Excerpts from
Uncertainty
By Michael Larsen
Except for a corner of the bedding that´s nicked off, the bed is as white and taut as a soft down coffin. Every night a small square appears like magic on the pillow. Peppermint chocolate in silver foil, cooled below the melting point. Is it meant to be eaten before or after you brush your
teeth? I´ve never quite understood that piece of chocolate.
The flowers in the vases have a freshness that seems almost unreal. Sweet-smelling and bursting with green juices, they are hyacinths and squeaky-leafed yellow tulips: through the vases the water shines crystal cleat like chrome or sun-splintered rain.
No doubt about it: the photograph was taken here. Not in this exact room, but in one of the many rooms of the hotel. The mirror and the texture of the dusty crimson wallpaper in the background give it away. Even with the two figures in close-up, you can make out the tiny upholstered cushions which, like a fingerprint, link the wall in the photo with a wall in one of the rooms. The colors change from floor to floor: On the fifth the wallpaper´s a subdued yellow, as in the photo. That´s where it was taken.
Her face is strangely contorted. Contorted with pleasure. As he holds her wrist tightly, she pushes herself backward against him, her fists clenched. The mirror, the wallpaper, the sweat on their bodies are all visible.
I can´t keep my eyes off the picture. I keep staring at it even though it makes me gag. The bed they´re lying on is rumpled, the sheets pulled askew: a pillow´s been pushed between her legs. The graininess of the picture makes it even smuttier.
This woman - who wanders through my dreams like a ghost suspended in time, whose fluttering lashes I can still feel against my neck like a frightened butterfly - flings her body backward as if letting herself be rammed by a pole, devouring it from below. At the moment they took the picture, her head jerked backward, as if she either died or came.
I don´t know him. I´m guessing the name on the note is his, but I´m not sure. And what about her? I ought to know her, but I´m not sure I do. I´m guessing.
In my dreams her face is still young. She´s still cool, round, and soft, with hands made only for caressing. Can I connect her to the woman in the picture? I find it difficult. Maybe it´s the short hair. When I saw her last, it was long and blond. In the letter Marianne sent with the photo, she said that Monique also dyed it after she´d had it cut.
Outside my door the hallways are quiet. Distant sounds penetrate the womblike security as through a light sleep. At night, when they bring up silver platters and sparkling decanters, the waiters in their white jackets
and black, razor-creased pants speak in the hushed voices of discreet lovers. The street far below is silent.
Though the sound of the bell on the ornate elevator can´t be completely muffled, the massive mahogany door to my room, a room hissing with artificially cooled air, makes even that sound almost imperceptible.
Occasionally someone pushes messages and letters under the door, but the only sound they make is a slight rustle and a white whisper across the carpet. They´re usually from Solker. He worries about my expenses.
After the descent in the elevator, which leaves a faint deafness and a slight sense of exhaustion, one steps into the lobby. It´s quiet there too.
In the tall-pillared silence, the leather feet of business people across the deep-pile carpets make no sound at all. You´d need microphones to pick up conversations, curiously dead and intimate. Trails in the carpet reveal the unheard bustle, while invisible servants constantly erase and sweep away the shadows and dust.
Beneath the cathedrallike dome in the front hall, the men seem clean, well-groomed, and odorless, and the pomade in their short, black hair gleams wetly like dew from a bath. Their colorful silk ties give them an aura of boyish innocence, and the thought of their multimillion-dollar deals seems incongruous. Around the women swirl invisible, dizzying clouds of fragrance. Most wear high-necked, tailored, solid-colored suits; others wear dresses, with only the slits in their skirts allowing them to move. They could be young wives, girlfriends, or colleagues: you can´t tell. They might also be bought women. Their soft shoulders are large and square; as they walk, their gliding, pointy footsteps seem to be squashing something underfoot. They look like colorful carnivores, their faces white with smiles and their shiny lips blood red, almost dripping.
There´s a majestic stylishness in the hotel corridors. Everything warm pastels asleep in English red, crimsons, pale sandy yellow, and a single cold color which manages to make the bathroom larger and the water warmer - a cool green echoed in the detailing of the white towels and washcloths and in the wrappers of the hotel soap bars. The day I arrived, they wanted to know which newspapers I wanted delivered to my room with my breakfast. But of course they didn´t have any from Denmark.
The tips I give young Stuart, Louis, and the others are the only money that passes between us. Everything else is done by credit card. Everyone´s polite and smiling, almost homosexually friendly. No one recognizes the man in my photograph.
And I would have remembered her, says Stuart.
But I know she was here!
Stuart shakes his head. I don´t remember.
He doesn´t comment on the photo, asks no questions. Merely regrets not being able to help.
I can ring for Stuart - or any of the others - at any time of day or night. I can have my clothes cleaned or washed. When I want a car, I just press a button. If I have no special food requests, I can call down for one of the daily specials. The staff are like shadows in my life. Only once do I have to call for something I can´t find in the minibar. I can press a button to get a massage, to have the fifth-floor pool opened or my shoes polished or pants pressed.
And I can call when I run out of pills; the hotel doctor takes care of the rest. All they need is the prescription, and only the first time.
Bad dreams again, sir?
No dreams at all.
Michael Larsen: Uncertainty
Harcourt Brace & Company 1994
Translated by Lone Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher
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