The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel (23 page)

A woman was standing next to me. She was about my age, with a no-nonsense look. “Terrible, this,” she said in a Midwestern accent. “You see, Salazar’s made it against the law not to wear shoes—part of his effort to bring the country up to snuff for the Exposition. But these people are poor. They can hardly afford to buy shoes for their children, much less themselves, so they split a pair between every two. And it’s not as if the boys know any better. They’ve gone shoeless all their lives.”

“What will happen to them? Will they be arrested?”

“Who knows? Anyway, it’s not the boys that matter. It’s the people who are watching. All this is for their benefit—a little reminder of what’s in store if they cause any sort of trouble. Remember this the next time some twit starts holding forth about what a wonderful thing Salazar is for Portugal. Well, good day.”

She strode off. The boy who had been slapped had not risen. The other dangled like a corpse from a gibbet. Then I must have caught the eye of one of the policemen, for he yelled something at me and signaled me to cross the street. Immediately I started walking in the direction of the Hotel Francfort. I didn’t look back. If he put his hand on my shoulder, I decided, I would plead ignorance of the language. But he did not put his hand on my shoulder. I plunged through the Francfort’s revolving door, nearly knocking over the bellhop. “Excuse me,” I said, hurrying up the stairs—only to realize, when I got to my door, that I didn’t have a key.

I knocked. No answer.

“Julia, it’s me.”

Had she gone out? Was she in the bathroom?

There was nothing to do but return to the lobby. As usual, Messalina was standing in her doorway, smoking. She nodded to me,
and I nodded back. Briefly I considered asking her if she would get the key for me, but she was in her dressing gown, and I had no idea if she spoke English, so I went on myself. In the lobby, the scene was tranquil. No police were waiting for me. No officer was interrogating Senhor Costa. I got the key, went back upstairs, and let myself in.

Julia was in bed. She was still asleep.

I looked at my watch. By my calculation, she had been sleeping for five hours.

“Julia,” I said. Again, no answer. I lifted her by the shoulders. Her head lolled. “Julia, wake up.”

But she didn’t wake up. I felt her wrist. She had a pulse. The bottle of pills was where I had left it, on the edge of the bathroom sink. Eight pills were left in it. How many had there been this morning? There couldn’t have been so few or I would have noticed. For it was my duty as a husband to make sure that the supply of pills never ran low, much less ran out. And so if there had been fewer than a dozen, I would have made a mental note to get some more before the
Manhattan
sailed.

I went back into the bedroom. I opened the curtains, the window, the shutters. Sunlight fell on Julia’s face, exposing faint freckles that she usually covered with powder. She didn’t open her eyes.

“Julia,” I said. “How many pills did you take?”

She muttered something unintelligible.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll get a doctor. Just hold on.”

I hurried out into the corridor. From her doorway Messalina gazed at me in curiosity. “Doctor,” I said, tumbling back down the stairs to the lobby. “Doctor,” I said to Senhor Costa.

“Sir?”

“It’s my wife. She won’t wake up. I need a doctor.”

From behind me a voice said, “I’m a doctor. How can I help?”

I turned around. It was the woman in whose company I had just witnessed the harassment of the half-shod boys. She was sitting on one of the armchairs, a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits laid out before her.

“Oh, hello, it’s you. I’m Dr. Cornelia Gray.” She stood, brushed crumbs from her skirt. “Whatever is the matter?”

“My wife—I think she might have taken too many pills.”

“What pills?”

“Seconal.”

“Barbiturates. I’d better see her.” She headed for the stairs. “Well, come on.”

I looked at Senhor Costa. He shrugged. With her prim skirt and flat shoes and fair skin, Dr. Gray might have come out of Hollywood central casting—the small-town ingenue who loses her way amid sophisticated New Yorkers or Europeans and is inevitably upstaged by a more famous actress in a supporting role. In such a film, she would have been a nurse. Here she was a doctor. Nor had I any reason to doubt that she was a doctor. And so I followed her up the stairs, which she took two at a time. “Excuse me,” she said, elbowing past a couple on the landing. “Excuse me,” she said to Messalina, who got out of her way fast.

I opened the door to our room. “Julia?”

The bed was empty. Water was running in the bathroom.

“Julia!”

“What is it?” she asked, coming out.

She had on her dressing gown. The tub was filling.

Dr. Gray looked at Julia. Julia looked at Dr. Gray. They both looked at me.

“Pete?”

“I’m sorry. I thought—”

I sat down on the bed.

“Pete, are you all right?”

“He’s fine,” Dr. Gray said. “He’s just had a bit of a shock. He thought you were dead.”

“Dead! I was asleep.”

“Yes, I’m sure you were,” Dr. Gray said, putting a hand on Julia’s forehead. “No fever. Look at me. Pupils not dilated.” She touched Julia’s wrist. As the seconds passed, I held my breath. Over her shoulder Julia gazed at me in confusion.

“Sixty-two,” Dr. Gray said. “The low side of normal. You haven’t overdosed at all, have you?”

“No,” Julia said.

“Open your mouth. Say
aah
. Throat normal.” Dr. Gray took off her jacket. “Well, as long as I’m here, I might as well examine you. May I wash my hands? I’ll see you downstairs.”

It took me a moment to realize that this last remark was addressed to me.

“Downstairs?”

“After I finish.”

“Oh, of course.”

I left. In the lobby, Senhor Costa trundled up to me. “Is everything well, sir?” he asked—and in his voice I heard a note of pleading, as if he was urging me to answer him in the affirmative.

“It’s all right. The doctor’s examining her now.”

“You mean she is not—”

“No. She’s awake.”

Senhor Costa’s waist expanded visibly. He went back to his desk.

For lack of anything better to do, I sat in the chair opposite Dr. Gray’s. The tea was getting cold. Without thinking, I reached for one of the biscuits. Only as I was biting into it did I realize that I was committing a faux pas. For I hadn’t paid for those biscuits. They were Dr. Gray’s biscuits. Yet, having taken the bite, I could see no
good in putting the biscuit back down. So I ate it. I ate all the biscuits. I licked the crumbs off my fingers. I didn’t touch the tea.

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Gray emerged from the stairwell. I stood up again. “Your wife is fine,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “Well, fine. What I mean is she hasn’t tried to kill herself. She
is
dehydrated. Possibly anemic. If I were you, I’d get some fluids into her right away. And tell her to stay off the Seconal.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry for the false alarm.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. The truth is, I’ve been itching to do a little doctoring since I got here. Those are awfully thick glasses you’re wearing. Myopia, is it? Astigmatism?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Glaucoma? Cataracts? Watch my hand. Move your eyes, not your head. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

“Good. Other than being blind, you seem to be in good health. Sit down, why don’t you?”

“I think I should be getting back—”

“Not yet. She’s having a bath. Give her a little time to collect herself … I take it you’re on your way back home?”

I nodded. “We’re sailing on the
Manhattan
. How about you?”

“Us? Oh, we’re coming, not going. My husband and I arrived a week ago. On the Clipper. We’re with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee—and if you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry, because it was only formed last month. We’re trying to organize something for the refugees who are stuck in France. To help them get to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the States. If we can. Only it’s a bureaucratic hornet’s nest. Even worse than Prague, where we were last spring. Luckily Don, my husband, handles that side of things. Right now he’s meeting with the consul, trying to work out something in the way of visas. And in the meantime we’ve somehow
been dragged into this entirely quixotic but most worthy effort to get a freight car’s worth of powdered milk to Marseille. There’s a terrible milk shortage in France. It’s not like here, where you can get everything. Speaking of which, would you like some tea? Oh, it’s steeped too long. Never mind, I’ll order another pot.”

She summoned the waiter. He arrived on the spot. You had the feeling he wouldn’t have dared to make Dr. Gray wait. For there was something about her that commanded respect, even though she was the very opposite of what you would call glamorous, with her neat brown hair, her pared nails, her authoritative, unfussy voice.

Fresh tea arrived in record time. “Awful little episode that was, over by the Elevator,” Dr. Gray said as she poured. “It makes you remember you’re in a dictatorship. Of course, we don’t feel it so much—certainly not the way one did in Prague. I mean, when the newsstands carry every newspaper from home, why check if the local ones are censored? Which, by the way, they are. It drives me mad, this hands-off attitude toward Salazar, when really he’s no better than Musso. The difference is he’s only interested in maintaining his dominion, not taking over the whole world. We foreigners, we’re a distraction to him, a circus come through town. As soon as we’re gone, he’ll return to the business at hand, which is bludgeoning the Portuguese citizenry into submission.”

“I see that now. I didn’t before today.”

“And why would you have? I only know it myself because—well, I’m in the business, I suppose you might say. And it’s not like it’s obvious, the way it was in Prague. Or Berlin, God forbid. I mean, here the worst we can really complain of is boredom, of having to spend too much time in the cafés on the Rossio. Yet we shouldn’t forget, the Rossio used to be the site of the most monstrous public executions. Thousands cheering. That was what passed for entertainment during the Inquisition. And it could come to that again.
Have you seen those boys parading around in their ridiculous uniforms? You know why Salazar chose green, don’t you? Because black and brown were already taken.”

“I take it you’re planning to stay then?”

“Not for long, I hope. Once Don’s cut through the red tape, the plan is to drive to Marseille, set up the main office there, and then just maintain a satellite operation here in Lisbon. Of course, in this business there are always unexpected obstacles. For instance, who would have guessed it would be such an ordeal to get an international driver’s license?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Not yet. Why, do you know of one?”

“I do, actually. A Buick. Nearly new.”

“Then you should speak to Don. He’ll be back this evening. Oh, I never even asked your name.”

“Winters. Pete Winters.”

“Pleased to meet you, Pete Winters.”

We shook hands. And did that handshake last just a few seconds longer than it might have? I wasn’t sure. For suddenly it was as if my hand were no longer mine, as if the voice speaking through my mouth were a ventriloquist’s. I was there, in the lobby, and at the same time I was far away, in the back row of a cinema, watching the film.

“Well, I’d better be off,” I said, pulling my wallet from my pocket. “How much do I owe you?”

“For what?”

“The house call.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You’ve given me something to do. Since we got here, I’ve been bored stiff. I loathe bureaucracy. I can’t wait to get out of this godforsaken city and start doing something again.”

“In that case, I can but thank you.” I got up. “Oh—but I ate your biscuits. At least let me pay for the biscuits.”

“I can always get more if I want them. Well, goodbye. And if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“I won’t.”

“Just knock on my door. Room 111. Easy to remember.”

“Yes.”

“Any hour of the night or day.”

For the second time we shook hands. I went upstairs. While I’d been with Dr. Gray, Julia had gotten dressed.

“What was that all about?” she asked. “Whatever made you think I’d taken too many pills?”

“There were only eight in the bottle.”

“Yes, and when you left there were nine.”

“But there can’t have been that few. I’d have noticed.”

“Clearly not.”

“But why didn’t you wake up? I shook you and still you didn’t wake up.”

She began brushing her hair. “I didn’t
want
to wake up. What’s there to wake up for? This grim little room, that woman downstairs.”

“You mean Dr. Gray?”

“No, not Dr. Gray. You know who I mean.”

“Aunt Rosalie.”

“So you admit it’s her.”

“No. I mean the woman you think is Aunt Rosalie. Whose name, by the way, is Georgina. Georgina Kendall. What time is it? I’ve got to run. I’ll be late.”

“For what? Where are you going?”

“To meet Edward.”

“Oh, Pete—must you go out this afternoon? Couldn’t you skip it?”

“Not on such short notice.”

“But I’m afraid to be alone.”

“You won’t be alone. Iris will be along any minute.”

“Oh, God, Iris! I can’t face Iris today. She makes me so uncomfortable. And I’m not well, Pete. That doctor said so. She says I’m dehydrated. Anemic. And don’t they say you should never go on a sea journey when you’re ill?”

“But you’re not ill. You just need to drink more water. Anyway, there’ll be a doctor on the ship.”

“Yes, just like there was a doctor on the ship when Uncle Edgar died.”

“Don’t be silly.”

She was now pulling hairs out of the brush. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” she said. “The man I married—he’d never leave me like this.” Suddenly she turned to face me. “Where are you really going when you quote-unquote meet Edward?”

“‘Quote-unquote?’ I do meet Edward.”

“And it’s this important to you to meet up with him? Important enough that you’d abandon your wife when she needs you? Or is he just your cover? Who are you really meeting, Pete?”