Atlantic Hotel

by João Gilberto Noll

  I took off my clothes while still lying down, thinking about taking a bath. Even naked I wasn’t cold.

  I sat up on the bed and faced my white body in the mirror. I stood up, went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. I began lathering up, thinking I’d go to the movies that evening.

  Wrapped in a towel, I opened the minibar and took out a can of beer. I remembered my dream on the bus, in which I was the woman observing a man who had just appeared on the horizon. I let out a small burp, and a little bit of sour beer came back up into my throat. I took another slug of beer. I realized that this had not been the first and would not be the last dream in which I was a woman.

  Francisco Alves was singing a sad waltz. The lyrics were a lament that his beloved was in love with another.

  I lay down again. I recalled the flapper from the hotel in Copacabana. Unwrapping myself from the towel, I closed my eyes and opened my arms as if to make of myself an offering.

  I stayed like that for a few minutes.

  But a sudden rebellion came over me. I bit my hand, my arm, and started to moan and roll across the bed until I landed on the shaggy carpet.

  “I’m dead, bury me!” I exclaimed.

  I looked myself over in the mirror hanging in the small hotel’s foyer. I was wearing my ball cap, but since the doorman told me the temperature would fall sharply that night—the wind would begin to send things flying—I pulled the hood of the coat up over the cap.

  In the mirror I looked like I was from a foreign land: a person who was obliged to confront the worst possible weather every day. I felt the lack of something I’d never need to tolerate. I lowered my eyes.

  Out on the street a frozen wind did indeed begin to gust against me. I stopped a few times, steadying myself on posts, and considered returning to the hotel.

  Suddenly I saw the movie theater and decided to go in. They were showing a stupid American comedy titled Conquests of a Single Man. The actor was pretty; I’d never seen him before. The actresses were all likewise unknown to me. There were several, all of them having affairs with this guy at the same time.

  The end of the movie showed the guy crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in a red convertible with the only ugly woman in the entire film. The theater reeked of piss. I got up. The lobby seemed welcoming as I crossed it. There were some people sitting around, waiting for the ten o’clock show. I made my way to an empty spot on the corner of a sofa. I sat down and rubbed my hands to prepare for the cold outside. There was violin music playing in the theater.

  When the people from the eight o’clock show had all left, the people in the lobby started getting up and filing calmly into the theater.

  The usher closed a red curtain across the theater’s doorway. Then he looked at me and said they were starting the last showing. At that moment, various lights in the lobby went out. A shadow fell on the room. The woman who had been selling tickets came out of her little booth and put on a headscarf, tying it under her chin.

  I thought of saying something to the usher, maybe telling him I’d already seen the previous showing, and I was just killing time before meeting a friend at ten thirty. But when I fixed my gaze on the place from where he’d been speaking to me, he was no longer there.

  So I got up. And went out into the fierce night wind.

  As I left the theater a can was being dragged along by the wind. My breath grew labored again, and I could only think about finding the fastest way back to the hotel. But as I came to a corner, bent into the wind, I looked to the right and saw the bar where I’d had a cognac that morning.

  I went in. The same blond guy was there. He saw me, pointed to an empty table, and said, “So, sir, you remember how my brother and his brother-in-law were going to Rio Grande do Sul tomorrow?”

  “Yes, what happened to them?” I asked, taking a seat.

  “Oh, nothing… That’s them over there. The guy that’s blond like me is my brother, and the darker one is his brother-in-law,” said the bartender, pointing to a table with two young men.

  “So that’s them?” I said.

  Then I asked for a cognac, and imagined, if the wind let up, I’d try to find a woman.

  The wind was blowing hard outside. The bar gave off a cozy feel that only enveloping atmospheres within a cold night are capable of transmitting. People were sitting around, looking at each other with the air of ones who have the simple privilege of not being exposed to the elements.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the two guys who were going to Rio Grande do Sul the next day were staring at me, the darker one definitely talking about me like I was somebody to be excited about for some reason.

  I turned back to my cognac. I thought each of the two brothers, who looked like they were from the German territory, had the miens of complete innocents, totally opposite from the black-haired guy, who was perhaps a bit older—he, even from afar, came off much more sly.

  The black-haired guy got up. He came over to me and asked, “You wouldn’t be the actor from that film The Man Who Wanted to Be God?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Well, I saw it, but I didn’t really think it was any good,” he said, striking a cavalier air.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  He asked, “You ever work on a soap opera?”

  “On three, but never in a lead role,” I replied.

  “Oh yeah…?” he blurted.

  “I’ve done some films and quite a bit of theater,” I added.

  “But not anymore?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” I told him, “Nowadays I’m on the hunt for treasure, or something like that.”

  “Ah, you’re a man of mystery, like me,” he said, showing some camaraderie for the first time.

  But then he did something I didn’t like at all: he sat down at my table without asking.

  “So yeah,” he said, moving in close like he was about to tell me a secret.

  “So, yeah,” he repeated, and then went on, “My buddy that works here tells me you’re interested in going to western Santa Catarina.”

  “That’s right,” I replied.

  “So yeah, I have a car and tomorrow I’m going with my brother-in-law over there, the brother of my buddy here at the bar. We’re heading to a little town in Rio Grande do Sul, not too far, where he’s going to marry my sister.”

  “So then…” I said.

  “So then come with us. I’ll drop off my brother-in-law in the little town and we’ll keep going to western Santa Catarina if you want. We’ll make a deal on the price of my time—I could use a little extra dough.”

  I didn’t know what to say and kept tracing the rim of my cognac glass with my finger.

  Just like that, the guy was offering me a complete itinerary, something I wasn’t used to contemplating. But then there was the way his attitude made me suspicious—he seemed at least as cunning as everybody else in the bar put together. But, on the other hand, what was I sticking around for? Somebody is offering to be my oarsman across this river, I thought with relief.

  “So?”

  “Why not?” I replied.

  The car was a yellow Gol, not very new. We left Florianópolis in the afternoon. The brother-in-law of the groom was driving, I was in the passenger’s seat, and the groom was in back. The brother-in-law was named Nélson. The groom, Léo. I found it strange that neither of them had asked about my bags.

  Nélson flipped on the radio. We were leaving the city. Léo talked about how he’d been in Florianópolis for a year and a half, he’d come from western Santa Catarina, a village called Belo Si. In two weeks he’d get married and start working with his father-in-law in a little town called Pomar, where the wedding would be, and which he was about to see for the first time.

  I asked Nélson if he’d been born in Pomar. He said no, he was adopted by the family of the girl who was going to marry Léo. He was from a town near Pomar called Luzes. The family in Pomar adopted him when he was two years old.

  A little af
ter nightfall, Nélson stopped the car. The highway was dark and deserted.

  Dogs barked nearby. Nélson leaned back in his seat and said, “I thought it was right about here… Oh, there it is, that’s the entrance.”

  “Entrance to what?” I asked.

  Nélson burst out laughing, started howling, cruising down a narrow paved path bordered by eucalyptus trees.

  In front of us I could see a two-story mansion, long and wide, painted white, it seemed, in the moonlight. As he parked the car, Nélson stopped howling, looked at me, said, “Well, tonight’s the night, my actor friend, tonight we get to have our night of glory. The most fantastic women in Santa Catarina are all here. Tonight’s gonna be very special for my new little brother-in-law, Léo. I promised to bring him here before the wedding. So tonight’s all his; I reserved the best women, all on my tab. One last bachelor fuckfest.

  After delivering those seemingly memorized lines, Nélson gave Léo a rather firm jab to the chin and started howling again.

  As we walked from the parking lot to the mansion we passed alongside a grated metal fence with huge guard dogs behind it, crazed by our presence. They were so furiously worked up that they barely failed to clear the metal fence as they leaped at us. Word had it, Nélson told us, that one night one of the dogs got out by accident and ripped a client to shreds.

  “They say the whole thing ended there, because to this day nobody’s ever breathed a word about the guy’s disappearance. They say he was a loner. I heard the girls buried the body nearby.”

  The mansion was in the middle of a patch of woods, which in that darkness appeared to be quite dense. A beautiful woman opened the door and exclaimed, “Is this him?”

  “That’s right, the most eligible bachelor around!” Nélson bellowed.

  We went in, passing through a spacious foyer with a curved staircase that most certainly led up to the bedrooms. We went into a large parlor full of tables. They were all empty.

  A woman with Asian features sat in a corner, up against the bar. Behind the bar, a bartender in black tie stared vacantly into the empty room. When he saw us he smiled, and started convulsing a tapered shaker.

  The woman escorting us, in jeans and a yellow sweater, said things were falling off day by day.

  “With the exception of one or two travelers passing through, we have practically no work during the day. Lately things are only picking up around eight in the evening.”

  “Then it’s a good thing the house has the side businesses, the lumber and that lumpy cemetery…Instead of gravestones, it’s just all grass and discreet little crosses stuck here and there,” Nélson explained, his eyes popping.

  Then the woman escorting us said she’d go call her colleagues, and went through a door beside the bar.

  I looked at Nélson and said that a night in this place must cost a pretty penny. He said he was the boss of the place. All the women here owed him big time.

  “It took my blood and sweat to get this business going back in the day. At seventeen, eighteen years old I ran away from home and came here to do dirty work for the girls.”

  Nélson spoke in enigmas. But all the words he was saying, the house, it all seemed to me like something out of an old film.

  Léo was drinking cognac, sitting on a chair marooned in the middle of the dance floor. He seemed nervous, chewing a straw.

  I told Nélson I was going to get a room and try to sleep a bit. That I was tired, needed some rest, just recently over a wicked flu.

  “No, don’t be like that, my actor friend,” he replied.

  “I’ve got to, Nélson, I’m twice your age, if I don’t take care of myself I’ll fall apart,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

  The woman who’d received us reappeared with two very young girls.

  “I brought these two for you,” she said to Léo.

  And the two girls sat in Léo’s lap, one on each leg. Léo blushed. An old film, I murmured.

  The Japanese girl remained seated at the bar.

  I closed the door to the room they gave me and turned on the light. A double bed was pushed up against one of the walls. A TV. A white curtain, lacy. The door to the bathroom was half open, an armchair near the window.

  It was rather cold—there wasn’t a heater. I turned out the overhead light, felt my way over to the lamp beside the bed, and turned it on. I sat on the bed, took off my shoes. Then I lifted the thick comforter and got underneath without taking off my clothes, not even my cap. I thought that nothing about this room made it seem like a brothel.

  I lay on my side, turned to the wall, just like they say Indians do when they sense they’re about to die.

  I noticed a newspaper near my feet, bunched up against the wall. I squirmed down to reach it. It was a local paper. That day’s date. On the first page there was a notice about an American’s suicide on the bus from Rio to Florianópolis.

  The newspaper said Susan had lived for some time in a depressive state, caused by the drowning death of her seven-year-old daughter.

  Next to the article was a photo of Susan—her passport photo by the looks of it—faded.

  The article explained that the information regarding Susan Flemming the paper received was relayed from an employee of the U.S. embassy in Brasília.

  They made no mention of Susan’s profession. Didn’t cite any relation to an archaeological dig in Brazil.

  I tossed the newspaper. I grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it.

  I fell asleep.

  I awoke to someone knocking on the door. It took me a while to recognize my surroundings. They knocked again. I said they could come in and rolled over to face the door.

  It was the girl with Asian features I’d seen sitting by herself at the bar. She opened the door and said, haltingly, “Nélson sent me here. He said you’d be needing some company.”

  She stayed where she was, with the doorknob still in her hand, almost smiling.

  I told her Nélson was mistaken, that I was dead tired.

  “Later, maybe,” I said, signaling for her to close the door.

  “Let me sleep,” I demanded, my voice hoarse. But she didn’t obey me. She closed the door and came over to the head of the bed, asked if maybe I was sick, if I was sure I didn’t need her.

  Then she sat on the bed at the level of my knees, touched my feet, and said I should take off my clothes, put on fresh pajamas—nice-smelling, she’d get me some.

  “You wear pajamas?” I asked, underlining my voice with an angry tone.

  “They’re not mine,” she responded, “they’re my father’s. They’re what I took from him when I left home three years ago.”

  “Let’s see these pajamas.” As though giving the order in my sleep.

  In seconds she came back with the folded pajamas, and they actually did smell rather nice. You could smell them an arm’s length away. She waved them lightly under my nose and asked me if they weren’t just what I needed. I told her she was completely right and curled up, feeling blanched.

  Then she pulled off the covers and started to undress me, piece by piece. She had a way of doing it that got me to help. The last thing she took off were my socks. Then she started to dress me in the pajamas.

  With the pajamas on I turned back to the wall, the same position I’d been in when she arrived. She sat down beside my feet.

  “If you want you can keep the pajamas,” she said.

  “I’m not bringing anything with me,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m going to start doing,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to keep anything with me anymore,” she replied.

  Then she remained silent for a while. I almost didn’t move. I was staring at the wall like an Indian who senses he’s about to die.

  Suddenly, I broke the silence myself, just to see if she was still there.

  “Is your family Japanese?”

  “My parents both have Japanese parents, they live in Londrina, in Paraná. Tha
t’s where I ran away from three years ago. I hitchhiked all the way down Santa Catarina, sometimes doing whole stretches on foot, until I ended up here. I’ll stick around another six months.

  “And then where will you go?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to save up some cash, I’ll meet a friend of mine in Miami, she’s doing really well there. I’m going to try, too.”

  I asked her to turn out the light.

  When I awoke the next morning I was still turned to the wall. It was a white wall, but darkened by dampness in a few places, turning gray if not black.

  I heard Nélson’s voice. He had to be nearby, and was practically shouting as usual. One bit of what he yelled came through completely clear: he would no longer associate with weaklings. That, once he left for Australia, he didn’t want a single idiot in his field of vision. He would build an empire with two or three people as decisive as himself.

  “Think of Onassis, a guy who washed up in Argentina when he was still a kid living hand-to-mouth. Well, he ended up marrying America’s widow!” He was saying this as though speaking to a crowd.

  At this point, Nélson began to make burlesque shouting noises, sometimes howls like the ones I’d heard in the car as we arrived at the brothel. I let out a sigh that did me well to hear aloud. I concentrated on letting out another, but it didn’t work, it wasn’t reproducible.

  So then I got up, opened the lacy curtain, and saw the day. Out in front there rose some craggy-looking hills. To the left, if I looked out the corner of the window, low, dense plants stretched into the distance.

  There were no clouds. I opened the window, letting the sharp sun in. The weather promised to be warmer. Wind was blowing again, creating some movement on the surface of the trees’ leaves. I didn’t shut the window.

  My clothes had been placed tidily on the armchair. I went into the bathroom, shut the door.

  On the back of the door I saw an old calendar, 1986, from something called Fichter Transport. On the top part of the calendar was an image of Christ. Christ stripped of his robes, just a cloth around his thighs. Standing, his hands tied together with rope, his crown of thorns, drops of blood on his forehead. His pupils gazing on High.