Rates of Exchange (15 page)

‘Please look round, do you see any chemist shop where your good old friend can go for his recipe?’ says Lubijova, sitting in the far corner of the taxi, ‘I don’t think
so.’ ‘Yes, he’s an odd sort of chap,’ says Petworth. ‘I wonder if your wife thinks also he is an odd sort of chap,’ says Lubijova, ‘Do you call her Lottie?
It is a nice name. How is she, your Lottie? Also a nice person? Would she like one like that for a friend?’ ‘She’s dark, very private,’ says Petworth. ‘And also she
smokes the small cigars,’ says Lubijova, ‘Here, see, your hotel. Isn’t it grand? Do you see now you are important visitor?’ And the Hotel Slaka, under the portico of which
the taxi now moves, is clearly a hotel in the old grand manner, with fine stone fac¸ades and many balconies. ‘Very nice,’ says Petworth. The glass entrance doors open, and two
limping doormen walk toward the taxi; the driver switches his radio from jazz to massed choir music, and gets out. Petworth is about to get out too when, in the half-darkness, a hand seizes his
arm; in her corner Lubijova, holding him, is staring at him urgently. ‘Comrade Petwurt, before you get out, I tell you one thing, for your good,’ she says, ‘This odd sort of chap,
I think you shall be a little careful of him. Always in my country there are those who want something. Perhaps he makes for you some trouble.’ ‘Trouble?’ says Petworth, looking at
her. ‘I am your good guide, I like to help you,’ says Lubijova, ‘I do not know what he plans, but remember, it is good to be cautious. I hope you understand?’ ‘I think
so,’ says Petworth. ‘I think so too,’ says Lubijova, putting her forefinger to her nose, ‘Now let us get out, and you see your nice hotel.’

II

The Hotel Slaka, located in Plazsci Wang’liki (somewhere toward the top of your map), is indeed a hotel in the old grand manner. Imperial times have made it, and the grand
travellers of an older Europe; its fac¸ade is stone, its portico wide, its lobby vast, its ceilings high, its ferns abundant. Archdukes and hussars, duchesses and décollettée
ladies must once have passed through these fine halls, beneath these cut-glass chandeliers, beside this faintly erotic statuary, up these grand staircases, into these discreetly curtained alcoves.
But history, sparing no one and nothing, affects even hotels. Now portraits of Lenin, Brezhnev, Grigoric hang over the reception desk; at it work girls in the blue uniform of Cosmoplot.
Today’s visitors have contemporary political significance: a group of Vietnamese women in dark blue worksuits, cadre pens in their top pockets, hair fringed over their eyes, stand and talk
quietly in one corner, and a cluster of black Africans in long flowing robes laughs and chuckles in another. In Petworth’s path, as he goes toward the desk, which is marked
R
’
GYSTRAYII
, two men stand silently facing each other, holding red carnations, while the two interpreters beside them talk fluently. A limping doorman
takes Petworth’s luggage to the desk, which is surrounded by a crowd of large women, several with dyed hair, most in dresses of pink and green. Large suitcases stand at their feet; they look
at Petworth curiously. ‘Ivanovas,’ says Lubijova, ‘Push through them, push, push, push. They like to make their factory outings here, we are so cheap. But you are important
visitor.’

There is a girl behind the desk in blue uniform, with dark red hair, spread fanlike from her head in lacquered splendour; she looks at them without interest. ‘Hallo, dolling,’ says
Lubijova, ‘Here is Professor Petwurt, reservation of the Min’stratii Kulturi, confirmation here.’ ‘So, Petvurt?’ the girl says, taking a pen from her hair and running
it languidly down the columns of a large book, ‘Da, Pervert, so, here is. Passipotti.’ ‘She likes your passport, don’t give it to her,’ says Lubijova, ‘Give it
to me. I know these people well, they are such bureaucrats. Now, dolling, tell me, how long do you keep?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ says the girl, ‘It registers with the police.’
‘No, dolling, this is much too long,’ says Lubijova, ‘I do not love you. You can arrange, do it for me tonight. Tomorrow he goes to the Min’stratii Kulturi, and they
don’t let him in without it.’ ‘Perhaps,’ says the girl, ‘I try.’ ‘Comrade Petwurt, remember, come back in three hour and ask it from her,’ says
Lubijova, ‘Remember, here if you do not have passport, you do not exist. And I expect you like to exist, don’t you? It is nicer.’ ‘Here, Pervert,’ says the
lacqueredhaired girl, pushing a form across the desk, ‘I need some informations.’ ‘It is not English, he doesn’t understand it,’ says Lubijova, ‘We do it
together. Put here: name, address, where born, how old; so old, are you really, I didn’t think it. Now where you come from, London, didn’t you, and how long you stay, that is three
nights. Now where you go next, do you know, I tell you: Glit. Write it down, four letters,
G
-
L
-
I
-
T
.
She can do the rest herself. There, dolling, is good?’

Taking the pencil from her hair, the girl checks the form. ‘Okay, is good. Now, Pervert, this card I write for you, it is your hotel ident’ayii, ja? Only this gives you your key. If
you lose, no replace. And don’t forget, no this, no key, no breakfast.’ Petworth picks up the card, which has a name, A. Pervert, written on it, and a room number, and on the back a
message saying: ‘Bienvenue à Hotel
SLAKA
, une Hotel «
COSMOPLOT
». Services gratuits: transports du bagages
jusqu’à et depuis la chambre; brosses à habit, aiguilles, fils; information sur la température de l’air.’ ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Dolling,
let us find out if anyone loves him,’ says Lubijova, ‘Does he get some messages?’ The lacquered-haired girl inspects the pigeonholes behind her: ‘One letter,’ she
says. ‘Oh, from Slaka?’ asks Lubijova, ‘You have some more good old friends here?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth, putting the letter into his pocket, ‘I can’t
think who could know I was coming.’ ‘I expect it is some nice girl who remembers you,’ says Lubijova, ‘Now is everything good? Do you need anything? Do you want perhaps to
call your wife, your dark lady? If so, please tell me. There are certain regulations, they are such bureaucrats here. We must book it before.’ ‘Yes, I would like to call her,’
says Petworth. ‘Of course, you must give her the love of Plitplov. I will make arrangements while you are upstairs. Please write down me the number.’ The lacquered-haired girl leans
over the counter and bangs on it with a large key: ‘Sissi funvsi forsi,’ she shouts to a large bald hall-porter, who comes over, takes the key, and drapes himself in Petworth’s
luggage.

‘It is not permitted that the guides go upstairs,’ says Lubijova, ‘So you go there, take a time, do a wash, what you like. I sit here in these chairs and read some more pages
of Hemingway. Then you come down and we make some business.’ ‘Business?’ asks Petworth. ‘Oh, don’t you like some money?’ cries Lubijova, ‘And a programme?
Don’t you like to make some objections and changes? Look, go quickly, you will lose your luggage again. See, the man gets in the lift, be quick.’ Petworth pushes back through the crowd
round the reception desk; the big Ivanovas, smelling of musk, stare at him, though whether they are struck by his charms or his sagging Western clothes he cannot tell. The elevator has great copper
doors, embossed with modern reliefs showing peasants and factory workers happy in their activities: the scowling porter holds them apart. Petworth gets in; so do three more Petworths, in baggy
safari suits and flat earth shoes, staring at him from the mirrored walls. Slowly, jerkily, the doors close, and the downstairs world of travellers and tours, guides and delegations goes from
sight; slowly, jerkily, the elevator, its decor evidently in excess of its technology, begins to bump and grind upward through the building. Then the big doors tug open again, to reveal an upstairs
world: a silent wide corridor, carpeted down the middle, flanked with vases on pedestals, holding plastic flowers; an old wooden desk with an old wooden chair, on which sits an elderly floormaid,
in white overall, mobcap, black socks, white shoes with the heels omitted, who looks up from an old paperback book to inspect him.

The porter leads the way to a large mahogany door with 654 on it, which opens to three turns of the key. Inside is a big airless anteroom, bigger than last night’s entire hotel room in
Bayswater, but furnished only with a large sprouting hatstand with a crop of coathangers on it, a large cheval glass, and a doormat for the feet. Another mahogany door leads on into a room of
considerable nobility: a vast, high-ceilinged bedroom with two balconied windows, facing out over the large square below, with the trams and the signs saying
C
OPT
and
PECTOPAH
. An empire sofa stands against one wall; a directoire table holding a bowl of roses stands against
another; a dressing table with a large mirror faces across to a vast bed, more treble than double. A fresco of raucous nymphs decorates the ceiling; a great brass light like an upturned bush
dangles from the centre of their sport into the room. On the wall hangs an old and vaguely erotic line-drawing, showing the image of a decorative female foot, and the inscription ‘Salon
Damenschuh um 1890.’ Apart from that, the decoration consists largely of mirrors; some twenty Petworths and their bald porters move frantically in all directions through the disproportionate
space. ‘Camarad’aki,’ says the porter, opening another mahogany door and switching on the light of a vast inner sanctum: in it is a throne-like toilet; a bidet; a very large bath
with showerpipes, ascended to by means of tiled steps. It seems strange, under a new and egalitarian ideology, to be granted such space, more than he has ever had in a hotel before, more even than
his ego can fill; it seems difficult, in a proletarian world, to know how to reward the bald porter and the floormaid, who peers in from the doorway. It seems well that he has no money; what he
does is to reach into the Heathrow bag, take out the carton of cigarettes, crack it open, and offer a packet each to the porter and the maid. The porter puts down the large key on the directoire
table, and inspects the packet gloomily; the maid puts hers unenthusiastically into the pocket of her overalls. Then they are gone, leaving Petworth to occupy, as best he can, the vast space.

He looks around. Already the room does not look quite as it did before, as if it is emptying to match his own vacancy. More closely inspected, the grandeur displays small flaws. There is a
marked smell of dustiness. Moths inhabit the velvet curtains to the balconied windows. In the rose-bowl on the directoire table, processes of vegetable decomposition have begun. A large crack runs
down the wall opposite the bed; another zigzags between the reaching hands of the nymphs cavorting on the ceiling. A wall-lamp has fallen down behind the sofa. The cornice droops off the ceiling in
one corner. The glinting mirrors are bloomed, discoloured, and cracked. The rattling windows fit badly, admitting metallic noise from the trams below. The signs saying
PECTOPAH
and
C
OPT
flash stark bright light into the room. When tried, the great radio like a cinema
organ at the bedside proves to have only one audible channel, the others giving off the noise of static and bagpipe jamming. The bathroom light the porter switched on will not switch on for
Petworth, so that the door must be kept open. The fine European toilet, which has one of those high inner ledges that permit scientific inspection of one’s most basic daily achievements, has
an American addition: a slip across it saying
SANIT
’
AYII
, which has spared someone the trouble of cleaning it. As Petworth drops his trousers
and sits down there, drips from the ceiling, twenty feet above, fall generously onto his head. And when he reaches out to the toilet-roll holder for paper, that simple provision – quite
unlike the temperature of the air – proves not to be a free service of the establishment. From above the washbasin, a cracked mirror stares at Petworth, inspecting this predicament; so
probably too, Petworth reflects, does some nearby HOGPo man, peering through a screen.

Yes, there are, Petworth goes on to consider, sitting there, travellers who are adept at travel. And travel is in turn adept with them, so that for them switches always work, keys move easily in
doors, telephones function. There are others who travel too, but travel does not sympathize; and for them bedsprings always fail, wardrobe doors never shut or, more probably, take one’s
clothes and then will not open again, lightbulbs fail, toilet paper runs out. Perched there, in front of the HOGPo man, Petworth knows himself to be of the second class; once again, he feels in his
pocket for a piece of paper that will solve his problems. There is the grey letter of invitation; there is his currency declaration. And there too is his hotel ident’ayii, which proves to say
on the back: ‘Welcome to Slaka, city of trees and art, flowers and gipsy song. No doubt all will be satisfied with their sojourn in this beautiful place. In
HOTEL
SLAKA
, do not neglect to visit: ***
RESTAURANT SLAKA
: offered are such delicacies as, Kyrbii Churba (mutton soap), Cotelette de l’Amateur (chop-lover’s
chops), Sarkii Banatu (folded pate), and the notable Boyard Plate, animated with folkloric singeress and typical orchestra; ***
NIGHTCLUB ZIPZIP
: the personal are clothed as
peasants from mountains and national fame artists give remarkable performances of, jiggling, songing, art-strip, ect.; ***
BARR
’
II TZIGANE
: the
personal are in cutumes Romany, and both spiritual and nonalcoolical drinks are availed.’ There is the letter he has just been given downstairs, in an envelope which has an official crest on
the back, as well as an air of having been unstuck and refashioned, though this could be an optical illusion. The envelope contains an engraved invitation card, from a Mr and Mrs Steadiman of the
British Embassy in Slaka, inviting a Mr A. Petworth to dinner at their apartment the following night, in order to meet a Mr A. Petworth. The card is too stiff, the envelope too sharp, to serve the
occasion; happily there is also last night’s bill from the hotel in Bayswater, to resolve the problem.