The White Hotel (6 page)

But he was not at all jealous of his father’s fame. He just wanted to find a young wife, and put down roots. She must find her life as a singer, constantly in demand here, there and everywhere, a terrible strain? Not really, she said; not usually. This was the first time she had strained her voice. Foolishly she had taken on a role which was too high for her register, and demanded too much power. She was not by nature a Wagnerian singer.

The train, which had been travelling non-stop for about two hours, flashing through great cities without even slowing, surprised them by coming to a halt at a small, quiet station in the middle of the great plain. It was scarcely a village—just three or four houses and a church spire. No one was waiting to get on, but the corridors of the train filled with struggling movement, confusion, shouts, and they saw a mass of travellers disgorge on to the platform. As the train pulled out again they watched the disgorged host put down their cases uncertainly on the platform. The hamlet was soon out of sight. The plain grew dustier, more desolate.

“Yes, we can certainly do with rain,” said the young man. The woman sighed, saying, “But you have your whole life before you. You shouldn’t have such gloomy thoughts at your age. Now, for me, it’s certainly true. I’m almost thirty, I’m beginning to lose my looks, I’m widowed, in a few years my voice will start to go altogether, there seems little to look forward to.” She bit her lip. He felt mildly irritated that she ignored or misunderstood all his remarks. But the renewed rise and fall of her bosom produced a tightness at his groin which was luckily hidden by his newspaper.

When—still clutching his newspaper—he went up the corridor to wash his hands, he saw how empty the train was. They seemed to be the only two travellers left on it. Returning, he found that his absence, short though it had been, had broken the intimacy. She was reading her score again, and nibbling a cucumber sandwich (he glimpsed her small, pearly, even teeth as she bit). She smiled at him briefly before burying herself in the score. “What a lot of crows there are on the wires,” he found himself saying. It sounded—to him—boyish, uncertain, stupid; his maladroitness disturbed him.

But the young woman smiled a joyful agreement, saying, “It’s a very difficult passage.
Vivace
.” And she broke into a husky, pleasant hum, running up and down the bristling semi-quavers. She stopped as suddenly as she had started, turning red. “Lovely!” he said. “Don’t stop!” But she shook her head and fanned her face with the open book. He lit another of his cigarettes, and she shut the book and her eyes at the same time, leaning back. “It’s Turkish, isn’t it?” She thought there was opium in the smell, and began to feel drowsy again in the warm, stuffy compartment.

He had changed, during his brief absence, into a smart light-blue civilian suit. The train entered a tunnel, turning their small travelling room into a sleeping compartment. She felt him stretch across and touch her hand. “You’re perspiring,” he said sympathetically. “You should let the air get to your skin.” It did not surprise her when she felt his hand part her legs. “You’re running in sweat,” he said. It was very peaceful and free, letting the young officer stroke her thighs in the dark. She had already, in a sense, slept with him, allowing him the much greater intimacy of watching her while she was asleep. “It’s stuffy,” she said drowsily. “Shall I open a window?” he suggested. “If you like,” she murmured. “Only I can’t afford to become pregnant.”

Finding it almost impossible to breathe, she spread her thighs and made it easier. He was looking into the dark blur of her face where now and then the whites of her eyes glowed. Those plump delicious thighs under the stretched silk were all too tempting, for someone who had been caged up for several years. Over her eyes appeared a small patch of red. It increased in intensity and grew larger. It separated into little spurts of crimson, and he realized her hair was on fire. He whipped off his coat and smothered her head with it. She came up choking for breath, but the flames were out. The train moved into the sunlight.

The fire and the harsh sunlight had broken the mood, and the young man stubbed his cigarette angrily. The woman jumped up and stood before the mirror, rearranging her hair, covering the burnt patch with a glossy black lock. She took down her white bonnet from the rack and put it on. “You can see how easily roused I am.” She chuckled nervously. “That’s why it’s best for me not to start. It doesn’t take much.” He apologized for being so careless, and she perched on the edge of her seat,
taking his hands tenderly and anxiously, and asked if she could be pregnant. He shook his head. “Then,” she said with relief, “there’s no harm done.”

He stroked her hands. “Do you want me?” she asked. “Yes. I do. Very much,” he said. She blushed again. “But how would your father feel about your marrying a poor widow, so much older than you? With a four-year-old son? And that’s another thing—my son. How would
he
take it? You’d have to meet him and we’d have to see how you got on.” The young man did not know what to say to this. He decided to say nothing, but to begin stroking her thighs again. To his relief her thighs parted at once, and she leaned back, her eyes closed. Her bosom heaved and he laid his free hand on it. “We could spend a few days together,” he suggested.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes still closed. She gasped and bit her lip. “Yes, that would be lovely. But let me see him first and prepare him for meeting you.” “I meant you and I,” he said, “on our own. I know a hotel in the mountains, by a lake. It’s beautiful. They’re not expecting you?” She shook her head, with another gasp as his finger slid into the opening. The young man lost interest in the woman, through the mystery of his finger having disappeared inside her. He could feel it gliding through her flesh, yet it had vanished. She grew so wet he was able to cram more into her. She cried out—so many fingers gliding in her, as though she were a fruit he was paring. She imagined both his hands crammed into her, to get at the fruit. Her dress was up around her waist, and the telegraph poles flashed by.

Gradually through her distracted senses she heard torrential rain falling on the corridor window; while on the other side the plain was still barren and dusty and the sky a yellow glare. The rain stopped, and when they glanced aside they saw the ticket
collector cleaning the window with a soft brush. His startled face looked in at them but they carried on with what they were doing as though he were not there. The thump of her buttocks against his fingers caused her book to fall to the floor, creasing the second act of
The Masked Ball
. “Oughtn’t we to stop?” she gasped, but he said he needed his fingers there.

He needed them there, as they ran past streets of neat houses and then high tenement slums with lines of washing stretched from window to window. And besides, they were so jammed he doubted if he could remove them even if he had wanted to. She nodded, convinced it was not possible to stop.

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.