The staff of the Grand Hotel had specific instructions on how to deal with the children of guests. Very decisively but always kindly and politely, no matter how difficult this might prove to be. Except for me, it was very rare for children to be in the hotel in the early autumn. I was well behaved, polite, and managed quite well in the red-walled living room, empty but for the record player and my picture books for company. I knew what was allowed and what was not; and that described my reputation. He is a nice quiet boy, the adults would say, able to keep himself busy. They had no idea how I abused their trust and confidence. They thought they didn’t have to worry that I might get into an accident or do mischief. The chambermaids, bellboys, and cleaning women competed for my favors; they liked to have me along or waiting for them while they did their chores.
Of my own secret mission, of course nobody knew anything.
I loved to follow the different hotel workers along the corridors on the soft, dark red carpets, which absorbed the sound of footsteps, go downstairs with them via the rear stairwell, then take the elevator, glittering with its cut-glass windows, all the way to the top floor, doing all this to discover the hotel’s secrets. I realized early on that one should not say no to anything. The more willing and polite I was and the more reliably I behaved, the more communicative people became; ultimately grown-ups are rather careless with their secrets.
It never occurred to anyone, for example, to lock the external door of the garbage bay from the inside.
Beggars also had their place and hour; nobody imagined that the beggars might assault the garbage bins. They were supposed to line up just before the kitchen closed. They came one by one out of the night with their worn bags and frayed satchels, waited before the basement window, bathing in the light that filtered through it, in the kitchen stench streaming outward at and in the weakening preclosing kitchen clatter.
If it rained, they stood under umbrellas.
At most they would make courteous little gestures, well understood by others in the line: but of course, go on, your grace; oh no, don’t even mention it. And the chambermaids never ceased boasting that here, fortunately, we hardly have any real beggars. The directress takes this very seriously; she can’t abide smelly or filthy persons and will not suffer Gypsies or drunken louts. As far as she’s concerned, that kind of person can just stand in the rain or snow; she won’t give them a morsel.
One wasn’t to speak of people in this line as beggars. The directress did not want to see a beggar who looked like one. She could not bear such human wrecks. Nobody could tell her that a person couldn’t wash in cold water.
Watch it, little girl, I hear beggar from you again and I’ll rap your mouth for you.
She’d do it too, there’s good reason to be afraid of that big ring of hers, because these people are decent ladies and gentlemen, and every person is entitled to respect. Poor war widows, disabled pensioners, victims of some family disaster. Some of them come for food to take to their gravely ill relatives. These people have been truly robbed of everything. God forbid someone should speak ill of these poor beings or humiliate them. If anybody, the communists should be ashamed of themselves.
Everything’s all right so long as one is healthy and can work.
Anybody can lose his job and wealth, anybody, it’s getting them that’s hard.
You can believe me: nobody’s fate is assured.
Enough misfortune awaits one in this life, may the Virgin Mary or the Lord Jesus protect you.
Szidónia Oltó was the name of the chambermaid who from the very beginning took me under her protection. Because she was also an orphan, she knew what that meant. There was a certain woman among those poor beings, she explained to me, who once had been a permanent guest of the hotel and whose orders had not been easy to carry out. How could one possibly predict the course of one’s fate; one plays the big shot while one can. Such people usually want everything, no matter what it is. And they never run out of orders to give — don’t put it over there, put it here, and how many times do I have to tell you the same thing, and she won’t eat that, won’t touch it at all; what she wants is what’s being served at the next table.
The wheel of fortune is always turning, little boy, don’t ever dare think of humiliating anyone.
And she showed me who that certain woman was.
I was in love with Szidónia Oltó and not only because she said interesting things but also because the skin on her elbows and knees was rough and scaly and she liked it when I rubbed them for her.
The smell coming from her white blouse was quite strong whenever she held me to her breast, saying I was her little son.
That poor thing lost everything, and I mean everything she had, except for that rabbit-fur coat, she’d whisper excitedly while we waited for a snack to be prepared for a guest on the third floor. The collar of that coat is pretty shabby too, look at it. You won’t believe this, but this woman, careful, she’s looking at us, every Easter she and her husband used to spend two weeks here, on the first floor.
They’d take no place else, in the same suite used by Cardinal Pacelli and by the Prince of Wales.
We thought that the man who at the same time was staying in room 11 was her lover, but it turned out that he too was her husband. That’s right, you heard me. There wasn’t another woman in the whole world as cunning as this one. Believe me. Now, of course, she’s drinking like a fish and has to hold on to a railing when she moves. She had to take the interior staircase up to her second husband, who’d wait for her there. Look how she’s wound up. Still, when you look at her today, you see the wife of General Pechl, yes, to this day, but she’s also the widow of Major Bertolini. Today, nobody wants her. When people found out about it, it was all covered up very nicely, even though they published news of the bigamy in the papers.
This husband of hers sent the major to the front line so he’d be killed and there’d be peace and quiet at last. He was right to do it.
You can take their supper for them, that slut.
If her other husband hadn’t done what he did, she’d have rotted in jail.
Put a little lettuce on the bottom, Danika, it looks so pitiful like this.
You can believe me, there’s no justice in the world. But now, it doesn’t matter any more, no point blaming her. The Lord Jesus or the Virgin Mary, if they wanted to, would forgive even someone like her.
I shouldn’t bother my head about their problems. I’d better stop talking about it altogether.
The beggars were given not leftovers exactly but prepared food that guests had not accepted and the waiters, having no alternative, had returned to the kitchen virtually untouched.
You can’t imagine how much I know.
If guests didn’t ask to have the food they’d rejected packed for them, then it was packed for these wretches, but just as carefully as if they were guests. The directress saw to it that this was done properly. Spoiled food was not allowed in any of the packages, at worst only something that would not hold over for the following day.
They owed this not only to notions of Christian charity but also to the hotel’s good name. And the directress would have done it exactly the same way even if her reward had been only the recipients’ gratitude, but, of course, one should have faith in providence.
In the short lulls between the rushing waves of service to the guests, the cooks tossed these choice leftovers onto trays lined with wax paper, nimbly arranged the food to make it look attractive, and then covered the trays with more wax paper. Later scullery maids packed this untouched food not in decorative wrapping paper bearing the hotel’s logo, as they would have done for a guest, but in newspaper, and then handed the parcels out through the barred window.