A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell

Author:Joseph Skibell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1997-11-12T22:00:00+00:00

39

I have often thought how pleasant it would be to live in a hotel, to live as a guest, and have everything provided you. Your furnishings, your meals, all of life’s dreary chores seen to by a large and helpful staff, many of whom are experts in their fields. If you want tea, you press a button and a boiling samovar arrives. After a long day of work, perhaps you feel the need to relax. And so, with a discreet word in the concierge’s ear, a horse is saddled and, within the hour, you are flying across the grounds in the whorling light of dusk, not a care in the world. Your stomach is empty, but so what? You may eat in the restaurant or have the meal sent up to your rooms. There is no hurry, no schedule to keep. You may change into your clothes leisurely, taking time, if you wish, for a massage, before meeting a friend or two in the bar while your table is prepared.

Outside my window, the sun lowers itself into the forests. Dark silhouettes move against the pattern of the trees. The figures call out to one another, carrying long poles.

I close the light in my room. The hallway outside my suite is bright and humming with activity. Porters scurry about, whitecapped chambermaids and pageboys rush quickly by, offering the briefest of nods, inquiring with only a look whether you are in need of anything.

A white carpet covers the stone floors, muffling my steps and the tap of my cane. I pass familiar men and women dressed elegantly for dinner with their children. We greet each other with appreciative nods and tart, concealed smiles. To look at us now, who would imagine that only this afternoon we were wandering through the snows, worm-eaten and morose? The corridors are hung with intricate tapestries, depictions of hunting parties and scenes of courtly love. Glittering mirrors cover the walls between them. These we pass, looking secretly into our own bedazzled eyes.

Is it possible that we actually belong here?

“Going down!” the liftboy sings and we squeeze into the lift, a thick gaggle of us, drawing ourselves in tightly so as not to crease each other’s clothes.

In the foyer, a rush of languages flies about our ears. The Direktor can be heard barking orders in German, the Maître d’Hôtel welcoming new arrivals in French. At a telephone station behind the reception desk, the head chef, a tall man in a white stove-pipe hat, screams in Italian, perhaps to a negligent wholesaler. The waiters address each other in either Rumanian or Greek.

In the alcoves of the bar, beneath the arches and the great porticos, and all along the staircases with their winding iron rails, guests converse in English, in Spanish, in Czech, and, God knows, in seventy other languages.

A child falls and cries for its mother in Serbo-Croatian and is picked up and comforted by a stranger speaking Dutch with a Turkish accent!

In the bar, men in evening jackets press their heads together.

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