The Third Reich

SEPTEMBER 18

Like a ray of lightning, Frau Else appears at the end of the hallway. I’ve just gotten up and I’m on my way to breakfast, but I’m frozen in place by the surprise.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she says, coming toward me.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I was in Barcelona, with my family. My husband is sick, as you know, but you aren’t well either and you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

I let her into my room. It smells bad, like tobacco and stale air. When I open the curtains the sun makes me blink in pain. Frau Else stares at El Quemado’s photocopies pinned to the wall; I imagine she’ll scold me for breaking the hotel rules.

“This is obscene,” she says, and I don’t know whether she’s talking about the content of the pages or my decision to display them.

“They’re El Quemado’s edicts.”

Frau Else turns. She’s even more beautiful than she was a week ago, if possible.

“Was he the one who put them up here?”

“No, it was me. El Quemado gave them to me and… I decided it was better not to hide them. For him the copies are like a backdrop to our game.”

“What kind of horrible game are you talking about? The game of atonement? It’s all so tasteless.”

Frau Else’s cheekbones may have gotten slightly sharper during her absence.

“You’re right, it’s tasteless, though the truth is it’s my fault, I was the first to bring out photocopies; of course, mine were articles on the game. Anyway, coming from El Quemado it’s to be expected, we all have to do things our own way.”

“Statement of the Meeting of the Council of Ministers, November 12, 1938,” she read in her sweet and melodious voice. “Doesn’t it make your stomach turn, Udo?”

“Sometimes,” I said equivocally. Frau Else seemed increasingly upset. “History in general is a bloody thing, you have to admit.”

“I wasn’t talking about history but about your comings and goings. I don’t care about history. What I do care about is the hotel, and you are a disruptive element here.” With great care she began to take down the photocopies.

I suspected that it wasn’t just the watchman who had come to her telling tales. Clarita too?

“I’m taking them,” she said with her back to me, gathering up the copies. “I don’t want you to suffer.”

I asked whether that was all she had to say to me. Frau Else was slow to answer. She shook her head, came over to me, and planted a kiss on my forehead.

“You remind me of my mother,” I said.

With her eyes open, Frau Else kissed me hard on the mouth. How about now? Without knowing very well what I was doing I took her in my arms and deposited her on the bed. Frau Else started to laugh. You’ve had nightmares, she said, thinking probably of the terrible mess the room was in. Her laughter, though it may have verged on the hysterical, was like a girl’s. With one hand she stroked my hair, murmuring unintelligible words, and when I lay down beside her I felt on my cheek the contrast between the cold linen of her blouse and her warm skin, soft to the touch. For an instant I thought she was going to surrender at last, but when I slid my hand under her skirt and tried to pull down her underpants, it was all over.

“It’s early,” she said, sitting up on the bed as if propelled by a spring of unpredictable force.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I just got up, but what does it matter?”

Frau Else got all the way up and changed the subject as her perfect—and quick!—hands straightened her clothes, moving like entities completely separate from the rest of her body. Cleverly she managed to turn my words against me. I’d just gotten up? Did I have any idea what time it was? Did I think it was decent get up so late? Didn’t I realize how confusing it was for the cleaning staff? As she delivered this speech, she kicked every so often at the clothes scattered on the floor and put the photocopies in her pocket.

Basically, it became clear that we weren’t about to make love, and my only consolation was the discovery that she had yet to find out about the incident with Clarita.

As we said good-bye, in the elevator, we agreed to meet that evening in the church square.

With Frau Else at Playamar, a restaurant about three miles inland, nine p.m.

“My husband has cancer.”

“Is it serious?” I ask, aware that this is a ridiculous question.

“Terminal.” Frau Else looks at me as if we’re separated by bulletproof glass.

“How much time does he have left?”

“Not much. He might not live through the summer.”

“The summer’s almost over… Though it looks as if the good weather will last until October,” I stammer.

Under the table, Frau Else’s hand squeezes my hand. Her gaze, however, is lost in the distance. Only now does the news begin to take shape in my head: her husband is dying; this is the explanation, or the catalyst, for many of the things that have been happening in the hotel and outside of it. Frau Else’s strange mix of seductiveness and rejection. El Quemado’s mysterious adviser. The intrusions into my room and the vigilant presence that I sense in the hotel. Considered from this perspective, was the dream about Florian Linden a warning from my subconscious that I should watch out for Frau Else’s husband? The truth is that it would be disappointing if it all boiled down to a question of jealousy.

“What’s going on between your husband and El Quemado?” I ask after a lapse occupied only by our fingers secretly interlacing. The Playamar is a busy place and in a short time Frau Else has greeted several people.

“Nothing.”

Then I try to tell her that she’s wrong, that between the two of them they’re planning to crush me, that her husband stole the rules from my room so that El Quemado could hone his game, that the strategy the Allies are following can’t be the fruit of a single mind, that her husband has spent hours in my room studying the game. I can’t. Instead I promise her that I won’t leave until her situation (that is, the disappearance of her husband) is cleared up, that I’ll stand by her, that she can count on me for anything she needs, that I understand if she doesn’t want to make love, that I’ll help her to be strong.

Frau Else’s way of thanking me for my words is to squeeze my hand in a crushing grip.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, pulling away as surreptitiously as possible.

“You should go back to Germany. You need to take care of yourself, not me.”

Upon declaring this, her eyes fill with tears.

“You are Germany,” I say.

Frau Else lets out a laugh—strong, ringing, irresistible—that draws the gaze of everyone in the restaurant. I also choose to laugh heartily: I’m a hopeless romantic. A hopeless sentimentalist, she corrects me. Fine, then.

On our way back I stop the car at a kind of inn. Down a gravel path there’s a pine grove with stone tables, benches, and garbage cans scattered about at random. When we roll down the window we hear distant music that Frau Else identifies as coming from a club in town. How can that be when the town is so far away? We get out of the car and Frau Else leads me by the hand to a cement balustrade. The inn is at the top of a hill, and from up here we can see the lights of the hotels and the neon signs in the shopping district. I try to kiss her but Frau Else refuses me her lips. Paradox-ically, back in the car, it’s she who takes the lead. For an hour we kiss and listen to music on the radio. The cool breeze that comes in through the half-open windows smells like flowers and fragrant herbs, and the spot is ideal for making love, but I thought it best not to steer things in that direction.

Before I realized, it was after midnight, though Frau Else, her cheeks flushed from so much kissing, seemed in no hurry to get back.

On the steps leading up to the hotel we found El Quemado. I parked on the Paseo Marítimo and Frau Else and I got out of the car together. El Quemado didn’t see us until we were almost on top of him. His head was bowed and he was staring distractedly at the ground; despite his broad back, from the distance he looked like a child, hopelessly lost. Hello, I said, trying to radiate happiness, though from the instant when Frau Else and I got out of the car a vague and insistent sadness settled over me. El Quemado raised his sheeplike eyes and said good evening. For the first time, if only briefly, Frau Else remained standing by my side, as if we were a couple, with shared interests. Have you been here a long time? El Quemado looked at us and shrugged his shoulders. How is business? asked Frau Else. Decent. Frau Else laughed her best crystalline laugh, which sweetened the night:

“You’re the last of the season to leave. Do you have work for the winter?”

“Not yet.”

“If we paint the bar I’ll call you.”

“All right.”

I felt a twinge of envy: Frau Else obviously knew how to talk to El Quemado.

“It’s late and I have to get up early tomorrow. Good night.”

From the stairs we watched as Frau Else stopped for a moment at the reception desk, where presumably she spoke to someone, and then moved on down the dark corridor, waited for the elevator, vanished…

“What do we do now?” El Quemado’s voice startled me.

“Nothing. Sleep. We’ll play another day,” I said harshly.

It took an instant for El Quemado to digest what I’d said. I’ll be back tomorrow, he said in a tone in which I caught a hint of resentment. He rose in a leap, like a gymnast. For an instant we eyed each other like bitter enemies.

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” I said, trying to control the sudden trembling of my legs and my desire to lunge at his neck.

In a fair fight, the two sides are equally matched. He’s heavier and shorter, I’m nimbler and taller; we both have long arms; he’s accustomed to physical exercise; my determination is my best weapon. The decisive factor might be the spot chosen for the fight. The beach? It seems like the right place, the beach at night, but there, I fear, El Quemado will have the advantage. Where, then?

“If I’m not busy,” I added dismissively.

In reponse El Quemado was silent, and then he left. As he was crossing the Paseo Marítimo, he looked back as if to check that I was still on the stairs. If only at that moment a car had appeared out of the darkness, going one hundred and fifty miles an hour!

From the balcony, not even the faintest glow can be seen from the pedal boat fortress. I’ve turned out my lights too, of course, except the one in the bathroom. The bulb over the mirror sheds an aquatic radiance that barely illuminates a wedge of carpet through the half-open door.

Later, after closing the curtains, I turn the lights back on and study one by one the various elements of my situation. I’m losing the war. I’ve almost certainly lost my job. Every day that goes by distances me a little further from an improbable reconciliation with Ingeborg. As he lies dying, Frau Else’s husband amuses himself by hating me, assaulting me with all the subtlety of the terminally ill. Conrad has sent me only a little money. The article that I originally planned to write at the Del Mar is set aside and forgotten… not an encouraging panorama.

At three in the morning, I got in bed without undressing and picked up the Florian Linden book where I’d left off.

I awoke a little before five, feeling suffocated. I didn’t know where I was and it took me a few seconds to realize that I was still in the town.

As summer fades (or as the visible signs of it fade), noises begin to be heard at the Del Mar that we never suspected before: the pipes now seem empty and bigger. The regular muted sound of the elevator has been replaced by scratching and races behind the plaster of the walls. The wind that every night shakes the window frame and hinges is more powerful. The faucets of the sink squeak and shudder before releasing water. Even the smell of the hallways, perfumed with artificial lavender, breaks down more quickly and turns into a pestilent stink that causes terrible coughing fits late at night.

One can’t help noticing those coughing fits! One can’t help noticing those footsteps in the night that the rugs never manage to muffle!

But if you go out into the hallway overcome by curiosity, what do you see? Nothing.