress down over her shoulders, she gave herself a wash. Now she could hear the Shchadenkos moving around upstairs, a bustle of hurrying feet. It would be comforting to have Liuba’s company. She put the remains of the potato peelings in the saucepan. The pancakes would warm Kolya’s stomach for the journey. She relished the smell as the peelings started to sizzle.

  It was time to wake her son. Not so long ago, she would have whispered in his ear, and tickled him awake. But lately he had grown modest and private, and she had put up an old curtain to divide the room and give him a chance to feel a little bit independent. So she merely stood at the curtain opening and called his name. When he groaned, she told him breakfast was almost ready. “We’ve got pancakes!” she said, tempting him. Though he groaned again and turned over, she knew it would not be long before he would be leaping out of bed. He was very excited about the journey.

  While she was seeing to the breakfast he appeared, in his trousers and vest, took a good sniff of the delicious pancakes, and sat at the table. She told him he must wash first—but before that he must go to the toilet, because they were short of water and there wasn’t enough for him to wash twice. Living in such filthy conditions, she was sure they had only kept healthy during the last three years by being very careful about cleanliness. Grumbling that he didn’t need to go yet, he pulled his jacket on over his vest and banged open the door.

  When they were sitting and eating the pancakes, he asked her again what she thought the place would be like, where they were going. She could only feed him scraps of her childhood lessons—the fragrant orange groves, the cedars of Lebanon…Jesus walking on the water…“I am the rose of Sharon.…” Geography and Scripture were confused in her mind, and it was difficult to paint a convincing picture. She felt hopelessly ignorant. Geography had never been her strong point. It was beginning to get light, and she glanced out at the dreary yard with its rubbish heaps, and the backs of more slums. “It will be a paradise compared with this, Kolya,” she said. “You’ll see. We’ll be very happy there.”

  But Kolya looked doubtful. He was very upset because two of his best friends, Shura and Bobik, were not Jewish and could not come. And she knew he was also bothered that his father would not be able to find them.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “he’ll find us. They’ll have lists of people who have emigrated. When he comes back to Kiev he’ll be able to find out exactly where we are, and will come straight over to join us.” She tried to make her voice and expression convincing, and briefly touched the crucifix at her throat. Never had it seemed the right time to tell him his father would not be coming back. She would tell him when they were settled somewhere safe, far away, where they could begin a new life.

  When they had finished their meal, she washed the dishes in the last of the water, wiped them, and stowed them away in the battered suitcase. Though most of their possessions had been sold or pawned, in the effort to survive, there was still a lot to be squashed into one case. Kolya had to sit on it before she could snap the locks shut. She tied string around the case to make sure it did not burst open on the journey. Luckily it could withstand a lot of battering. It had been expensive when she had bought it, with some of the money her father had given her on her seventeenth birthday. Her mind went back to her departure from Odessa, more than thirty years ago, and she had the same queasy feeling. Her breast felt both hollow and weighed down with lead.

  Besides the case, there was a paper package tied up with string. It contained a bottle of water, and some onions and potatoes. Kolya had stolen the food a few days before, during the outbreak of looting. She felt frightened sick at the risk he had run; but had decided to keep the food. It would not be easy to prove that a few vegetables had been stolen; and it would have been almost as dangerous to take them back. She entrusted the parcel to Kolya, and told him to be sure to hold on to it and not let it fall.

  They put on their coats, and stood facing each other uncertainly. She knew she must not show how frightened she was. “Say goodbye to the cockroaches!” she joked. Kolya looked close to tears, and it made her realize he was still only a child, for all his grown-up ways. She hugged him and said everything would be fine, and that she was glad she would have him to take care of her.

  Dumping their baggage in the tiny hall, they climbed the stairs to see if the Shchadenkos were ready. But Liuba and the children were dashing about in complete disarray still. With three children and a mother-in-law—an old woman who needed tending hand and foot—Liuba looked tired out even before the long day had begun. There were clothes scattered over the floor, and she was struggling to dress Nadia, her youngest. Pavel and Olga were doing nothing to help, as always; the old woman was complaining in the corner; and now Nadia was howling because she had only just realized they would have to leave the cat, Vaska, behind. Her mother was trying to reassure her that Vaska would be fine, she would feed well off the scraps in the back yards. But Nadia was inconsolable. “Can I do anything?” said Lisa; but Liuba shook her head, and said they had better go on, and try to claim an empty compartment; she and her brood would join them later. How she was going to get her mother-in-law to the station she didn’t know, but they’d manage somehow; they always did.

  Lisa’s gaze fell on the cobbler’s tools lying by a wood box. She looked questioningly at Liuba, and her friend blushed and dropped her eyes. Lisa knew there was no point in saying anything; she would take her husband’s tools with her, though it was a million to one against Vanya finding his family again, even if he were released one day. Lisa felt guilty too, because there was almost nothing of Victor’s left. Eve
rything had been sold to get food. But then, she had had her parcels and letters returned, which meant his almost certain death; whereas her friend’s husband was still alive somewhere, as far as she knew. He had been arrested and sentenced for grumbling to a customer about the shoddy materials he had to work with.

  They could hear stirrings of life in the other tenements backing on to the yard. “You’d better go,” said Liuba. “With any luck there won’t be many about yet.” Kolya was edging towards the door impatiently, but Lisa hovered, doubtful. Yet it seemed the best plan, to go early and claim seats. The two grey-haired women embraced, and Liuba shed a few tears. She was very emotional. As she dabbed her eyes, Kolya produced from his pocket the old pack of cards, to show Pavel he had not forgotten them. Then his mother followed him down the stairs, they picked up the case and the package, and went out into the alleyway that led to the street. Dawn had broken, but the light was still weak.

  When they came out on to the street they were stunned. The whole of the Podol was on the move. Instead of being able to walk along quite quickly, they had to push their way into a great slow-moving queue as wide as the street. It was like the huge crowd Lisa had once got caught up in, edging its way towards the Kiev football stadium. But that mass had consisted of men, for the most part, and their arms had been free. This mass, surging slowly up the Glubochitsa, carried their houses on their backs, so to speak: old plywood cases, wicker baskets, carpenters’ boxes…. And in the absence of able-bodied men, who had retreated with the army, here were invalids, cripples, women and their crying children. The old and bed-ridden had taken up their beds and walked. Some of the old women carried strings of onions round their necks, like huge necklaces. In front of Lisa and her son, a sturdy lad was carrying a very old lady on his back. Other families had evidently banded together and hired a horse and cart to carry their old and their baggage. Only the poorest of the poor lived in the Podol district, but they all had more possessions than could be carried. The crowds up ahead were massed so thick that Lisa knew she would be lucky to get seats on the train for the two of them; to save a compartment for Liuba and her brood would be out of the question.