The Grand Budapest Hotel (4 page)

Zero looks back briefly over his shoulder as he starts down the staircase and sees M. Gustave slip into the suite. The door locks.

Montage:

A succession of
dames
of varying
grandeurs
seen tête-à-tête with M. Gustave: a sixty-year-old Russian chats with him in the tea salon; a sixty-five-year-old German strolls with him on the promenade; a seventy-year-old Argentinian shares a cigarette with him, naked in her bed; a seventy-five-year-old Englishwoman washes his back in her bath; and an eighty-year-old Austrian wearing a hairnet and a nightgown gives him a blow-job while he watches in the mirror and eats grapes. There is a platinum wig on a stand on the dressing table.

Cut to:

Mr. Moustafa and the author at their dinner table. The remains of a rabbit tart are replaced by a sizeable roasted pheasant as the author gently inquires:

M. Gustave, somewhat tousled, with lipstick on his cheek, stands waiting to arrive at his floor. He checks the railings for dust. The car stops and the elevator operator opens the gate. M. Gustave exits with a curt nod. A middle-aged couple enter.

As the elevator descends, the middle-aged couple sniffs the air. The man looks irritated. The woman swoons slightly.

Zero wakes up in the pitch black in a tiny room smaller than a service elevator, turns on the light, springs to his feet dressed in white pajamas with short trousers, splashes water from a bowl onto his face, then quickly dampens and combs his hair. His uniform hangs neatly from a peg on the wall. He carefully grooms it with a clothes-brush.

The evening meal. Most of the hotel staff occupy a long table set for fifty. A thin, grey broth is served with boiled potatoes. M. Gustave starts at a little podium, then paces back and forth in front of it as he addresses the group. They begin to eat hungrily – but, at the same time, they continue to listen, attentive and respectful.

As the poetry begins, some of the diners’ eye glaze over and there are faint sighs. Mr. Moustafa continues his narration:

Cut to:

M. Gustave seated at a folding table in a room nearly identical to Zero’s but with a connecting sitting room and kitchenette. He wears his uniform trousers and a white undershirt. He eats a bowl of cereal while listening to classical music on a radio set.

There are approximately twenty-five identical bottles of cologne on a shelf above the sink in the background. Each is labeled
‘L’Air de Panache:
Pure Musk.’

A large sedan with tire-chains arrives through the snow and parks in front of the hotel. A sign next to five stars on the side of the hood reads:
GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
.
One of the back doors opens, and a tall man in a double-breasted suit emerges. He carries a briefcase and wears a pointy beard. He is Deputy Kovacs. He hurries to the top of the steps where M. Gustave waits to greet him.

Zero, substituting at the concierge desk, looks up to a high window across the room where the shadowy figures of M. Gustave and Deputy Kovacs meet in a storage pantry. A clerk with a pot belly flips the pages in a ledger book and takes notes. He is Herr Becker.

Cut to:

A plain, graceful, seventeen-year-old beanpole with freckles and a birthmark the shape of Mexico on the side of her face. She is Agatha. She works a rolling-pin over a wide expanse of flattened pastry dough. There are carts circled around her filled with trays of exceptionally well-made, beautifully decorated pastries shaped like hourglass figures.
(
These are Courtesans
au chocolat.)

Agatha pauses to dry the perspiration on her brow with the back of her sleeve. She resumes her rolling.

The timber-frame storefront of a tiny patisserie. A large sign painted in delicate, pink cursive across the glass reads: 
MENDL’S
.
There is a heavy-set baker in an apron with flour over every inch of himself standing in the doorway. He is Herr Mendl.

Agatha rides a rickety bicycle up the alley next to the shop and rings a bell as she rattles down the cobblestone lane. She bears a milkmaid’s yoke balanced across her shoulders overloaded with sixty small, pink pastry-boxes tied with string.

Cut to:

Agatha gripping the handlebars as she bounces pedaling down the road.

Title:

Dawn. The platz in the center of Nebelsbad is deserted. Zero emerges briskly from a press kiosk carrying a thick stack of newspapers. He looks down, scanning headlines, as he crosses the street.

Zero stops. His eyes are glued to one of the articles. He skims it. He quickly re-reads it twice more. His mouth falls open.

He bolts off at a sprint.

Zero races up the steps into the hotel carrying the stack of newspapers.

Zero dashes past Reception carrying the stack of newspapers.

Zero mounts the staircase three steps at a time carrying the stack of newspapers.

Zero speed-walks to the end of the hallway and stops in front of a door labeled
PRINCE HEINRICH SUITE
.
A sign on the knob reads: ‘Do Not Disturb’. Zero hesitates, then knocks. Pause. The door opens a crack and an irritated M. Gustave in a purple, silk dressing gown looks out.

Zero holds up the stack of newspapers. M. Gustave picks one off the top and studies it.

Insert:

The front page of the
Trans-Alpine Yodel.
The headline is:
WILL THERE BE WAR? TANKS AT FRONTIER
– but a column below the fold reads:

A photograph shows Madame D.’s corpse flat on her back on a white carpet.

As M. Gustave reads the article, he says gravely:

An old woman’s voice calls from the next room, coquettish:

M. Gustave slams the door, and Zero dashes away down the corridor.

A first-class stateroom on the express to Lutz. The snowy foothills of the Zubrowkian Alps whiz by outside. M. Gustave and Zero each hold a glass of chilled white wine. There are tears in M. Gustave’s eyes.