Joseph Roth - Three Novellas

“No,” said Andreas, “I’ve got nine hundred and eighty francs, and that’s a sizeable sum. You go home!”

“I’ll drop round in a day or two,” said the footballer, his friend.

10

The room in which Andreas now found himself staying was number eighty-nine. As soon as he was alone, he sat down in the comfortable armchair, which was covered in pink rep, and began to take stock of his surroundings. First he looked at the red silk wall-covering, with its pattern of pale gold parrots’ heads, then the door with three ivory doorknobs on its right hand side, the bedside table and the reading lamp on it with its dark green shade, and a second door which had a white door knob, that seemed to have something mysterious behind it, or mysterious at any rate to Andreas. In addition there was a black telephone by the bed, so handily placed that one could lie on the bed and reach across to pick up the receiver quite comfortably. After studying the room for a long time, intent on acquainting himself with it, Andreas suddenly felt a keen curiosity. The second door with the white door knob irritated him, and in spite of his timidity and the fact that he was unaccustomed to the ways of hotel rooms, he got up, determined to see what it might open on to. He had naturally assumed it would be locked. How surprised he was to find that it opened easily, almost invitingly!

He saw before him a bathroom with gleaming tiles, and a tub white and shimmering, and a toilet, and, in short, what might have been termed in his circles a convenience.

At that moment he felt a pressing need to wash, and he turned on both the taps and filled the tub with hot and cold water. As he undressed to get into it, he regretted that he didn’t have a change of shirt, because when he took off his shirt he saw that it was exceedingly dirty, and he already dreaded the moment when he would have to get out of the bath and back into his shirt.

He climbed into the bath, conscious of what a long time it was since he had last washed. He bathed gleefully, got out, got into his clothes, and then didn’t know what to do with himself. More out of perplexity than curiosity, he opened the door of his room, went out into the corridor, and saw a woman on the point of leaving her room, as he had just done. She was young and beautiful. Indeed, she reminded him of the sales girl in the shop where he had bought his wallet, and also slightly of Caroline, and so he said hello to her and bowed, and when she nodded back to him, he felt emboldened and said to her straight out: “I think you’re beautiful.”

“I like you as well,” she replied, “but now you must excuse me! Perhaps we’ll see each other tomorrow.” And she disappeared down the dark corridor. He, though, suddenly in need of love, looked to see what the number was on her door.

It was number eighty-seven. He made a note of it in his heart.

11

He returned to his room and waited and listened. He felt absolutely determined not to wait till the morning to see the beautiful girl again. The almost uninterrupted stream of miracles of the last few days had convinced him that he must be in a state of grace; but by that same token, he believed himself entitled to a little excess of zeal on his own behalf, and he rather thought he would pre-empt grace, out of deference to it, as it were, and without causing it the slightest offense. So when he thought he could hear the quiet footfall of the girl from room eighty-seven in the corridor, he carefully opened the door of his room by a handbreadth, and saw that it really was her, going back into her room. What he had failed to realize, though, as a consequence of long years of desuetude, was the by no means unimportant circumstance that the beautiful girl had observed his little act of espionage. Consequently, as profession and experience had taught her to do, she quickly produced a semblance of order in her room, switched off the main overhead light, lay down on the bed and picked up a book and began reading it; unfortunately it was a book she had already read long ago.

A few moments later, as expected, she heard a quiet knock on her door, and Andreas stepped into her room. He remained standing by the door, merely awaiting the invitation to step a little closer which he was sure would not be long in coming. However, the pretty girl didn’t move; she didn’t even put her book aside, she only asked: “And what brings you here?”

Andreas, his confidence boosted by bath, soap, armchair, wall-covering, parrot’s heads and suit, replied: “I couldn’t wait till tomorrow to see you again, my dear.”

The girl made no reply.

Andreas moved a little nearer, asked what she was reading and observed with frankness: “Books don’t interest me.”

“I’m passing through,” said the girl on the bed, “I’m only staying till Sunday. On Monday I have to appear in Cannes.”

“As what?” asked Andreas.

“I dance in a night-club. I’m Gabby. Haven’t you ever heard of me?”

“Of course, I’ve seen your name in the newspapers,” lied Andreas — and he was even going to add: the newspapers I sleep in. But he didn’t.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and the pretty girl didn’t object. She eventually put away her book, and Andreas stayed in room eighty-seven till morning.

12

On the Saturday morning, he awoke with the firm resolve not to leave the beautiful girl until it was time for her to go. Yes, and the fragrant thought bloomed in his mind that he might even travel down to Cannes with her, because, like all poor people (and more especially, like all poor people who also drink), he was inclined to take the small sums of money in his pocket for large ones. So, in the morning, he counted up his nine hundred and eighty francs. And since they were in a wallet, and the wallet was in a new suit, the sum seemed to him to be ten times what it actually was. As a result, he wasn’t at all put out, when, an hour after he’d left her, the pretty girl walked straight into his room without knocking, and, when she asked him how they would spend their Saturday together, he said, at a venture, “Fontainebleau.” It was like a name he had heard in a dream. He had no idea how and why it came to trip off his tongue now.

So they took a taxi and drove out to Fontainebleau, and it turned out that the beautiful girl knew of a good restaurant, where they served good food and fine wines. And the waiter there knew her, and she was on first name terms with him. And if our Andreas had been of a jealous disposition, it might have made him angry. But he wasn’t jealous, and so he didn’t get angry. They spent some time eating and drinking, and then they drove back to Paris, again in a taxi, and suddenly they saw the glittering expanse of the evening in Paris ahead of them, and they didn’t know what to do with it, and they were just two people who didn’t belong together, whom fate had simply thrown together. The night stretched out ahead of them like an empty desert.

And they were at a loss what to do together, having rather frivolously squandered the principal experience that a man and woman may have together. And so they decided to avail themselves of the facility reserved to people in our own century when they don’t know what to do — they went to the cinema. And they sat there, and it wasn’t pitch-black, it wasn’t even dark, in fact it could barely be called half-dark. And they held hands, the girl and our friend Andreas. But his hand felt noncommittal, and it embarrassed him. His own hand. When the interval came, he decided to take the beautiful girl out into the foyer for a drink, and they went out and they drank. And he had no interest whatever in the film any more. They went back to their hotel feeling awkward and constrained.

The following morning, the Sunday, Andreas woke up fully aware of his obligation to repay the money. He got up rather more quickly than he had done on the previous morning, with such alacrity in fact that the beautiful girl was startled out of her sleep, and asked, “Why the hurry, Andreas?”