Oscar Coop-Phane - Zenith Hotel

‘I haven’t got much money.’

‘So we’ll make do with what you’ve got.’

I’m done for the night. The money comes fast. At what cost?

Back to the Zenith Hotel. Always the same old routine. I climb the six flights of stairs up to my dismal room with the paint peeling off the walls. The stairs are worn down in the centre from too many feet tramping up and down them in boots or trainers. I don’t like this stairwell. I hurry to the top.

I unlock the door with my big gilt key, then slump down on my little bed and lie there, on my back, my legs dangling, still dressed, the strap of my bag around my arm. I’d like to be able to stay like this forever – as flat as a pancake. I feel good. I think of nothing.

But I have to sit up. Mentally I count. On thirty, I’ll get up. Twenty-seven… twenty-eight… twenty-nine… thirty. Right, another two minutes. I count again. I don’t want to get up. Twenty-seven… twenty-eight… twenty-nine… thirty…

Slowly I take off my make-up. I wipe cotton wool over my face with one hand, holding a small fragment of mirror in the other.

I ignore my reflection. I’ve given up looking for crow’s feet around my eyes and new blackheads on my nose. I think about other things – I don’t want to see myself.

Slowly, I get undressed. I let my clothes drop gently on to the white-tiled floor. I don’t fold them, they’re dirty. I’m going to the launderette tomorrow, as I do every week.

I slip into my nightie. That’s my evening routine. My movements are mechanical, like in the morning when I scratch my head and make coffee.

My routine makes me forget the nasty taste seeping through my body. I concentrate on the moment. I slip into my nightie and go and fill my water bottle on the landing.

I go back to my room and smoke a cigarette in silence.

I double-lock the door. At last I can go to bed, turn on the television and light up another fag.

I gently fall asleep, watching people living on the other side of the screen.

The commentators’ voices are soothing. They have that journalistic tone that makes them sound beautiful and professional. The voices of those who keep us informed.

I trust that voice. It isn’t nasty. I can let myself go. I listen with one ear. With the other, the one that’s glued to the pillow, I start to nod off. A pleasant voice with a journalistic tone.

I fall asleep. Tomorrow’s another day.

Oscar Coop-Phane was born in 1988. He left home at 16 with dreams of becoming a painter and at 20 moved to Berlin where he spent a year writing and reading classics. There he wrote Zenith Hotel , which won the Prix de Flore in France, and then Tomorrow, Berlin (Arcadia, 2015). Today he lives in Brussels and is working on his third novel, October .

‘Oscar Coop-Phane oozes affection for his characters, from their beautiful humanity to the depths of their weaknesses’

‘One of the most intriguing and exciting new voices on the French literary scene’

‘The best first novel of the year’

‘He’s only 23, but Coop-Phane’s sparse style cuts to the bone and reveals a sensibility far beyond his years’

‘A melancholic and earthy novel that marks a rigorous, vigorous entrance into contemporary French literature’

‘Coop-Phane has achieved the modest and moving prose of Calet and Bove – not a copier, but an extraordinary amateur paying tribute to his readings. His poetic text is as sad as a lonely Sunday’

‘ Zenith Hotel is a melancholy portrait of desire and radiant grace’

‘In this astonishing first novel, Coop-Phane has brought alive the inhabitants of the dirty, poor streets of Paris, compiling a spare yet tender portrait that is never sentimental. An unbelievable discovery’

‘It’s beautiful. It’s sad. It’s pure poetry’

‘A short and thought-provoking book that lays bare the unvarnished heart of city dwelling. It’s populated by people trying to manage their lives, and their footsteps reverberate across the hard tarmac of the arrondissements – the unforgiving structure that underpins each vignette. Astutely observed and told with care’

‘ Zenith Hotel is pure poetry. It’s a one-sitting read that manages to fit more emotion into 105 pages than most novels do in 500’

Arcadia Books Ltd

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www.arcadiabooks.co.uk

First published in France by Éditions Finitude 2012

First published in the United Kingdom by Arcadia Books 2014

Copyright © Oscar Coop-Phane 2012

Translation copyright © Ros Schwartz 2014

Oscar Coop-Phane has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This Ebook edition published in 2014

ISBN 9781909807631

This book is supported by the Institut Français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess programme. Arcadia Books would like to thank them for their generous support.

Arcadia Books supports English PEN www.englishpen.org and

The Book Trade Charity http://booktradecharity.wordpress.com

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