The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel (8 page)

“But it’s not like her. She’s a terrier. She’s always been oblivious to birds.”

“Hadn’t we better go down?” I said. “It’s getting dark.”

“Isn’t it amazing,” Julia said, “how in the summer the sun takes forever to start setting, but then when it does, it sets so fast?”

It was true. In minutes the sky had gone from yellow to blue to purple, like a bruise. “Pete’s right,” Edward said. “If we don’t go soon, we’ll have to lick the steps, like Daisy.”

For some reason we descended in reverse order—me first, then the women, then Edward taking up the rear. From the platform, an ironwork bridge thrust out into the shadows. We crossed it, Iris clutching my arm, defiantly not looking at the pedestrians making their way along Rua do Carmo, 150 feet below.

“I remember someone telling me once that when you fling yourself off a roof, you should make sure to dive, not jump,” she said. “That way your head hits the ground first and you die instantly.” She laughed. “My, what a grim turn the conversation has taken! We were all so lighthearted earlier.”

“I know,” Edward said. “You’d think the world was ending or something.”

With a self-assurance that was beginning to seem predictable, Edward led us through a warren of cobbled streets so narrow that the old women leaning out of their windows could almost kiss. How he had discovered Farta Brutos in the first place was what I wanted to know. It had no sign. Nor did the streets at the corner of which it was situated appear to have names. Each sloped upward at such a precipitous angle that the restaurant itself was sunk a few feet below the sidewalk. The door was so low that I had to bend down to get through it. In a sort of antechamber, a raucous group of young men was eating at a circular table. “That’s something else that you don’t see in Paris anymore,” Iris said to me. “Young men.”

Soon the owner—elderly and pot-bellied, with suspiciously luxuriant black hair—stepped over to greet us. Seeing Edward, he cried out with joy. They shook all four hands. They embraced. They kissed each other on the cheek.

“Look at him,” Iris said, nudging me in the ribs. “You’d think he
was a regular. Yet we’ve only ever been here once. And it’s like this everywhere we go.”

The owner ushered us down a few more steps into the dining room proper. It was only slightly bigger than the antechamber. It had five tables, all but one occupied by Portuguese men, smoking and shouting. “Lucky I reserved,” Edward said, taking a seat at the one empty table. I tried to pull out a chair for Julia, but there wasn’t space. She had to slide in sideways. The chairs themselves were low and narrow, with rigid backs. Through the windows you could see the shoes of the people passing by outside.

“What do you think?” Edward said. “Definitely not the sort of place you’d run into the Duke of Kent.”

“Probably he doesn’t have the stomach for it,” Iris said as a waiter deposited carafes of wine and water, a basket of rolls, and a ramekin containing what appeared to be fish paste onto the table.

“Is there a menu in English?” Julia said.

“Oh, you don’t bother with a menu here,” Edward said. “You leave it to Armando to choose for you.”

“Lovely.”

Edward poured the wine, which was amber in color and rather pale. “
Vinho verde
. A specialty of the north, made from unripe grapes. And now I’d like to propose a toast. To us. The four seasons.”

“Four seasons?”

“Yes, since all of them are represented here tonight. Mr. Winters, with his summery wife, Julia. Then me—Freleng is almost
frühling
, isn’t it? And the autumn-blooming Iris.”

“But irises bloom in spring.”

“Not all of them do,” Julia said. “A few bloom in autumn.”

“Do they?” Iris said. “I didn’t know. As Eddie will tell you, I’m an idiot when it comes to gardening.”

We toasted, and for a moment Iris’s small, wet, very blue eyes
met mine. There was in them a vulnerability at odds with her sardonic tone. Or was the sardonic tone merely defensive, a child’s fists beating against intolerable knowledge?

Soon Armando returned, bearing a tureen of thick, brownish-red soup, which he ladled out for us. To Daisy he gave a bowl of water and a kidney. Tasting the soup, I could not help but wonder if a kidney had also been involved in its preparation—that or some pig’s blood, for it had a distinctly metallic flavor. Offal holds no fear for me. I dug in with gusto. So did Edward. Julia, on the other hand, took one sniff and cringed, while Iris—such was her enthusiasm for the
vinho verde
that she appeared hardly to notice the soup, which in any case was soon cleared away, to be replaced by a steaming casserole of duck and rice atop which slivers of chorizo sausage lay curled.

“This is the specialty of the house,” Edward said. “It’s prepared like an Italian risotto, then put in the oven so the rice gets crisp.”

He dolloped some onto my plate. How different this was from French food! “In French cooking,” I said to Edward, “either you get the purity of a particular ingredient—for instance, mâche in a salad—or you get a flavor that defies you to identify any of the ingredients. Here you get both.”

“Exactly. The rank pungency of the duck meat, the acridity of the chorizo, the … How would you characterize the rice?”

“Rice doesn’t have a taste so much as a texture. It’s something for the palate to resist.”

“Listen to them,” Iris said to Julia. “Why can’t men talk sensibly? It’s only food.”

“And then the collective flavor of each forkful,” Edward said, “which almost brings tears to the eyes, because there’s something so, well, nostalgic about it, yet it’s entirely new … I mean, you can tell that, for someone, this is the food of childhood. Nor does it
matter that it’s not your own childhood. The past—some collective notion of the past—comes alive in your mouth.”

“Been reading Proust lately, have you?” Iris said.

“I think I could live here,” Edward said, “if I could learn the language. The language—that would be the challenge.”

“It sounds like Russian to me,” Julia said.

“Of course, it’s easier to read than to speak,” I said. “When I look at the newspapers, I recognize maybe half the words.”

“Speaking of Portuguese,” Iris said, “do you know what the locals have taken to calling our own Suiça? Bompernasse.”

“
Bom
what?”

“Bompernasse. It’s a pun. Montparnasse combined with
bom perna
, which is Portuguese for ‘nice legs.’”

“Because of all the barelegged Frenchwomen who sit outside in the afternoon, smoking,” Edward said, “which is something no self-respecting Portuguese woman would do. In fact it would be a scandal for a Portuguese woman even to go into a café.”

“Such a backward country in some ways,” Julia said.

“But Julia, I thought you wanted to wait out the war here,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean I consider it the ideal place to live,” Julia said. “I mean, it’s not Paris.”

“Is Paris your favorite place on earth?” Iris said.

“Of course. Isn’t it yours?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say anywhere was my favorite place. Now, Eddie—he really can feel at home anywhere. Close your eyes, spin the globe, send him wherever your finger lands, and I guarantee you, within a month he’ll be mayor.”

“But isn’t feeling at home anywhere really the same as feeling at home nowhere?”

“No, in fact it isn’t,” Edward said, “though that’s a common misperception. In fact, the person who feels at home nowhere is in
an entirely different category from the person who feels at home everywhere. Iris is that person.”

“It’s true,” Iris said. “I don’t even understand what people mean when they say they feel ‘at home.’”

“Well, isn’t it—I don’t know—a sense of belonging?”

“So I’m told. But ‘belonging,’ ‘home’—they’re just words to me. And don’t bother trying to explain them—it would be like trying to convey the notion of sight to a blind man.”

“But surely you must have a feeling for the place you grew up.”

“You assume that I grew up in a place. I didn’t. I was born in Malaysia. My mother died in childbirth, my father when I was four. I hardly remember him—or the amah who nursed me. I was five when I was sent back to England, and though I had some relations there, they didn’t have much interest in me, so from then on it was just school after school … until I met Eddie.”

“Little Orphan Iris,” Edward said.

“I think it’s probably why I have a dog,” Iris said. “A dog is a constant. You can rely on a dog in a way you can’t rely on a place. Of course, when we left Pyla we could have left Daisy behind. Our friends told us we were mad, that getting to New York would be difficult enough without having to worry about an old dog. Well, I put my foot down. I’d have stayed in Pyla myself, brazened out the occupation, rather than abandon Daisy to some French peasant who for all I knew would shoot her the moment we were out of sight.” She was teary-eyed again. “And then in Irun, at the Spanish customs, the officer insisted that Daisy was commercial merchandise and we had to pay duty on her. I said, ‘She’s fifteen years old. How much do you think you could get for her?’ But I had the feeling he’d take his chances rather than lose the argument, so we paid the duty.”

A waiter cleared away our plates and laid three immense bowls on the table. The first contained a watery custard, the second pears
purpled in wine, the third a thick orange porridge. “Raw egg yolks and sugar,” Edward said, helping himself. “Extremely sweet.”

“Too sweet for my taste,” Julia said.

“Do you think we could give some of the egg stuff to Daisy?” Iris asked. “They say eggs are good for dogs. They lend luster to the coat.”

“If you don’t think it’ll bring on diarrhea,” Edward said. “Diarrhea is the last thing we need.”

Julia shuddered. I served myself some of the custard and looked across the table.

For the second time all evening, Edward’s eyes met mine.

For the second time, he winked.

After dinner we walked back to the Rossio. The streets were loud with the plaintive wail of fado singers.

“Call me a snob, but I just don’t get the appeal of the fado,” Iris said.

“They’re such sad songs,” Julia said.

“The fado is meant to be sad,” Edward said. “It is the ultimate expression of that most Portuguese of emotions,
saudade
, which might best be defined as the perpetual longing for a perpetually elusive … no, not satiation. Rather, that which will never be.”

“Perhaps, what will never be on the menu at Farta Brutos?” I suggested.

“Yes!” Edward said.

“If you ask me, it’s just caterwauling,” Iris said. “Daisy can’t bear it, can you?”

Daisy was busy smelling some pigeon droppings on the pavement.

“Not here, Daisy,” Edward said, tugging at her leash. “We don’t want to stop here.”

I looked at him questioningly. With his shoulder he indicated the window display we had stopped in front of. Castles, Meistersingers, elves. Friendly old Munich, hearty old Heidelberg. Gay, carefree waltzing in Vienna.

“The German Reich Railway Office,” he said.

“As recently as December, they were advertising in
Vogue
,” Julia said. “Sixty percent off with special travel marks.”

A young man wearing a homburg stepped up to us. “You are planning a trip, Madame?” he asked Julia.

“What?” Julia said. “Oh, no. I mean, not to Germany.”

“But you are Americans. Why not go on holiday in Germany?”

“Actually, we’re not American,” Iris said. “We’re Tasmanian.”

“Tasmanian?”

She nodded. “Have you been to Tasmania? It’s lovely. Famous for its animals, most notably the Tasmanian devil.” She pointed to Daisy. “Of course, this one’s tame—more or less. Still, I wouldn’t get too close.”

The young man tipped his hat and fled. Edward burst out laughing.

“What was that all about?” I said.

“A German informer,” Edward said. “They’re all over the city. Usually they pretend to be English, hoping to pick up some information.”

“You could tell because he had a big behind,” Iris said.

“What?” Julia covered her mouth with her hand.

“It’s my wife’s theory,” Edward said, “that informers can always be recognized by their big behinds.”

“It’s not a theory. It’s something I was told. By someone who knows.”

“But why should they have big behinds?” Julia asked.

“Maybe it’s all the sitting they do,” I said.

“Or the double life,” Edward said. “It could be the double life,
the double life itself, that brings on the big behind. Pete here, for instance—he doesn’t have a big behind. And I’ll bet he’s never led a double life. Am I right, Pete?”

“About the behind or the life?”

“Let me have a look,” Iris said, stepping behind me. “My God, it’s true! There’s just this … flat plane. You’d think he had no buttocks at all.”

“Of course I have buttocks. Only these trousers—”

“But Pete, you don’t.” Almost in spite of herself, Julia burst into laughter. “I mean, you do, only there’s just … not much to them.”

“Reductio ad absurdum,” Edward said, “a man with a clear conscience.”

“Whereas you, my darling,” Iris said, “have a distinctly protuberant behind. Not fat, just … protuberant. You could bounce a dime off it,” she added to Julia.

“With all that implies,” Edward said.

By now we had passed under the bridge we had crossed earlier, the one that connected the Elevator to the Bairro Alto. Above the Rossio, a neon stopwatch told the time, the words OMEGA O MELHOR pulsing beneath it.

“For a poor country, they certainly seem to have plenty of money for electricity,” Julia said.

“It’s too much,” I said. “It gives me a headache.”

“Would you rather go back to the blackout?”

“In some ways.” The truth is, I have always preferred darkness to light, silence to noise.

Outside the Francfort Hotel, I reached to shake Edward’s hand, but he didn’t take it. “Anyone care for a nightcap?” he said.

“Count me out,” Iris said. “I’ve hardly slept since we got here, and I have a feeling that tonight I just might. Julia’s tired, too. Aren’t you, Julia?”