This is undoubtedly the hotel storage room. The remains of a world that was. The remains of a world of bright colours.
Fifi moves some objects, shuffling them from hand to hand, like a child in a toy shop, and is visibly bewildered.
“I haven’t explored everything at the hotel,” he explains. “May and I have only been here five months.”
It is clear from his expression that he doesn’t know where to start.
“They should be somewhere, razors.”
And he sidesteps between the piles on the floor, opening boxes and cartons containing suntan lotions, lip balms, soaps, colouring books, postcards, and sealed hotel toothbrushes.
In one corner of the room is a half-open box that turns out to be full of books.
“I think these are books that the hotel guests left behind,” says the young man after a brief examination.
He digs into the box.
“They’re in different languages,” he concludes.
I bend over and run my fingers over the volumes: there’s Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain and also Doctor Faustus; Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlöf; a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson; Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman; A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf; and another poetry book by Elizabeth Bishop. I open it, skim through and read some lines about how The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Because so many things seem filled with the intent/to be lost, Bishop writes, the author who herself had lost a watch, mother, house, cities, two rivers and a continent.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys …
I put the poetry book back into the box and pick up Yeats, browse through a few pages and pause on: Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.
The young man observes me inspecting the books.
“Someone must have wanted to get rid of those books because they didn’t like them enough to keep them. You’re welcome to take some, if you like. May told me you’re a writer yourself.”
He stoops over the boxes and seems to be puzzled by everything they contain.
“I wanted to study history,” he says, “that’s if I’d gone to college. But ever since I realised that it’s only written by the victors, I don’t want to anymore.”
He straightens up and is holding a packet of disposable plastic razors.
“We only have Venus, pink,” he says, handing me the bag. Six of them.
I’ll try them. I tell the young man I’ll also take a ballpoint pen out of the box and shove it into my breast pocket.
He asks me if I need anything else.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Condoms, mister Jónas?”
“No, thanks.”
He says he’s not too sure about how to price the goods, but that he’ll stick the razors on my bill.
I notice him scanning the room and moving things on the shelves as if he were searching for something.
I decide to make use of the intimacy of this space to mention the mosaic mural one more time. When I’d bumped into him the last time, he had said that the remarkable thing about this wall I was asking about was that there was absolutely no trace of it, and no one was aware of hot springs in the area.
“It’s all very strange,” he had said.
This time he hesitates and I seize on the opportunity to insist some more. Yes, that’s right, he now remembers that there are some hot springs in the area and he confirms that there are, in fact, baths in the basement of the hotel, but that they are closed at the moment.
The answer regarding the mosaic mural is noncommittal, however.
“That’s right, there were”—he uses the past tense—“somewhere around here some famous murals, but they’re not accessible to tourists right now.”
He continues to open boxes while he’s talking, looking into them and closing them again.
“Will they be soon?”
He hesitates again.
“Well, they’re actually packed away.”
He’s standing by the postcard stand and gives it a spin.
“Since we’re starting to get tourists again, maybe we should try putting a few of these in the lobby,” he says.
Yearning is stronger than pain
There are three of us sitting at as many tables for breakfast. I see that the actress is by the window with her slice of bread and cup of coffee. There is a pile of papers on her table. I have greeted her three times. The neighbour from my corridor sits at the third table, and that’s the sum of the guests. The coloured paper lanterns that hang from the ceiling draw my attention because the room seems to have been decorated for a feast.
“From the beginning of the war,” says Fifi, when he brings the coffee over. The wedding was cancelled in the end. They used to hold a ball here too once a year. For New Year’s.
Honey is offered for the bread and I remember what I read online about bee breeding when I was booking the hotel. Fifi also told me that the bees died during the war and honey production has ceased.
When the actress sees me, she smiles and stands up, takes her coffee cup, gathers her pile of papers, and walks towards me. I notice that my neighbour from the corridor is watching both of us, and adjusting his chair and posture to keep us clearly in sight. He is wearing a yellow velvet jacket, Bermuda shorts, and striped socks.
Alfred, he said his name was.
The actress asks if she can sit with me, puts down her papers, and adjusts a scarf around her neck.
Slowly.
Then she says she saw me down on the beach.
“Yes, I was checking to see if the sea was salty.”
She smiles.
“And was it?”
“Yes, it was.”
She gazes out the window.
“That isn’t the same sea you have in your parts.”
“No,
