Grand Hotel

by Vicki Baum

  Doctor Zinnowitz and General Manager Preysing, two quite correct gentlemen, left the Winter Garden with their well-worn briefcases under their arms, crossed the corridor, and passed by the hall porter’s desk to reach the Lobby. Here there were many other men like them, all with the same kind of briefcases and all carrying on the same kind of discussion. But now a few women too had made their appearance, fresh from their baths and perfumed after their morning toilet. Their lips were neatly painted and they pulled on their gloves with careless ease before passing through the revolving door to the street whose gray surface was bathed in yellow sunshine.

  Just as they were crossing the Lobby to the telephone room, Preysing heard his name called. Pageboy No. 18 was going along the passage calling out at regular intervals, in his clear, careless, boyish voice: “General Manager Preysing! General Manager Preysing of Fredersdorf! General Manager Preysing!”

  “Here,” called Preysing and put out his hand for a telegram: “Excuse me,” he said and read it as he walked beside Doctor Zinnowitz through the Lobby. He went cold to the roots of his hair as he read it.

  The telegram ran: “Negotiations with Burleigh & Son irrevocably broken off. Brösemann.”

  That’s finished it. You need not send for the typist, Doctor Zinnowitz. It’s finished. Manchester is done with, thought Preysing while drawing nearer to the telephone room. He stuck the telegram into his coat pocket and gripped it there spasmodically between his thumb and forefinger. Finished. There’s no need to have any copies made, he thought, and intended to say it aloud. But he did not say it. He cleared his throat, which was still husky after his overnight journey. “It has turned into quite a fine day,” was what he said.

  “Yes. We’re at the end of March now,” answered Zinnowitz, who had put off his business manner and become a private person with an eye for the ladies’ silk stockings. “Booth No. 2 will be free in a moment,” said the operator, with his fingers on the red and green plugs.

  Preysing leaned against the padded door of the booth and stared mechanically through the glass panel at a broad back inside the booth. Zinnowitz was saying something, but he paid no attention. He felt an immeasurable fury against Brösemann, this blockhead of a confidential clerk who fired off telegrams like this to him just when he needed back-up to pull off a troublesome deal. No doubt the old man was behind it with his senile spite. Now you’re in the soup and let’s see what you make of it, he would be saying with malicious joy. The poor general manager could have cried. His nerves were in a pitiful state after his sleepless night. He was worried to death, and his upright principles were no match for all these wretched and baffling complications. He tried to get his thoughts in order, but they twisted and turned in his brain. By his side Doctor Zinnowitz was talking in the tone of a man-about-town about a new Theater Review done all in silver, entirely in silver. Then he felt the door of the telephone booth against which he was leaning for support being gently but firmly pushed open and a large and strikingly handsome fellow in a blue jacket forced his way out with a friendly air; indeed, instead of taking it amiss, he politely apologized. Preysing absentmindedly stared him straight in the face. He saw it with a strange distinctness at very close quarters, and he too muttered a conventional apology. Zinnowitz was already in the booth. He was engaging the services of Flamm the Second, some competent female who was to make copies of letters, and it was now all utterly pointless. Preysing knew well enough that he ought to put a stop to it, but he could not gather the energy to do it.

  “I’ve set it up,” said Doctor Zinnowitz as he came out of the booth. “Flämmchen will be here at three. There are plenty of typewriters in the hotel. I shall have the letters by five. I’ll speak to you on the phone before the conference. We’ll bring it off yet. Au revoir.”

  “Au revoir,” said Preysing to the whirling reflections of the revolving door as it ejected the lawyer into the street. Outside the sun was shining. Outside a small destitute man was selling violets. Outside no one was worried by amalgamations and troublesome contracts. Preysing had kept the telegram tightly gripped in his right-hand coat pocket until Doctor Zinnowitz finally disappeared in a taxi. He now took it out and holding it in his left hand went to a table in the Lobby. There he carefully smoothed it out and folded it neatly together, and then he put it in the breast pocket of his neat dark gray suit.

  •

  At five minutes past three the telephone roused Herr Preysing from his afternoon nap. He jumped up from the couch on which he had lain down after taking off his shoes, shirt collar and jacket. He had that comfortless and disagreeable feeling which is the usual result of snatching a few minutes’ sleep in a hotel. The heavy yellow curtains were drawn. The room was full of dry hot air from the central heating. His right cheek was marked with the impress of his travelling cushion. The telephone kept ringing insistently. A lady was waiting for the general manager in the Lobby, the hall porter announced. “Send her up,” said Preysing and began hastily to make himself presentable. Unexpected difficulties, however, were raised most politely on the telephone. The hotel had its rules and regulations. Rohna, the reception clerk, himself communicated them to Herr Preysing with many apologetic regrets and the smile of a man of the world. It was not allowed to receive ladies in one’s bedroom and unfortunately no exceptions could be made. “But, good heavens! This is no visit from a lady. It’s my secretary, as you can see for yourself, and I have some work for her,” Preysing said impatiently. The smile of the reception clerk became almost audible. The general manager was requested to be so good as to take the lady to the room specially provided for such purposes. Preysing rang off, replacing the receiver with a violent jerk as he did so. He felt that he was being submitted to the most shocking inconvenience. He washed his hands, gargled with mouthwash, wrestled with his collar stud and tie, and hurried down to the Lobby.

  In the Lobby sat Flämmchen, Miss Flamm the Second, the sister of Miss Flamm the First. Two sisters less alike could scarcely be imagined. Preysing had a vague recollection of Flamm the First as a most reliable person with colorless hair, a detachable sleeve on her right arm and a paper cuff on her left who, with an uncompromising air, barred the way to undesired callers in Doctor Zinnowitz’s outer office. Flamm the Second, Flämmchen, on the other hand, had not a trace of this stolid demeanor. She was leaning back in an arm-chair as though she were quite at home in such surroundings; she was swinging one foot in a neat shoe of light blue leather, and looked as if she was out to have a jolly good time. She was, as her whole appearance testified, at most twenty years old.

  “Doctor Zinnowitz sent me to make the copies. I ought to explain, I am Flämmchen, the person he said he would send along,” she said without ceremony. She had a dab of red lipstick in the center of her lips, dabbed on quite casually, merely because it was the fashion. When she stood up it became apparent that she was taller than the general manager. Her legs were long and her figure from head to foot was magnificent. She wore a tight leather belt round her remarkably slender waist. Preysing was furious with Zinnowitz for putting him into such an idiotic situation. The scruples of the reception clerk were now very understandable. She was wearing perfume too. He wanted to send her home. “We had better be quick, hadn’t we?” she said in the deep and slightly husky voice that young girls often have. Pepsy, his elder daughter, had had a voice like that as a child.

  “So you are Miss Flamm’s sister? I know Miss Flamm,” he said. There was more rudeness than surprise in his voice. Flamm the Second pushed out her underlip and blew away a lock of hair that hung over her forehead beneath her small felt hat. The little golden curl rose in the air and fell slowly back onto her forehead again. Preysing did not wish to look, but looked all the same. “Stepsister,” said Flämmchen. “I am the daughter of our father’s second wife. But we get on quite well.”

  “I see,” said Preysing and looked at her with troubled eyes. So now she was to make copies of letters from a correspondence that was finished with, that was utterly senseles
s, utterly unreal. For months he had been counting on the agreement with Burleigh & Son, reckoning on it in all his plans, and he could not readjust himself all at once. It was simply beyond him to wipe this affair utterly from his mind. Irrevocably broken off. Brösemann. Irrevocably. There was a letter to Brösemann to dictate as well, a stinger. To the old man, too, about the forty thousand. If the Chemnitz affair fell through tomorrow, the forty thousand for steadying the market had been thrown to the winds.

  “Right. Come along to the writing room, then,” said Preysing and, filled with gloom, he preceded her along the corridor. Flämmchen with a smile of amusement kept her eyes on the roll of flesh at the back of his neck as she followed him.

  Already the typewriters could be heard in the distance like faint machine-gun fire, with their bells ringing at regular intervals. When Preysing opened the door, volumes of cigar smoke came eddying out in huge coils. “Fine acoustics,” said Flämmchen with a little sniff. Inside the room a man was walking to and fro with his hands behind his back and his hat on the back of his head, dictating in a nasal American voice. He was the manager of a film company. He looked Flämmchen up and down with the rapid glance of a connoisseur and went on dictating.

  “This won’t do,” said Preysing and slammed the door shut again. “I must have the room to myself. All these annoyances at every turn in this hotel.”

  This time he walked behind Flämmchen along the corridor. He was in a rage now, and in the midst of his rage, the swaying of Flämmchen’s hips warmed and pricked his senses. In the Lobby Flämmchen once more attracted all eyes. She was a magnificent example of the female form—of that there seemed no possible doubt. Preysing found it extremely unpleasant to be making his way across the Lobby in the company of so striking a creature, and he left her to stand where she was while he arranged with Rohna for some undisturbed time in the typewriting room. Flämmchen, entirely unmoved by the looks that were fixed upon her from all sides (she was used to this, Heaven knows!), carelessly powdered her nose, and then, without moving from the spot, took a cigarette case from the pocket of her coat with a free and easy air and began to smoke. Preysing approached her as if she were a thicket of nettles.

  “We shall have to wait ten minutes,” he said.

  “Bon!” said Flämmchen. “But after that we must be quick. I’m supposed to be back at Zinnowitz’s by five.”

  “Are you so punctual as all that?” asked Preysing sullenly.

  “Rather!” answered Flämmchen, and laughed roguishly in a way that made her nose quite short like a baby’s while her light brown eyes darted a sidelong glance at him.

  “Well, take a seat till then,” said Preysing. “And have something. Waiter, get the lady something,” he said tactlessly and made his retreat.

  Flämmchen ordered a Pêche Melba and nodded her head quite happily. Also she blew again at her lock of hair, but without success. She was as beautifully built as a racehorse and as natural in her movements as a puppy.

  Baron Gaigern, who had been wandering about the Lobby for several minutes, looked at her from the distance with unaffected admiration. After a moment he went up to her and said in a low voice: “May I take a seat beside you? But surely you have not forgotten me? Didn’t I dance with you in Baden-Baden?”

  “Impossible. I’ve never been to Baden-Baden,” said Flämmchen and took a good look at him.

  “A thousand apologies. I see now, I must have made an error and mistaken you for someone else,” said the Baron hypocritically. Flämmchen laughed at this. “You can’t fool me with that old story,” she said drily. Gaigern laughed too.

  “Well, let’s drop that nonsense. I may sit here, may I? You are quite right. You could not be mistaken for anyone else. A girl like you is only seen once. Are you staying here? Are you going to be dancing this evening? Please—I should so much like to dance with you. Will you?”

  He put his hands on the table. Flämmchen’s were there already. There was a little space between his fingers and hers and the air between them began to vibrate. They looked at each other and they liked and understood each other instantly, these two young and charming people. “Good lord, you’ve got a way with you,” said Flämmchen, enchanted.

  And Gaigern answered, equally enchanted, “You promise then? You’ll come for the five o’clock tea?”

  “I can’t. I’ve work to do. But I’m free tonight.”

  “Oh, too bad, I’m not. What about tomorrow? Or the day after tomorrow at five o’clock? Here in the Yellow Pavilion? That’s settled then?”

  Flämmchen licked her ice cream spoon clean, and said nothing.

  What was there to say in any case? You picked up acquaintances the way you lit a cigarette. You took a few puffs just as you felt inclined and then you stamped out the little spark.

  “What is your name?” Gaigern asked meanwhile.

  “Flämmchen,” said she promptly. Immediately thereafter Preysing came up to the table with a proprietary air, and Gaigern politely made way for him by getting up and standing behind his chair.

  “We can get started now,” said Preysing irritably.

  Flämmchen extended a gloved hand to Gaigern while Preysing looked on with displeasure. He recognized Gaigern as the man who had come out of the telephone booth and once again he saw his face so distinctly that every pore and every little line in it was revealed.

  “Who is that?” he asked as he crossed the Lobby at Flämmchen’s side.

  “Oh, an acquaintance,” she replied.

  “Indeed. You have a number of acquaintances, no doubt?” “I can’t complain. It doesn’t do to make yourself too cheap. Besides I don’t always have time.”

  For some obscure reason this reply was comforting to the general manager.

  “Have you got a permanent job?” he asked.

  “Not at the moment. I am looking for one. Well, something will turn up. Something always turns up,” said Flämmchen philosophically. “I should like best of all to get involved with films, but it isn’t easy to get a start. If I could only get a start I should soon get on. But it’s so horribly difficult to make a start.” She looked with a troubled and comical expression into Preysing’s face. She was now like a young kitten. All the charm of a very young kitten appeared to meet in the changing expressions of her face. Preysing, who was far from recognizing such things, opened the door of the typewriting room, asking as he did so: “Why films in particular? You are all film mad.” Among the “all” was included his seventeen-year-old daughter, Babs, who adored films.

  “Oh, as to that, I have no illusions about it. But I photograph well. Everybody says so,” said Flämmchen and took off her coat. “Shorthand, or straight into the typewriter?”

  “Type it, please,” said Preysing. He was now more lively and in better humor. He had rid his mind of the fact that Manchester had fallen through, and as he took the first and so very promising letters of this correspondence from his portfolio he felt positively happy. Flämmchen was still taken up with her own affairs.

  “I am often photographed for the newspapers and such. They’ve taken pictures of me for advertisements for soaps, too. How did that come to be, you may ask? Well, one photographer tells another. I’m very good in the nude, you see. But it’s wretchedly paid. Ten marks a photo. Just imagine. No, the best thing would be if someone would take me travelling as his secretary this spring. Last year I went with a gentleman to Florence. He was working on a book—a professor— charming man he was. Oh well, something else will turn up this year too,” she said and set up the machine. It was evident she had her cares and just as evident that those cares weighed on her as little as the lock of hair which from time to time she blew up off her forehead. Preysing, who could not reconcile the casual allusion to the nude with any scheme of things to which he was accustomed, wanted to say something businesslike. Instead of that he said, gazing meanwhile at Flämmchen’s hands as she adjusted the paper: “How brown your hands are. Where did you find enough sun for that?”

  F
lämmchen inspected her hands, and then she drew her sleeve up a little way and looked earnestly at her brown skin. “That’s the snow. I went skiing in Vorarlberg. A friend of mine took me with him. It was glorious. You should have seen me when I got back. Shall we get started then?”

  Preysing walked through the thick cigar smoke to the farthest corner of the room and began to dictate from there.

  “Date—you’ve got the date? Dear Herr Brösemann, Bröse—got that? Referring to your telegram of this morning, I have to inform—”

  Flämmchen carried on with her right hand while with her left she removed her hat, which seemed to bother her. The room looked out onto a dark ventilation shaft and was lighted by green-shaded electric lights. In the midst of these business matters Preysing could not help thinking of a chest of drawers, an old chest of drawers of birch wood in the entrance hall at Fredersdorf.

  It came back to him that night when he woke up after dreaming of Flämmchen. Her hair had the color, the flame-like sheen of old birch wood, and the lights and shadows of its grain. This hair of hers was clearly before his eyes as he lay in bed at night, breathing the dry air of the hotel bedroom while the lights of the electric sign flitted across the drawn curtains. The briefcase on the table in the darkness got on his nerves. He got up and put it in his trunk, rinsed his mouth once more with mouthwash and once more washed his hands. The suite annoyed him. It was expensive and uncomfortable. It consisted of one small room with a sofa, a table and chairs, and a small bedroom with an adjoining bathroom. The bath faucet dripped, and the drip, drip, drip pursued him till he fell asleep. Once again he got out of bed and set the alarm clock. He had forgotten to buy the razor and would have to be early at the barber’s. He fell asleep and again dreamed of the typist and her birch-wood hair. He awoke once more. The light from the electric sign was still flitting across the curtains, and the nighttime hours in the strange bed seemed to him disagreeable and confused. He was in a panic at the thought of the meeting with Schweimann and Gerstenkorn, and his heart thumped in his chest. He had been in a strange confusion of mind ever since he handed over the letters from England and he had a persistent feeling that his hands were not clean. Last of all, just as he was falling into a doze, he heard someone come along the carpeted passage, whistling softly. It was the occupant of Room No. 69, who put a pair of patent-leather shoes outside his door as though life were delightful.