Hotel Iris, Page 7

  I wiped my face with the tablecloth hanging in front of me and ran to the kitchen.

  “So how are you feeling?”

  “I skipped breakfast and lunch, and I feel a lot better.”

  “You didn’t have to come in, you know.”

  “I thought I’d come and see how I felt.”

  “Well, I’m grateful. We’ve been swamped.”

  She was tying the strings of her apron as she chatted with Mother. Our eyes met for only a second as I poked my head in the kitchen door, but her look said that she’d kept her promise and that I would have to keep mine.

  “I’m finished with the tablecloths,” I said. “Could I go to the dentist now? It’s unbearable.” Breaking free from the maid’s glare, I turned to go.

  S E V E N

  “I look awful. … You mustn’t laugh!” I reached down to fasten the buckle on my sandal and brush the dust from my skirt.

  “You look fine.” His tone was gentle.

  “I ran … all the way.” I was gasping and found it hard to speak. My blouse was soaked with sweat, the front of my skirt was damp from the tablecloths, and my legs were covered with red welts from the mosquitoes.

  “You’re more lovely than ever.” He put his arm around my shoulders to calm me. This was what I had been craving.

  The plaza was still full of people, but the sun had begun to set. The flower clock was half in shadow, and the flagstones that ran along the base of the seawall were disappearing under the waves.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late. Have you been waiting the whole time?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I wanted to come, but I couldn’t get away. I thought I’d go crazy.”

  “I hope you didn’t do anything rash to get here.”

  “I said I was going to the dentist, so I have as much time as it would take to fill a cavity.”

  “Then we’ll pretend the dentist was very busy.”

  He seemed quite calm, and there was no sign that he had been waiting for hours in the heat. His skin was pale, and his necktie was still carefully knotted.

  Off the island, he never reproached me, accepting everything without complaint. In that room, however, surrounded by his Russian books, he forgave nothing.

  We walked a few blocks from the shore, the surf muffled behind the houses. The street was lined with antiques stores, cafés, camera shops, and hotels that were smaller but nicer than the Iris. The restaurants would soon display their dinner menus for the tourists who had come out to cool their sunburned skin in the evening breeze.

  From time to time we caught a glimpse of the sea between the buildings, a thin strip of blue that faded imperceptibly into the sky. As we passed the boatyard, we began to hear music. Signs with red arrows lined the sidewalk, and the trees were hung with twinkling lights and flags from various countries. A group of children ran by.

  “It’s the circus,” I said.

  Overnight, a vacant lot next to a storage company had been filled with booths and stalls, a merry-go-round, a teacup ride, a hall of mirrors. Some of the rides were playing music, flying through the air, while others attracted the crowds with bright lights. Everything had been painted in brilliant colors. Neither the sound of the surf nor the light of the setting sun reached the fairground. The translator reached for my hand, and together we walked in. A clown greeted us and took our tickets.

  A round stage had been set up at the front of the lot and decorated like a cake, and on it an odd-looking band was playing. At first I thought it was some sort of giant music box with life-size dolls playing the instruments, but on closer inspection I could see the dolls were real people. We watched for a while. The trombone player winked at me. The stage turned around and around as they played. The tempo was lively, but they were playing in a minor key—an odd piece, like the dance of a mad peacock.

  “My father used to bring me here when I was little.”

  “And was it always so crowded?”

  “Of course,” I said. Though I leaned close to him, we had trouble hearing each other. “We waited the whole year for the circus to come—like a village festival.”

  Long lines had formed in front of the rides. The smells of food drifted over from the stalls. The translator studied each attraction as though it were some exotic sight. My skirt had dried, and I had begun to forget my troubles at the Iris.

  “Should we get on one of the rides?”

  “You go. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “No, I don’t want to go without you. That’s no fun. Look, everyone here has someone to be with.”

  In the end, we rode a little airplane in the shape of Dumbo the elephant. The elephant was sky blue, with trunk held aloft and ears flared out. We climbed in, propping our feet on the ears. Our knees were bent double and our shoulders hunched in order to fit into the tiny seats.

  The translator seemed ill at ease, and he tugged continually at his suit, as if afraid it would get wrinkled. A buzzer sounded, the wires creaked, and the elephants lifted into the air. The translator let out a startled gasp.

  “Here we go!” I laughed. “You’ve never been on a ride like this? Never even been to the circus before?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe it! Why not?”

  “No reason, really. I just never had the chance, and I’m not very good with heights.” The elephants suddenly started to move forward. I screamed and grasped the guardrail, afraid I would be thrown out. The breeze swirled around us, and my skirt billowed. The wisps of hair on the translator’s head stood on end.

  There was still light in the sky, but the sun was sinking slowly into the darkness at the horizon. A pale moon rose over the seawall.

  The sea looked smaller from above. The island floated peacefully on the waves. The lights from the booths and rides blurred into a single bright mass, and at the center, the band played the same tune over and over.

  “Are you all right?” I called over the noise. “Are you having fun?” His eyes were shut tight, but he nodded.

  I looked out to where the Iris must have been among the jumble of buildings in the distance, but I couldn’t make out the hotel. The whole world was spinning rapidly with us.

  He seemed dizzy long after we got off the ride.

  “Do you feel bad?” I asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. We held hands again and wandered past the other rides.

  With dusk the fairground grew crowded. Children called out in excitement and rushed about clutching balloons or cotton candy. Strolling performers spat fire. Startled by the impromptu show, a baby began to cry. Couples wandered along arm in arm, stopping to hug and kiss as if there were no one else about. Popcorn and ticket stubs skittered across the grounds ahead of the breeze. A bottle rocket shot up from somewhere, a stray dog raced through the crowd, flashbulbs popped.

  The translator’s hand was soft. So soft, it seemed my hand would sink completely into his. This hand had done so many things to me—stroked my hair, made my tea, stripped me, bound me—and with each new act it had been reborn as something different. But was the hand that held mine now the same one that had killed a woman? The thought occurred to me at times, but it did not frighten me in the least. Had this hand strangled her? Or stabbed her with a pair of scissors? Or made her drink poison? I had no idea. But I could easily imagine how gracefully the fingers would have done those things … the curve of the knuckles, the faint web of blue veins.

  Leaning against the fence of the merry-go-round, we ate ice cream cones. The translator stared for a moment at his cone—chocolate and vanilla swirled together in a spiral.

  “It’s going to melt if you don’t eat it,” I warned.

  “But it’s such a fascinating shape.”

  “It’s just soft ice cream,” I told him.

  “I almost never eat it.”

  “You have to do it like this,” I said, opening my mouth wide and taking a huge bite. He watched me, and then, holding his
cone as if it might break, he bent forward and cautiously licked the very top. A drop melted on his pants, and he hurried to pull out his handkerchief and wipe it away. I took the handkerchief to help him, thinking how much simpler eating ice cream should have been than taking off my clothes and tying me up.

  “I always had an ice cream cone when I came here with my father. I could pick one ride and one treat, that was the rule. As we left the house, Mother would remind me, ‘Only one, now! Don’t forget, and don’t go begging for anything more.’ ”

  “But why was she so strict?”

  “She thought the fair was a waste of money. That’s all she cared about. But Papa always let me have something extra as long as I didn’t tell Mother. The best part was wandering around trying to decide what to choose. A candy apple, or the shooting gallery, or maybe the haunted house. … I felt as though a genie had offered to grant me a wish. And Papa would stay right there with me, waiting patiently, no matter how long I took to decide.”

  The wooden horses spun on and on behind us, while Dumbo made his endless flight. The sun set and the sky turned a deep indigo, but the stars were obscured by the lights of the fair. A balloon floated up on the breeze and drifted off toward the sea.

  “You love your father, don’t you?” said the translator.

  “I did,” I said, brushing the crumbs of the cone from my blouse, “but he died when I was eight. He was thirty-one. Everyone said he was too young.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” He looked down at the spot on his pants.

  “He was drunk and got into a fight. He hit his head somehow, but we don’t know exactly what happened. When they found him, his body was behind the movie theater. People talked about it for days, how blood was pouring out of his nose and ears, how his skull had split open and his brains were everywhere—all kinds of stories, even though they never saw him.” The translator was trying to finish the last bit of his cone without getting his hands dirty. He pursed his lips and nibbled the end of the cone. “But it wasn’t really as bad as they said. It’s true, his face was bruised and swollen, but when we cleaned him up, his eyes were clear and bright, almost as if he were alive, as though he might suddenly look up and apologize for giving us such a scare.”

  A buzzer sounded, and the horses on the merry-go-round spun slowly to a stop. The riders emerged reluctantly from the exit as the children who had been waiting impatiently for the next turn ran in to claim the biggest and best horses. Then the buzzer sounded again, the music started, and the horses sprang to life—over and over again. It seemed that nothing would ever interrupt this endless repetition, as though the horses and the children had ridden off into some cul-de-sac of time never to emerge again.

  “Mother was convinced someone had attacked him, and she tried everything to find who did it. She wanted to collect damages. But it was useless. There was no trace of him.” I paused for a moment and then added, “Have you ever seen a body?”

  “What?” he blurted out. He had been wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

  “A dead body.”

  “You mean a corpse?” he said.

  “No, not a ‘corpse.’ Not someone who lived out his life and died slowly of old age. A body! Someone who never saw it coming, who never had a chance. I mean the ‘body’ of someone who died suddenly, out of the blue.”

  He slowly refolded the handkerchief in his lap and licked his lips, as if still not convinced he’d managed to wipe away the ice cream.

  “I have,” he said at last. “A number of times.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know … during the air raids, and someone who committed suicide on the train tracks, and in a traffic accident.” He seemed reluctant to answer and sat there pressing on his temples, trying to unravel the thread of an inexplicably tangled thought.

  “But I want to know the details.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because,” I said. Because I thought his wife’s was among those bodies.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I did see the body of a child who fell off the excursion boat about ten years ago.”

  “Really? What was it like?” I moved closer and rested against him. He leaned over slightly to support my head and wrapped his arm around my back. The fence swayed. When I looked up, I saw a tiny patch of stubble that his razor had missed.

  “He was a beautiful little boy, about four years old. His skin was very fair, and his hair was naturally curly. He was very well behaved and was sitting with his mother on a bench on the deck. But something must have caught his eye, a seagull diving for fish or someone riding a Jet Ski, and he went running off toward the back of the boat. In the blink of an eye, he leaned over the rail and fell in. There was nothing his mother could have done, it happened so quickly. We all saw him, but it was as though he was being dragged overboard by some sea demon. His body fell in a smooth, even arc and hit the water with a quiet splash.” His voice shook as he spoke.

  “And then?” I breathed the question into his neck.

  “Strictly speaking, I never saw the body. Just the boy bobbing on the waves and then sinking under them. He didn’t seem to be suffering terribly. In fact, he seemed puzzled, as though he were wondering how he had come to be in such a predicament. His mother called his name, and the other passengers gathered along the rail. Someone tossed him a life preserver, but a big wave washed over him and he was gone.”

  “Did they ever find the body?”

  “No.” He shook his head, and I felt his every tremor through my cheek as I leaned against his shoulder. Coming through his bones, his voice sounded clearer and calmer, as though it were welling up from the depths.

  Someone dropped a cup of soda in the dirt. There was a burst of laughter, drowned out almost immediately by the band. The flags and the leaves and the lights of the stalls swayed in the cool evening breeze.

  It wouldn’t have taken long for the fish to clean everything away, and now his bones glowed faintly at the bottom of the sea, the two empty eyeholes staring up at the translator and me as we made our way to the island.

  “Even here, I feel as though we’re the only two people in the world,” I said.

  “We’re always alone. We need no one else.” He stroked my hair, which was limp with perspiration but still pinned up in Mother’s neat bun, while his other hand worked busily at the spot on his pants. His efforts had only made the stain worse, and I began to worry that the material would give way under his rubbing.

  The fire-eater blew a stream of flame into the air. A donkey with a child on its back ambled past. The crescent moon, which had been white a moment before, glowed orange.

  E I G H T

  It was a hot summer, the hottest I had known. Venturing outside during the day, even for a short while, made me dizzy from the heat. The light was so dazzling that the shoreline and even the sea took on a yellowish cast. There were many cases of sunstroke down at beach, and the sirens of the ambulances could be heard at the Iris.

  The guests used the showers in their rooms to cool off, and there was water running somewhere at every hour. The plants in the courtyard wilted in the heat, but the cicadas clinging to the zelkova tree sang day and night. Cracks had begun to form on the boy in the fountain.

  According to the radio forecast, the heat wave had no end in sight. Our guests muttered about the weather around the breakfast table in hushed, tired voices, but they went off to the beach just the same. An open container of yogurt left out overnight went sour overnight. Mother and the maid used the heat as an excuse to drink beer all day, and they went about their chores with red cheeks. The heat lingered into the evening, long after the sun set, and there was no sign of rain or even a breeze. It seemed as though summer would go on forever, as though the seasons had stopped changing.

  One day, he ordered me to put his socks on for him. “But you can’t use your hands,” he said. Unsure exactly what he meant, I looked around the room in confusion, mopping the sweat from my face. “Only your mouth.�
�� I quickly put my arms behind my back, understanding for the first time how much trouble hands could be.

  I was terribly afraid—not that he would hurt me but that I might not please him. Would I end up being useless to him? Would I forfeit the love he had expressed in his letters because I couldn’t obey his orders? Fear welled up in me.

  “You have no hands,” he said, then suddenly, lifting his leg with perfect grace and confidence, he delivered a smooth, sharp kick to the back. I lost balance and fell to my knees.

  On the island, he could do what he wanted with my body, and my soul. “Wipe the sweat off your face,” he said. “Lick it.” As he spoke, he prodded my bare breasts with the tips of his fingers.

  My clothes were wadded in a ball under the desk. On top, as always, the tools of the translator’s trade were neatly laid out. The novel about Marie, the dictionaries, and the notebook. I had no idea whether he’d made any progress on the translation. It seemed as though more pages of the book had been turned, but the page in the notebook always looked the same.

  He had undressed me with great skill, his movements no less elegant for all their violence. Indeed, the more he shamed me, the more refined he became—like a perfumer plucking the petals from a rose, a jeweler prying open an oyster for its pearl.

  I stuck out my tongue to lick the sweat from my lips, forcing it out as far as I could until I nearly choked. Then I wiped the places I couldn’t reach on the rug. It was scratchy and burned my skin. My back ached where he had kicked me.

  “That’s right,” he said. He looked larger, seen from below like this, as though his shoulders and chest had suddenly become broad and strong. But the skin was still slack on his neck, and the wrinkles creased when he spoke. “Now the socks, and be quick about it.”

  I crawled to the bedroom and then struggled to my feet. But as I was about to open the wardrobe, I was kicked once again.