The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel (2 page)

“Being so close to the Spanish border, we figured we could wait until the last minute to leave,” Edward said. “But when the last minute came, we only had five hours to pack and get out.”

“On top of which,” Iris said, “my passport—wouldn’t you know it?—was due to expire that day. That very day! The one that had my American visa in it. And so when we got to Bordeaux, first we had to go to the British consulate for the new passport, and then to the American consulate for the new visa, and all that before the Spanish consulate and the Portuguese consulate.”

“We were in Bordeaux, too,” Julia said. “At the Splendide, the manager was renting the armchairs in the lobby by the half hour.”

“The Red Cross shelter wouldn’t accept dogs.”

Suddenly Julia screamed and leaped to her feet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaping up too.

“Something’s licking my leg.”

“Don’t worry, it’s only Daisy,” Iris said, and hoisted a wire fox
terrier up from under the table. “You love the taste of moisturizing cream, don’t you, Daisy?”

“It scared me half to death,” Julia said. “Does it bite?”

“She’s fifteen,” Edward said. “Her biting days are past, I think.”

A delayed consciousness that she had just made a spectacle of herself stole over Julia, who sat down again hurriedly.

“You must excuse my wife,” I said. “She’s not used to dogs.”

“You mean you didn’t have dogs growing up?” Iris said.

“We had a poodle, but it was more my brother’s.”

“The remarkable thing about dogs,” Edward said, “is that when you get them they’re babies, and then before you know it they’re the same age as you are, and then they’re old. It’s like watching your children grow up to become your grandparents.”

“Daisy was a beauty in her time,” Iris said. “She could have been a champion if she hadn’t had a gay tail.”

“What’s a gay tail?” I asked.

“It means that the tail curves too much,” Edward said.

“Poor thing.” Iris arranged the dog in a sitting position on her lap. “You thought you were going to spend your dotage in a cottage by the sea, didn’t you? Well, so did we.”

Tears filled Iris’s eyes.

“Now it’s my turn to excuse
my
wife,” Edward said. “This whole business has been harder on her than she likes to let on. Not that it hasn’t been hard on everyone. You, for instance—”

“Us?” I said. “Oh, we’ve been lucky.”

“And just how is that, pray tell?” Julia said.

“Well, we’ve made it this far without getting killed, haven’t we? A ship’s coming to rescue us. And when you think what some of these poor devils wouldn’t give to have a ticket on that ship—”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see why their having to leave their homes is any worse than our having to leave our homes,” Julia said.

“Oh, but it is,” Iris said. “Because we’ve got somewhere to flee
to
, haven’t we? Whereas all they have to look forward to is exile—that is, if they find a country willing to accept them.”

“But it’s exile for us, too,” Julia said. “France was our home, too.”

“All we are is interlopers,” Iris said. “Tourists who stayed on for a few years or a few decades.”

“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” Edward said. “Why, that old lady we met the other day, Mrs. Thorpe—she’s lived in Cannes fifty years. She doesn’t have any people in the States, no money, nowhere to go.”

“At least it’s better than a concentration camp,” Iris said—at which Julia started a little. “No, the truth is, Daisy’s the only real European here. Why, do you know what people keep coming up to ask me? If she’s a schnauzer! Imagine that, mistaking you for a Hun dog!”

“Though of English stock, Daisy was born in Toulouse,” Edward said. “The product of a morganatic marriage between a British champion and a French peasant girl.”

“Champion Harrowhill Hunters Moon,” Iris said.

Daisy had now put her front paws up on the table. Very delicately, she pulled a roll off a plate and nibbled at it. “That reminds me,” Iris said. “We’ve got that appointment with the vet at eleven. It’s nothing serious,” she added, to Julia, who was sitting as far back in her chair as possible, “only her feces haven’t been terribly solid and I’m thinking she might have worms. There’s a certain kind that look like grains of rice. Then again, she’s been eating rice.”

Julia went very pale.

“But, darling,” Edward said, “don’t you think we ought to first help Mr. Winters back to his hotel, so he can fetch his spare glasses?”

“Oh, of course,” Iris said. “How rude of me.”

“Please don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Nonsense,” Julia said. “You’re blind as a bat without your glasses.”

“Where are you staying?” Edward said.

“The Francfort,” Julia and I said in unison.

“But how funny,” Iris said. “So are we.”

“You must be at the other one,” Edward said. “Otherwise we would have seen you.”

“The other one?”

“There are two—the Hotel Francfort, which is over by the Elevator, and the Francfort Hotel, which is right here, next to the café.”

“We’re at the one by the Elevator,” I said.

“That’s the nicer one. You know, it’s become a running joke among the foreigners. ‘Just think, here we are fleeing the Germans, and we end up at a hotel called Francfort.’”

Iris looked at her watch. “Tell you what, Eddie,” she said, “why don’t
you
walk Mr. Winters back to his hotel—”

“The blind leading the blind, right?”

“—and perhaps Mrs. Winters can come with me to the vet?”

“Me?”

“You don’t mind, do you? I’d so appreciate it. If nothing else, the company. If I’m to be honest, I’m sick to death of spending all my time with Eddie. No offense, darling.”

“None taken.”

“But I’m terrible with dogs,” Julia said. She looked to me for rescue.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” I said.

“I’ll get the check,” Edward said.

“How could you?” Julia mouthed at me. But I pretended not to see.

I was blind as a bat, wasn’t I?

We put Iris, Julia, and Daisy into a taxi. Julia got in first. Then Iris handed her the dog. Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed how tall Iris was, especially compared with Julia, who was only five foot one. Just to fit into the taxi, Iris had to fold herself up like a penknife.

Holding out his arm to stop traffic, Edward led me across the street. I was almost giddy with relief and gratitude—to him, and also to Iris, who had just done me the great favor of taking Julia off my hands for a while. For the past weeks had been arduous, and Julia—well, the kindest thing to say would be that she had done little to make them less so. Just getting her to eat was an effort. At home she never ate much, and now she was eating virtually nothing. Nor did she care for our room at the Francfort, though it was paradise compared with some of the places we had slept during our trip: squalid hotels, barns, one night on the floor of a rural French post office, several nights in the car. I don’t want to suggest that Julia was incapable of coping with adversity. On the contrary, I have no
doubt but that, had the journey been one she was keen to be making, she would have gladly put up with all manner of discomfort. But the journey was not one she was keen to be making, and so each bed, each dinner, each toilet was an ordeal.

“Do you think they’ll have lunch?” I asked Edward. “Our wives, I mean?” I was hoping that Iris might succeed where I had failed, get Julia to eat a square meal for once and, in so doing, buy me a few more hours of freedom.

“I can’t see why not,” Edward said. He took my arm, as if I really was a blind man. “Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with the city—”

“Not very.”

“Then I’ll play tour guide for a bit. The neighborhood we’re in is Baixa. The neighborhood in the hills ahead of us is the Bairro Alto. The neighborhood in the hills behind us is the Alfama. That’s where the castle is. White peacocks roam the grounds. Now we’re crossing the Rossio. The Rossio isn’t its official name, of course. Its official name is Praça Dom something-or-other. That big statue way up there on the pedestal, that’s Dom something-or-other himself. Oh, and here’s an interesting bit of local color. Can you make out the paving stones? They’re laid in a pattern of waves. The effect is supposed to be nautical, suggesting Portugal’s dominion over the seas. Well, in the last century, when the English expats colonized Lisbon, they called the Rossio ‘Rolling Motion Square,’ because when they crossed it after a night of drinking they got seasick. Careful!”

I had nearly fallen; would have fallen if he hadn’t caught me.

“You seem to know the city so well,” I said. “Have you been here before?”

“My first time. I got in seventy-two hours ago. Which makes me an old Lisbon hand.”

“An older hand than I am after a week.” Again I tripped, landing against his side.

“You can’t see anything, can you?”

“Oh, I can see the outlines of things. Colors, shapes. Over there’s a big yellow worm. And next to it’s a bouncing ball. And tops spinning.”

“The worm is a tram. The ball is a dog. The tops are children.” He tightened his grip on my arm. “Now that I think about it, I wonder if it wouldn’t be in my best interest to make sure you
don’t
get your other glasses.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because without them, you’re my prisoner. You’re completely in my power.”

He punched me lightly on the biceps. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know … I suppose it’s just how strange the world looks.”

“And how does it look?”

“As if a wind’s blowing everything. Even the solid things. The writing on the signs—it’s like skywriting that’s starting to break apart.”

“And me? How do I look?”

“Oh, you I can see just fine. I’m nearsighted, not farsighted.”

“Yes, but how?”

Suddenly he stopped me in my tracks. He took me by the chin and turned me to face him. Close up, his features came into a focus that was all the sharper for the vagueness of the background. A zigzag scar ran the length of his chin. The nose flared, the small green eyes blinked once … twice …

“You look,” I said, “—well, fine.”

Apparently this answer was more droll than I had intended, for he laughed and patted me on the back. We resumed our walk. “A curious word, ‘nearsighted,’” he said. “I mean, to say someone’s nearsighted—isn’t it like saying of an armless man that he has two
legs? Or to call someone who doesn’t eat fish a meat eater? Why, if we talked that way all the time, how would we ever say anything to each other, any of us? But we
do
talk that way all the time.”

I had no idea how to reply to this—which, I suppose, was illustrative of his point—so I said nothing. We had now reached the opposite side of the Rossio, the one on which the swankier cafés—the Brasiliera, the Chave d’Ouro, the Nicola—were situated. Edward still had his hand on my arm. He was not so much leading me as pulling me, the way one might a dog on a leash. Not that I minded. Indeed, it was a pleasure, after so many weeks shouldering the burden of Julia, to be able to lean on someone else’s shoulder. And Edward’s shoulder was—how to put it?—reliable. In part this was because he was tall. I am five foot eight—seven inches taller than my wife, but seven inches shorter than Edward, whose stature was particularly noteworthy in Portugal, where few of the men exceed five-five or five-six. Yet there was more to it than just that. He had the quality that certain dogs do, of seeming always to have a destination in mind, even when they don’t.

He asked me what I did for a living and I told him. (I worked for General Motors then. I managed the Buick sales division in France—or did, until the Germans came.)

“So you’re gainfully employed,” he said. “That’s refreshing. I can’t remember the last time I met someone who was gainfully employed, other than waiters and hotel managers. Needless to say, I’m not gainfully employed.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never had a job in my life. Wait, that’s not true. The summer I turned sixteen, I worked in a shop. I sold yerba del sol tea, homemade preserves, and books on occultism. I never got paid, though. They still owe me seven dollars.”

“Where was this?”

“In California, in the Theosophist community where my mother lives. Or perhaps I should say the Theosophy community that lives on my mother.”

I didn’t know what Theosophy was. “And where will you go once you’re back in the States?”

“Oh, New York. I mean, where else is there?”

“Are you from New York?”

“I’ve lived in New York. I’m not really from anywhere. My father was Hungarian, but by the time I was born, he’d long since left Hungary. As for my mother—well, technically she’s Polish, though she grew up in England. Which meant that they could only ever communicate in second languages. And given that my mother speaks excellent English but not very good French, and that my father spoke excellent French but not very good English—well, is it any wonder that until I was five I didn’t utter a word?”

“But your English is perfect.”

“That was luck. I had a great-aunt who lived in New York. She took me under her wing. Thanks to her, I got an education.”

“Where?”

“Harvard, then Heidelberg—briefly—then Cambridge for the Ph.D.—the one I never finished. That was where I met Iris—at Cambridge. What about you?”

“Oh, just a little college in Indiana. Wabash College. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“I have, actually. I just can’t put my finger on where.”

We were now approaching the Francfort—our Francfort. I’m told the hotel closed a few years ago. It was on Rua Santa Justa, at the foot of the famous Santa Justa Elevator, from the turreted roof of which you could get a splendid view of the city, the docks, the distant hills in the shadows of which, on clear nights, Estoril and Sintra glinted. The Francfort had a revolving door. I have always loved
revolving doors, the mirror and whirl of them, how, when you pass through one, for a brief moment you’re sealed in, coffined, a hostage in a wedge of glass … And now I was in one compartment of the revolving door and Edward was in the one behind it, pressing me forward at such a speed that I tumbled out the other side as if I were drunk … About the lobby’s tiled floor, islets of furniture were dispersed, each with its own reef of rug. The curtains were drawn against the sun. In the artificial gloom, women’s earrings winked like coins; the pinpoint gleam of cigarettes might have been torchlight.