Homesickness (27 page)

A feeling of futility: there at a great height, scrambling up and down inside a copper head. The sea was like a dirty mirror. But never one to remain despondent Borelli showed by his expression he had thought of something else.

‘Next thrill!' Sasha cried out. She nudged Violet.

And Louisa turned to Borelli.

The float-bowl, its arm and point of pivot, the two valves, inlet-outlet, and the three or four split pins (mild steel) make up the efficient operation of the cistern. Include the length of chain and the wire lacing it to the external lever; these generally have a smooth penis-shaped wooden handle or a metal bracelet. Contemporary cisterns—now properly called water-closets—have the chrome-plated plunger which slides in a cylinder, an aesthetic breakthrough. When flushing, the floor of the cistern is opened, releasing a draught of water. The float (ball) then tilts in the void and so opens the valve, allowing fresh water to refill. Rising with the water, the float returns gradually to the horizontal where finally it turns the water off: from gush to bubble/hiss, faint high whistle, silence. The cistern is then ready to perform again. Only about the size of a grapefruit the floats were originally stamped out of discoloured copper—designed to last forever. But there have been many cases, especially lately, of hotels chiefly in Hungary, in Latin America and the Low Countries, and in the higher street numbers of Manhattan, where the
copper has punctured
. Summoned often in the dead of night the manager can only demonstrate a manual method of refilling, enough to get by. Stand on the seat; lift the cistern lid; raise the copper ball, reproducing the familiar gushing sound, until it is horizontal. In southern Italy and certain cities of Russia other ‘managers' have been known to arrive with a plastic pail of water and leave it at that. In underdeveloped countries with a large tourist inflow, chains have been known to come away in the hand. Scores of wooden and plastic lavatory seats crack under the almost hourly pressure. Even in some recently built hotels the push-buttons jam. Constant use wears the cylinder. The valves too become worn. They stick. After a day of wandering the bazaars and the endless parquetry of museums it is irritating to return to a leaking or ‘whispering' cistern. The manager is called. And how many of the slick so-called ‘low-boy' cisterns of plastic are spotted with cigarette burns, the colour of human ordure itself? The efficiency of the lavatory may not be affected, certainly it is not sufficient reason to call the manager, but the burns are an eyesore, a sign of traffic, the odour of statistics, like hairpins left in a drawer or the piece of smooth cuttlefish soap found in the shower recess.

Some of the picturesque countries of white stones and peasants in black have upwards of twelve million tourists per annum. Upwards—in other words—twenty-four million hands and heels of shoes scuffing the corridors; twelve million bowel movements, regular and irregular, to be catered for. The assortment of valves, copper floats and makeshift chains, the seats and the rusted but crucial internal split-pins take a hammering, night and day, no respite, not to mention the loading on the sewerage system, almost beyond the calculated diameter of the underground pipes. And where does all the muck—the weight and mass of it—go?

Crimson flowers in the carpets of foyers and stairs are trampled; cathedral steps worn down in the middle; banisters are rubbed smooth, honed, eventually loosened from the walls: twelve million sliding hands, many with gold and sapphire rings. The next year there are always expected to be more. The subcontractors in these centres make a killing more than usual, testing the cables holding lifts. Regularly replaced are the diving boards above pools, the backs of dining-room chairs, pillows and mattresses (kneaded by many interlocking smooth bodies, holidaying), the ballpoints of desk clerks—thousands of them—and telephone cords frayed by idle fingers. The languid arms wear out tablecloths, and on the vertical facade of the reception counter a single season of North American, German and New Zealand knees can wear away the varnish in the shape of a heart. Requiring constant adjustment, regular replacement, is that pneumatic device with elbows which steadily closes the glass doors. Even mirrors used by so many tanned but anxious faces wear out.

Quires of paper, of oblong registration cards, are imported to handle the…the invasion. Tons of, or miles of; the same for biro fluid. Not to mention petroleum products (more foreign exchange), and the extra kilowatts of juice: additional underground shifts requested of distant coalminers. And the tourist like anyone else has to eat. This can drive the price of food up. Twenty-three point four per cent of the perishables trucked and railed into Manhattan is consumed by them; said to be more like 80 per cent in that other island, Venice.

‘God knows—I mean, really—why we chose this hole,' was Gerald's comment; but he was distinctly unsympathetic to the jackhammers of the New World. Granite, Carrara marble, bronze and oak were his substances: permanence, like the residue left by religion and history—and in the Old World it's so much part of the whole, so visible. As he spoke the tapered shadow of a yellow jib came in from across the street, and across the carpet like a draughtsman's compass, swinging an iron ball. The desk clerks wore yellow hard hats. The chairs and carpet had a fine coating of demolition dust. A confident travel agent several oceans away wasn't to know. In the last decade the hotel had enjoyed tremendous traffic, an old favourite for the package tour, the seminar and sales convention. The carpets and even the floorboards underneath were now badly worn, and the janitor and several of the white-collar staff were over there all shoving, trying to open one of the sliding windows. A black woman vacuumed a corner and as Mrs Cathcart watched the old heavy-duty Hoover gave up the ghost: a declining whine, almost-human sigh. In its heyday the lift used to be the fastest in the western world. It still had the brass plaque. Festooned now with fingerprinted mirrors and advertisements for bistros, Rotary International and a dozen nearby museums and hair salons it seemed to be held by ropes of rubber, took its time, tired, with coloured lights flashing when they shouldn't have. After walking or waiting all day naturally they were impatient. Doug for one got irritable if he went too long without his shower. They all wanted showers and to put their feet up. Already Hofmann flipped the pages of the latest
Time
as he entered his room, looking forward.

Each had an end wall of tinted glass and they could step over and look down and across at the landscape of verticals and thrust, capital's example, the sections here and there being replaced, as in a child's building game. A pearly light refracted through petrochemicals softened the edges and imbued the pastel canyons with high mercantile drama and a sensation of even greater—if that were possible—opportunities. Such a sense of complications and graduations. The various ELECTRIC WORDS could be gazed at for hours. In Rooms 104 and 109—Sheila's and the Hofmanns'—soap worn smooth into cuttlefish had been found in the basins…disconcerting…and Gerald Whitehead found strands of hair on his pillow.

In Borelli's room the tan tip of a Florsheim shoe protruded from under his bed. He stepped back: anything can happen in New York. Poking it with his stick he found it empty. He sat on the edge of the bed. Such a piece of flotsam could make him rueful. He turned it over. The shoe, that of an American male, fitted a tall heavy man leaning to his left. It was his right foot. Nationalism and shoe styles: the American male prefers the soles protruding around the perimeter giving the appearance or the illusion of flat-footed, well-meaning eagerness. Across the ocean the Englishman's brogue with its serrated tongue and extravagantly punched bindings is a subtle yet loud counter to the quiet English architecture, the greens, and subdued speech patterns. Shoe styles and nationalism: they fit. Americans who readily buy classic Burberry raincoats are reluctant to step into alien brogues.

‘My lavatory's kaput,' he said aloud. In the corridor he asked, ‘Do you have water?'

‘We're next to you,' Louisa leaned out. ‘He can use ours—can't he, Ken?'

Squatting near the window Ken appeared to nod but didn't turn.

And here was the redeeming feature of their hotel—worth writing home about. Instead of Gideon Bibles each room had been given a powerful telescope. These were the 16-inch Japanese refracting type and not cheap. They were chained to the windowsills. Guests could study at close quarters the habits and appearance of the local inhabitants without embarrassment. Proposed amendments had been constantly rejected by Congress: the use of high-powered telescopes was a constitutional right of the individual.

Quickly getting the hang of it, members of the group focused on their preoccupations. Each one became chained to the window, some with their doors wide open. Both Hofmann and Garry Atlas had focused from slightly different angles on the cleavage of the platinum blonde wobbling below; but it was Hofmann who switched to the brown tenement building in the adjoining precinct, an unsavoury district, and slowly panning floor by floor found there, between fire escape and busted downpipe, fourth window along…telegram boy in kitchen seated on housewife's knee. A large woman, she was stroking the boy's head. And look now she began—. ‘What have you found?' Louisa typically asked. ‘Let me see.' ‘Nothing.' But the window grew so large and so clear, revealing the women's teeth and heaving bosom as she whispered in the poor boy's ear, leaning forward now to see his glazed open-mouthed expression, that Hofmann moved to another window, as if she could see him, before quickly returning. She wore only a slip. She stood up and sat down with the boy again…

Even Kaddok sat by a window directing Gwen as she focused and described. She began everything, ‘There's an American tying his shoelace…an American with parcels trying to get a taxi…' as if they were natives. And Kaddok running his tongue over his blue lips, nodding, nodding: make great natural shots, these, for sure.
City Life
or
The Big Smoke
or
Americans at Play
. Meanwhile Garry began following a policeman and couldn't help grinning as the magnified red index finger suddenly entered one nostril and worked around, pulling a variety of faces, as if he were tightening a screw inside his head. Searching behind for his Budweiser can he said aloud to himself, ‘The filthy bastard…'

‘Let me look,' Louisa asked Hofmann for the fifth time.

‘Just a second.'

‘I'll go next door!'

What else in the following hour or so did Garry see? What did the Cathcarts see? Black in open sports car scratching his crotch at traffic lights; grey-haired helicopter pilot perspiring and
running tongue over bottom lip
as he settled on top of a skyscraper; an aproned maid in black who stepped out onto posh balcony and threw out the orange contents of a fish bowl; firemen in a yard behind the station playing poker; the ballet class; chap in a checked suit having pistol practice on his penthouse roof—successive bulls; followed a blind beggar: who left his corner and in a diner opened the
Wall Street Journal
.

Gerald spent his time profitably. To his surprise he stumbled upon grimy caryatids and plaques and other folk-carvings set among the entablatures and portals of the brownstones, normally invisible or very difficult to see from the street.

‘There's something wrong here,' Borelli frowned from his window. ‘Wherever I turn I see a woman, ah, fitting herself into a brassiére. Wherever I turn. Here's one in a hotel window now. Ah, she too is so beautiful. I don't think I should be looking. Put yourself,' he turned to her, ‘in my position.'

Louisa met his eyes, laughing. She touched her throat, ‘What can you be afraid of?'

‘It must be the position of my room.'

Every room has its own view, its own angle.

‘Let me look, I'll bet it doesn't happen with me.'

Silk shirt settled against denim; and Borelli asked, ‘Now the way they pitch forward like that—with these brassieres—is that standard practice?'

‘Well I have to,' said Louisa, not exactly answering. She kept her eye on the telescope.

Mmmm: Borelli thought for a while.

‘It doesn't suit you,' he said changing the subject. It really doesn't.'

She had gold earrings; hair pulled back; she had pale skin; she had sadness spreading in her forehead.

‘What doesn't? What do you mean?'

But she returned quickly to the telescope where she was listening more than looking.

‘I mean looking through that thing. It doesn't suit you. You don't have to do it.'

But Louisa had noticed something. The telescope pointed down almost vertical. ‘That looks like our Sheila in the park. I think it is.'

In other rooms others had recognised her, and focused. Every room has the same view, but different angles. Sheila's paisley scarf and worried expression fluttered large. She was half-running.

‘She doesn't have her handbag,' Louisa observed.

In 105, Sasha turned as North sauntered in through their open door. After knocking, of course. ‘We've just seen a man and his wife mugged in Harlem!'

‘Oh dear,' he said, ‘and I wanted to show you some squirrels, a family in the park.'

‘I'd like to see that! Show us.'

‘Since when have you been a squirrel-freak?' Violet asked out of the side of her mouth.