The Two Hotel Francforts

by David Leavitt

  “If it were up to me—”

  “It is up to you.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “For another hour it can be up to you.”

  “Half an hour?”

  “Of course. What, in all of time, is half an hour?”

  “But they add up.”

  “No, they don’t. They really don’t.”

  Chapter 12

  You were supposed to be for Iris, you know.”

  “Iris?”

  Edward nodded. We were sitting at a back table in the British Bar, on Rua Bernardino Costa. On the famous clock, the hour hand was touching the four, the minute hand between the six and the seven. We had come here in order to put off, just a little longer, our inevitable reunion with our wives.

  “It might have worked out that way, too, if it hadn’t been for your glasses. Something about your glasses … They made me want you for myself.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, though in retrospect I see that I did understand—that perhaps I had understood all along.

  He told me the story. About a year after he and Iris married, she became pregnant. “And the pregnancy was terrible. She nearly died. So did the baby. Maybe it would have been better if she had.”

  “Iris?”

  “No. The baby. Our daughter, you see, is what in olden times people called feebleminded. An imbecile. I do so prefer these antiquated terms, don’t you? They’re so much more … bracing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well. She lives in California now, with my mother. But that’s another story. The point is, after she was born, Iris developed this absolute terror of getting pregnant again. Because she was convinced—absolutely convinced—that our daughter’s condition, as they say, owed to the circumstances of the birth. And so we just … stopped. Sex, I mean. There was no treaty. It was more a matter of … unspoken mutual consent. And then the other decision—to put the child in the institution—it was Iris’s to make. As the mother, she had the right to make it. Not that she was ever easy about it. To be honest, she felt rather guilty. She still does.

  “We were living in New York then. The girl was three. She couldn’t speak, could barely walk. So we took her on the train to California—she loved that trip. I really think those were the happiest days of her life—and come to think of it, I walked the length of the train that time, too. With her. And then we left her with my mother, and went back to New York and sailed to France, where we began leading—the good life, I believe it’s called.”

  “And your daughter? Didn’t you think about her?”

  “Well, of course I thought about her. The trouble is, that’s all I really could do, think about her … But I’m straying from the point, which is to explain how you were supposed to be for Iris. You look so surprised. As if the idea never occurred to you. Well, why do you think I was talking about her underwear?”

  “Are you saying that it was planned? That you planned it between you?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It’s a sort of … arrangement we have. It goes back years. Le Touquet, that was the first time. As a matter of fact, it was with Alec Tyndall, the fellow who bet me he could write a murder novel faster than I could. Which just goes to show that there really is more to every story than meets the eye. Iris is right again.”

  “Wait—what happened with this Tyndall?”

  “Well, we were in the bar at the hotel, and we were both very drunk. We’d been drinking for hours. And Iris had gone to bed, and Tyndall’s wife was, as they say, indisposed, and we got to talking—trading dirty stories. He was really a very dirty-minded fellow, Tyndall. The British are, as a rule. He wanted to hear dirty stories, and of course I obliged him. I told him all sorts of things about Iris. Some of them were even true. And then, when I could see he was getting, oh, most excited, I slipped the key across the table to him. The key to our room. And I suggested he just … go up and let himself in.”

  “Did Iris know?”

  “Oh, no. She didn’t have a clue. I was acting entirely on impulse, taking—oh, yes—a tremendous risk … Only somehow I knew it wasn’t really a risk. And I was right.

  “He stayed with her all night. Did I mention that Daisy was with me in the bar? Daisy, my bosom companion of so many madrugadas. We walked up and down the promenade until dawn, didn’t we, Daisy? Until we saw the lights go on in the room. Iris pulling open the curtains.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything. She just … looked at me. The expression on her face … it was almost a smirk.

  “Well, that was how it started. Mind you, it’s never been a regular thing with us. Just a few times a year. Nor has it always worked out as smoothly as it did with Tyndall.”

  “And this was what was supposed to happen with me?”

  “Well, why did you think she took Julia off to the vet like that? Why do you think she told Julia to let us go off alone together to have a drink?”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  “No, it’s not in the least believable, is it? Not, for instance, as believable as my being a con man.”

  “Is that why you’re telling me this? Because you’re upset that I thought you were a con man?”

  “Upset! Why should I be upset? Why, with my bloodied shirt and my swollen lip and the world ending, should I be upset? I’m not being sarcastic, you realize.”

  “Yes.”

  “Besides, you need to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Iris knows.”

  “You told her?”

  “I didn’t have to. She guessed.”

  Again I looked at the clock. I could make no sense of it. I could no longer make sense of time.

  “But what is she going to do? My God, what if she tells Julia?”

  “Oh, she won’t do that. In fact it was the first thing she said—that Julia must never find out.”

  “You might have mentioned this earlier.”

  “Would it have made any difference?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. The trouble, my friend, is that this thing, this affair—let’s call it by its name—it’s serious. It matters. I mean, if it was just fun and games on the beach, a punch in the face, the occasional afternoon in a brothel, that would be one thing … But you see, I’m starting to have these mad notions about you. For instance, I want to dance with you. Isn’t that mad?”

  “No. I’ve thought the same thing.”

  “And not just any dance. An old-fashioned dance. A waltz.”

  “That would be quite a spectacle.”

  “Grown men dancing together … I know, it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous—and yet sort of touching, when you think about it.”

  “Edward—has this ever happened to you before?”

  “Strictly speaking … But how can one speak strictly of these things? There was the usual fooling around in boarding school, of course. And then once, when I was visiting my mother, we had a row, and I stormed out and and took the train to San Francisco and went to a bar. And even though I was underage, the barman served me. I met a sailor. He was dead drunk. That’s how I got the scar on my chin.”

  “What happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, that’s the sum total of it. My lifetime experience of buggery—until now. And you?”

  “Me? Nothing. Never.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “Not even in college?”

  “Wabash was a very clean-minded place.”

  “Yet it seemed to come to you so naturally.”

  I didn’t reply. I was embarrassed. Instinct embarrassed me, appearing this late in the game.

  At last the hour had come when we could put off parting no longer, so we paid the bill and left. The rain had stopped. Mist rose from the pavement. Soon Rua Bernardino Costa gave way to Rua do Arsenal, which is famous for its shops that sell salted cod. On the sidewalks, warped strips of the stuff hung from hooks. They looked like dried-o
ut sponges, smelled like ammonia. Back at the brothel, I had taken what my brother George called a “whore’s bath,” running a wet washcloth up between my legs. Now a gummy sweat coated the sides of my torso. When I got back to the hotel, the first hurdle would be to get into the bathroom before Julia caught a whiff of me.

  Outside the Francfort’s revolving door, Edward and I shook hands.

  “Tomorrow?” he said.

  “Where?” I said. “When?”

  “How about four? No, three thirty. At the British Bar.”

  The prospect warmed me. I nodded.

  He walked away, in the direction of the Elevator.

  In the lobby, as I passed the front desk, I saw that the key to our room was on its peg.

  “My wife is out?” I asked Senhor Costa.

  “She has been out since two,” he answered. “An English lady came and took her away.”

  “Was she tall, this English lady?”

  “Very tall.”

  I thanked him and went upstairs. While I was gone, the room had been made up. The pillows were fluffed. Strangest of all, not a single item of Julia’s clothing was to be seen.

  Was it possible she had actually left? Taken her things?

  No. On the dressing table, the requisite hand of solitaire was laid out. La Belle Lucie, in which the cards are arranged in fans.

  She must have been in the middle of a game when Iris came for her.

  I undressed, stuffed my clothes in a suitcase—later, when Julia wasn’t looking, I would have them laundered—and locked myself in the bathroom. Much to my relief, the water in the tub ran hot. Down my arms and legs, a grayish residue slurried.

  After I was dry, I put on clean shorts and an undershirt. Thinking I might rest for ten minutes, I lay down on the bed, atop the coverlet.

  At midnight the sound of church bells woke me. The room was dark.

  No sign of Julia.

  I got under the covers and fell back asleep.

  At one, there was a rapping on the door.

  I let her in. She smelled of cigarettes, of gin, of a perfume not her own.

  “I’m sorry to be so late,” she said. “Were you worried? You must have been worried.”

  “I was, rather.”

  “I knew it. Iris said you wouldn’t be, but I knew you would.”

  She kissed me on the nose.

  “Your wife,” she said, “has had a most extraordinary day.”

  Chapter 13

  From one night to the next, our roles had reversed. Such, at least, was Julia’s view. Now it was she, not I, who had been out until all hours; she, not I, who was carrying the redolence of the public world into our private bed; she, not I, who, as she put it, had “some explaining to do.”

  And oh, how she longed to explain! Even as she washed up, I could hear her voice from behind the bathroom door, though I couldn’t make out the words. Finally she eased herself into the bed, and it was as if a fiery ingot, fresh from the furnace, were pressing into my back. For she was always hot, my Julia. Sleeping with her was like sleeping with some fantastic tiny, overheated creature, one of those hairless dogs that in Mexico are used as hot-water bottles. Before Edward, this had excited me. Making love to Julia had been like a fever dream, in which I grew immense and she shrank to a fierce little Thumbelina, to whose supplications I had no choice but to yield … And now I wanted to push her away. At her touch I broke into a sweat. I feared flailing in the night and smashing her nose, rolling on top of her and crushing the life out of her in my sleep.

  “Oh, Pete, what can I do to make it up to you?” she asked in the morning as we were waiting for our coffee at the Suiça.

  “Make what up to me?” I said.

  “Being so impossible these last weeks. So difficult. About rooms and so forth. And then last night, staying out so late … Were you terribly worried? Is that why you haven’t asked me where I was?”

  “I figured if you wanted to tell me, you would,” I said, trying to affect a tone of woundedness.

  She put her hands atop mine. “Oh, my poor darling, how petulant you’re being. You really must have been worried.”

  Petulance seemed as convenient a screen as any other for what I was feeling. I shrugged.

  “I must say, it touches my heart to see you like this. Why, yesterday I said to Iris—I really did—‘Iris,’ I said, ‘the way I’ve been behaving, he’ll probably be relieved that I’m not there. He’ll probably hope I’ve gone for good.’”

  “And what did Iris say?”

  “That I was being silly. Self-dramatizing. And she was right. One thing you can say about Iris, she doesn’t mince words. She can take you down a peg—but gently. Without hurting you.”

  “You mean she’s bracing in her truthfulness?”

  “Not exactly. It’s more that she has a way of looking at things, a way you’d never consider if she didn’t suggest it. But then, when you do look at things that way, they make a new kind of sense.”

  “And what’s her new way of looking at you?”

  “Well, that I’m angry at my family—and all these years I’ve been taking it out on you. Which is absurd and unfair, because you’re the one who got me away from my family. Why, if it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what would have become of me. And yet from the way I’ve been acting … as if it was ever within your power to change things … But now I’m going to make it up to you, Pete. I promise. From now on you’ll find me a changed woman.”

  She leaned back, almost rapturous in her contrition. Have you noticed how certain dogs, when you speak to them in a voice not your own, when you use a falsetto or meow like a cat, will become deeply agitated? I am like that. It bothers me when people don’t sound like themselves. Cynicism, even outright hostility, I was used to from Julia. But earnestness—it made me shudder.

  After that she told me the story. It seemed that no sooner had I left to fetch the car from Estoril than Iris had swooped down on her. “Swooped”—that was the word she used. “I mean, I was just tidying up a bit, thinking I might take a nap, when all of a sudden the telephone rings and it’s Senhor Costa saying that there’s a lady to see me. And so I went down and it was Iris. And she said, ‘Get your hat—we’re going on an expedition.’ And I said, ‘What sort of expedition?’ And she said, ‘Never mind that, just get your hat.’ So I got my hat and we went out and she had a car waiting. She’d hired a car. And off we drove to Sintra. And, Pete, it’s the loveliest town in the world! Like an Italian hill town, but greener. Not so stony or severe. And the air! You can taste how clean it is. And there are the most breathtaking views, and an old hotel—Byron stayed there—and a palace. So we had tea—outdoors, in the most beautiful garden, with climbing roses—and ate these delicious little cheese pastries that are a local specialty. And we talked. About Paris and New York and our childhoods and you and Edward. I told her about our drive from Paris, and it was then that she gave me the most exhilarating dressing-down, pointing out that whatever we might have gone through, it was far worse for other people, these poor people with no citizenship, no country, because unlike them, at least our passports are worth something.”

  “But that’s exactly what I said at dinner. At dinner you argued with me.”

  “I know I did. Probably because—I have to admit it—it was you who was saying it. But this time, maybe because it was just Iris and me, and she’d pointed out how horrid I’d been, I could listen.”

  “A miracle worker, this woman.”

  “Don’t make fun of her. It’s not that she’s a saint. It’s that I’m an obstinate fool. And when you consider what she’s had to cope with! Orphaned so young, and then the tragedy of the child.”

  “Oh yes, the child.”

  “You know, it breaks her heart that she couldn’t raise her own daughter. Especially since, from what she tells me, the girl is absolutely beautiful. Just beautiful. But her mind … it isn’t there. ‘A blank slate,’ Iris said … Well, it was getting on by then, and I said I really ough
t to be getting back, in case you should worry, but she said that in the long run you’d be glad that I was showing more independence, and in Portugal people keep late hours, so what was the rush? And so we had a walk around the town, and it was while we were walking … Now, Pete, promise you won’t get angry.”

  “What?”

  “Just promise that you won’t lose your temper. Because once you’ve thought about it, I’m sure you’ll see—”

  “What, for God’s sake?”

  She drew in her breath. “I’ve rented a house.”

  “A house?”

  “In Sintra. And, Pete, it’s just marvelous! We passed it entirely by chance. There was a gate with ivy growing over it, and a TO LET sign. And so we stopped, and I was gazing through the gate, sort of dreaming, and Iris said, ‘Why don’t we ring the bell?’ And I said, ‘Pete will kill me.’ And she said, ‘It can’t hurt to make inquiries.’ So we did, and the housekeeper let us in. The owners are English. They’re in London now—the husband is doing some sort of war work—and they’re letting the place month by month. Just until the war is over, you understand. A neighbor showed us around, a Portuguese lady, very cultured, she spoke perfect French. And, Pete, it’s just exquisite! The architect is someone famous. I forget his name. Iris will remember. And not only did he design the house, he built all the furniture. Every piece. By hand. Beautiful things, oak and leather, no froufrou. Jean would love it. So I asked the price, and Pete, it was so cheap that … I took a leap of faith. I rented it.”

  “What do you mean you rented it?”

  “Just that. I rented it.”

  “You’re not saying you actually put down money—”

  “Only the first month, since it was all I had on me. I said that this afternoon—”

  “Did you sign anything?”

  “Just a receipt.”

  “Not a lease?”

  “No, not a lease.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a lease?”

  “Of course I’m sure it wasn’t a lease. What do you take me for?”

  “Come on. Get up.” I threw some coins on the table.