The Last Resort (18 page)

Religious convictions aside, Miss Guêpe, a native of Switzerland raised in the strictest Calvinist tradition, who only considered herself moderately religious, did indeed take this as a kind of sign—from Allah, from God, or whoever looked over these details. And so she decided that the time had come to change direction, especially after her first and very faltering steps. She would now dedicate her energies to an entirely different kind of hotel venture.

To everyone’s surprise, the very first thing she did was fire the Algerian chef specializing in haute Middle Eastern cuisine and hire a new culinary director, an expert in low-calorie, health-conscious fare. From her office, connected to the outside world by nothing but a single telephone and her superior hotel-management instincts, Miss Guêpe had ascertained that luck was on her side. She didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together—on the one hand, she had a thick red clay liquid spewing out from her beautiful gardens, and on the other hand, she knew that a hedonistic fervor was taking over the world—this, at least, was what she read in all the hotel-industry surveys she pored over so assiduously in her free time. Very well: She had never been much of a beauty, nor did she believe in nonsense like facial creams and youth serums, much less the wondrous powers of the sulfur waters bubbling out from her recently unveiled pool. But that didn’t matter. Everyone else believed. People were willing to pay a small fortune for treatments that promised health and beauty, and they were even willing to travel to the edge of the desert to stay at an extravagant hotel like L’Hirondelle d’Or in order to avail themselves of these amenities.

And so this initially unwelcome discovery was what turned LH’O into a sanctuary of health and well-being, a well-oiled machine that ran according to such precise schedules that the guests had no choice but to forget about their frenetic lives in the city, for a few days at least, as they smeared their faces with muds of the deepest red and various other hues. The black mud, for example, was added a bit later on—and though it was not exactly authentic, it was certainly quite imaginatively created, formulated with truly superb products that Miss Guêpe purchased from a Swiss pharmaceutical company. And so, plastered from head to toe in these invigorating salts—and tightly controlled by a mealtime discipline that successfully married nutritional virtue and
cordon bleu
excellence—the guests lived in a state not dissimilar to bliss. Silence, routine, peace, and order: Miss Guêpe was there to take care of them.

Miss Guêpe’s method, it should be noted, was radically different from that of the many other rigorously healthy spa hotels that had recently become so popular, especially in the United States. At the American spas, discipline was inflicted by smiling yet inflexible supervisors who directed the guests’ activities with hands-on authority: First we go to the gym, then the massage room, and now, sir, a glass of carrot juice, and on and on like that. The guardian angels of L’Hirondelle, however, made themselves very wonderfully absent, being native residents who would never dream of interfering with the guests. As such, Miss Guêpe was able to avoid hiring energetic masseuses or chirpy restaurant hosts who recommended the fennel mousse over the cucumber puree. Miss Guêpe had eliminated all that blah-blah-blah, and replaced it with her long, invisible hand, taking care of everything behind the scenes. This very wise method was very clearly enumerated in a plaque of the hotel’s ten commandments that Miss Guêpe had placed on a wall in her office the day L’Hirondelle opened for business. No guest would ever have the occasion to see it, as it was located in a very restricted area of the hotel, and in any event, the decalogue could easily be whittled down to two basic golden rules. One: Do everything possible to ensure the full relaxation of the guest, since that is the reason he or she has paid such a fortune to come here. Two: Control every element of the hotel without ever allowing yourself to be seen.

They say that once she had perfected this unique strategy—the first of its kind in hotel history—Miss Guêpe rested. That was when she decided to reserve this sacred yellow room for her own use. From there, she would direct the establishment with serenity and moderation, a serious challenge at any hotel and even more so at L’Hirondelle, an oasis in the middle of Nowhere, a place where every so often the unexpected mishap could escape Miss Guêpe’s stringent controls. Like today, for example: We find Miss Guêpe sitting at her desk, talking on the telephone, issuing the most detailed of commands to the hotel staff despite the fact that this very morning a most unfortunate incident has come to pass, threatening the very perfect Swiss machine that governs everything at L’Hirondelle. And now this most regrettable incident—if that is, in fact, what we can call it—is sitting on top of her desk wrapped up in a thick plastic case.

“Do you know what this is, Karim?” she asks as she hangs up the phone and turns to the young man in the gardener’s uniform nervously standing at attention before her. He is young, perhaps twenty-five, his dark face cracked by the sun. His velvety eyes reveal the great anxiety he feels at this moment.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A bat,
madame.
”

“And do you know where this bat was found, Karim?”

Karim looks down at the animal, which is lying in a surgical-style metal tray covered by a film of plastic. Despite the plastic, he is able to distinguish some very unpleasant things about the creature, such as a set of extremely sharp teeth and a hairy ear standing up on end like an accusatory finger pointing straight at him, slender and as stiff as a board. Karim feels that Miss Guêpe has gone a tad too far by placing the witness of his sin on her table and displaying it in a metal box as an exhibition of sorts. But he says none of this. He simply looks at her.

“This bat, Karim, met its death in the winter pool of L’HO,” says the directrice, making use of the verbal economy for which she is renowned. Short, terse sentences, the briefest interactions possible, including reprimands. She has always found this to be the most effective approach.

“Drowned in the winter pool, Karim. We found him floating in the water this morning. I believe you and I have discussed the issue of rats before, have we not?”

Karim remembers the moment all too well, though he would much rather forget it. Miss Guêpe, however, wants to make sure that Karim knows exactly what she means, for it is extremely important. To add a bit of realism to her bizarre spectacle, Miss Guêpe removes the plastic seal so that she and Karim may look directly at the bat lying in his metal box. Miss Guêpe prods the animal with a wooden stick that Karim believes was once attached to an ice cream pop, but he cannot be sure. It may very well be an instrument specifically designed for examining the bodies of dead animals. The defunct bat’s stiff ear is pointing, once again, straight at Karim when Miss Guêpe says:

“The rat, Karim.”

Karim implores her with his velvety eyes, but Miss Guêpe is immune to velvety eyes. “The last time the pool was emptied, an enormous rat was found in the drain pipe. You remember that, I know you do.”

Silence.

“Sucked in by the water pump,” she adds. To freshen Karim’s memory, she takes her stick and prods the rigid bat, which flips over in the box. Karim indeed remembers.

Curiously enough, he does not think of the stiff, swollen rat that had gotten sucked in by the water pump and trapped in a pipe—he thinks of Miss Guêpe’s foot, which, on that distant occasion, had flipped the gummy cadaver on its side once they had extricated it from the pipe and placed it on the ground. And he remembers how she said to him, over and over again, “Karim, Karim. This is repulsive. It must not happen again. But it was an accident. You did not place the yellow tape around the pool to alert the guests that we were draining it, did you?”

“Yes,
madame,
I did.”

“For it would have been a very dangerous oversight—”

“It was in place,
madame.
”

“—because if the yellow tape was not in place, Karim,” Miss Guêpe continued as if she hadn’t heard a thing, “this dead rat might be a guest of the hotel, and you would be held responsible.”

Karim does not understand how a guest could possibly fit into a drainage pipe, but as is his manner, he says nothing. Of the previous incident, all he really recalls is that it involved a disgusting rat. Not that he is especially squeamish about vermin—after all, he had seen plenty of dead rats in his life, but none had ever been quite like that one: as big as a rabbit, with four pink paws facing up toward the sky and a head that the water pressure and the contours of the drain pipe had molded into the shape of an egg and whose two eyes very nearly jumped out from their sockets like little marbles: a pair of bright white, useless eyes that stared up at Karim as Miss Guêpe had continued talking.

“No more accidents, Karim,” she had said. “I don’t want to see one more rat, bird, bat, or even the tiniest insect in that swimming pool. I hope you understand what I am saying.” Just in case he hadn’t, she had nudged the dead animal’s swollen body a bit more with her foot, and Karim had looked on as the animal’s damp fur grazed the tip of Miss Guêpe’s very sober shoe for a fleeting moment.

And now, the memories come flooding back into Karim’s mind, prompted by the sight of this new, diminutive witness of his sins lying on the table before him.

“It will not occur again,
madame.
I promise you.”

“It will not occur again,” Miss Guêpe repeats. Then she reaches out for the telephone, a sign the gardener interprets as permission to finally leave the room.

“Just a moment, Karim.”

“Yes,
madame.
”

Verbal economy is one of Miss Guêpe’s most admirable qualities, but for the moment she is still staring at the bat. In one hand she holds the telephone that Karim believes to be the instrument of his liberation and with the other hand she makes a vague gesture toward the vermin on her desk.

“Take this thing and dispose of it in the incinerator, please.” She hands him the metal tray, along with the ice cream stick she had been using as a pointer.

“Thank you,
madame,
” Karim says.

“Once you have disposed of him, and only after you have washed your hands
very
well, will you please do me the favor of going to the kitchen?”

“Yes,
madame.
”

“And please tell the chef that I need to speak with him. That is all. You may go now, Karim.”

Karim walks away with the evidence of his crime in his arms, and as he closes the door behind him, he takes a moment to breathe deeply and feel a twinge of pity for the chef, who, like himself, has been summoned to the yellow room. He stops for a moment before starting down the stairs, and using the ice cream stick, he bundles the dead creature in the plastic wrapper. If anyone right at that moment were to ask him why he is doing such a thing, Karim would swear in the name of Allah and his prophet that it is for reasons of hygiene, for he knows full well that cleanliness is paramount at L’Hirondelle. But the real reason is that he can no longer bear the sight of that dead bat’s stiff ear pointing at him. He walks down the service stairs toward the incinerator, enters the furnace room, opens a small door, and finally throws the animal into the fire. Only then does Karim remember that he must go to the kitchen and speak to the chef at once, because a call from the yellow room can only mean that he has committed a dire breach of conduct, a blunder as unforgivable as Karim’s, because Miss Guêpe normally communicates with mortals by telephone. If she has summoned the head chef for a personal audience it must mean that she has a very serious matter to discuss with him.

“Perhaps he burned the lamb that is to be served at dinner,” Karim ventured to guess. “Poor guy.” The bat crackles in the flames and Karim stands there pondering these things for a few more minutes until the highly unpleasant odor of scorched flesh spurs him back into action and he slams the incinerator door with resolve. For as long as he is the gardener at L’Hirondelle d’Or, never again will anyone find a dead rat, bat, or any other creature anywhere near the mud baths or the winter solarium, the home of L’Hirondelle’s covered pool.

Other People One Might Meet at a Spa Hotel

2. Sánchez

When two rats are trapped in a 50cm x 50cm maze, they will inevitably end up copulating, even if they are of the same sex.

When four rats (or five at the most) are trapped in a box together, each one will keep his distance, trying not to invade the territory of the others.

When six rats are placed together in a box, sooner or later they will begin to eat one another. This is a scientifically proven truth.

Proven or not, it is too hot to pay much attention to the science section of the Spanish newspaper
El País.
Sánchez quickly flips through the pages until he arrives at the classified ads, one of his very favorite sections of the newspaper:

Zenda, your prisoner, sadist sanctuary, 284-1870.

Paloma, submissive, Greek, golden shower, black kiss, 878-4580.

Sexual smorgasbord, full of surprises . . . 885-8788.

What on earth was it about the number eight that gave it such predominance in the adult section of the newspaper? Perhaps it is the roundest, softest, most sinuous number? Antonio Sánchez López adores his daily trip through the sexual services offered in the newspaper, for that is where he gauges the level of misery humans have sunk to, an old habit acquired in the early days of his career as a scandalmonger.

Mature widow, generous bosom, 388-8864

Victor, real men only, 980-6899

Every day there is something new. He knows how very wildly the supply varies, for he has been poking his nose into lowlife habits like these for years now, and not because he is interested as a client. He is attracted strictly as a spectator of misfortune, and also because these pages often provide good material for his radio show. In the beginning, his stories were mostly about anonymous scandals, but not anymore—nowadays it is far more profitable to talk about politics and public life. People didn’t care what he talked about as long as he made sure to dig up some dirt on the rich and powerful. That was the way things were now. Sánchez had changed considerably over the past few years, thanks to all his success, but his method was the same as ever. Every morning, after a relatively thorough perusal of the top stories in the newspaper, he would always save a few extra moments to revel in the detritus of his earliest radio career triumphs. By now it had become a kind of routine—he was like an old panhandler so accustomed to eating cockroaches that he continued to fry them up even though he could easily afford caviar.