His mother had never been the waxen thing they had buried. He wondered where she was and why she had not called or written, why she had not advised him in some way, though perhaps she had, perhaps it was her letter that lay in the green-lined drawer of the dream.
The snow clouds parted for an instant, and the moon touched the ocean. He, seeing that fragment of it tossing in the silver light, knew it and knew that in some previous life he had sailed there for decades; and that this previous life was returning to him. He remained poised upon the ice, but the knowledge passed. The moonlight upon the waves became only the moon on the waves, and he grew accustomed to the salt bite of the wind, so that he no longer rejoiced in its sting, but felt only its cold. And after a time he turned away from the ocean and clambered slowly down, often slipping, gripping the ragged ice-slabs with frozen fingers, and crossed the black road with its dancing ghosts, and crossed the broad terrace with its dancing ghosts, and went at last up the steps and into the Grand Hotel.
The hotel had double walls of glass, with a double door in each. Between the first glass wall and the second stood a lone bellboy, like a sentinel guarding a castle without a garrison, a last sentinel left behind by Caesar to watch over the Roman Wall or the Rhine. This bellboy looked at his burned and perforated topcoat and his seared face and said, “Can I help you, sir?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you can. At least, I hope you can.” He wanted to tell this bellboy his room number, but he could not remember it, so he said, “There was a fire. In a theater and a Chinese shop.”
The bellboy nodded wisely. “What theater was it, sir?” The bellboy had curly hair as blond as excelsior and wore his pillbox cap over one ear.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There was some sort of play, about a revolution.”
“Ah, that’d be the Adrian, sir. Nice place.”
“Not any more,” he said. “It burned to the ground.”
“Prob’ly the Government did it, sir. You know how they are.”
He nodded (though he did not know) and asked, “Isn’t there anyone at the desk?”
“Not this late there isn’t, sir. I’m supposed to take care of it. I’ll take you up in the elevator too, sir.” The bellboy shrugged. “It’s our off season, sir. You know how it is. If we had fireplaces in the rooms …” The bellboy shrugged again, a minute movement of thin shoulders beneath his skin-tight red jacket.
“My friend rented our room. I’d like to know how long it’s paid for.”
“I can look that up for you, sir.”
He nodded, took his hotel key out of his pocket and handed it to the bellboy, who opened the inner glass door for him and showed him into the lobby.
At the desk, the bellboy opened an enormous book and paged through it. “Here you are, sir. That was yesterday, or rather the day before, the way it is now. For a week, sir, so you’ve got six more nights left, counting tonight.”
In the elevator, he asked the bellboy where he could buy a new coat. He was fairly sure that North had bought the shirts, ties, and hats without leaving the hotel; perhaps North really could drive, but he had always been asked to drive, been ordered to drive.
He said, “I beg your pardon?”
“I was saying there’s a place here, sir. In fact, they’re having a big sale, because of it being the off season. In the lower level, sir. There’s a barber shop down there too, and a billiard parlor. Lots of things.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I got lost in what I was thinking.”
“It’s natural you’re shaken up, sir. You must have just barely got out alive.”
He said, “I don’t know,” wondering if he was not in fact dead. He remembered hearing about Purgatory as a child; even then he had not believed it, but perhaps he had been wrong, as he had been wrong about things so many times since, wrong about a whole series of wrong choices that had seemed likely never to end—until at last Lara had chosen him. Did they have fires in Purgatory? No, they had fires in Hell.
He felt that the elevator had started too fast, wrenching and shaking him. And yet he had not noticed at the time, not noticed until its motion had become smooth, showing him all the floors, all the hallways of the hotel, its veins and nerves laid bare by this cage of wrought iron, which displayed to him water lilies and pyramids at one level, golden cattle and sheaves of wheat at the next.
And at every level, empty veins and silent nerves. This was what a scalpel saw as it sliced flesh, this sectioned view that could not live.
He had undergone several operations as a child, none since, and thus he found that his view of surgery was still a child’s—you went to sleep in the daytime and woke sick. This had been the reality, this surgeon’s elevator touring his body to learn how it was made; the wrought iron glared at him with the faces of jungle beasts, from the rolling eyes of a bull with the wings of a vulture and the bearded head of a man.
“Top floor, sir.” The bellboy took out the key. “I’ll see you to your room, sir.”
“Do I look that bad?”
“I’ll feel better if I do, sir.” The bellboy hurried down the hallway ahead of him. “Here we are, sir. Imperial Suite.” With a rattle of the lock, he opened the door. “You and your friend are the only ones on this floor, but if you have trouble or anything just call the desk. I’ll hear the phone.”
He nodded.
The room, which had been cold before, was frigid now. As he got out his wallet, he tried to recall whether he had drunk with the taxi driver; surely he had, or he would not have slept in the taxi. There was nothing smaller than a ten, but he felt that the bellboy deserved a ten after all they had been through together, studying the great book, watching the sea, performing their autopsy on the bellboy’s place of employment.
“Thanks, sir.” The bellboy coughed. “Sir, we have these little braziers …”
“Yes,” he said. “I’d like one, if I can have one.”
“They’ve got to be ventilated, but those French doors will take care of that, sir.” The bellboy flashed a lopsided smile. “I’ll bring one up to you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He was undressing when the bellboy returned. The brazier was a tiny thing, yet far better than nothing. He put it in his bedroom, and when he switched off the light, he found that its copper sides were faintly luminous, aglow with warmth and cheer.
When he woke in the morning, Lara was not there, and every muscle ached. The back of his right hand had been scorched as well as his coat sleeve, and the burn was crusted and painful. The cologne and shaving soap North had bought were still in the bathroom, but neither seemed the right sort of thing to dab on a burn.
Medical was listed on the white plastic card that slid from beneath the telephone. He dialed, and was told that the doctor was not yet in, did not often arrive until later or never during this, the off season, and would (or perhaps would not) call him upon arriving at last. He could not remember his room number, but he said, “I’m in the Imperial Suite, on the top floor,” and the disembodied operator seemed to understand.
It was only when he had hung up that he realized his call had gone through without difficulty, that he had not gotten the twittering voices or Klamm, and that someone—almost the correct someone—had in fact answered.
He resolved to call his apartment again, and at once began to look for something else to do, something that would postpone the moment when he would actually have to dial his own number. He had assumed that the little brazier had gone out, but a few sparks remained, sullenly crimson among the fluffy gray ashes. He added bits of charcoal from a copper can that had accompanied the brazier, then rinsed his fingers in the bathroom, avoiding the burn as much as he could.
His topcoat was ruined. His best trousers would have to be replaced too, but they remained good enough to wear until he got new ones. He dressed gingerly, careful of the burn and thinking more about breakfast than of the call and his apartment, feeling it would be wisest to put both out of his thoughts until it was time to telephone—to telephone and talk to somebody who was not Lara, or no one.