The Little Hotel Read online

  Lina works in the sewing-room and never comes in contact with the guests. It is the younger one, Luisa, whom I rely on. She sometimes makes friends of the guests, and she likes order kept among them. She scolds them, she smiles at them, she cries for their troubles if she likes them. If she takes an interest in a guest, not the same as liking but nearly, she tries to teach him Italian. ‘You must learn, come, listen, I’ll teach you, it’s easy. One word after another. Bu-on-gior-no! Buon-gior-no! Good-day! Buon giorno! Good morning! Say it, Madame, please.’

  The conversation you see was all in Italian except for the few English words she had learned herself. And all the time she talked she worked. In the morning she hurried to Mrs Powell’s little room and she could be heard saying:

  ‘Aren’t you going out, Madame, Ma-da-me? Sortir. Sortire. Sorr-tirr? Go-ah-oot? Sortire? It’s lovely now. But, of course, Madame must learn Italian. I teach her. I-ta-li-a-no, Madame. Volete parlare italiano, Signora? Si?’

  And she would apply herself, while she turned a mattress, shook out linen, dusted, to teaching one Italian word. Very early in the morning, about six, Roger and I studied English in the basement near the furnace while Gennaro or Charlie made up the furnace. Charlie knew English very well; Gennaro knew quite a bit too. There was a window on the narrow light-well and every word we said could be heard clear as birds at the top of the air-shaft. Luisa leaned out of the window as she was dressing, catching the warm air and the English words.

  Mrs Powell was always losing things. Though she did not speak Italian and scarcely a word of French, she managed to let Luisa know about them. When Mrs Powell went out for her walk Luisa would start moving furniture and looking for them. Mrs Powell had mending-bags, sachets, numerous paper parcels. She wrapped things up and tied them with ribbon or string and would have to unwrap them to see what was in them. Luisa begged her,

  ‘Buy those plastic bags, Madame; you can see through them.’

  Luisa would see the little lady tripping in her pink and blue along the esplanade and would go through the room looking for what was lost. Afterwards Luisa would say in Italian:

  ‘Supposing I packed for you a bit, Madame? Arranged things in drawers, eh? But of course you lose things like this. Perdere-è-facile. Lo-oose eezy! I arrange everything? She doesn’t understand! Too bad.’

  Mrs Powell cried out in her strong loud voice: ‘Luisa, my stockings have been stolen! Vous compre-nay? Volay—volay, stolen.’

  ‘Si, si, Signora, leave it to me, ho capito,’ said Luisa very fast, but she would think it over before she really understood. To me she would say pettishly:

  ‘Why can’t she learn a few words?’

  I explained to Luisa: ‘She says that she thinks it vulgar in Americans to go abroad and come back home and say words with a foreign accent.’

  Luisa cried, ‘Indeed, indeed! Then let me assure the lady that she is in no danger of being vulgar. Never. She is very elegant. The height of elegance.’

  And yet when Mrs Powell at breakfast said, ‘One off, for my breakfast, one off with bacon, vous comprenay?’ Luisa called ‘Oui, oui’ with a smile and would say in the kitchen, ‘She is trying hard.’

  Luisa went on with her teaching efforts. ‘Sun, soleil, Madame, sole.’

  The deafish old woman cried, ‘Volay, volay, stolen; kelkun, someone, stole my scissors. The man. L’homme. Get l’homme. The new man on the stairs. The sulky one.’

  ‘De quoi? Che dice, Signora?’

  ‘Volay, volay.’

  ‘Ho capito. Stockings, eh? Ha-ha. There they are!’

  ‘No, no, scissors!’

  ‘That’s bad. I’ll look. Behind the boxes. Feld down, eh?’

  ‘No, no, pas tombay, volay, volay.’

  ‘No, no, pas volés, no stolen, feld down, Madame.’

  ‘My scissors! Volay. L’homme.’

  It took Luisa two days to find out what had been stolen this time. She came running up from the sewing-room where it had come to her. She ran to Mrs Powell.

  ‘Signora! I understand! I forbici—click-click, like that, eh?’

  ‘Yes, scissors.’

  ‘I forbici, allora, ah, i forbici.’

  For some reason Luisa became alarmed. She asked advice from Mrs Trollope. Mrs Trollope herself went down at ten-thirty at night to talk to Gennaro, who was on night duty. Gennaro was getting ready to lie down on the sofa. We were then trying out Herman, a new man from Lucerne. He was tall, dark, strong but sulky, lazy. He would look straight down into your eyes and wear a slight smile and then go away mumbling. Everyone but Clara disliked him. Luisa said to Mrs Trollope, ‘I have an idea she is going to have our boxes searched, this Signora Powell.’

  Meanwhile, Clara was conspiring and flirting with the new man, Herman, on the quiet upper floors. Mrs Powell had lost three pairs of nylon stockings, a silver-backed comb and the scissors. Herman, said she, stood up against the wall in the dark to watch her go to the toilet and rushed into her room when he heard the door close. Madame Blaise, too, said when she came from the w.c. she found Herman in the dark part of the hall, between the linen-cupboard and her room. Mrs Trollope believed he looked through keyholes. She had been sitting in a certain place at a certain time, her clothes round her waist, when straight in front of her she had seen the strangest thing—a soft dark fringed living thing, a human eye in the keyhole. This Herman was an imp of disorder. I don’t know that he did anything wrong, but he disturbed everyone. Herman’s little room was on the top floor, between the lavatory and the bathroom. He was there when he should have been working, and in the legal rest-hour he was elsewhere. Mrs Trollope said: ‘He is always skulking about. What can Clara find so interesting in him? Clara is such a refined woman. But then she is too good-hearted to be suspicious as we are.’

  I said: ‘Clara is not refined, Mrs Trollope. This air she has is to fool you. She is a mischievous old maid and always hatching plots.’

  Well, Luisa found the stockings but not the scissors. Said Luisa:

  ‘Something must be done. She is talking about the police. She’s a regular bulldog: she’ll never let go.’

  When I came upstairs there was Clara between two cupboards flashing her nails and talking something into Herman. She scurried away smiling and waving her hands to me. ‘Another German alliance,’ I thought to myself. Clara was a restless intriguer: she tried to get all the German-Swiss servants into her plots.

  I called Herman down to the office and told him he must get on with the floors upstairs. Old dirt and wax made them dark. They had to be cleaned off with steel wool and re-waxed. Herman always got into a huff when told to work. He took his time about going upstairs and I heard no sound of scraping for half an hour, but I heard whispering. That was Clara again. They were both on the top floor near the servants’ bedrooms. I went upstairs and met Clara coming down smirking. She had knitting-needles in her hands which she was going to lend to Mrs Trollope. At this moment I was short-handed because Charlie had just taken to his bed with his floating kidney. The Italians were all muttering among themselves, saying i forbici and were slow at their work.

  Later on that day, the scissors were found on Mrs Powell’s dressing-table. Luisa said both to me and to Mrs Powell: ‘I put them there; they were not lost.’

  More than that she would not say, not where, nor whether she had any suspicions, not even if Mrs Powell herself had lost them. ‘Enough is enough.’

  After this, whenever Mrs Powell lost anything, Luisa would say emphatically:

  ‘Like the scissors, eh, Madame, like I forbici?’

  I had a suspicion that Herman had taken them for some purpose; but I don’t know.

  That was the end of lost things with Mrs Powell. She returned to her political work, which consisted in making cuttings about communism and putting them on the tables before meals, or in the letterboxes. She was the most patriotic American I ever met.

  Chapter 4

  MRS POWELL SAT IN THE dining-room and if Mr Wilkins had not yet come do
wn, but Mrs Trollope was there, would make loud conversation about communists, to annoy Mrs Trollope. She told a good many people that Mrs Trollope was a communist. If she was, pigs have wings.

  One night after such a scene, I invited Mrs Trollope to the movies. The film was Goodbye, Mr Chips and I was longing to see it. Mrs Trollope wanted to see it again. She said:

  ‘It gives you such a feeling of the dear old world still being with us in the new; though the young seem so old nowadays.’

  Just as Mrs Trollope and I were talking about this in the office, Mrs Powell went past with Clara. Luisa was putting my boy Olivier to bed and Clara was going to baby-sit and had her knitting under her arm.

  Said Mrs Powell to Clara:

  ‘I never imagined there would be so many coloured people and half-breeds about in Switzerland. Communism attracts such unfortunates.’

  Clara was smirking and she winked at me.

  Mrs Powell continued: ‘I heard of one who was sent to a convent and married straight out of the convent young; that was before the colour could show, of course. They very often have an exotic beauty when young, though they coarsen with age and you can see it then.’

  I closed the door and told Mrs Trollope to come into the sewing-room while I got ready. I had to lock up my desk. I would just say good night to Olivier and give Clara a stiff look to cool her down.

  But Mrs Trollope put her head on my shoulder:

  ‘In the East, in Malaya, it never happened to me; they’re much kinder in the East.’

  I stopped her by telling her about the new document the Mayor had given me. He was going to buy the Hotel Lake Leman, which is right on the lake and charges much higher prices. He was going to put the hotel in Olivier’s name.

  ‘I don’t see why the Mayor should not want to make such a sweet little boy a gift to remember him by, especially if he is alone in the world,’ said Mrs Trollope.

  ‘As the Mayor is ill, he may suddenly have realized what it is to have no one to cry for you when you’re gone. You come back and look at a tombstone and think, there is my dear father. Perhaps he might want Olivier to take his name as a second name. You ought to suggest that. After all, it is a really magnificent present.’

  I looked out. There was no one about but Clara, who was singing, croaking rather, a song to herself. Mrs Trollope said, forgiving her:

  ‘Clara is always so happy.’

  I got my hat on and when I went out Clara was sitting in her chair at the office door watching the stairs, the lift, knitting the same old sweater and chatting with Mrs Trollope who was admiring her clumsy work.

  ‘It is for my boy-friend,’ said Clara coyly.

  I wondered in passing what she was so good-natured about. Mrs Trollope, like most people, was taken in by Clara’s red and yellow cheerful face and the blonde mat like a wig piled on her head which, at fifty, had not a single grey hair in it. The sweater had been done for Christmas, but had such small armholes and neck that it was more fit for Olivier than for a man, and so it had to be undone. Clara, with nods, pokes, glances and stabs with her needle was indicating to Mrs Trollope that she would be in charge of the house, while the proprietors were out enjoying themselves; that she was a motherly sort, who after working all day, found pleasure in staying at night to look after my child. I came and whisked Mrs Trollope away. Robert Wilkins was downstairs talking with Charlie and drinking whisky with him; my husband had gone to another cellaring; this was becoming quite a habit of his. He pretended that it was good for business: in these cellarings he met all the influential men in town.

  How good Clara was, said Mrs Trollope, what a nice woman, one felt comfortable with her.

  I said: ‘Clara is all right as long as she feels herself admired: she will play up to you. But she is treacherous, underhand, turbulent and a plotter.’

  ‘I thought she looked so happy and romantic knitting for her sweetheart and looking after your baby. I feel quite fond of her.’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ I said, laughing gaily.

  Now we were hurrying along the street in the damp mild air and I forgot all my troubles. ‘She’s only happy when there’s trouble and misery; and when there isn’t she stirs people up until there is. She’s full of smiles: something is cooking.’

  ‘But she has an honest straightforward jolly way and she’s a hard worker.’

  ‘She thinks she’s indispensable because she was here before us. On the other hand she conspires because she’s afraid of her old age. You must beware of old servants, old horses and old dogs.’

  Mrs Trollope sighed and said life was very cruel.

  I was just telling Mrs Trollope about the happy days when my girl friend Edith and I went out every afternoon arm-in-arm, and how Roger and I had taken Edith in in her trouble at the sad time her parents put her into the street, when we passed the Hotel Lake Leman. There were three men on the corner, one of them middle-sized, bareheaded and excited. It was the Mayor. He saw me and ran up saying: ‘It is done, it is done this very minute, Madame: the business is concluded.’

  He talked eagerly for a bit and we went on. I explained that he meant he had bought the Hotel Lake Leman. We gave it a quick glance as we hurried past, at the tiled entrance full of glass doors, palms and carpets. I had noticed that one of the two other men was the manager of the hotel. He did not acknowledge me. People were jealous of us when we first came here into the hotel business. They had driven others away.

  Mrs Trollope kept asking me about the Mayor and halfway through the film, when the break came, she made me quite a long speech in an undertone. She said, in the East, she and Mr Wilkins had known someone rather like the Mayor. She said I must watch the servants and guests. He might wait for them in the dark and jump on them. I was surprised and interested. I had never seen a madman and I thought they made faces, howled and had fits. I could not help saying that only that morning the Mayor had had a long talk with me about Olivier and how we ought to train him if he was going to be an actor—for Olivier is always dressing up and loves to recite. The Mayor knew a lot. He had mixed in the very best society. He told things that made me laugh. A woman he had known in the very best society in Brussels had a lover who objected to her horsy teeth; so she had them all pulled out and her mouth remade. Just then her husband died and her lover married a high-school girl. ‘I loved her for her wonderful teeth and she pulled them out,’ was his excuse. The Mayor said, ‘Belgian society is very amusing and very cruel; you would like it very much.’

  We liked the movie. Mrs Trollope said she was glad to see a story of natural sweet little boys. After we had a quiet beer I told Mrs Trollope about my troubles with Roger. There is a married woman after him, my best friend Julie, the one who keeps calling me German because I like beer. She makes him smoke and drink too much; and she leaves me alone with her husband while she goes off with Roger. She is French and she flatters Roger that he is truly French. Her husband, although he is Roger’s best friend, tried to kiss me. Mrs Trollope said to me, ‘This woman wants to make up a foursome.’ Until that evening I had never heard of such a thing. I said:

  ‘But why does she insult me and Olivier so much? She said, “Olivier used to be a beautiful child; now he is cross-eyed and fat and getting more like you every day.” ’

  Mrs Trollope told me that the mother of a beautiful child must put up with a good deal of jealousy.

  The next morning was Friday. There were only two or three people in the dining-room for breakfast, people who had stayed overnight; and I let young Emma, Gennaro’s wife, make the coffee. The cook Francis had left, I had a new cook coming; but in the interval I had the old German chef who had been here before, in Clara’s young days in the hotel. He was an aged man, obliging, glad of the work. He got occasional work in the workmen’s pensions and did odd jobs. His cooking was in the German country style, which our guests did not care for; but for a day or two it did no harm. He made good plain flour soups, boiled meat with potatoes and cabbage and desserts of flour and jam. And, u
nlike Francis, he got on with everyone.

  Emma was an Italian mountain peasant, serious, goodlooking and very intelligent. I think she was the most intelligent of all our servants; and yet she knew nothing when she came to us. The Christmas before, I had allowed Gennaro to go to her home, to ask permission to marry her. He asked our advice several times: ‘Is it right? Am I fair to her? Is it the right thing to do? She is a young girl, only nineteen years old and I am compared with her an old man, thirty-four. Fifteen years is a great difference. I am not sure it is right.’

  But then he would add: ‘She is a very serious woman and I am serious. Her opinion is that it will work out. I asked my mother’s advice and she thinks Emma is a good wife for me. My married brother and his wife, also, are in favour of it. They think I should marry and they overlook Emma’s poverty. They say she herself is such a fine woman that they consider I am lucky.’

  At such moments he would change expression and say: ‘I’ll tell you the truth: I think myself very lucky to have found such a fine woman. Her poverty is nothing to me.’

  Gennaro met his mother every morning when he was cleaning the lowest part of the building, which is on lake level. Since the hill is so steep, one side of the hotel is almost on lake level and the chief entrance is up the hill just below the station. The lower entrance is a wide calm place, very sunny in the mornings; Gennaro liked to work there and spend a few moments in the sun. His mother came past every morning on her way to another little hotel where she worked as chambermaid; and there they would meet.

  Emma was short and thickset but I could see her attractiveness. Roger came from the mountains himself and preferred town types. Gennaro, you see, was born on the lake shore here, at Nyon, and he had lived here all his life, except for the war and a few years as a child under Mussolini. His family came from the Borromean Islands. If you have ever seen them you know that those low-lying islands are heavenly. The grandfather’s home was in these islands and Gennaro was saving money to buy it, so that his mother could go there in her old age. Therefore he thought a long time about marrying. What confused him more was that now his mother, a widow, wished to remarry. He was ashamed: ‘People will say I cannot provide for my mother.’