Strange Hotel

by Eimear McBride

  STRANGE HOTEL

  Eimear McBride

  For William

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Strange Hotel

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  STRANGE HOTEL

  London?

  Paris x

  St Petersburg

  Moscow

  Budapest x

  Bratislava x

  Warsaw x

  Cracow x

  Haworth x

  St Austell x

  Beijing x

  Tokyo x

  St Petersburg x

  Bucharest x

  Craiova

  Paris x

  Khartoum

  Barcelona x

  Cairo x

  Riga x

  Amsterdam x

  Milan

  Florence x

  Sorrento x

  Naples x

  Rome x

  Avignon x

  Santarcangelo di Romagna

  Brussels x

  Siena x

  Bagno Vignoni

  Venice

  Berlin x

  Dublin

  Donegal

  Ballycastle

  Belfast

  New York x

  Newark x

  Folkestone x

  Manchester x

  Edinburgh x

  Glasgow

  Stratford-upon-Avon

  Norwich x

  Avignon

  She has no interest whatsoever in France. The subject is unbroachable with her. She disregarded it as best she could on the train from Nice. She did not absorb her cab ride here. With this indifference, of course, she has defeated herself: tomorrow will mean the acquisition of a map. The, as yet, avoidable worse though would be requesting directions in her tense-less French. It galls – the merest suggestion of this and the insufferable tone it habitually elicits. With a shudder, she calls to mind a previous incident of ‘Madame, shall we start again … perhaps in English this time?’ Too late, too late will be the cry. But as she inwardly simmers her fractious eye alights on a bowl of matchbooks nearby – crimson, gold and gratis, liveried for the hotel. Their reverse addressed, surely? Location marked on a street grid? Retrieving two and flipping one she discovers it is. So, upon sliding them between the folds of her valise, finds a complication resolved.

  This appeasement aside, the foyer sags with humidity unleavened by the indoor trees. Palms, she supposes. Fronds dust-patinaed to rust, as though some off-Riviera Death in Venice were the desired effect. Should this be the case they’ve not been entirely unsuccessful, she reflects – the aqueous decadence of old Venice excepted, alongside any perceptible increase in the likelihood of an untimely death. Th. And there it is, death again. Displaying its feathers as the always inevitable. Even here, in this suppurating suburban hotel to where she herself doesn’t know how to get. Enough however, enough of that. This kind of thing could make her blink but before it can she recalls her previous assessment that, however stifling the atmosphere may be, it’s unlikely to bring about her demise. Besides which, there appears to be a dearth of golden-haired boys upon whom to unhealthily dwell. In fact, as she casts about, she sees absolutely no children at all. Naturally she finds in this no cause for complaint having, in her own small way, contributed to their absenteeism too. To be perfectly frank – as she is to herself – the, approaching fetid, adult clientele also fail to seriously assert their presence, beyond peripherally. An unwelcome thought this, the thought of them: walking, being, unconsciously imbibing the air as though it’s a rightful allocation of theirs which will never run down. But then, above, a fan kicks in. Its whirr invasive. Air imitates motion. Time reasserts itself. Sweat rolls down her neck. It brings to mind her much favoured attitude of haste – not that she’s in any specific rush. It’s merely her preference not to indulge mortality’s by now routine assaults on her carefully habituated ennui – a good word, ennui, so one–nil to French. This timely revival indicating, however, that now it’s best the brass call bell gets repeatedly pressed and the concierge is delivered a long look of impatience. As he indicates the desk clerk’s imminent attendance, she drums her fingernails almost to dents on the dark, high polished wood. Having come so far, with so little delight, she embraces this brief performance of her magnified distaste for delay.

  The clerk arrives, sunned-brown and neat and slow, through the door behind the desk. His disinterest does not regard her particularly while, invested in her own, she does not regard him back. Framed in keys, who is he to me, this arbiter of rooms? Besides, she’s already booked hers with some specificity and therefore need not gaze up hopefully for favour in his eyes. Well fortified thus, she slides her passport across. Her credit card after that. And as soon as the tan hand languidly indicates, swiftly signs without flourish along the dotted line. Neat fingers pass keys and hers, pale, intercept. She does not look into them for the number, just goes where his point – the white tips elegantly signalling stage right. She already knows where. This is not her first time in this hotel but she had not expected to return.

  The ground-floor corridor. Its hot dun gloom. The carpet runner and rods beneath her feet.

  Against all inclination, she remembers its brown tinted glass, the outsize faux Ming vases in gilt willow pattern. She seems to recollect how the nylon awnings stretched to construct channels of respite from the sun. She possesses little interest in the doings of the sun – bodies spit-stretched beneath, skin crimpling to burnt umber from – but recalls how her silently professed repugnance had borne little weight on the matter before. Rather, a radiant torture appears to remain the hotel’s aim, prosecuted most effectively by a marked absence of even the most cursory blind. She remembers that. Thinking that. So now does she think it afresh? And can she think it afresh? Or only ever again? Rat running around its run over and over and Stop. An instant of regret, forced from the knowledge that allowing memory, or any of its variables, admittance is invariably a mistake. Nonetheless, and even knowing that much, time makes a ladder of her anyway. Down. The room key – not being the more modern card but cut – and how on that previous occasion she’d also thought ‘When was the last time you saw one of those?’ What about that cigarette burn, to the far left, was that there? Located, unusually, in the skirting board. Surely she would remember a peculiarity like that? Does she remember? And if, in that past, she turns her head away, to the right, what other oddities might she see? Or what welcome familiarity might there be? Impatient now though with her brain’s apparent receptivity, she encourages her irritation to grow. Familiarity is not the ambition. Never at all, of late. In fact, she’d say she has been at pains to let nothing embed. Surely, it’s merely human nature, travel, stress, which beckons the mind back to that other visit? She could admit she came here on purpose but that would mean owning to a degree of conscious volition which she remains at pains to deny. And. On that first visit, she reminds herself, her attention had been on everywhere and so nowhere near the now all-important imperative to forget. She just saw all she saw and it went in and there’s nothing to be done about that.

  Door. Scratched dull lock. Put in. Turn the key. Fail. Joggle. Lean into. Be firm. Try again now. Try again, again. And, on another try, there. She’s in.

  She shuts it hard behind. Abominable heat. The day aches around her shoulders in search of other mischief. Headache. Perhaps but will not do and, before it attempts to beat this path through her, she turns the anxious air conditioning on. Once foxed by dials not of her immediate ken, she is now au fait with all the buttons of hotels and more than adept at deciphering their idiosyncrasised versions of ‘Up’, ‘Down’, ‘Whirl-around’, ‘Pre
ss’. This time she presses. A briefly baited wait. Hum. Cool air sputters live from the vent. In hoc signo vinces! Well, no. Or not exactly … some.

  In the corner, inevitably, a strapped fold-out stand for a case. Hers fits snug into the cradle. Zip. She checks for washbag damage – out of habit nowadays, rather than deep concern, and about convenience because if she had to, she could easily replace everything. Times have changed, she notes, as is her wont on these occasions of which, of late, there have been more than a few. Another unzipped bag, in another uninteresting hotel room, upon which she stares indifferently down at the folded clothes, or the shampoo congealing into them if she’s been unlucky which, on this occasion, she has not. All’s well in there so that’s all she does, apart from extracting then balancing her toothpaste-spattered washbag on the too-short shelf above the low, piss-stinking loo. Scrubbed though she’s sure and certainly looks it but a high turnover of dehydrated urine has a tendency to out. The poor aim of men, drunks and cracked tiles is her theory. The pungent condensation, her proof. A tightly shut bathroom door should work wonders, she thinks, and it could be so much worse. That said, she is grateful to have not yet removed her boots. Soon though she will, everything’s starting to hurt. Perhaps a quick check for which make-up’s gone astray first? She pulls the shaving light on. The cheap yellow fog shows her sickly but she already knew it would. Make-up’s fine, almost off. There is nothing needs tending, except a quick under-eye wipe. Should she shower? She quite probably should. Not now though. She’s going nowhere. She is certain of that. She turns the shave light off. Nothing to see here. She prefers it in the dark anyway.

  To do. To do. She seeks tasks to do but can’t find them anywhere. Look.

  No need to hang up her clothes. She won’t be here long enough for that. Instead the wants of sweat and thirst propagate in her head. She recalls the mini-bar not being in the obvious place but has, nevertheless, located its whereabouts after a swift moment or two. In its sole 7Up, she recognises an opportunity for restraint which she has promised herself to avail of, should the opportunity present. But, she explains to no one, it’s been a very long day. Then she remembers that this has indeed been the case and grows irritable with herself for allowing no one a say. The perennial problem recurs. If only no one could be banished as easily as bade. It gets wearing, the contortions of the critic in her head to whose scrutiny she must, however, submit. She should just make the choice, as it was once previously made. She knows that. She makes it then. Sees the phone and calls to the front desk and, in overly imperative English, requests a bottle of white wine. Or two. On hanging up, she mouths, ‘It’s unendurable, this heat,’ which her hands pretend is the directive to unlock and un-slide the fly-blown inner door. No one heard her though and did not in any regard buy this excuse.

  Courtyard.

  It’s not a courtyard, she thinks. A wall of breeze blocks enclosing a ‘bird of paradise’ run amok. However, they certainly fulfil their stated remit of keeping the breeze well and truly out. And, paradisiacal as the truncated vista purports to be, she’d far rather find herself in receipt of the occasional light lickings of … is it the Mistral here? She can imagine that sensation described as ‘delicious’ by some. Never by her. It’s an appropriation she finds particularly grim, as though even the pleasure of the fat is being re-consecrated by the messianic thin. At any rate, this ill-conceived digression fails to divert her for long and the lighting of a cigarette soon rekindles her preference for the feel of moving air. She suspected it would because it usually does. And she is tired. Exhausted. France appears to be taking its toll. Or her body disapproves the incidental disinterment of long, long ago. No. Just a few years ago. She wishes it was long ago though.

  So instead, she makes herself of now and forswears what has been.

  Meaning, here she sits, feet slipped into the grey sand beneath and already countless fag ends there. Even in their advanced state of decay she can confidently differentiate the dogged constancy of English tips from their more pliant European relatives. And, if she looks carefully does she spy a lung-collapsing papirosa there? Maybe. No matter. No matter to that, or the curl of smoke undulating over her head, all the way back in. It can linger by the ceiling. Nothing is at stake. This is France, as she’s chosen. There need be no excuses made. Besides which, no other person will be in this room tonight. That is the plan. That is the plan.

  Knock.

  Wine knock. She knows the sound. Tentative yet authoritative. She drops and grinds the cigarette out, ensuring no spark survives. She remembers, although now does not care to remember, ensuring this too in other times. Best practice, nothing more, she counsels herself and now all gone under the dirt anyway. She gets up, straightens and goes to get. But when did the sun fall and the night rise in such hot black? Of course, she reminds herself not to be shocked, that happens so much more quickly over here.

  Parquet. Pace. Light switch on and handle down.

  She opens the door. Supplicatory waiter. She signs his slip. He shows the bottles to her. They’re the right cold and wet after their journey from the bar. She takes them both then and does not tip. She has no euros yet. Once she would have cursed herself for this. Now, she doesn’t care. The night roasts behind her and the chug in of warm air undoes the whirred cool from above.

  Light switched off again.

  And to the business. The accoutrements there. The corkscrew. An old one. Dig. Screw. Pull. Use pressure from the underarm and hope for the best. If it is the best, which it is, then that makes it one–all between France and her.

  The bed stays unrumpled beneath as she yanks it free. A few light runnels on the bedspread. Chintz-ish brown fleur-de-lis, or cheap needlework, perhaps? There’s not much she knows about that, pours, and does not spill a drop. Drink. She drinks it down with some considerable relief at outmanoeuvring her travel fatigue, the buzzing, the desiccating heat and its risk of a maudlin dusk. That’s it right now, agitating her veins. Coursing through until the arches of her feet unclench – the most secret pleasure of drinking, she thinks, and unquantifiably nice. Her wrists will follow soon. Inevitably, knees. Loosed shoulders are desirable, if difficult to achieve. The key is to stop before it gets behind the eyes, after which all circumspection generally flies. That’s tightrope drinking. Tonight, she will make the attempt – to unhitch from while remaining in possession of. This is her intention. Certainly, more is not in the plan and, unwilling as she is to expand on that, she has little difficulty in recollecting why. So, she will drink only until her musculature relents which, even from this starting point, will require some intransigence. She has the time for it though, probably plenty too.

  Clock. She remembers over there.

  Time flashes below the TV, one hour ahead. She should change her watch but why make the effort? It passes quickly enough as it is. She drifts towards what she has left behind. Who. Then decides she’d rather not. Instead she shifts her attention to the television screen and to herself within its frame. What she might resemble, lounging here, she already knows. Probably enough has become of her though for that not to count very much. And it only might be true. And equally, might not be. By now sufficient wine has been drunk to ignore no one worrying at her ear anymore. To be alone in the head is bliss. Now is the hour to take full advantage of the quiet. She lies back against the headboard and lets her legs stretch, pondering her body like an inexorable event. Until the thought surfaces that this might also not be. She takes another sip before conceding it really isn’t actually and that was a foolish thing to think. Still. The body, always. She suspects she’ll always in some way favour it and so, for this short while, elects to mute the perpetual fear of just how precariously life hangs by its thread. And she slips it soon enough. And finds herself quickly nudging into the next. And this she doesn’t mind at all – meditating on how a few drinks bring the further joy of shearing away the female body’s perpetual role as ill-fitting attire. Look in the screen at these legs, arms, even these breasts, even this sto
mach will do. And she is fond of her skin, although somewhat more when out of it than when firmly within. This is the way of the world, she thinks, or how the world has been, more often than she’d choose.

  Never mind.

  She could live days like this, in the calm relax, but when the other pang triggers, she is not surprised. She is well acquainted with the peccadilloes to which her solitude, when bibulous, inclines. This is why she’s already clocked that the hotel bar is a mere two minutes’ walk – right, back up the corridor. And why she knows, should it not suffice, the wider locality is likely stocked, with everything, or one, she might require. She permits this a longer than fleeting thought before the boundaries of the plan are reasserted and she opts for the breeze blocks again.

  Outside, the conjugal dark romances around. Music from the bar. Bats against the moon. The wall breaks at the left, which she hadn’t previously seen. There is light from the ‘courtyard’ next door. Fewer birds of paradise. A table and two chairs. The ribboning profile of a young man – maybe young? – with curly hair. She thinks he is smoking a Gitanes. She thinks he is looking at her. So, summoning up all her available ambivalence, she leans back against the door frame.

  Warmed PVC on her spine. Smoke exhaled through her nose. Cicada click somewhere. Nip gnats or mosquitos. She is far from home or however that place may be best called to mind. Where the stuff is. Not the heart is. No, some heart is there and nowhere near enough wine has passed through her yet to make that any less true. Perhaps she does not wish it true. Or maybe just not for a while. Either way, she is untied enough to meet his eyes, briefly, then look away to the sanctuary of the distant night sky. Closing in nonetheless, too.

  And thrum beyond the walls. Traffic to the east, audible but not uncomforting in its part as the perpetual route to away. For her escape is not the immediate game, content as she is to watch him shift his weight casually from the right foot to left. It appears they’ve simultaneously elected not to speak. Already too late, she knows, for an ‘Evening’ or ‘Salut’, or comradely remarks about their ugly hotel and complaints about the heat. And if his eyes invite acknowledgement, there’s nothing to be done about that. All she offers is a pass of glances for the span of their cigarettes. Hers ambiguous, she ensures. His, it appears, calculating the odds but, when he raises a hand, she nods. There’s no further encouragement she’s willing to give but … she is still there. And when he lights another cigarette, she lights another too. When he moves closer to the gap, she does not move. She is sure now she has ten years on him, which – at her age – amounts to nothing. Accounts for nothing too. Trawling for youth has never been her thing. In fact, her purview has been the opposite, really. But as he takes another step, looking likely to speak, she scrapes the one-third-smoked cigarette out and goes back in. As is the plan. As is that plan.