Flashback Hotel

by Ivan Vladislavic

  “Do you mind not standing in front of the screen,” Mary said. Quentin ignored her, and she moved to the other end of the sofa.

  “Who seek to sow the seeds of discord and reap a harvest of bloody revolution,” the Prime Minister said.

  The camera began to zoom out and the Prime Minister grew smaller and smaller, until he was just six inches tall. He was seated behind a desk in an office filled with leather-bound books. He rose and came slowly round to the front of the desk.

  “To those who approach us as equals in the community of nations, we extend the hand of friendship.”

  A chubby hand reached out to Quentin. He put out his own hand and it tingled as it approached the screen and then slipped through into warm custard. The screen went blank and Quentin groped, closed his fingers around the Prime Minister and jerked him out of the box.

  In Quentin’s fist the Prime Minister looked even tinier than he had on the screen. He flashed and flickered, filling the space around him with a dirty cloud of electrons. “Put me back! Put me back this instant!” he shouted, beating his tiny fists on Quentin’s knuckles.

  Quentin turned to Mary, who was getting shakily to her feet, and said, “Look what I just did.”

  “You can’t do this!” the Prime Minister yelled. “By the powers vested in me I command you to put me back where you found me.”

  The voice was so full of authority and indignation that Quentin almost obeyed.

  He took one step towards the television set. But then the Prime Minister sank his teeth into Quentin’s forefinger, and Quentin gasped and dropped him. He careened off Quentin’s knee, arms and legs flailing, and fell with a soft thud on a bean bag. He jumped to his feet immediately, looked challengingly around him and began to scramble down to the carpet.

  “Get something to catch him in,” Quentin said.

  Mary ran to the kitchen. When she came back into the lounge with a salad bowl the Prime Minister was wobbling towards the television set. Quentin headed him off with a rolled-up newspaper and she dropped the bowl over him. There was a scratching sound against the inside of the bowl, and it inched forward. Then silence. Mary sat down on the arm of the sofa and looked at the message on the screen. We apologize for the short delay, it said, our technicians are working on the problem.

  “I hope we didn’t hurt him,” Mary said.

  “Of course not,” Quentin replied, nudging the bowl with his toe, “the little bastard’s as hard as nails.”

  Then he sat down heavily on the sofa and looked at his hand.

  They sat in silence, Mary chewing her fingernails and Quentin drinking from the bottle, until the Prime Minister’s office reappeared on the screen. A reporter was standing to attention in front of the desk. “Sorry about the break in transmission,” he said. “We’re sad to announce that the Prime Minister has suddenly taken ill and his address to the nation is therefore necessarily postponed. His doctor assures us that his condition is not serious. We will be issuing a full statement later this evening.”

  “Do you think he’s all right?” Mary said. “He’s very quiet in there.” When Quentin didn’t answer she went to the bowl, lifted it cautiously and peeped under it. “He’s not moving,” she said over her shoulder. Quentin studied the level of the liquor in the bottle.

  Mary prodded the inert form with her finger. “Oh God,” she said, “I think he’s dead.”

  Quentin sighed and squatted down beside her. “Just answer me one simple question. Do we like him?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she replied. “He’s human, isn’t he?”

  “Have we ever liked him?” he insisted.

  “No,” she was forced to admit.

  “Then why the hell should we start liking him now?”

  The Prime Minister groaned and sat up, rubbing his head.

  “He’s not even dead,” Quentin said. He picked the Prime Minister up by the scruff of his neck and shook him. Then he held him up to his face and said, “Now what should we do with you?”

  The Prime Minister began to struggle, kicking and punching at the air. Quentin smiled and rocked him back and forth.

  “Please, Quentin,” Mary said, tugging at his sleeve.

  “All right then. What do you think we should do with him?”

  “We could keep him…”

  “Keep him!”

  “My mother has a printer’s tray full of little things that would be perfect for him: beermugs, teacups –”

  “Who’s going to feed him?” Quentin demanded.

  “We could take turns.”

  “Out of the question. Here, hold him while I have a piss.”

  When he returned, Mary was sitting on the sofa with the Prime Minister cradled in her palm, his arms folded and his chin on his chest. Quentin sat down next to Mary and put his arm around her shoulders. He examined the bald patch on the back of the Prime Minister’s head. Then he kissed Mary’s ear and whispered, “You’re right. It could be a lot of fun to keep him – for a while at least.”

  * * *

  —

  Mary crept down the passage, avoiding the floorboards she knew would creak, and peered into the kitchen. She could see the cage on the counter of the breakfast nook, bathed in cold moonlight from the window. She went closer slowly. The Prime Minister had his back to her. He was slumped – disconsolately, she thought – on a pile of sunflower seeds, with his head resting against the bars. He had taken off his jacket and folded it into a pillow, and that was under his neck; he had loosened his tie and slipped his braces off his shoulders. His feet were propped up on a corner of the water bowl. As she watched, one hand moved up to his face and a pinprick of coal glowed briefly. There was a pause, and then a small cloud of baby-blue smoke drifted up. Mary pulled up a stool and rested her elbows on the counter so that her face was just inches from the bars.

  The Prime Minister’s eyes were closed. He could have been asleep, except that his hand rose and fell, and his face brightened and faded in the glow from his cigarette.

  Mary tapped a fingernail on one of the bars. The Prime Minister’s lip curled and then his eyes opened slowly and looked into hers.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling.

  He stared at her.

  She reached a finger in through the bars and scratched the side of his head. He jerked his head away, strode angrily to the other side of the cage and sat down with his back to her.

  Mary turned the cage around so that she could see his face. “You’re incredibly cute,” she said.

  The Prime Minister ground his cigarette out, lay down on his side and pulled the collar of his shirt up over his ears.

  After a while Quentin called from the bedroom and Mary went back to bed.

  * * *

  —

  The first meal Mary gave the Prime Minister consisted of a morsel of mashed potato, a sliver of steak, and a pea, all carefully laid out in the lid of a milk bottle. The Prime Minister took one look at it and threw it in a corner. The whole of the next day he refused to eat. On the following morning he ate some oats and a raisin, and banged his plate against the bars for more.

  That night Mary got up for some water and heard a strange squeaking sound coming from the kitchen. Going quietly nearer she saw the Prime Minister, stripped to his underpants and with his tie knotted around his head, jogging on the treadmill.

  And in this haphazard fashion things settled into a routine.

  Mary fed the Prime Minister and saw to it that his cage was kept clean. She provided him with little things from toyshops, most of which he threw out of the cage when her back was turned. The one object he seemed pleased with was a recliner, complete with a miniature antimacassar and lace-edged scatter cushions. One morning Mary found the Prime Minister’s clothes in a pile next to his breakfast dishes, so she washed them for him. She also gave him a bowl of water and retired disc
reetly to another room. Though she heard him singing as he splashed around in the bath, he still refused to speak to her.

  Mary found the Prime Minister fascinating. She spent hours each day watching him as he paced around with his hands clasped behind his back, or sat day-dreaming in his chair, or did his exercises. In the evenings, after Quentin came in from work, Mary had to watch over the Prime Minister to protect him.

  Quentin’s hatred for the Prime Minister did not diminish with time. He seized every opportunity to torment him. He poured water over him, he threatened him with cigarette lighters, he banged things down on the counter next to the cage when he was napping. Every evening over supper, while the Prime Minister ate his miniature version of the meal with his back purposefully turned, Quentin would read out the latest official news.

  “This morning the Prime Minister was discharged from hospital. His doctor is still refusing to comment on the precise nature of the illness that struck him down mysteriously last Saturday. However, he described his condition as satisfactory. After his discharge the Prime Minister retired to his country residence to recuperate.”

  The Prime Minister would carry on chewing as if he hadn’t heard.

  Only once did Mary feel the desire to hurt him, and this was in an attempt to provoke him out of his stubborn silence. She was washing the dishes one morning, chatting away to him about her childhood, her parents, her sister who had emigrated, and looked up to see that he wasn’t listening at all. He was lying on his back examining the mechanism of the treadmill. She grabbed an old newspaper off the vegetable rack and was about to bang on the cage with it, but her eye caught the headline and instead she tore off the front page and stuffed it in through the bars. She smiled as the Prime Minister wrestled with it and then, when he had succeeded in spreading it out, paced out its meaning with his hands behind his back and a tear on his cheek. The page showed a photograph of the Prime Minister’s wife, smiling bravely into the camera, and below that a report to the effect that the Prime Minister was still not well enough to speak to reporters. There was also an editorial which speculated that the Prime Minister’s political career was over, and listed the five people most likely to succeed him. When he wrung his hands over that, Mary started to laugh. The Prime Minister flew into a rage, overturning his chair and kicking sawdust through the bars.

  After this incident Mary felt terrible. She apologized at length, assuring him that she wasn’t really at all like Quentin, but the Prime Minister maintained a wounded silence.

  * * *

  —

  One evening the three of them were watching television. At Mary’s insistence the Prime Minister’s cage had been placed on a kitchen stool quite close to the set. Although she had motivated the concession to Quentin on humanitarian grounds, her main concern was to keep a protective eye on the Prime Minister.

  During the commercial break before the late news the Prime Minister heaved himself out of his chair and went to urinate in the cup Mary had provided for that purpose in a corner of his cage.

  Quentin suddenly burst out: “That’s it! I can’t take it any more!” He grabbed the cage and stormed through to the kitchen.

  “Please, Quentin,” Mary pleaded, running after him.

  Quentin put the plug in the sink and turned on the water. “I won’t tolerate his presence in this house another minute!” he shouted. “What the hell are we going to do with him? We can’t just keep him until he dies. He could live for another thirty years.” He turned off the tap and reached into the cage. The Prime Minister clung tenaciously to the bars, but one firm tug was enough to pull him loose. Mary flung herself on Quentin but he shoved her away and plunged the Prime Minister under the water.

  A stream of bubbles boiled to the surface.

  “He’s talking under water,” Mary said in a small voice.

  Quentin pulled the Prime Minister out of the water and threw him down on the counter. “This is fucking impossible!” he shouted, and went back to the lounge to watch the news.

  Mary put her finger on the Prime Minister’s damp belly and pressed. Water spilled from the slack lips, and then his chest shuddered and began to rise and fall. She lifted him gently, laid him out on a dishcloth and blew in his face. After a while he stirred and sat up, choking. He was trying to say something. Mary patted him on his back.

  “He’s crazy,” the Prime Minister finally said in a gush of water.

  “There there,” Mary said, pushing him down onto his back, “you must rest. You’ve been through a horrible experience.”

  The Prime Minister lay quietly for several minutes while Mary stroked his forehead. Then he pushed himself tiredly into a sitting position. “In the circumstances,” he said, choking back a sob, “I’m ready to talk.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a formal meeting, with Mary in the chair.

  Quentin sat on a stool at one end of the breakfast nook counter, the Prime Minister sat in his recliner at the other. The cage had been put away where he couldn’t see it. Once he was out of the cage the Prime Minister seemed to grow in stature. He sat with an air of dignified despair, appropriate to an honourable surrender, his fingers meshed together in his lap, his legs crossed, one shiny black shoe swinging.

  “I declare this meeting open,” Mary said.

  The Prime Minister rose, looked around the room as if acknowledging a silent audience, then cleared his throat, and began: “Ladies and gentlemen. You see before you a man who was once the proud leader –”

  “You’re not half the man you used to be,” Quentin put in.

  The Prime Minister looked gravely at the toe of his shoe, then began again. “Ladies and gentlemen. My friend’s manner may be insulting, but there is a measure of truth in his words. I stand before you alone, humiliated –”

  “Belittled,” Quentin said.

  The Prime Minister stamped his foot. He addressed himself to the chair. “In the name of decency, will you stop this man from interrupting me.”

  “Please, Quentin,” Mary said, “let him have his say.”

  “He’s not in parliament now,” Quentin said.

  “My boy…,” the Prime Minister said.

  “Ha!” Quentin shouted, banging his fist on the counter so hard that the Prime Minister lost his footing and fell on his hands and knees. Quentin burst out laughing. The Prime Minister picked himself up, dusted the knees of his suit, and sat down in his recliner. He crossed his legs deliberately and said, “I demand an apology for this childish behaviour.”

  Mary looked at Quentin.

  “You’re not serious,” he said.

  He saw that she was.

  There was a silence in which Quentin tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and the Prime Minister rubbed his knees.

  At last Quentin said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” the Prime Minister said.

  “Let’s begin again then,” Mary said. “Quentin, please control your temper. Mr Prime Minister – proceed, and please make it brief.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Forgive me if I do not rise. Through no fault of my own, my knees hurt. Let me come straight to the point. What we have here is a classic case of interdependence. I need you, for practical reasons: food, water, a roof over my head. Incidentally, the question of living-quarters is one I’d like to come back to later on. As I was saying, I need you. You also need me. The reasons you need me are rather different. I amuse you. I keep you company. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the dearth of human fellowship around here. But perhaps I could come back to that as well later on.”

  The meeting lasted four hours. Quentin smoked fifteen cigarettes. The Prime Minister, who was dying for a cigarette himself, bit his nails and jogged his foot. He wrung his hands. He limped around on the counter waving his fist and wagging his finger. Quentin spat at him and bombed him with peanuts. Eventually the P
rime Minister, in a frenzy of frustration at his inability to overturn the ashtray, scooped up handfuls of ash and rubbed them into his face.

  At last the meeting was over. The minutes, as Mary set them down, recorded that

  (1) Quentin would attempt to secure the Prime Minister’s wife without using unnecessary force or causing her unnecessary anguish.

  (2) The Prime Minister’s living-quarters would be improved.

  (3) Quentin would refrain from taunting the Prime Minister without due cause.

  (4) The Prime Minister in turn would do his best not to antagonize Quentin by refraining from, among other things, urinating in his presence or trying to escape.

  After the meeting Mary installed the Prime Minister in one corner of the spare room. The Prime Minister, in his new spirit of conciliation, offered to carry the recliner through himself, but eventually gave up halfway down the passage and allowed Mary to carry him and his furniture the rest of the way.

  That night the Prime Minister couldn’t sleep. He roamed the expanses of the wall-to-wall carpet and charted the limits of his new homeland.

  * * *

  —

  For seven full evenings they sat in front of the television set, Quentin perched on a stool within easy reach of the screen, hands tingling, the Prime Minister in his recliner on top of another stool, holding thumbs conspicuously, Mary sitting quietly on the sofa behind them.

  Getting the Prime Minister had been a simple enough task; getting his wife proved to be more difficult. It required calculations of scale and definition that hadn’t occurred to Quentin before. In the weeks after her husband vanished she made frequent appearances on the box (or in the box, as Quentin put it). They saw her almost every night, looking bravely into the camera and describing a relapse or a recovery. But the camera was usually focused on her face, and the opportunity for snatching her was lost. On the one occasion when she was shown in full figure, she must have been all of twelve inches tall, and Quentin, on the point of making a grab for her, saw the look of horror on the Prime Minister’s face and stopped himself.