Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

What was I thinking, letting a child go up in the elevator alone?

One of the staff at the reception agreed to go up with me in order to check. And the trip in the elevator is longer than you think. There was nothing to say, no point in trying to get friendly with this man or trying to gain his trust and win him over by making some remark about the weather. He wanted to retain his doubts about me. He was not going to be drawn in until he got this clarified. So the elevator moved almost without moving. I was thinking about the dial reaching the fourth floor. The doors opened and the man from the reception walked at normal pace ahead of me, no hurry. He knocked on the door, politely calling out her name. All of which takes time. Valuable seconds spent on formalities before he eventually looked at me and looked at the door and then put his hand up to indicate that I should stand back, while he took the initiative and made the decision to open the door. He stepped into the room, cautiously at first, coughing and calling her name, you never know what you might come across in a situation like that. And she was not there. I knew it. I ran past him to check the bathroom, but there was no sign of her there either.

She was lost in the hotel somewhere, but where?

The man called the reception to report a guest missing, in a wheelchair. He gave her name and the room number. It was all about procedure and what to do next. But I had no time to wait. I went back down again, trying to work out what had happened. She must have been unable to find her room, just as I had suspected. The only thing to do now was to search for her, floor by floor, and then I heard her voice.

Inside the elevator, I heard her calling. She was not in the elevator, but I could hear her voice clearly calling me.

Liam. Liam. That’s all I heard.

I couldn’t work out where. I called back. Other guests arriving with suitcases may have found it a bit unsettling, to see me coming out of the elevator calling, looking around as if I was lost, not right. I went up another floor and her voice was not there any more, so back down I went again until I could hear her, we were in communication. I thought she was in the elevator shaft somewhere. Incarcerated, inside the wall, or in the stairwell. Or maybe in some kind of storage area. I couldn’t figure it out. And then eventually I narrowed it down to the basement, she had to be down there, that was the only thing left I could think of. Why did it take me so long to work that out?

The way I explained it to myself is that she went down in the one elevator that led to the basement, where I had not been looking. The other two elevators don’t go down that far. That was the problem. She had got the elevator that leads down to the underground car park.

When I found her she was very upset. She was frightened and confused, breathing very rapidly, not making sense. The card key for the room was still in her hand, held tightly. She would not let it go. She was looking around to get her bearings, no idea where she was. And the surroundings were not like upstairs, no hardwood panelling or soft carpets. It was cold down there, with bare, bright lights and no need for décor, only scuffed paintwork. All this time, while I was trying to find out if she was in her room, she was trapped in the basement, shivering.

Liam, she said. I saw my brother.

I tried to calm her down.

I saw him, she said. Jimmy.

I tried to take her hand but she pulled away from me. She must have thought I was not going to believe what she was saying, because she kept repeating that she saw her brother. She said she tried to call the elevator and then she saw her little brother, he was whispering to her, she didn’t know what he was saying.

He was looking into my eyes, she said. He’s in trouble, Liam, he needs me.

Maybe it was all the medication. She was shivering and not getting enough air. And she was complaining of a horrible taste in her mouth, like chalk. Chalk and custard and bits of tobacco leaves, bits of seaweed, she said, stuck at the back of her throat. I gave her the see-through bag in case she wanted her medication, something to calm her down and bring her back to herself, maybe a bit of chocolate to get the taste of custard and seaweed out of her mouth. And then I did the breathing song with her. I told her to relax and breathe in and out calmly. Because it sounded like she had been in a race, completely out of breath, her nose was running. When you’re ready, I said, take in a deep breath and hold it for as long as you can, very good, hold it, hold it. Then I told her to let it all the way out again, all the way, all the way, all the way, very good, but she could only manage a few shallow puffs. I wanted her to try it again, one more time, but she was too upset. She was hardly getting any air at all into her lungs. As if time was running out. She was searching all around to see where her brother was, asking me if I could see him, would I go and check in those little rooms, those closets where he might be hiding, all the storage places where they keep detergents and cream cleansers and bath mats and shower caps and toilet rolls, all those little shampoo bottles people take with them and which have to be replaced for each new guest, because she worked in room service once and she would know where all these things were kept. Was he in any of those places hiding, she said, maybe in one of the empty boxes of materials delivered to the hotel, behind a trolley that was loaded with spare pillows and duvets and bedspreads, hiding to get away from the noise in his head of what he remembered as a child? Was he in the place where they do the washing, behind the dryers rotating, in the room where they store all the linen, was he in one of those presses stacked up with fresh linen, to keep safe?

I had to get her out of the basement as quickly as possible. Come on, I said to her, let’s go back upstairs. I called the elevator and brought her up to her room, though she was still worried about her brother, saying he was lost and she couldn’t leave him down there. So I told her we had to find some way of getting her warm first, then we could go back and look for him. I had to get her into the bath. I had to stop her shivering. I had to get her ready for the opera. I had to pick up the tickets for Don Carlo .

We left the Adlon Hotel with plenty of time. She was going to see her family. She was going to meet them for the last time, alive on the stage, her father and mother. Her brother. Her family waiting at the Berlin State Opera.

We passed by the Russian Embassy along the way. All the stuff that went on in there, she said, beyond those railings, and the guards so stern and silent outside. Sentry, she said. We passed by souvenir shops with lots of postcards and Berlin guides. Tankards and T-shirts with the green man walking. All the landmarks you could not mistake for any other city, a miniature plastic Brandenburg Gate that people bring home as proof. We continued on Unter den Linden until we got to the university, a big open square where we stopped for a while to look down at the white empty shelves underground. And because she said nothing, because she didn’t say go back now, let’s not go any further, I pushed the wheelchair on again, out of the square and up towards the entrance of the State Opera with its façade lit up.

Don Carlo.

I pushed her all the way in through the doors, right into the crowd of people waiting in the foyer, people standing in a line to hand in their coats. The smooth silent wheels of the wheelchair running along the carpet. I got her a programme and handed her the red glasses. She had no need for the programme, but she loved holding it in her hands and hearing the voices around her, the buzz, you could feel it.