Hotel Silence

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  “And are you and your brother the owners of the hotel?”

  She hesitates.

  “No, our auntie. She’s actually left the country. You could say we run it for her.”

  Then she’s about to add something but holds back.

  I feel the need to fully understand:

  “And you live here with the boy, you and your brother? In the hotel?”

  She nods and says they’re waiting for a house in the town. The house she intends to move into—along with some other women and her son and brother—was damaged and has no water or electricity.

  “Meanwhile, we live here,” she says, and disappears into the bathroom to place some towels. I hear her unscrew the tap.

  “The water is clear,” she says in amazement. She is standing in the doorway.

  “There’s no more sand,” she adds.

  “I cleared the pipes.”

  I hear her turning on the shower.

  “The shower works too. And the water is hot,” she says from inside the bathroom.

  She’s astonished.

  “Yes, I just had to unscrew the showerhead and clear out the sand and mud inside it.”

  Then she’s suddenly at the window and has drawn up the blind.

  “We used to come here on our holidays as children, my brother and I,” I hear her say.

  She stands silently by the window a moment, with her back turned to me.

  “There,” she then says, pointing out the window. “Against that wall people were shot. There was a bakery beside it and it was difficult to avoid that corner.”

  I approach the window.

  “There?”

  “Yes. The bullet holes can still be seen in the wall. Anywhere people formed a group or a line there was the risk of being shot.” And she explains that there were battles between neighbourhoods and there was a state of siege, so that some districts were isolated for months on end.

  “The people survived by passing food through a tunnel,” she adds.

  I think about this. Looking from the window it’s difficult to work out where the sniper might have been positioned.

  She becomes silent but then continues:

  “There are a number of theories on who the shooter was.” She hesitates and looks over her shoulder, as if trying to ensure that no one is standing at the door.

  Unless she is checking on the boy.

  “I’ve heard it’s a member of the choir,” she says, adjusting the elastic in her hair.

  All over the city

  I am buried

  Apart from fixing the wardrobe door there are no other chores on the list today. No one knows about me and no one is expecting me. I know that my mother, beyond the ice-cold ocean, is listening to the afternoon story on the radio and eating her rhubarb pudding with cream, but no one expects anything from me. I haven’t been jobless for twenty-six years. What am I to do with a whole six days? Excluding seven hours of sleep, that leaves me with seventeen hours a day to be filled.

  “Seventeen times six equals a hundred and two hours,” Mom would have immediately answered.

  That means that the glowing star will rise above the earth’s horizon six more times.

  Is there still something I want to do?

  I could go sightseeing, particularly since I’ve now repeated the claim that I’m on vacation ten times. What church, what museum, what archaeological sites should I visit?

  Yesterday the brother at the reception desk had no recollection of the existence of a mosaic mural or other relics, maybe he’ll remember them today.

  I ring the bell twice, it takes the young man ten minutes to appear. When he finally does, he is busy doing up the buttons of his white shirt. I notice he is wearing tracksuit trousers and sneakers and has dust and grey particles in his hair that look like plaster or putty, as if he had been working with cement. He has headphones around his neck, which he takes off and places on the desk without turning off Lorde.

  I ask him about the mosaic mural again:

  “Have you found out anything about that mural? The antiquities?”

  “No, unfortunately,” he says. “It takes a long time. I’m working on it.”

  I give him more clues and tell him that, according to the information I found online—to be more precise, on Hotel Silence’s website—the wall is divided in two. One part dates back to antiquity, while the other is a more recent addition connected to the health spa the hotel advertises.

  “You can’t rely on everything you see on the Web,” says the young man. “Besides, that was before the war,” he explains. “A lot has changed since then.” He then thanks me for reminding him to update the website.

  “I’ll continue to make enquiries and will let you know if I find anything,” he adds, focusing his attention on adjusting the stack of maps on the counter.

  He then wants to know where I’m off to.

  “Going on a walk.”

  Then, as quick as a flash, he unfolds a map of the town and repeats yesterday’s instructions on the places I shouldn’t set foot if I don’t want to be reduced to a maimed trunk; not here and absolutely not here. And once again he warns me about deserted areas.

  “The sun also shines on the surface of graves,” he concludes, folding the map again. And because I have slept through breakfast, he recommends the only open restaurant down the road. If I want, he can call the owner and let him know to expect me. That way I could be sure he’s cooked something.

  I suddenly realise that the young man could be my son’s age, that is to say if I had managed to create another living being.

  You who I cross upon

  Here I am down on the earth.

  Literally speaking.

  I spread out the map of the town square. The weather is still and warm and the air is golden with dust.

  In the square there is a flock of grey pigeons. I remember what the cabdriver said yesterday:

  “Even the birds vanished in the war.”

  Machinery can be heard in the distance, some construction is being done in the town. I meander down narrow streets and feel like I’m always turning at the same corner. Some of the houses look intact, but others were clearly abandoned in haste. There aren’t many people about, but in some odd way many of the faces look strangely familiar. There’s a woman who looks like my ex-sister-in-law, Gudrún’s sister, and for a moment I think I catch a glimpse of Svanur’s back. I scrutinise the people but they don’t look back at me. Many of them are missing an arm or a leg or some other body part that others normally possess as a pair.

  Then I remember when Gudrún asked me out of the blue whether I would donate her a kidney if she ever needed one. I said yes and asked if she was ill, but she said no. I thought, what if she asks about my heart? Would I then tell her that I’ll gladly give her anything that I have more than one of?

  “Those are the kind of questions women ask,” Svanur would have said. “A sign of them putting you to the test.”

  Ultimately, I must reach the wall peppered with bullet holes. Sure enough, I reach the wall that faces my hotel-room window and examine it up close, standing in the very footsteps of those unsuspecting people shot at on some afternoon or starlit night. I stroke the lukewarm stone, slipping my fingers into the bullet holes.

  “People dream simple dreams,” Svanur would say. “To avoid getting pointlessly shot and hoping your children will remember you.” Judging by the density of the holes, it does not seem unlikely that executions happened here. But the cabdriver had said they were carried out on the soccer fields.

  The hotel is in my direct line of view, and when I focus my gaze on the second floor, where my bedroom window is, for a moment I get the feeling that someone is standing behind the glass and observing me, someone who turns on the light and then turns it off just as swiftly again, as if playing with the switch or sending important Morse code messages to the town: No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking.

  Time is full of dead cats

  Since I’m not
dying today, I need to eat.

  It isn’t difficult to find Restaurant Limbo, which the young man pointed out to me on the map. It’s located on the main street between the town’s hair salon, which is closed—although two hairdresser’s chairs and a large photograph of a young Sophia Loren are on display in the window—and a children’s boutique, which is also closed, like most of the other stores on the street. I try to decipher the signs in the windows to understand what was housed where. Some of the brand names are international and I recognise a poster of a well-known brand hanging inside a shuttered shop window: “Life is short, let’s buy jeans.” Opposite the restaurant there is another children’s clothing store, and beside that a sign reads Pizza Verona and another reads Café Amsterdam, both places deserted and closed. On my way I pass a boarded-up cinema displaying a poster of Bruce Willis, with bulging biceps and soot on his forehead, in a broken display case by the entrance.

  The red curtains in the windows of Restaurant Limbo are drawn, so it’s impossible to see inside, but as soon as I approach, the doors open wide.

  The man who escorts me to a table by the window tells me they phoned from the hotel to let them know I was on my way, so that the “dish of the day” is already in the oven.

  He places a handwritten sheet marked “Dish of the Day” in front of me with no further clarification and a ridiculously low price beside it. I realise that I could survive several weeks in this country on the money I exchanged at the airport.

  “Very good,” says the man.

  He places a fork, a glass, and a cloth napkin on the table and gets me a beer. “Neptunus,” the label reads on the bottle.

  I’m the only customer in the place.

  “You won’t be disappointed,” he adds. “Speciality.” I wait half an hour for the food while the man chats with me, an apron tied around his neck and a tea towel tossed over his shoulder. He wants to know what I’m doing in town and, like the cabdriver, asks if I’m on a special mission.

  I tell him I’m on vacation and by way of emphasis point a finger at the map of the town I have spread out on the table.

  He wants to know where I’m from and whether there have been any recent wars there.

  “Not since 1238,” I say.

  “So you didn’t participate in the air raids?”

  “No, we don’t have an army.”

  He then says that he’s heard that I fixed a wardrobe door at the hotel this morning.

  “That kind of news spreads fast,” he says, and I notice he is wearing impeccably polished, elegant black shoes, like many of the men I have seen on my walk.

  He doesn’t wait for any confirmation, but instead informs me of what the young man at the hotel has already shared, that the hotel is owned by the aunt of the siblings who run it. That she—that is to say, the aunt—is a widow who inherited the hotel from one of her husband’s relatives and that she has left the country.

  “Many people died in the war and so it is not always clear who owns what.”

  I notice a curled-up cat in a corner of the room. He’s the first four-legged creature I’ve encountered in this town. When the man moves away to fetch my food, the cat stands and coils itself at my feet. As I bend down to pet the animal, I get the feeling I’ve seen this striped grey cat with a black muzzle before. He looks like a female cat I’ve sometimes petted on my street at home; it all fits, same bone structure, same fur, same bushy tail.

  “There weren’t many animals left in town at the end of the war,” says the owner when he returns, nodding towards the kitten. And then adds: “The meat is not unlike rabbit meat.”

  He places the dish in front of me and even though it’s quite dark inside the restaurant, I see from the shape and bone structure of the roast that it’s the meat of some small animal. He makes a separate trip to fetch a knife and turns the handle of the razor-sharp blade towards me as he passes it.

  A knife can be used to slice bread just as easily as a man’s throat, I think to myself.

  I’m a man who is not fussy about food and eats anything that is put in front of me when I’m hungry. I occasionally used to buy a hot dog on my way home from work and don’t cook elaborate meals, but rather buy chops in breadcrumbs and fry them with Season-All and eat them straight off the pan as soon as they’re ready, standing over the stove.

  It occurs to me that the meal might be a bird and I try to remember what migrant birds stop in these parts before setting across the turbulent grey ocean to build a nest on a heath between two tussocks on a bright spring island. The owner, who has positioned himself by the edge of the table to watch me debone the meat, confirms my suspicions.

  “Pigeon,” he says.

  It all makes sense, he got the contents of the menu from the street.

  “Not a white one, actually,” he adds. “We don’t have all the ingredients that we want.”

  The dish comes as a surprise and turns out to be tasty.

  I ask about the spice and the owner lights up with interest.

  “Cumin” is the answer. “Very good?” he says, simultaneously nodding his head to indicate that this is both a question and an affirmation. The recipe was supposed to include mushrooms, but they have been removed from the menu since it is too dangerous to pick them.

  The owner stands over me and waits for me to put my cutlery down beside the carcass of the bird, so that he can take the plate away. He scurries into the kitchen and swiftly returns, coffee is on its way. He places two cups on the table and two tumblers, drags over a chair from the next table, and sits opposite me to chat some more. The coffee is strong, as is the schnapps, but both are good. Despite being alone in the establishment, he quickly glances over his shoulder, lowers his voice, and says he’s heard I travel with a drill.

  “Yes, and we heard that you checked out the pipes at Hotel Silence.”

  I don’t ask who’s “we.”

  “No, the fact is,” he says, finishing his coffee and downing his tumbler in one gulp, “that I wanted to ask if you might be able to help me make a door.”

  I tell him I’m on vacation—it’s the third time I mention it.

  The man continues regardless and says he wants to change the entrance into the restaurant, to have a door on hinges that will open both in and out.

  “And so that it will be possible to see who is coming in,” he adds.

  Before I manage to protest any further, he has pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket, which he unfolds and smoothes out with the palms of his hands. He lays it out on the table in front of me.

  “With wings. Swinging doors,” he says, pointing at his amateurish pencil drawing.

  Judging by the sketch, the doors are to be on hinges and curved in shape. He has put a lot of work into the curves and used an eraser unsparingly.

  “Yes, like in the Wild West,” I say.

  The man sitting opposite me has the expression of one who has finally met a person who understands him. He nods.

  “You got it. John Wayne. The invincible one.”

  I tell him I’m no carpenter and that, apart from anything else, I don’t have the right tools and prepare to stand.

  “No problem,” he answers. “You’re a handyman and I’ll get the tools for you.”

  He shakes his head when I pull out my wallet with the intention of paying. Instead he wants to know if I’ll take a look at his pipes for him. In the kitchen.

  “Later,” I say.

  “Yes, next time,” he says.

  He follows me to the door, as does the cat who stands up when I do. It is then that I realise that one of the cat’s eyes is shut, that it’s a one-eyed cat. I bend over to stroke its fur.

  “Cats have always outlived man,” he says. “If not your cat, then someone else’s.”

  The man stands in the doorway and points at a sign in a dark window across the road. I’d noticed similar signs all over town: “Room for Rent.”

  “Most houses rent rooms to tourists. We hope things are picking up a
gain. Yesterday the other foreigner in the hotel came to eat and today you, so we have every reason to be optimistic.”

  An urge

  to touch

  a woman

  When I get back to the hotel, the movie star is standing at the reception desk talking to the young man. They both suddenly fall silent as I enter.

  She turns and greets me.

  I find this difficult to explain, but I’m suddenly overcome by an urge to touch the woman, to caress her lower back, a feeling somewhere between stroking a cat and a newly smoothened wall. It is immediately followed by another feeling, like looking forward to calm weather or a spring that doesn’t arrive—not at the time or in the manner one expects.

  “I’m still trying to find out about that mosaic mural,” says the young man hurriedly and turns his attention back to the woman again. He mutters something to her in hushed tones and I sense he’s explaining something to do with me, because she swirls around and looks at me, and then nods at him approvingly.

  On the way down the corridor to my room I hear someone calling me—a man of my age, standing in his doorway in a white robe and leopard print socks and thick, hairy calves protruding in between. The belt of the robe dangles loosely at his waist. I deduce this must be the other foreigner.

  He is holding a bottle of light yellow liquid in one hand and a toothbrush glass in the other and wants to invite me in for a drink.

  “No, thank you,” I say, adding that I’m on my way to my room.

  As soon as I say this, I realise it doesn’t sound like a sufficiently pressing errand because he says: “Are you in such a hurry? We could also play a round of chess. Do you know Tal’s attack strategy?”

  He waves the bottle and takes one step down the narrow corridor, leaning one hand against the opposite wall, effectively blocking my path.

  He says he heard a drill in the next room and has drawn the conclusion that I am working on the building.

  I tell him I’m on vacation.

  It delights him as if I’d hit the nail on the head.

  He rephrases his question and wants to know who I’m working for.