Strange Hotel

by Eimear McBride

  Stansted

  Sligo

  Leigh

  Enniskillen

  Birmingham

  Edinburgh

  Paris

  New York

  Worcester MA

  New York

  Princeton

  Ostuni

  Bristol

  Bristol

  Birmingham

  Cork

  Jerusalem

  Amsterdam

  Den Bosch

  Beijing

  Chengdu

  Suzhou

  Shanghai x

  Toulouse

  New York x

  Edinburgh

  Auckland

  It is the farthest furthest she has ever been. On a flat earth she would be at the edge. As it is, to go on might be the shortest way home and just let the world fold back on itself. For despite some perplexity regarding her current notions of home – and her periodic declarations that that is simply not so – her belief in the planet’s curve is secure. It is an unbreachable line, and one of the few of which she has ever been sure. Until now, here, in this outermost place. As the ground imperceptibly spins beneath and all around her the heavens shift, she finds herself thinking she wouldn’t object to some more tangible proof it exists. Out there somewhere, she knows is the ocean and horizon, with nothing to be seen after it. She can’t help envisaging – admittedly, flying in the face of all sense – a great cataract roiling at the deep sea’s end towards which she, and New Zealand, inexorably inch. Torn from or flowing to, to be dragged over the edge and churned into particles of dust, or particles of time, or whatever becomes of a body once it has attained its finest grade of dismemberment.

  This may all be a touch cataclysmic, she will admit, especially as on her arrival it was already night so she has no idea what it looks like out there. That said, in terms of proof, she’s not asking for much – mathematical calculations or satellite photographs. No, really just a physical hint. Some readily appreciable sensation for instance. Say, how toes inevitably touch the ground after heels in a continuous, predictably repeating sequence? Of course, she understands there may be disparities within this pattern too. As far as walking goes however, it is the expected usual and in her general indifference to personalised nuance she does not feel she has been remiss because … because who thinks about every step? Well, there are some people who obviously must but, having been fortunate with her health, she does not number herself among them. She wouldn’t even think of it now except it seems the ground has somehow misplaced her confidence in it. Either that or – and this would be considerably more abstract – the soles of her feet have begun doubting themselves.

  Is it an actual possibility that such a precisely located doubt might exist? She is inclined to think it is not. Realistically, she must presume, her feet may have a problem afoot. It’s quite rare for the ground to change itself. Highly unlikely over the course of an average ride in a lift, and all was still well back on the ground floor. Although she realises this is an earthquake zone, she has had experience of tremors on her travels before and this is not like that. What exactly it is like, however, is proving harder to nail down. But something was clearly amiss from the moment its trundle ground to a halt and she stepped out onto her given floor. As though there was a suddenly insufficient amount of air, or gravity had ceased to be non-negotiable. Not, of course, affecting everything – there were no floating occasional tables or independently occurring asphyxiations to be witnessed. No, it appeared to be her alone forced to gingerly navigate the over-lit corridor. Providentially her room lay directly across but, for all the three or four steps it took, her faith in the immutability of bricks and mortar has taken a significant knock.

  She’s not terrifically keen on how this makes her brain look so it may, ultimately, prove preferable to lay these complications at her feet. And why shouldn’t she? They currently reside at ground zero of the issue – her arms are feeling fine. Even so, an unambiguous description of the problem is hard to get across. Her best guess, her best explanation is … they – her overly animate feet – fear taking another step. They seem to suspect they’ll find themselves in an empty place and then, on stepping back, step back into no place where everything expected is gone. A sort of waking version of sleep’s ever surprising jolt into a deeper down. Ration ally she knows, even as she only reflexively reflects, this fear is incredibly cogent, especially for feet. But to be frank, she’s too tired to be operating at full speed. Her mind will have to take her body’s word for it and, from where she is standing now, she really believes it. In truth, she daren’t take one more step. Then she takes one, to thwart her predilection for the melodramatic. She doesn’t take another one though.

  Instead, she casts her eyes across the room. From the ridged cream wallpaper past the wall-mounted screen, over the gold sheen of the bedspread to the open blind window, to the night and the city beyond. Twinkle twinkle there you are, a solitary life on an anomalous star – or planet, as the case may be. Beige carpet matched to the dark brown skirting. But her preoccupation with the decor has never been less specific. The details lie on the top of her brain and will not be admitted. There have been more hotel rooms than she will ever care to think of. Now she is looking for something else and she searches for what it is.

  Then.

  Too much ado, far too much ado about nothing, she curtly reflects.

  It’s not inconceivable either a recovered sense of perspective might be the extent of it, making this palaver a mere spell of jitters, consistent with a parching twenty-four-hour flight. Or even, perhaps, that weird gold hutch of a lift?

  Well indeed, there is that.

  She’s never been particularly claustrophobic but finds herself already shuddering to think of it. A box of reflections closing in. And, while she has frequently seen that very same design before, the three hundred and sixty degrees of mirror have rarely induced more alarm. Front, back and either side on, there was no escaping the persistently receding self-contemplation, especially of her face. Perpetual cheekbones and eyes sunk under yellow light – designed perhaps by fans of a vague touch of jaundice? That same thought had occurred, and tickled her, in there but she hadn’t laughed aloud because of the engrossed blusher application of the woman on the other side. And by ‘engrossed’ she means there had been an unreasonably ‘do or die’ quality to the putting on, but then, she shouldn’t judge. For all she knows perhaps it was. After all, isn’t female skeletonisation now just a shorthand for ‘loved’? Or is that ‘lovable’? She doubts death was truly in the air though, not for that consternated face, so she is going to judge anyway. Or would, if she could be bothered and she can’t tonight. They’re your cheeks, stranger, so do what you like. All these faces mean nothing to me and yours isn’t even the most interesting in this lift. That prize goes to his expression of exquisite suffering while also smothering a laugh. She’d first heard it in his voice, then caught it in his eye. Then they played a quick game of I know that you know that I know that I no wait. She’ll get to this strand later on.

  First of all, she is thinking she knows flattery to be the intention behind such lights above mirrors. And she has already noticed this hotel to be frequented by those tormented by their need to look or, should that be, to be seen? But, from whichever perspective, only perfectly and unblemished by the glum accumulations of living. She envies what must be the relief of having only preoccupations like that – while acknowledging they may not provide relief for those thus preoccupied. She wishes she could rub along with this attitude more ambivalently. Although that would require taking for granted the utter lack of value assigned to her many years of being alive. And she cannot buy in. She does not believe. While she may not consider herself to have achieved any particular greatness in life, it’s been hard enough to keep on clocking those decades up. To get to her late forties has taken a lot of ploughing through. There may have been considerable work put into forgetting too – sometimes with more success than she cares to
admit – but without those accumulations displayed in plain sight it would be as if she had never lived at all. She’ll not stoop to clichés about the blank canvas of youth – despite, generally, subscribing to their truth. She’s just not unhappy about being a creature of oil and mess and stain. She has been bitten and will bite and there is a life in her home, even when she is not around, which bodily exists and is true.

  But she doesn’t want to think of that now.

  This place is too remote and that place too far off.

  Her intermittent agoraphobia flutters at the slightest mention of distance, even inside her head. As though on naming she might dematerialise into it. And, for the record, she doesn’t appreciate the increasingly overheated tone she has taken up. She much prefers herself when being rigorously pragmatic. To this end, she tells herself, everything back there is fine and her absence a mercy of not getting simple things wrong. Her existence a mercy of being alone and all the delight that entails.

  So.

  Hopping down from her high horse, she’s now also inclined to confess that neither has she remained entirely immune to the fixations of her age. Not her personal age, naturally. That, she has embraced readily – recognising her luck – and never minded at all. If she cared about her face, she would call it beautiful and more now than twenty years ago. But she does not care. She will not opt in. She might even be willing to die on this hill. Forty-nine is as good as any place she could realistically be. Still too young for the truly great installations of regret. Too old for the game of being boored into silence. And if what-might-have-been does occasionally catch her out, well, no one gets everything. The net result is, those type of years have never been a cause of anxiety for her. By ‘her age’ she means simply her time, her era. This means there’s a make-up bag in her bag. She possesses some kind of serum for her hair. She may even find herself dabbing something underneath her eyes later. And while deriding what erasure that copiously applied blusher might imply, neither did she just stare at the floor. For all her feigned obduracy she too looked in the mirror, albeit without feeling any pressure to improve what it was she saw there. But as she watched herself trying not to watch, she also saw herself stretch off into the void.

  Infinitely.

  Meaninglessly.

  And, if she elected to never move again, eternally.

  Forever the carnival trick of a seeing woman trying not to see? Forever the carnival trick of a woman trying not to be … opened into every room on every floor in every hotel around the world? Unfolded and unfolded, boundlessly. Never to be less or more, better or worse. Just this crystallised extending version of self. Liberated from the scourge of accountability as well as hope of reprieve. But no … not exempt reality. Still moving forward. Still on the inside of time. And, actually, is she about to become the carnival trick of a high-rise woman who …

  Christ!

  Again?

  Stop that!

  Do not move. Do not take a step and do not go over there.

  No.

  So …

  Instead?

  What an incredibly morbid cast of mind, she thinks. Most likely too to be erroneous, based, as it is, on the supposition that every room in this place – as well as everywhere else – is the same and the same and the same. She knows that cannot possibly be true. There have been no significant social movements crying out for the democratisation of hotel rooms – not that she’s been privy to anyway. So, an empiricist when she wants to be – and that time should be now – she then admits it, candidly. Not all hotels are created equal. Therefore, what happens within their rooms cannot be identical and she has absolutely not just been killing time. Killing it until when?

  No!

  Have you not been listening to yourself?

  Not that!

  No!

  Hotels.

  Oh yes.

  Some must have bigger bathrooms. Super king beds. Perhaps facilities more elaborate than a teabag and kettle, or a dispiritingly understocked mini-bar – she’s not reflecting on her own room’s amenities now, she has yet to check. But opportunities for increased billing and superfluities aside, she will not, cannot deny that, once distilled all hotel rooms are essentially alike, if not exactly the same. A place built for people living in a time out of time – out of their own time anyway. And if that isn’t always the reason why they came, it is often the reason she has.

  She really doesn’t want to start with all that.

  It’s a fundamentally impractical use of her time and, ultimately, these maunderings cast little light on the situation with her floor.

  She notes that she now finds it preferable to designate it as ‘a floor situation’ rather than any difficulty with her body which – despite her best efforts – continues mainly to exhibit strength and provide no tangible reason for doubt. And why should she seek to doubt it? After all, it’s hers. Also, her feet are clearly there, inside her shoes, and visible against the abstract shag-pile swirls. When she flexes their muscles, they instantly move. Their look, and their function, is perfectly fine. It’s just … What? She has lingering concerns about whether anything exists beneath what she is standing on. And, let’s face it, there’s nothing like the threat of the abyss to make one reluctant about purposefully striding across an unfamiliar floor.

  Which is utter nonsense, she immediately scoffs.

  Then immediately asks what’s holding her body up?

  Not time anymore.

  And what about her feet?

  Stop.

  She knows there is no real logic to this. For God’s sake she has just, literally, ceased to contrast the potential contents of the other rooms. She knows they are below. They are actually there. She knows too, beneath this carpet lies a floor. Wood. Some kind of cement. Steel beams. Wiring and fittings from which light fittings can be suspended. Then exactly the same below that again, over and over, right the way down. There will be, will be basements, carparks, foundations, rock and plenty more between there and the centre of the earth. She cannot fall through or find herself accidentally returned to the place from which it has taken her so long to arrive. There is no going back. There is only on. And, furthermore, there is nothing malign at work. The laws of physics have not been disturbed in order to give her a scare. And why would the laws of physics ever consider her to be in need of one? She’s scarcely an inflection on the flabbergasting spectrum of life, not to mention just one of many human beings tonight who have found themselves on this sixth floor. The powers that be – should they exist, and they do not – need take no notice of her. She is doing fine. Very well. Yes, she is tired so she is not quite herself. Or she is herself and the problem is worse than she thinks. Maybe even the worst there is? Stop this.

  Stop again.

  She recovers herself. She is recovered from her existential overindulgence. In summation, she is not alone in opposition to some malevolent grand design – even if in low moments it has felt like that. The universe is not conscious and therefore has no idea she exists. She has, of late, preferred it like this – when she has been bothered to prefer.

  Better.

  Better and more like herself.

  And now she has arrived at the moment to push the whole way through. Which means it’s precisely the wrong moment for drawing attention to what else she’d been considering back in the lift. Which was what? What time is it? No, not … No. Pushing the whole way through doesn’t involve thinking of that. To go on is to keep going on.

  So, to this end.

  She puts down her bag. She closes the door. Nothing happens. Her hand relaxes and she is alone now. She throws her key card on the writing desk. She removes her coat. She lies it lengthwise on the bed. An extensive array of physical movements are made and all without consequence. There is, manifestly, no true cause for alarm. If there seem to be a thousand angled lamps blazing that’s usual enough, as will be the ritual later tonight of learning which switch is which. And isn’t there a volcano here somewhere? she cribs from the back
of her mind or maybe the in-flight magazine of the airline. Dormant now, she remembers, unfortunately. She’s keen to see the crater anyway – she appreciates a good chasm into which she can stare. But on facing the window and administering her paranoid jetlag a slap in the face, the only sight to be seen is herself.

  A ghost in the glass.

  Her inclination, once more, for the dramatic.

  Even so, a ghost in the glass.

  The impression remains.

  It’s the kind of thing could overwhelm her with spectral remembrance if she hadn’t inhabited her own absence before. The vacated place. She knows it exists; she’d just rather avoid it.

  Then the weight makes it fall anyway.

  Tube rides where her silent grief was so palpable, strangers, unbidden, rose and offered their seats. And she’d slipped into them staring past the hems of coats to the tunnel-blind window across – that pained replication of her white face constructing windows to remembering too. Remembering all the times he’d sat with her on the same tubes. Slouched. Faces facing their reflection-drained looks and remembering. Apparently, this is her memory’s set-piece from their hard times – enshrined as such, probably, because of the motion and silence public transport can enforce. Or perhaps she’s endowing it retroactively? But, given memory can produce proof they laughed on the underground plenty, why would she do that? Because lately going anywhere, except on foot, translates to a kind of despair. No.

  That actually wasn’t a question.

  Well the response, if not answer then, still remains a No.

  This is another argument she cannot win so returns herself to remembering them, sitting ghostly on their long-ago trains, remembering in their bad times, their good. She will remember too they were sometimes unsure. Sometimes they looked from themselves to the fraughtly loved other and did not know what was coming next. Just as she remembers that the city moving above their heads did not help at all. Its business was purely providing routes of escape. She remembers when they did and did not take them. She remembers, in her early grief, wishing to go back to that static place and see him in it again. See him in that hardship too – feeling it while still sitting next to her though. Ghosts in the glass but at least as two. Not a ghost in the glass remembering all the ghosts that have been. And now here, a ghost again. Also alone but not the same. Stationary rather than on a train. And not as crippled as she had been then. Not irradiated by pain. Not irradiated now, she’d say, by anything. Cool and calm. Cool and calm, if not for her irk with the floor.