The Complete Short Stories (54 page)

She did not go to
church, she was above church. I had hoped to see her there, wearing different
clothes and perhaps sitting with the chemist, the dentist, and their wives in
the second front row behind the count and his family; or perhaps she might have
taken some less noticeable place among the congregation. But Frau Lublonitsch
was a church unto herself; and even resembled in shape the onion-shaped spires
of the churches around her.

I climbed the lower
slopes of the mountains while the experts in their boots did the thing
earnestly up on the sheer crags above the clouds. When it rained, they came
back and reported, ‘Tito is sending the bad weather.’ The maids were bored with
the joke, but they obliged with smiles every time, and served them up along
with the interminable veal.

The higher mountain
reaches were beyond me except by bus. I was anxious, however, to scale the
peaks of Frau Lublonitsch’s nature.

One morning, when everything was glittering
madly after a nervous stormy night, I came down early to look for coffee. I had
heard voices in the yard some moments before, but by the time I appeared they
had gone indoors. I followed the voices to the dark stone kitchen and peered in
the doorway. Beyond the chattering girls, I caught sight of a further doorway,
which usually remained closed. Now it was open.

Within it was a bedroom
reaching far back into the house. It was imperially magnificent. It was done in
red and gold. I saw a canopied bed, built high, splendidly covered with a
scarlet quilt. The pillows were piled up at the head — about four of them, very
white. The bedhead was deep dark wood, touched with gilt. A golden fringe hung
from the canopy. In some ways this bed reminded me of the glowing bed by which
van Eyck ennobled the portrait of Jan Arnolfini and his wife. All the rest of
the Lublonitsch establishment was scrubbed and polished local wood, but this
was a poetic bed.

The floor of the bedroom
was covered with a carpet of red which was probably crimson but which, against
the scarlet of the bed, looked purple. On the walls on either side of the bed
hung Turkish carpets whose background was an opulently dull, more ancient red —
almost black where the canopy cast its shade.

I was moved by the
sight. The girl called Mitzi was watching me as I stood in the kitchen doorway.
‘Coffee?’ she said.

‘Whose room is that?’

‘It’s Frau Chef’s room.
She sleeps there.’

Now another girl, tall,
lanky Gertha, with her humorous face and slightly comic answer to everything,
skipped over to the bedroom door and said, ‘We are instructed to keep the door
closed,’ and for a moment before closing it she drew open the door quite wide
for me to see some more of the room. I caught sight of a tiled stove
constructed of mosaic tiles that were not a local type; they were lustrous —
ochre and green —resembling the tiles on the floors of Byzantine ruins. The
stove looked like a temple. I saw a black lacquered cabinet inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, and just before Gertha closed the door I noticed, standing
upon the cabinet, a large ornamental clock, its case enamelled rosily with
miniature inset pastel paintings; each curve and twirl in the case of this
clock was overlaid with that gilded-bronze alloy which is known as ormolu. The
clock twinkled in the early sunlight which slanted between the window hangings.

I went into the polished
dining-room, and Mitzi brought my coffee there. From the window I could see
Frau Lublonitsch in her dark dress, her black boots and wool stockings. She was
plucking a chicken over a bucketful of feathers. Beyond her I could see the
sulky figure of Herr Stroh standing collarless, fat and unshaven, in the open
door of his hotel across the path. He seemed to be meditating upon Frau
Lublonitsch.

It was that very day that the nuisance
occurred. The double windows of my bedroom were directly opposite the bedroom
windows of the Hotel Stroh, with no more than twenty feet between — the width
of the narrow path that led up to the frontier.

It was a cold day. I sat
in my room writing letters. I glanced out of the window. In the window directly
opposite me stood Herr Stroh, gazing blatantly upon me. I was annoyed at his
interest. I pulled down the blind and switched on the light to continue my
writing. I wondered if Herr Stroh had seen me doing anything peculiar before I
had noticed him, such as tapping my head with the end of my pen or scratching
my nose or puffing at my chin, or one of the things one might do while writing
a letter. The drawn blind and the artificial light irritated me, and suddenly I
didn’t see why I shouldn’t write my letters by daylight without being stared
at. I switched off the light and released the blind. Herr Stroh had gone. I
concluded that he had taken my action as a signal of disapproval, and I settled
back to write.

I looked up a few moments
later, and this time Herr Stroh was seated on a chair a little way back from
the window. He was facing me squarely and holding to his eyes a pair of
field-glasses.

I left my room and went
down to complain to Frau Lublonitsch.

‘She’s gone to the market,’
Gertha said. ‘She’ll be back in half an hour.’

So I lodged my complaint
with Gertha.

‘I shall tell Frau Chef,’
she said.

Something in her manner
made me ask, ‘Has this ever happened before?’

‘Once or twice this
year,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to Frau Chef.’ And she added, with her music-hall
grimace, ‘He was probably counting your eyelashes.’

I returned to my room.
Herr Stroh still sat in position, the field-glasses in his hands resting on his
knees. As soon as I came within view, he raised the glasses to his eyes. I
decided to stare him out until such time as Frau Lublonitsch should return and
take the matter in hand.

For nearly an hour I sat
patiently at the window. Herr Stroh rested his arms now and again, but he did
not leave his seat. I could see him clearly, although I think I imagined the
grin on his face as, from time to time, he raised the glasses to his eyes.
There was no doubt that he could see, as if it were within an inch of his face,
the fury on mine. It was too late now for one of us to give in, and I kept
glancing down at the entrances to the Hotel Stroh, expecting to see Frau
Lublonitsch or perhaps one of her sons or the yard hands going across to
deliver a protest. But no one from our side approached the Stroh premises, from
either the front or the back of the house. I continued to stare, and Herr Stroh
continued to goggle through his glasses.

Then he dropped them. It
was as if they had been jerked out of his hands by an invisible nudge. He
approached close to the window and gazed, but now he was gazing at a point
above and slightly to the left of my room. After about two minutes, he turned
and disappeared.

Just then Gertha knocked
at my door. ‘Frau Chef has protested, and you won’t have any more trouble,’ she
said.

‘Did she telephone to
his house?’

‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t
use the phone; it mixes her up.

‘Who protested, then?’

‘Frau Chef.’

‘But she hasn’t been
across to see him. I’ve been watching the house.’

‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t
visit with him. But don’t worry, he knows all right that he mustn’t annoy our
guests.

When I looked out of the
window again, I saw that the blind of Herr Stroh’s room had been pulled down,
and so it remained for the rest of my stay.

Meantime, I went out to
post my letters in the box opposite our hotel, across the path. The sun had
come out more strongly, and Herr Stroh stood in his doorway blinking up at the
roof of the Guesthouse Lublonitsch. He was engrossed, he did not notice me at
all.

I didn’t want to draw
his attention by following the line of his gaze but I was curious as to what
held him staring so trancelike up at our roof. On my way back from the post-box
I saw what it was.

Like most of the roofs
in that province, the Lublonitsch roof had a railed ledge running several
inches above the eaves, for the purpose of preventing the snow from falling in
heavy thumps during the winter. On this ledge, just below an attic window,
stood the gold-and-rose ormolu clock that I had seen in Frau Lublonitsch’s
splendid bedroom.

I turned the corner just
as Herr Stroh gave up his gazing; he went indoors, sullen and bent. Two
car-loads of people who had moved into the hotel that morning were now moving
out, shifting their baggage with speed and the signs of a glad departure. I
knew that his house was nearly empty.

Before supper, I walked
past the Hotel Stroh and down across the bridge to the café. There were no
other customers in the place. The proprietor brought the harsh gin that was the
local speciality over to my usual table and I sipped it while I waited for
someone to come. I did not have to wait long, for two local women came in and
ordered ices, as many of them did on their way home from work in the village
shops. They held the long spoons in their rough, knobbly hands and talked,
while the owner of the café came and sat with them to exchange the news of the
day.

‘Herr Stroh has been
defying Frau Lublonitsch,’ one of the women said.

‘Not again?’

‘He’s been offending her
tourists.’

‘Dirty old Peeping Tom.’

‘He only does it to
annoy Frau Lublonitsch.’

‘I saw the clock on the
roof. I saw —’

‘Stroh is finished, he —’

‘Which clock?’

‘What she bought from
him last winter when he was hard up. All red and gold, like an altarpiece. A
beautiful clock — it was his grandfather’s when things were different.’

‘Stroh is finished. She’ll
have his hotel. She’ll have —’

‘She’ll have the pants
off him.’

‘He’ll have to go. She’ll
get the place at her price. Then she’ll build down to the bridge. Just wait and
see. Next winter she’ll have the Hotel Stroh. Last winter she had the clock. It’s
two years since she gave him the mortgage.

‘It’s only Stroh’s place
that’s standing in her way. She’ll pull it down.

The faces of the two
women and the man nearly met across the café table, hypnotized by the central
idea of their talk. The women’s spoons rose to their mouths and returned to
their ices while the man clasped his hands on the table in front of him. Their
voices went on like a litany.

‘She’ll expand down to
the bridge.’

‘Perhaps beyond the
bridge.’

‘No, no, the bridge will
be enough. She’s not so young. ‘Poor old Stroh!’

‘Why doesn’t she expand
in the other direction?’

‘Because there isn’t so
much trade in the other direction.’

‘The business is down
here, this side of the river.’

‘Old Stroh is upset.’

‘She’ll build down to
the bridge. She’ll pull down his place and build.’

‘Beyond the bridge.’

‘Old Stroh. His clock
stuck up there for everyone to see.

‘What does he expect,
the lazy old pig?’

‘What does he expect to
see with his field-glasses?’

‘The tourists.’

‘I wish him joy of the
tourists.’

They giggled, then
noticed me sitting within earshot, and came out of their trance.

How delicately Frau
Lublonitsch had sent her deadly message! The ormolu clock was still there on
the roof ledge when I returned. It was thus she had told him that time was
passing and the end of summer was near, and that his hotel, like his clock,
would soon be hers. As I passed, Herr Stroh shuffled out to his front door,
rather drunk. He did not see me. He was looking at the clock where it hung in
the sunset, he looked up at it as did the quaking enemies of the Lord upon the
head of Holofernes. I wondered if the poor man would even live another winter;
certainly he had taken his last feeble stand against Frau Lublonitsch.

As for her, she would
probably live till she was ninety or more. The general estimate of her age was
fifty-three, fifty-four, -five, -six: a healthy woman.

Next day, the clock was gone. Enough was
enough. It had gone back to that glamorous room behind the kitchen to which
Frau Lublonitsch retired in the early hours of the morning to think up her high
conceptions, not lying supine like a defeated creature but propped up on the
white pillows, surrounded by her crimson, her scarlet, her gold-and-rosy tints,
which, like a religious discipline, disturbed her spirit out of its sloth. It
was from here she planted the palm tree and built the shops.

When, next morning, I
saw her scouring the pots in the yard and plodding about in her boots among the
vegetables, I was somewhat terrified. She could have adorned her own person in
scarlet and gold, she could have lived in a turreted mansion rivalling that of
the apothecary in the village. But like one averting the evil eye or like one
practising a pure disinterested art, she had stuck to her brown apron and her
boots. And she would, without a doubt, have her reward. She would take the
Hotel Stroh. She would march on the bridge, and beyond it. The café would be
hers, the swimming-pool, the cinema. All the market place would be hers before
she died in the scarlet bed under the gold-fringed canopy, facing her ormolu
clock, her deed-boxes, and her ineffectual bottle of medicine.

Almost as if they knew
it, the three tourists remaining in the Hotel Stroh came over to inquire of
Frau Lublonitsch if there were any rooms available and what her terms were. Her
terms were modest, and she found room for two of them. The third left on his
motorcycle that night.

Everyone likes to be on
the winning side. I saw the two new arrivals from the Hotel Stroh sitting
secure under the Lublonitsch chestnut tree, taking breakfast, next morning.
Herr Stroh, more sober than before, stood watching the scene from his doorway.
I thought, Why doesn’t he spit on us, he’s got nothing to lose? I saw again, in
my mind’s eye, the ormolu clock set high in the sunset splendour. But I had not
yet got over my fury with him for spying into my room, and was moved, all in
one stroke, with high contempt and deep pity, feverish triumph and chilly fear.