David Szalay - Spring

*

It is still dark when he leaves the bed and feels for his things, which are mixed up with hers on the floor. He has a terrible feeling that he is neglecting poor Hugo—who, having spent the night unexpectedly on his own in Mecklenburgh Street, must urgently need a walk. That is why he is standing there in the dark, even though to all intents and purposes it is still night outside and he has not slept much on the thin pillows, frequently waking to look at the time, in spite of the fact that the alarm was set. Then it went off—loud and shrill—and he sat up while she struggled, still essentially asleep, to make it stop.

He is feeling for his things on the floor when she turns on the light. She puts a hand over her eyes. ‘No, it’s okay,’ he says quietly, doing the same. ‘I don’t need the light. Thanks.’ His mouth is thick and faecal-tasting. He is sweating. It is too hot for him here, where the storage heater seems impossible to switch off and leaks nasty heat all night.

When he is dressed he sits on the edge of the bed, wondering whether she has fallen asleep again. She has not—as soon as she feels his weight on the mattress, she sits up, and seems to prop herself on an elbow.

‘Okay, I’m going,’ he whispers.

‘Okay.’

He kisses her, lightly touching her lips with his own. Her lips are sleepily warm. Her whole face, which he can hardly see, is sleepily soft and warm. He kisses her again, and is just standing up to leave when she says, ‘James.’

‘Yes.’

‘So… What are we going to do?’ she says. ‘Just carry on as before?’

For a few seconds he says nothing. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

This time it is she who does not speak for a few seconds. ‘Okay,’ she says eventually. ‘Nothing too intense, though.’

He is not sure what she means by this. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing too intense.’

‘Okay.’

‘Sorry to wake you up.’

‘That’s okay.’

She hears him tiptoe through the squeaking hall. There is a suspenseful silence while he puts on his shoes and jacket, then she hears the front door swing open and shut. Twice. In an effort to be quiet, the first attempt was too tentative.

She is half an hour late for work, and striding across the lobby she sees immediately that Carlo is upset. ‘I’m sorry, Carlo,’ she sings, while still out in the open space, under the shimmering spectrums of the two-tonne chandelier. He just shakes his head and skulks into the staff cloakroom. For a few seconds she stands at the front desk, paying down the oxygen debt of her hurry.

Then she follows the small Italian into the staff cloakroom. In the mirror, she sees what a mess her hair is, how pouchy her eyes look.

Carlo is shrugging on his smart blue overcoat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says flatly, as if it were a final offer.

‘S’okay,’ Carlo says, without looking at her. He straightens his scarf. ‘You owe me though.’

Throughout the morning the huge hotel empties. The lifts ping. Porters push trolleys loaded with luggage. Taxis swarm on the manicured forecourt. The doormen endlessly open the doors, while from the windows of the top floor the waiters have no time to look out over the massed treetops of the park, pushing westwards for over a mile into the indistinct distance.

At about eleven, when things up there have finally quietened down, Ernő—the Hungarian waiter, her silent suitor—steps out of the lift with something in his hands.

‘Is that for me?’ she says, matter-of-factly.

‘Naturally,’ Ernő says, under the innocent impression that this is just an elegant way of saying yes.

‘Thanks. That’s very sweet of you.’

‘Nothing,’ he says.

She puts the coffee under the summit of the desk and stares out at the long perspectives of the lobby. The shimmer of its spaces, of the chandelier—an inverted wedding cake, listlessly iridescent—seems superannuated. Its luxury seems stale. The little shops in the neglected, marble-floored passage seem frumpy, superfluous, survivors from a time when only the shops in luxury hotel lobbies were open on Sunday, or even Saturday afternoon.

She has lunch in the subterranean warren of linoleum passageways the public never sees, and it is sitting there in her sober work clothes that she starts to think properly about what has happened. She feels uneasy. When she said, ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while,’ that was what she meant, and yet somehow it is not how things seem to have been left. She shouldn’t have had sex with him, of course. Probably she should not have let him stay the night at all. Should not even have let him kiss her. It had been her intention not to let him kiss her. She had felt sorry for him. She had felt sorry for him when he said, in that oddly simple way of his, ‘Why won’t you kiss me?’ There is something about him that tugs at her heart. (‘Why won’t you kiss me?’) So yes, she felt sorry for him. That was not the main thing, though. The main thing was that she seemed to find it impossible not to kiss him when he was there, in front of her. His mouth. The way that kissing it her whole mind seemed to melt… Pondering this phenomenon, she pours herself some water. Her failure to hold to her intentions makes her wonder whether she is wrong to want not to see him for a while. It makes her wonder whether that is in fact what she wants. Does she know what she wants? She does not seem to.

She finds it upsetting to upset people. That is her weakness. That is why she let him leave this morning thinking that everything would just go on as if nothing had happened. That is why the idea that maybe she was wrong to want not to see him for a while so easily tempted her as she sat propped on her skinny elbow in the dark and turned her face slightly away from his halitosis. She had nearly not said anything. Nearly not even said, ‘James! So… What are we going to do?’ And then, oppressed by his silence—standing there like a sullen shadow—and her own sudden uncertainty, ‘Just carry on as before?’ She had not meant the words to convey the sense that that was what she thought they should do. She had meant them more as the sceptical starting point for a conversation on the subject. That was not how they had sounded. They had sounded like a straightforward suggestion, and he was obviously willing to take them as one. So he left, and she lay there for a few minutes, feeling that he had somehow been unpleasantly sly—which made her dislike him—and then she fell asleep.

She was hurt by his lack of emotion when she said she did not think they should see each other for a while. The way he was silent for a few seconds and then just said, ‘Okay.’ When he said that, she suddenly wondered what he felt. He did not seem to feel anything. And if he did, why did he not show it? Why did he not express it in words? Why did he not even try?

She pours herself some more water from the plastic jug and someone sits down at the table, as far away from her as possible. Ernő. When she looks in his direction, he just nods. They do not speak to each other, not even a few pleasantries, which seems odd. He must be ten years younger than her. He might be no more than twenty. Sometimes she thinks that if he simply walked up to her and suggested they take the lift upstairs and have sex in a vacant room—as he presumably wants to—she would just say, ‘Yeah, okay,’ and start setting up a suitable key. The trouble is, if he did that, he would no longer be Ernő, with his shy, lusty innocence. His unspoken, obvious longing. He would be something else.

‘How are things today?’ he says suddenly.

It is a tedious question and his tone is tediously sincere and she just shrugs and says, ‘They’re okay. Fine.’ He has no sense of humour, or does not seem to. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she says, and stands up with her tray.