Peter Stamm - We're Flying

She didn’t cook and she didn’t clean, I even had to make my own bed. The only services she performed were opening cans and setting the table. One time I remarked that I wasn’t exactly getting my money’s worth. Ana’s face darkened in a scowl. She said it would be better if I stopped wasting time on Maxim Gorki and started thinking about my own attitude toward women. That has nothing to do with it, I said, surely you can at least expect running water and electricity in a hotel. You’re getting much more than that, Ana snapped back. I didn’t know what she meant, but I was careful to stay off the subject in future.

I tried to imagine what the place would be like with visitors in summer, with the dining room packed, someone playing the piano, and children running up and down the corridors, but I couldn’t manage it.

The stack of dirty plates in the kitchen grew. One time I counted them. If Ana used three plates a day, then she must have been here all winter. I asked her if she was some kind of housekeeper. If you like, she said. I didn’t believe her, but by then it was a matter of some indifference to me why she was here.

FOR LUNCH WE usually ate tuna with artichoke hearts, in the evening we lit a fire outside and heated a can of ravioli on a stone. The sun left the valley early and it got cold quickly, but even so we sat by the fire a long time in the evening, drinking wine. We had barely exchanged a word all day, and while Ana wasn’t any more talkative than before, she did at least listen to me. I didn’t feel like talking about myself, I didn’t want to think about my home life, which seemed remote and irrelevant. So I started telling her about Summer Folk . She responded to the various characters as if they were real people: she got annoyed with Olga for complaining all the time and called the engineer Suslov a bastard. Varvara and her ravings about the writer Shalimov left her cold. How could she fall for such a man, she said indignantly, he’s just a bad seducer. What would a good seducer be like, then? I asked. He would have to be honest to the woman and himself, said Ana, and shook her head disapprovingly. Her favorite was Maria Lvovna. I knew the famous monologue from Act IV pretty much by heart, and was asked to recite it several times by Ana. We are summer folk in our country, we’ve traveled here from somewhere. We bustle about, look for some comfortable niche in life, we do nothing and we talk all the time. Yes, said Ana, we all need to change. We need to do it for our own sakes, too, I said, so that we don’t feel our awful solitude so much. Ana looked at me suspiciously, and said I wasn’t to start getting any ideas. You would fit well into the play, I said. In a letter, Gorki said all his female characters hate men and all his men are rotters. Then you would fit into the play yourself, said Ana. By the flickering firelight I couldn’t be sure of her expression.

I never found out where Ana slept. When we went back inside at night, each of us with an oil lamp, she said I should go on ahead, she would be along in a while. Once I waited for her in the corridor outside my room. I had turned my lamp off, and listened in the darkness for a long time, but I couldn’t hear anything, and in the end I just went to bed.

Half dreaming, I imagined Ana coming into my room. In the middle of the night I awoke and saw her silhouette in the pale moonlight. She got undressed, pulled aside the covers, and climbed on top of me. It all happened in complete silence, the only thing that could be heard was the distant rushing of the brook through the thin windows. Ana was rough with me, or perhaps I should say she treated me like an object she needed for a particular end, but for which she had no particular regard. When she had satisfied her hunger, she left, without a word passing between us.

IN THE MORNING, as usual, Ana was already sitting at the breakfast table when I walked into the dining room. Not really thinking what I was doing, I stroked her hair on my way to my seat. She gave a jump and cringed. I tried to start a conversation, but Ana didn’t answer, and only looked at me with a grim expression, as though she knew about my dream. As she always did, she gulped down her food and got up as soon as her plate was empty.

After breakfast I browsed through some illustrated volumes in the library, and later I went along to the Ladies Saloon and knocked billiard balls around. There was no sign of Ana, and she didn’t come in for lunch either. I ate downstairs in the kitchen, and then I went back up to the library and started reading one of the American thrillers. In the early afternoon I heard a car outside. When I looked out the window, I saw a couple of men getting out of an old Volvo in the driveway. For a moment I thought of hiding somewhere, but then I just stayed put and went on with my book. It was maybe an hour later, and I had just thrown aside my thriller in irritation, when the double doors swung open and the two men walked in. They looked at me in amazement, and one of them—not replying to my greeting—asked me what I thought I was doing. I’m reading, I said. And how did you get in? asked the man. Through the door, I said, and got up. I’m a guest at the hotel. The Kurhaus has been closed since last autumn, said the man. The owner has gone bankrupt. The hotel is going under the hammer next month.

And then he introduced himself, his name was Lorenz and he was the official receiver in the next-door community. The other man was a prospective buyer, an investor by the name of Schwab, who already owned a few other hotels in the area. I told them about Ana, and went to the lobby with them, and in a drawer behind the front desk retrieved the guests’ register with my own entry. Even so, the receiver remained suspicious. Had I not suspected anything was amiss? he asked. A hotel with no running water and no electricity. True, he hadn’t canceled the telephone, how was he to know that someone was going to squat in the building? I didn’t say anything, what could I have said? And where is this enigmatic woman? he asked. I said she would be here at seven, seven was when we always had dinner. The receiver looked at me doubtfully, and said he would be grateful if I would pack my things. I would be able to get a ride with them later. They would take another hour or hour and a half to finish what they were doing. I said I had paid until tomorrow, but he didn’t respond, and said to the investor that he would now show him the basement floor. I went up to my room to pack.

When I was done, I climbed up to the higher floors for the first time since I was here. They looked exactly like the one I was staying on. I opened the doors to all the rooms, but none showed any sign of occupation. From the top floor, a narrow staircase led up to the attic, which was crammed full of old furniture, Christmas decorations, cardboard boxes full of envelopes and toilet paper. A stack of straw wreaths lay next to an old sign with Yuletide Ball written among painted icicles. I found a dozen horn sleighs and big dusty Chianti bottles, but no sign of Ana. Even so, from the time I started searching the building for her, I had the feeling she was around, and would pop up somewhere at any moment.

After I had searched the whole building without finding anything, I sat down in one of the chairs in the lobby, not bothering to pull off the sheet. Eventually the two men emerged from the dining room. Herr Lorenz had a paper roll under one arm. He looked at his watch and made a gesture of impatience. Six o’clock, he said to his companion, I don’t want to keep you any longer. If you want to wait, replied Herr Schwab, I’m not in any particular hurry. I’m curious about this woman myself. He turned to me and said, surely I knew where they kept the wine, and couldn’t I bring up a bottle for us? I’ll do that, said Lorenz quickly, and vanished downstairs. What do you think of the place? asked the investor, is it bearable? He wasn’t quite sure himself. Two bankruptcies in short order didn’t exactly bode well, but perhaps it had just been badly run.