Маргарет Миллар - The Listening Walls

“That can’t be. I heard, with my own ears...”

“Then you need new ears. Four hundred four is empty. I am the manager of this establishment. Who would know better than I which rooms are occupied and which are not?”

“Perhaps, while you were away from the desk for a few minutes, someone checked in, two American ladies.”

“Impossible.”

“I know what I hear.” Consuela’s cheeks were the color of red wine as if the blood in her veins had fermented with fury.

“This is bad,” Escamillo said, “to hear things other people do not.”

“You haven’t tried. If you would place your ear here, at the wall...”

“Very well. The ear is here. And now?”

“Listen.”

“I am listening.”

“They are moving around,” Consuela said. “One of them is wearing many bracelets, you can hear them clanking. There. Now they are talking. Do you hear voices?”

“Certainly I hear voices.” Escamillo stepped briskly out of the broom closet, brushing lint off the sleeves and lapels of his suit. “I hear your voice and my voice. From an empty room I hear nothing, praise Jesus.”

“The room is not empty, I tell you.”

“And I tell you once again, stop this nonsense, Consuela Gonzales. I think you have not been saying your beads often enough lately and God is angry with you, making noises that you alone can hear.”

“I have done nothing to make Him angry with me.”

“We are all sinners.” But Escamillo’s tone implied strongly that Consuela Gonzales was the worst of the lot and she was to expect only a minimum of mercy, if any. “You had better go down to the bar and ask Emilio for one of those new American pills that ease the mind.”

“There is nothing the matter with my mind.”

“Is there not? Well, I am too busy to argue.”

She leaned against the door of the broom closet and watched Escamillo disappear into the elevator. Globules of sweat and oil stood out on her forehead and upper lip. She brushed them off with a corner of her apron, thinking, he is trying to frighten me, embarrass me, make me out a fool. I will not be made out a fool. It is easy to prove the room is occupied. I have a key. I will unlock the door, very quietly, and open it, very suddenly, and there they will be, arguing, moving around. Two ladies. Americans.

Her ring of keys, suspended from a rope belt around her waist, struck her thigh and tinkled like coins as she moved toward 404. She hesitated at the door, hearing nothing now but the traffic from the avenida below and the quick rhythmical drumming of her own heart.

Only a month ago, two American ladies had occupied this very room. They too had argued. One of them wore many bracelets and a red silk suit, and painted her eyelids gold. And the other...

But I must not think of those two. One is dead, the other is far away. I am alive and here.

From her key ring she chose the key labeled apartamientos and inserted it quietly into the lock. A quick turn of the key to the left and of the doorknob to the right and the door would open to reveal the occupants of the room and Escamillo would be proved the cowardly liar that he was.

The key would not turn. She tried one hand and then the other, and finally both together. She was a strong woman, used to heavy work, but the key wouldn’t budge.

She rapped sharply on the door and called out, “This is the chambermaid. I must change the towels. Please let me in. I have lost my key. Please open the door? Please?”

She caught her lower lip with her teeth to stop its trembling. The room is empty, she thought. Escamillo is right, God is punishing me. I hear voices no one else can hear, I talk to people who are not there, I listen at walls that say nothing.

She hesitated only long enough to cross herself. Then she turned and ran down the corridor to the service stairway. In flight, she tried to pray. Her mouth moved but no words came out, and she knew it was because she had not said her beads for a long time; she could not even remember where she had put them.

Four flights down, and she was in the little room behind the bar where Emilio and his assistants came to sneak cigarettes and finish off the dregs of bottles and count the day’s tips.

She had made so much noise crashing down the steps that Emilio himself hurried back to see what the fuss was about.

“Oh, it’s you.” Emilio was bold and elegant in a new red bolero trimmed with silver buttons and orange braid. “I thought it was another earthquake. What do you want?”

She sat down on an empty beer case and held her head in her hands.

“How’s Joe?” Emilio said.

The American was waiting in Escamillo’s office, pacing up and down as if he couldn’t find a door to escape through. He looked worried, as worried as Escamillo felt. Escamillo, from the beginning, had had grave doubts about the situation, but Mr. Dodd was very persuasive. He’d made the plan sound both reasonable and practicable.

Escamillo was afraid it was neither, although so far he hadn’t indicated his misgivings. He said simply, “Everything is in readiness. They are arguing very well together, very real.”

“And Consuela is listening?”

“Certainly. Listening, it is a long habit with her.”

“Did you have the lock changed?”

“Just as I was instructed, so everything has been performed. She can gain access to the room only when the ladies are ready to receive her. Also, the silver box — I gave it to Emilio as you told me to do. However, I do not understand about the silver box. Why was it necessary to purchase an exact duplicate? I begin to wonder.” Escamillo’s face, normally as bland as a marshmallow, was contorted in anticipation of disaster. “I begin to have doubts.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Señor?”

“We all have doubts,” Dodd said flatly. “Let’s just hope hers are bigger.”

“She is not a fool, you know. A cheat, a liar, a thief, all those, but not a fool.”

“She’s superstitious and she’s scared.”

“ She is scared, ha! And who is not? I feel my liver turning cold and white like snow.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of. Your part in this is finished.”

“I must remind you that this is my hotel, my reputation is at stake, I am responsible for...” The telephone on Escamillo’s desk began to ring. He darted across the room and picked it up. His small pudgy hands were quivering. “Yes? That is good, very good.” He put the phone down and said to Dodd, “It has worked so far. She is with Emilio. He is very clever, you can trust him.”

“I have to.”

“Señor Kellogg will be here soon?”

“He’s waiting in the lobby now.”

“Suppose there is violence? Violence distresses me.” Escamillo pressed his hand against his stomach. “You have not taken me entirely into your confidence, senor. A little voice keeps telling me that there is something questionable about all this, perhaps even something illegal.”

A little voice kept telling Dodd the same thing but he couldn’t afford to listen.

“How is Joe?” Emilio repeated.

“Joe?” She raised her head and stared at him blankly. For a moment the blankness was genuine — Joe was long ago and far away and dead. “Joe who?”

“You know Joe who.”

“Oh, him. I haven’t seen him. He was no good. He ran off with another woman.”

“An American?”

“Why do you say that?”

“He sent me 250 pesos that he owed me. It was marked on the envelope, San Francisco.”

“Ah, so? Well, I hope she is very rich so he will be very happy.”

There’d been two rich ladies , Consuela thought. They were ready to be plucked like chickens, but all Joe got out of it was a second-hand car and a few clothes to be buried in, because he lost his nerve, he began feeling sorry for people. His mind had turned soft as his belly.