At the main entrance I started mingling with the crowd, or, rather, I was swept up and flung inside. I decided it was time to get a bite to eat at a snack bar. My hot dog tasted as bland as paper; I tossed the half-eaten hot dog and its plastic plate into the trash can and went into a cafe with a peacock stationed over the entrance in full array. It was much too big to have been stuffed. A week ago Annabella and I had sat under the very same peacock while waiting for her father. There were others in the cafe. I sat down with my coffee at a comer table, my back to the wall: while standing at the counter I had been conscious of someone staring at me from the rear. No one was looking my way now—to the point where it was blatantly obvious. The distant whine of the jet engines now seemed to come from another, more important world. I sat there using my spoon to break up the sugar lumps at the bottom of my cup. A magazine with a black cover and a red band running across the top lay on the table next to me—a copy of
Suddenly I was fed up with all the stalling around, so I made my way past the glittering shopwindows and aimed for the escalator marked AIR FRANCE in big sky-blue letters. It was a shortcut to the hotel. I held on tightly to the railing: the combed treads on the steps were slippery, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. Halfway between levels I noticed that standing in front of me was a woman with a dog in her arms. I winced: her hair was the exact same shade of blond. Slowly I glanced back over my shoulder, though I had a pretty good hunch who would be standing behind me. A flat face, a complexion made livid by the fluorescent lighting, sunglasses. I shoved my way past the blonde and worked my way up the escalator, but I couldn’t just walk off without satisfying my curiosity. So I stood by the railing and inspected the passengers as the escalator dropped them off one by one on the landing. The blonde gave me the onceover as she strolled by. She was carrying a folded shawl with a knotted fringe, the same fringe I’d taken for a dog’s tail. The guy in back of me turned out to be fat and pasty-looking. Not a trace of Mongol blood.
Along the way I picked up a bottle of Schweppes, slipped it into my coat pocket, and glanced at the clock above the reception desk with a sigh of relief: my room would be ready. My bellboy went ahead of me with my bags, set the smaller one down on top of the larger one in the hallway, pocketed a ten-franc tip, and was on his way. The hotel breathed a quiet sort of intimacy that made the whining roar of a landing airplane seem incongruous. Good thing I’d remembered to pick up a Schweppes. I was thirsty now, but, not having a bottle opener, I peeked into the corridor to see if there was a refrigerator where I might be able to lay my hands on one. The warm colors of the hallway carpet and walls caught my eye, filling me with respect and admiration for French interior decorators. I found a refrigerator, opened the bottle of Schweppes, and was already heading back to my room when who should come around the corner but Annabella. In a dark dress she looked taller than I’d remembered her, but she had the same white ribbon in her hair; and when she came toward me, swinging her shoulder bag at her side, it was with the same serious look in her dark eyes. I recognized the purse, too, though the last time I’d seen it, it had been ripped open at the seams. I’d left the door open on my way out, and she slipped into the doorway.
“Annabella, what’re you doing here?” I wanted to say, being as shocked as I was glad to see her, but all I could muster was a faint “Aa—” before she went inside the room, with such an inviting toss of the head and with such an unequivocal glance of the eyes that I stopped dead in my tracks. She left the inner door open, and in my momentary panic I thought maybe she wanted to confide in me, but before I was even in the room I distinctly heard both her shoes fall to the floor and the bed squeak. With these sounds still fresh in my ears, feeling morally indignant, I went in and gasped: the room was empty.
“Annabella!” I yelled. The bed was untouched. “Annabella!” Silence. In the bathroom, maybe? I opened the door, but it was dark inside; I waited in the doorway till the light blinked on. Bathtub, bidet, towel rack, washbasin, my own reflection in the mirror… I went back into the room, not daring to call out any more. Though it was unlikely she would have had time to hide in the wardrobe cabinet, I opened it anyway. Empty. My knees began to buckle, so I slumped into an armchair. Even now I could describe exactly the way she walked, the kind of clothes she wore… Then I realized why she’d seemed taller: she was wearing high heels instead of sandals. I could still see that expression in her eyes as she passed through the doorway, the way her hair spilled over her shoulder when she motioned with her head. I could still hear her naughtily kicking off her shoes and the sound made by the creaking bedsprings, and I remembered my jabbing, stinging sensation at hearing those sounds… Was it all just a fantasy? A hallucination?
I touched my knees, my chest, and my face, as if this were the sequence in which I had to examine them, ran my hands over the chair’s rough upholstery, walked across the room and banged my fist against the wardrobe’s half-open door; everything felt solid, stationary, immutable, well defined, and yet somehow ambiguous. I paused in front of the television set and saw a reduced reflection of the bed and a pair of girls’ shoes carelessly flung down on the carpet. I spun around in horror.
There was nothing on the floor, nothing anywhere. Next to the television set was a telephone. I picked up the receiver, heard the dial tone, but stopped short of dialing. What was I to tell Barth—that I was in a hotel fantasizing about some girl and was afraid to be left alone? I hung up the receiver, took my toilet kit out of my suitcase, went into the bathroom; as I leaned over the basin, I suddenly froze. Everything I was doing had its immediate and familiar precedent. Like Proque I splashed my face with cold water. Like Osborn I rubbed my temples with cologne. Then I went back into the room, not knowing what to do next. Nothing happened to me. The most sensible thing would have been to climb into bed and go to sleep. On the other hand, I was afraid of undressing, as if my clothes were somehow a protection. Moving quietly in order not to rouse the evil spirit, I took off my pants, shoes, and shirt, and after switching off the overhead light, pressed my head against the pillow. Now the threat seemed to come from outside—from the hazy ambiguity of the objects standing in the penumbra of the night light. I switched off the lamp. A feeling of inertia came over me; I forced myself to take long and even breaths. There was a knock at the door; I didn’t move a muscle. There was another knock, and someone—a man—opened the door and stepped into the passageway. The figure, silhouetted against the corridor’s brightness, started advancing toward my bed.
“Monsieur…”
I didn’t make a sound. Now so close that he stood over me, he laid something down on the table and quietly withdrew. The lock on the door clicked; I was alone again. I dragged myself out of bed—more beat than dazed—and switched on the wall light. Lying on the table was a telegram. With a pounding heart and wobbly legs I picked it up. It was addressed to me, care of the Hotel Air France. I glanced down at the sender’s name, and my blood ran cold. I pressed my eyelids together, opened the telegram, and again read the name of the man who had been buried long enough to be a rotting corpse.
WAITING ROME HILTON RM 303
ADAMS
I must have read and reread the message ten times, examining the telegram up close and from every angle. It had left Rome at 10:40, thus well over an hour ago. It was probably just a slip of the pen. Randy might have moved into the Hilton—he had settled for the little hotel near the Spanish Steps for lack of anything better—and this was his way of letting me know. Or he might have received my message, given up waiting for me, then heard about the flight cancellations and decided to wire me. But why the switch in names? And of all names, why that one? I sat down by the wall and considered whether the whole thing wasn’t just a dream. The wall light was burning right over my head. Everything around me was taking on a new appearance. The window curtain, the television set, and the outline of the shadows had all become portents of something inscrutable. Everything was becoming dependent on me, subject to my will. I decided to eliminate the wardrobe cabinet. Its lacquer finish suddenly turned dull, the outline of the door became blurred, the rear wall burst open, and an unshapely black hole was soon crawling with writhing, slithering shapes. I tried to restore the cabinet but couldn’t. The center of the room was gradually being enveloped by the shadows in the corners. I could only rescue those objects that still remained in the light. I reached for the phone; the receiver, which had taken on a perverse and mocking shape, slipped out of my hand. The telephone became a gray rock with a rough surface, the dial a hole. My fingers penetrated the surface and touched something cold. There was a ball-point pen lying on the table. Exerting all my powers of concentration to keep the
