I Was Jack Mortimer (Pushkin Collection) (6 page)

Here he took a cab.

“New Bristol,” he said.

A few minutes later the car stopped by the Bristol at the same spot where earlier he himself ought to have pulled up with Jack Mortimer.

The hotel entrance was still lit; to the right shone the red and light-blue neon sign of the hotel bar.

While Sponer was paying, a hotel attendant approached.

Sponer nodded, and the man, having greeted him, lifted the cases out of the car and carried them to the entrance.

Sponer glanced at the driver. With the coat over his arm he then entered the hotel.

The glittering marble hall dazzled him for a second. The thick pile of the carpets absorbed all sound of
footsteps
. Strains of dance music reached him from somewhere intermittently.

A liveried porter came up to him.

Sponer said, “My name’s Jack Mortimer.”

The porter bowed immediately. “We had been expecting you about seven, sir.” And straight away he added something else in English, which Sponer failed to understand.

“I was held up,” Sponer muttered.

Another man, in a suit, suddenly stood before him.

“Mr Mortimer?” he asked. “This way please!” And he noiselessly hurried towards a lift door. Sponer followed. They entered the lift. A bellboy was suddenly at his side to take the overcoat from his arm. The lift started, then stopped. They got out. They walked along carpeted, glittering marble
corridors
. A door was swung open, a chandelier lit up, mirrors of a salon gleamed all round, a bedroom with brocade bed covers was illuminated, snow-white walls, nickel and chrome fittings shone in a bathroom, and the soft-spoken manager—addressing him now in English, now in German, eager to explain and recommend—bowed again, taking a step backwards to allow a second small boy to hand Sponer his mail, comprising a few letters and two telegrams.

“Would Sir require anything else,” Sponer heard the manager ask.

Sponer shook his head. If there was anything else he wanted he’d ring, he muttered; and the manager, the man who brought the luggage, and the two boys bowed and disappeared.

He was left standing in the middle of the room, in Mortimer’s room, in Mortimer’s clothes, in Mortimer’s life.
And in his hand he held Mortimer’s letters. He planned to spend a night in the dead man’s life and be gone the next morning, no matter where, disappear, become himself again, Sponer, the taxi driver who had delivered Mortimer alive and well at the Bristol, and whom no one could accuse if he was later asked, “Where is he? Where’s Jack Mortimer?” Hadn’t he arrived at the Bristol with his luggage, spent a night, and left the following day?—Where to?—None of my business! How should I know? Go and ask someone else! He left my cab and went into the hotel; how should I know what he did after that?

For one night only he would live Mortimer’s life, and the next morning he’d return to his own. Because otherwise people might turn up who knew Mortimer, or who had business to discuss that only Mortimer could handle, or a question to put to him to which only Mortimer knew the answer.

But he, Sponer, wouldn’t be there any more. The dead man’s life into which he had stepped would be over in a few hours.

But that’s not how things turned out. It was no longer a question of hours. One doesn’t step into anyone’s life, not even a dead man’s, without having to live it to the end.

He, Sponer, was now Jack Mortimer, the living. And that’s how he would have to stay, right up to Mortimer’s death.

H
E KEPT STARING
at the floor, and only after the people had left, did he dare raise his eyes, fixing them on the closed door and listening for every sound. He waited until the door to the corridor had fallen shut, for only then did he imagine he’d be safe till morning. Then, suddenly, he heard a noise which told him they were still on the other side of the door; he even heard the manager issuing an instruction and one of the bellboys answering him. The manager said something further, and this time it was the porter who answered; then a couple of voices spoke simultaneously. All of a sudden, however, they stopped as if by command, or rather, continued in a whisper; he heard it clearly even though he couldn’t understand what they were saying. But the whispering continued.

While he was listening, his heart went on beating faster and faster, and in the end he couldn’t stand it any more. He rushed noiselessly to the door and pressed his ear against it, but he still couldn’t understand anything. Finally his nerves snapped and he threw the door open.

He saw the manager, the bellboys and the porter standing
in the hallway, looking at a picture in a gilt frame, which took up a large part of the wall.

It was an old oil painting depicting a battle scene.

A suite of furniture—a silk-covered sofa and two armchairs, which had stood under the painting—had been pushed aside.

As Sponer flung the door open, he saw them stare back in terror. The manager immediately began to apologize. “It wasn’t hanging straight,” he said, motioning towards the picture. At the same time, at a nod from him, the suite was pushed back where it belonged, and they quickly left the room, bowing.

After the door had closed, Sponer wiped his brow with his sleeve. Then he suddenly threw the letters that he was still holding in his hand onto the sofa, ran to the door, opened it, tore the key out of the lock, double locked the door from inside, turned round, and was about to take a deep breath and say to himself, “Now I’m safe till the morning…”

Instead, from the moment he locked the door, he had the overwhelming feeling that he was in a trap and that everywhere people were lying in wait and eavesdropping on him.

His nerves, which had held firm for six hours, and which had endured the car journey through the city with the dead man on board, the sinking of the body, and the desperate risk of adopting Mortimer’s identity, finally snapped the moment when there was nothing else to do but wait for the next morning.

First of all, however, he tried to suppress his anxiety. He walked slowly up to the painting, looked at it and fingered the frame, causing it to sway slightly. He lifted it away from the wall and let it fall back with a slight clatter. He even knelt on the sofa to examine it in more detail.

A large body of cavalry and foot soldiers clad in clothes of antiquity were marching through dark clouds of smoke. The baroque motif of a white charger with a swanlike neck and a huge crupper pointing towards the foreground caught his attention in particular. Staring fixedly—to block out all other thoughts—at the shooting, stabbing and the general mêlée portrayed in the painting, he pulled off his overcoat and threw it aside. He was feeling unbearably hot. He gulped two or three times, as if to swallow something that had become lodged in his throat. The black, piercing, mouselike eyes of the rider, looking over his shoulder, on the pirouetting white charger, stared out at him penetratingly from the small, weather-beaten face; also, when he got up from the sofa and stepped back, they appeared to follow him everywhere, and he had the feeling he was suffocating in this over-richly decorated, but relatively small room. Everything was eerily silent; the plush carpets absorbed every sound. He drew his hand once again over his forehead, went back to the salon, but then, after a quick look round, returned immediately to the bedroom, from there went to the bathroom, and found himself once again in the hallway. However, he didn’t stay there but walked, or rather ran, again into the salon and
bedroom, into the bathroom and hallway, and repeated this mad circuit three or four times, each time faster and faster; the furniture and lights swam in front of his eyes, forming a swirling pattern, until he tripped over the edge of a rug and fell with a crash.

He remained lying there utterly still for a few moments, then turned over with a groan, let his head drop back, and stared wide-eyed about the room as if unaware of what had happened.

Lying on his back, it seemed as if something had snapped inside him, for he suddenly felt easier and also felt the coolness of the floor doing him good. He now perceived everything with unusual clarity, probably on account of his posture, each object making a greater and more powerful impression upon him than before.

The room was sumptuously decorated, mainly in the First Empire style, though in other styles as well, and all around him he could see highly polished furniture,
caryatides
adorned with lights, and wallpaper reaching up to the ceiling. A greenish bronze chandelier with three tiers of light bulbs swayed overhead, and the wooden ceiling was divided into uniform diamond-shaped figures, each displaying a fantastic, lavishly painted, gilt and silvered coat of arms. Leopards, eagles and lilies intertwined to form an overbearing ornamentation that would have been more appropriate as a feature in a funeral parlour.

Still shaking slightly, he stood up and walked over to the
bedroom as if to recommence his tour, interrupted by the fall, but halted at the door. The room was done out in wine-red velvet, and over the bed hung a gold-coloured silk baldachin. On the bedcover a gold-embroidered pomegranate pattern shimmered in the dim light of two pendant lamps which, like at a catafalque, shone either side of the bed—Mortimer’s bed. He could easily imagine the outstretched form of the murdered man in the shadow of the baldachin.

The anxiety, which to some extent had abated with the fall, now surged back; it rose, as it were, from the floor up to his knees, gobbling up his whole body, and began, in a probing and insidious manner, to go for his throat, choking him. Mortimer’s life confronted him in a more ghostly, weird and threatening manner than Mortimer’s death.

Till now he hadn’t had a single spare moment to think about who this Mortimer in fact was; these rooms, which Mortimer had never entered, seemed to know, and were trying to impart to him who Mortimer was. In vain did he keep reminding himself that this no longer concerned him, that come the morning he would be out of the hotel, that he would forget Mortimer like a bad dream. But the air was saturated with the presence of the dead man who had no wish to stay dead; it was as if he were already here, lying in wait for Sponer. Now that he had latched onto him, he didn’t want to lose this last chance to carry on living; he was assailing Sponer, clinging onto him, sapping his lifeblood; he was not to be shaken off.

A dead man is simply that; he decays and disappears; soon it is as if he had never existed. The dead man who had lain in his car was being swept along by the river, attacked by fish, ground to pulp by rocks and boulders; he was floating downstream towards Hungary; soon he would be less than a stain in the water or a rustle in the reeds. He was gone, had vanished, the corpse was by now miles away—so far so good. However, it was ridiculous to suppose that as a result anything had been accomplished. The real Mortimer was not dead at all. He continued to live.

He was very much alive, and there was no need for him to look anything like the former Mortimer—a young man of about thirty, medium height, bland features, hair slicked back, eyes grey. He might as well look like Sponer now, though it was immaterial what he looked like; all he yearned for was to live, irrespective of whether he looked like this or like that, had fair hair or brown hair, grey or dark-blue eyes. It was no longer a question of hair or eyes, face, hands or body, he had settled in Sponer’s skull. Like a bird of prey he had sunk his claws into this, his new nest, and had implanted himself there; he could no longer be shooed away; he ruled and gave the orders: lift up your hand, do this, do that, bestir yourself, stop, take me there, follow my commands, do as I wish! For are you not me now?

For a man is not just a thing of flesh and blood that walks, eats, drinks, sleeps and dies; rather a man is that what is in the minds of others, whom he loves or hates, commands,
insults, seduces, confuses, destroys, preoccupies and
torments
. Mortimer was no longer the dead man in the river, he was the demon in Sponer’s head. It had taken only a few hours to shove Mortimer’s corpse out of the way; the living Mortimer was a far trickier customer to deal with.

Sponer, who somehow had to survive, was now floundering in the dark, beset from all quarters by dangers as if by wild beasts, ready to attack him at any moment. He simply no longer believed that when he left the hotel in the morning, it would be the end of the matter. There was more to come. There always was.

It would persist—he could no longer get away from it—yet he didn’t have the faintest idea what it was. He was hooked. Perhaps the suitcases contained something that would give him a clue? He tore them open, pulled out the articles one by one, and scattered them over the chairs. Underwear, suits, toiletries, shoes; some items were still quite new or hardly used. It seemed as if the dead man had recently kitted himself out, everything seemed quite impersonal, just like any other man’s wardrobe, as if the dead man didn’t want to betray himself. Sponer searched through all the pockets, looking for letters, but found nothing, and then he remembered the mail they’d given him when he arrived at the hotel, and he had already forgotten what he’d done with it, but finally he found it in the entrance hall on the sofa where he’d thrown it. He first tore open the telegrams, read two incomprehensible and obviously coded messages in English, chucked them aside,
opened one of the letters and, while searching with his free hand in his jacket pocket for cigarettes, lowered himself onto the edge of the sofa and began to study the letter, all the while continuing to fumble unsuccessfully for his cigarettes. However, he didn’t understand the letter as he didn’t know much English. He tore open the second, which, like the two in Mortimer’s wallet, was again signed with a W, and deduced it was another love letter. He returned to the salon, looked to see whether perhaps he’d thrown the cigarette packet away somewhere, and in the meantime removed the dead man’s wallet and compared the handwriting of the old letters with the new one; it was the same. However, he didn’t continue reading, because not being able to find his cigarettes infuriated him suddenly. He hadn’t been in need of a smoke at all so far; now, however, he was all of a sudden dying for one and, unable to find his cigarettes, he blew his top. Swearing furiously, he rushed to the door and rang for the waiter.

Scarcely had he done this than the danger of the situation dawned upon him. The waiter might of course know him, for he might already have met the man, God knows where, but it was a distinct possibility, or alternatively the waiter might know Mortimer. That the staff in the entrance hall didn’t was beside the point, for the staff might have changed, or there might be another shift on duty, especially at night. So, if a room bell was rung, the waiter was not to know, even if he had met Mortimer previously, that the person now in the
room should be Mortimer; the bell had simply rung for room number such-and-such, and when the waiter entered and encountered someone other than Mortimer, why should he suspect that he, Sponer, was impersonating anyone! In the morning, however, at checkout, staff who knew Mortimer might well be on duty. He, Sponer, would of course just hurry past them and get in the car, but all the same, someone could notice that the person getting in was not the Mortimer he knew. The car would of course immediately drive off, but the busybody trying to match Sponer’s appearance with that of Mortimer’s would be puzzled, questions might be asked, and if it later turned out that Mortimer had disappeared, everyone would say, “Yes, we, too, found he looked quite different,” and they’d follow this lead and enquire what time he had arrived, why only after midnight if the train was in before seven p.m., and then they’d enquire further and ask who had driven him from the Westbahnhof, and the drivers would come up for questioning again. Damn! However, so much time would have elapsed, days and weeks probably, before they’d discover Mortimer’s disappearance that they’d no longer be able to establish who had been at the station that time… What, however, if they found out sooner that he had disappeared? Perhaps people were already expecting him, he might have acquaintances in the city, perhaps he’d actually been here before, of course, otherwise the porter wouldn’t have…

His thoughts, which were again in a welter of confusion, were interrupted by a knock at the door. Who was it? The
waiter? Why didn’t he just enter? Sponer stood there in silence. The knocking was repeated.

“What’s the matter?” he finally shouted out.

Somebody was saying something on the outside, and at the same time the door handle moved up and down. He’d forgotten that he had locked the door and, despite his utterly confused state, he suddenly realized he was behaving like a madman; the dead man’s belongings were lying all over the chairs and strewn around on the floor. He picked some of them up quickly and stuffed them into the suitcases.

“Just a moment!” he called to the person on the other side of the door, smoothed his hair, looked in the mirror to straighten his tie, and was horrified by what he saw. A face stared back at him, for all the world like the dead man’s. Closing his eyes for a second, he smoothed his hair down once more, went to the door, unlocked and opened it, ready to slam it shut immediately if it turned out that he knew the person standing there.

The waiter who entered was, however, a complete stranger. He was a man of about thirty-eight or forty, clean-shaven, unruffled in appearance, and on the portly side. He asked how he could be of help.

“Cigarettes!” Sponer said.

“Khedive, Figaro, Dimitrino, Simon Arzt?” the waiter asked, and looked at Sponer.