Hotel Iris (7 page)

The slip I was wearing that day has disappeared. I had hidden it at the bottom of a drawer full of underwear. So why did she take that, of all things? It was cheap, and the lace was in tatters from so many washings. But she doesn’t care—she seems to need the thrill of taking things from me.

Perhaps she put it on and admired herself in the mirror before coming to work. She’s quite thin, though she eats well enough. Her jaw is pointed, her arms and legs are like twigs, and her ribs stick out—a body suited for stolen underwear. But I didn’t really care that she took it. He tore it off me in an instant and tossed it under the couch. It was useless—there was no need for such things between the translator and me.

The summer season had begun in earnest now, and we were busy at the Iris. The rooms were full almost every day. Guests would check in, have their swim, stroll along the seawall,
sleep in our beds—and then check out again. The maid, our resident thief, began coming to help out in the evenings as well as during the day.

A letter from the translator arrived every three days. The handwriting and the polite words were always the same—and so different from the way he had treated me that day. I enjoyed reading his formal, almost humble, letters and remembering what had happened at his house. When I finished reading them, I would mix them with the trash from the guest rooms and burn them in the incinerator in the backyard. I would have liked to keep them, but there was no safe hiding place in the Iris, no place Mother or the maid wouldn’t find them.

As we got busier, it became harder to find time alone at the front desk. Mother would constantly call for my help, and the vacationing guests were demanding—ice for a sunburn, a drain plugged with sand, rooms that were too cold or too hot, mosquitoes, a taxi to be called. … There seemed no end to their orders and requests, but I tended to them all without a word. I felt it was important to be quiet, and to keep my secret safe.

A little after noon one day, I went up to change the towels in 202. The young couple staying in the room had just taken their baby down to the beach. Their suitcases lay open, overflowing with disposable diapers, jars of baby food, dirty socks, makeup bags. Powdered milk had spilled from a baby bottle tipped over on the night table. We had squeezed a crib into the small room, and there was barely space to walk. The curtains were faded from the afternoon sun, the wallpaper
peeling here and there. I was about to put fresh towels in the bathroom when I remembered that the translator had been here in Room 202. Though not for the whole night.

I wondered whether he had done the same things to that woman he had done to me. Though they had no bags, had he brought that strange cord with him? Did he tie up the woman on the bed by the window or the bed by the wall? Did he order her to lay on the narrow strip of floor?

She was plumper than me, so the cord would have sunk deeper into her flesh. Here in this room, which smelled of sweat and perfume and baby formula. She had put on a good show, gasping with fake desire, flicking her tongue and grasping with her fingers.

I was not the only one who had been loved in this way, not the translator’s only victim. I was jealous of that woman.

Having hung the clean towels on the rack, I closed the bathroom door. I picked up a scrap of paper and threw it in the wastebasket, then I sat down on the edge of the bed. A letter had just arrived, and I was desperate to read it.

… my heart beats faster at the thought of you climbing my shell-covered stairs, drinking tea from my teacup, peering in my mirror. I find myself stopping to caress that mirror, my hand still covered in shaving cream.

Anyone who saw me would think me odd indeed, but those with impoverished hearts cannot recognize simple miracles, even the sort revealed in the act of shaving.

When they turned us away from the restaurant, I wasn’t worried about my lunch—I was worried I had lost you. That’s why I was so furious. That woman was there when we first met, and she reappeared when we were about to share our first meal. But you saved me, you protected me with a warmth I had never felt before.

On the surface, my life hasn’t changed. I rise at 7:00, and I translate for three hours before lunch and two after. When I finish work, I go for a walk around the island and then take a nap. After that, I make my dinner. I am at home alone in the evening, and go to bed at 11:00. No one comes to visit, not the mailman, or the bill collector, or even a salesman. But now this sad existence is filled with joy at the knowledge that I have met you—and with the fear and regret that joy brings with it.

I ask myself what would become of me if something happened to you, if you were struck by a car and disappeared without a word. Or perhaps it was all just a dream, perhaps there was no girl named Mari, not there in the plaza, not at the Hotel Iris. That’s what I fear most. …

The stronger my feelings for you become, the greater my fear, and the more freely I abandon myself to baseless speculations and anxieties. Yet the more I immerse myself in the profound joy of loving you.

I beg of you to go on living in this world I inhabit. I suppose you find this a rather ridiculous request, but to me it is of the utmost importance that you simply exist.

“What are you doing in here?” I looked up to find that I had left the door ajar and the maid was peering in at me.

“Nothing,” I said, jumping to my feet. The envelope fell to the floor.

“You have no business in here.”

“I forgot to change the towels,” I said, picking up the envelope. I tried to slip the letter back inside, but I was too nervous to manage it.

“Liar. I saw you just sitting there on the bed.” She reached out for the letter with a nasty laugh. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to stuff the envelope in my pocket. She grabbed my wrist and snatched the letter, nearly tearing it in half. “Please, stop.”

“What are you hiding? Surely it can’t hurt if I read just a few lines.” We fought for the letter in that cramped room, scattering diapers and baby bottles, and she laughed and taunted me as she danced away, brandishing the letter over her head.

“Let’s see … ‘My Dear Mari, I hope you have not caught cold. Dear Mari, just writing the words makes me impossibly happy’ … It’s a love letter!” she cried.

“You’re horrible, reading someone else’s mail.”

“And what about you, hiding up here to get out of work. But who is it from? He’s no spring chicken, to judge from the handwriting. But this is a nice touch—a woman’s name in the return address. Who came up with that bright idea?”

“Please stop!”

“Oh! Now I remember, you’re supposed to be writing to some rich old lady. But this is obviously a man. Tell me all about him. I want to know everything!” She was hopping up and down, beside herself with glee.

“I won’t tell you anything. It’s none of your concern.”

“But you’re like a daughter to me, and this is serious business for a girl your age. I’ll have to tell your mother, but you know how upset she’ll be. She gets so crazy about anything that has to do with her Mari …”

“Give me back the slip,” I blurted out. She fell silent and her face went blank.

“What are you talking about?” she said, her voice trembling just a bit. “You do say the oddest things.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” I said. “My compass, my handkerchief, the stockings, the petticoat, my little beaded purse—I want it all back.” I had nearly forgotten about these things, and yet the list came spilling out. She bit her lip. “All I have to do is tell Mother and she’ll fire you. And if everyone in town finds out you’re a kleptomaniac, no one will hire you ever again.”

Snorting in disgust, she crumpled the letter, threw it on the floor, and stalked out of the room. I picked it up and went to burn it in the yard.

Summer vacation had begun, and the school was deserted. The sky above the empty bicycle rack was slowly turning crimson, and the rays of the setting sun slanted deep into the
classroom, lighting up the tables, the blackboard, the beakers, and the translator’s face.

“Do you do that often?” I asked, picking up an eraser someone had left behind and rolling it across the lab table.

“Do what?” he said.

“Spend the night with someone you don’t know. …” I spoke slowly, choosing my words. He looked down at the worn eraser and said nothing. I studied his expression, worried I had offended him, but he gave no hint of displeasure. Perhaps he was simply searching for the best way to answer.

“Not often,” he said, after a long pause. “It’s actually quite rare.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She was standing on a corner waiting for customers, so I spoke to her.”

“But how did you know she was a whore? They don’t wear signs, do they?”

He looked up and frowned. “You just know,” he said. “A woman like that is always hunting for a man—that’s why she’s out on the street.”

It had been amazingly easy to get into the classroom. The lock was broken on the back gate, just as it had been when I was a student here. From there, we cut behind the pool, past the archery range and the tennis courts, and up the fire escape next to the music room. The science room was the last one on the second floor. We hadn’t seen anyone or heard a sound.

After spending the afternoon at his house, we had intended to say good-bye at the dock on the island. But neither
of us could bear to part so soon, and he had ended up riding the excursion boat with me back to the mainland. Then, after the boat reached shore, we wandered around town while he waited for the next boat to take him back, and ended up at the school.

“I get terribly frightened sometimes,” he said. “When I finish a job, I take the boat to town to mail it off—it might be a pamphlet advertising pills made from sturgeon fat … ‘just ten tablets a day improves circulation and strengthens the liver.’ I buy a stamp and drop it in the box. The envelope makes just the slightest sound as it falls, and at that moment a terrible fear comes over me.” He reached out and drew an alcohol burner toward him. The curve of the lamp fit perfectly in his palm; the wick snaked through the glass. “It’s not a matter of being sad or lonely. I no longer feel lonely. No, it’s as though I’m being sucked silently into some hole in the atmosphere, to disappear altogether. Pulled in by an overwhelming force, and once I’m gone, I’ll never get back.”

“Do you mean you’d die?”

“No, everyone dies. This is something else, like being drawn toward an invisible chasm. I feel I’m being singled out for some sort of punishment. In fact, I’m afraid I won’t be permitted to die but be forced to wander eternally at the ends of the earth. No one will mourn me, or even so much as notice that I’m gone. No one will look for me, except perhaps the sturgeon pill company wanting to pay my translation fee—and they would give up soon, over such a paltry sum as translators are paid.” He stared at his reflection in the glass of
the lamp. His hand moved, and the reflection wavered with the shifting liquid.

“I pay these women to help me escape this fear. The desires of the flesh confirm my existence. And then, in the morning, I take the first boat back to the island. I throw out the notes for the sturgeon translation, the sample pamphlets, even the blotter I’d been using—and then I’m sure that the crisis has passed.”

I nodded. I hadn’t understood everything that he’d said, but I didn’t want to disturb the quiet of the classroom. He breathed a long sigh, as though his fear had finally left him.

The wind off the ocean had died at dusk. The leaves on the trees were still, and the school flag and the nets on the soccer goals hung limp. We went into the storage room at the back of the classroom. It was dark and stuffy and its shelves were filled with equipment for high school science experiments: flasks, beakers, mortars, a scale and weights, a chart with the periodic table, a slide projector, a model of the human skeleton, test tubes, microscopes, insect specimens, petri dishes. … We walked down the narrow aisle between the shelves. The air was faintly medicinal, like the translator’s plastic cord.

“Did you think me contemptible?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve known about these women since I was a child. They come to the Iris all the time.” A specimen box caught my eye; the pin inside had come loose, and the beetle lay at the bottom.

“Do you do the same things to them?” I asked.

“They could never be the same,” he said, shaking his head. “Mari …” I loved the sound of my name on his lips. “There is no one like you. You are unique, every fingernail, every strand of hair incomparable.”

I didn’t know how to answer—I just wanted him to say my name over and over. There was no need for other words, words that had a meaning. I opened and closed the drawers under the shelves at random, test tubes rattling together.

Earlier that same day, I had been tied to a bed with iron rails that were ideal for securing my ankles and wrists. He had cut away my slip with a large pair of scissors. The blades had been sharpened to a fine edge, and the steel had a dark sheen. He snapped them open and closed in the air, as if to test the sharpness and savor the sound. Then he drew them straight up my body from my spread legs, and the slip fell away as if by magic.

The blades touched my abdomen. A cold shock ran through me, and my head began to spin. If he had pressed just a bit harder, the scissors might have pierced my soft belly. The skin would have peeled back, the fat beneath laid bare. Blood would have dripped on the bedspread.