Should I tell him I don’t feel like talking? That I’d be grateful to spend this time together in silence?
I need furniture for three floors and start collecting items for the bottom floor. I drag out a teak dining table and two armchairs and start looking for chairs to fit the table.
“I need a moving van,” I say, fishing out another table, a desk lamp, and a standing lamp. I mentally count the number of beds that are needed and try to imagine where the furniture could go.
Bingo says he can get a van and a buddy to assist with the carrying.
He helps me move wardrobes and a crib for the infant in the group to the entrance. There I gather the furniture. I only have to say the word and he does it for me without question. It’s obvious that he is used to obeying orders. I manage to find beds for all the occupants of the house, although the mattresses are ruined and need to be found somewhere else. On the other hand, May had said she could get some old but decent enough duvet covers at the hotel, which she was going to take with her to the house. I step between the items and point: this, this, and this. Yes, that desk and that swivelling chair over there. I also pick up a few bicycles.
Bingo lifts up a birdcage and I shake my head.
“There’s stuff there from apartments that foreigners left behind when they fled the country,” says my henchman, who is now sitting in an armchair with his feet on a table. I notice a valuable antique chair, but don’t bother telling him. I signal him to stand up.
I’m at the very back of the warehouse searching for another wardrobe when I spot a patterned rug that has been thrown over something. When I lift it, I discover a stack of tins of paint. I inspect them and see that they are unopened.
Bingo follows me, flabbergasted.
“That must be from some building supplies store, stock that ended up here,” he concludes. “If we’d known, we could have sold it.”
He pulls out a penknife and prises open one of the tins.
I pick out the tins and open them, one by one.
“This one, this one, and this one,” I say, and he stacks them by the furniture.
I search for varnish.
“I need sandpaper, brushes, and varnish,” I say.
That way I could start working on the floors next week.
He gets down on all fours and rummages through the stock of tins, moving his lips as he reads the labels. Meanwhile, I grab four rolls of leaf-patterned wallpaper.
As we’re leaving and Bingo is about to slide the door closed, I spot a record player just by the entrance. It’s on the floor under a table and, at first glance, seems to be undamaged. I lift the lid and examine the needle. Despite five years of warfare, air raids, melted asphalt, and shredded flesh, the needle seems to be intact. I look around. It figures, a few feet away lies a box with a substantial vinyl collection. I quickly browse through the records, which include some fine recordings with Maria Callas and Jussi Björling. There’s Franz Liszt’s Dance of the Dead and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and there’s also a Bowie collection, Liza Jane and Can’t Help Thinking About Me and Never Let Me Down. I pull one record out of its sleeve and it’s unscratched.
I signal to my henchman that I’m taking the turntable with me to the hotel and that he is to carry the record collection.
“I’ll come back with the ladies tomorrow,” I say.
We still need kitchen fixtures and other furniture. Would they want a bookcase?
Bingo takes his role seriously and walks ahead of me, clutching the LP collection in his arms. He moves with slow, cautious steps to ensure his precious cargo doesn’t stir. When we reach the hotel, I tell him he can put the box down. It has stopped raining and I notice a flowerpot has been installed by the entrance.
“I used to sing in a choir before the war,” he says suddenly from where he is standing on the hotel steps. “Baritone.”
May’s words echo in my mind: “Every man has killed here.”
“Yes, I used to sing in a choir myself,” I say. That’s actually where I met my wife—ex—in the choir.
I could have added: “I didn’t really exist yet back then.”
What if he answered: “And now? Do you exist now?”
The land that flows with milk and honey
Fifi has news. Good news.
“We’ve got our first reservations,” he says. “Three, to be precise, though not until next month.”
And that’s not the only piece of good news because the archaeologists he was telling me about will be arriving in two weeks’ time.
“They’ve confirmed. And reserved a room. So things are starting to move,” he adds.
He stands by the computer in a semi-uniform: a white shirt and tie, but torn jeans and canvas sneakers.
“Just trying to look the part,” he says to explain the tie.
He says one of May’s friends in the house is going to take care of the cooking when they open the restaurant.
“My sister has organised it all.”
To celebrate the news, May’s friend is in the hotel kitchen as we speak, boiling beef that will soon be ready.
“It’ll be a change from my pea soup,” Fifi adds.
He turns the computer so that I can see the screen and says he’s adjusting their website, which hasn’t been updated since before the war.
“We emphasise the baths and the fact that all our rooms have their own character. How do you like it?”
“Nice.”
He says there’s something he’d like my opinion on. Since it is now clear that their aunt won’t be coming back, he and his sister have been thinking about changing the name of the hotel. They have a few possible names in mind.
How do I like Blue Heavens Hotel? Or Hotel Blue Sky Unlimited? Another possibility might be Paradise Lost
