She hurries towards the entrance, through reception, out the revolving door, where the concierge skips towards her. “Taxi, please,” she says in Slovak first, then Italian, and she feels as if she wants to tear at her tongue, remove al these languages. The concierge smiles and raises his hand, his glove so very white against the red of his uniform.
Zoli is halfway in the taxi and halfway out when she realizes she doesn't have any money, and she thinks how absurd, climbing into this car, in a land she doesn't know, going towards a room she doesn't know, with no coins to take her there. “Wait, please,” she says to the driver.
In the hotel glass, the reflection startles her, her gray hair, the bright dress, the shrunken bend of her back. To have come al this way and see herself like this. She pushes back through the revolving doors. Far down the corridor she sees Swann— he looks as if he has spent his life turning in every wrong direction he can find, and, for a moment, she sees him as that man on the motorbike, with a rabbit hopping in front of him, swerving to avoid it, his crutches strapped on the back, light and dark moving over the fields.
She hurries down the corridor, ducking through the kitchen to the amazement of a young man chopping carrots into tiny slivers. Someone shouts at her. Her hip glances off the edge of a metal table. She fol ows a young waitress carrying a large silver tray out of the kitchen, into the hal again where she stops a moment, breathes deeply, looks for Francesca in al the faces, their confusion, their joy, their music.
“Mamma?”
Zoli shuffles across and takes her daughter's elbow. “I need some money. Some French money.”
“Of course, Mamma. Why?”
“I need to get a taxi. I need to go home. Your home. Hurry.”
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing, precious heart.”
“Who was that man you were talking to?”
“That was Swann,” she says. She is surprised at herself. She wanted to say: Nobody. To shake her head and shrug. To cast it off, pretend indifference. To stand there, a picture of ordinary strength. But she doesn't, and instead she says it again: “That was Stephen Swann. He has some journalist with him.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I just need some money for a taxi.”
“What did you say to him?”
“What did I say? I don't know what I said, Franca. I need to go.”
“What's he doing here?”
“I don't know. Do you know?”
“Why would I know, Mamma?”
“Tel me.”
“No,” says her daughter. “I didn't know.”
“Just give me the money, please. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I beg of your sweet eyes, Franca.”
She sees a light sweeping over the val ey, a bird through treetops, a road rising white in front of her eyes, then she feels herself sway. Francesca takes her elbow and places the other hand tight around her mother's waist. The rush of hotel wal paper. The quick glint of light on glass. Fingerprints at the low corners of the windowpanes. Swann is leaning against the wal , framed by two cheap prints, his chest heaving. The journalist stands beside him, head bent, scribbling in his spiral notebook. Swann looks up as they pass. He raises his hand again.
“Don't turn,” says Zoli. “Please don't turn.”
They move towards the revolving door and the sound of taped birdsong. Francesca presses money into her hand.
“I swear, Mamma, I had no idea. I swear on my life.”
“Just take me out to the taxi.”
“I'l go with you.”
“No. I want to sit alone.”
She catches a brief waft of her daughter's perfume as she slides into the backseat. “Keys!” shouts Francesca, and Zoli rol s down the window, takes the key ring in her palm.
She can see Francesca mouthing something as the taxi pul s away—I love you, Mamma—and in the rear of the reception area, shuffling, trying to get through the crowd, is Swann, rail-thin, quivering. He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.
Zoli sits back against the warm plastic of the seat and looks out to the alarming beauty of the sky as the taxi swings away from the hotel.
She takes the elevator without a second thought, places her head against the cool of the wooden panel, and recal s the noise of his cane, the shine of light on his forehead, the contours of his brow.
For a long time she forgets to push the button.
The chains clank and she rises. The elevator opens on another floor. A young woman and a dog step in to take her place. She walks the final flight of stairs. Turns the key in the door. Negotiates the long corridor in the dim light. She drops her dress to the floor and the metal spoon tumbles out of her pocket. Her underclothes fal behind her. She stands naked in front of the long mirror and gazes at her body—a paltry thing, brown and puckered. She
