Authors: Christina Stead
Most days he also went up the hill to the clinic. There he received his injections and shock treatments. When he came back, he always came first into my office and said: ‘Too much of a good thing! Any more of it and I’d fall down dead at his feet, on the floor of the clinic.’ But he said he was feeling better.
He had arrived dressed in a style some people think right for Switzerland, tartan shirt, open neck, soiled pair of trousers, of good make, leather jacket, muffler, cap and beach shoes.
He paid his bill regularly and without any objections; but he always wrote underneath something like this:
Bill paid to the Germans, seen and approved, the Mayor of B. Document 127
or whatever it was.
I was uneasy about him, especially as the weather was still wintry, sharp, and he kept crossing the lake to Evian without an overcoat. After I mentioned it to him, he wore his wool muffler; he even wore it to the w.c. And then he began going to the w.c. without a dressing-gown or slippers, but in his pyjamas, hat and muffler. He told me not to worry: the mountain wind was good for his headache. ‘I have a headache every night all night; it comes from the fever.’
The Mayor became a nuisance, ringing the bells all day for the staff, insisting upon attendance. He would have two or three of them at a time in his room, haranguing them about business, explaining how they must wait upon him; and next, amusing them, doing balancing tricks and forcing them to drink champagne. He would close the door and I would hear shouting and shrieks of laughter. I had to forbid them to stay in the room when the door was closed; and said there was to be no more than one of them in the room at any time. For the next thing might be that he would get angry with them, very high-and-mighty, he would chase them out saying that he must have better service or he would leave. Then he would storm down to me, only half dressed, asking for clean linen or pen and ink, or saying the food tasted bad.
To begin with we had very little linen and we were just starting to build up our supply; and then our laundress was good but slow. She has a little laundry business of her own which she runs with her son. But she is very nervous and does not sleep at night because she is afraid the Russians will come in with their troops and take her business. One day she was so sick in the stomach that she could not bring the linen but sent her son, who is even slower than she is. Another day, there was a strike; yet another time the weather was very wet; and so on. I sent the Italian sisters, Luisa and Lina, to help her with the laundry; but they are not experienced, though great workers. So quite often the housekeeper would be short of clean linen. The Mayor would come out into the corridor, cajole her, try to take clean linen out of the cupboard when she had it open. Lina was often sitting in the little sewing-room behind the office; but you could hear the sewing-machine going and in he would go, whenever I was out of the office, joking, commanding and trying to take the clean linen she was mending on the machine. Then he would examine the sheets to see if they were mended; and say, ‘I cannot sleep in mended sheets.’ Anything, you see, to cause excitement. Yet he was an amusing interesting clever man. I liked him even though he kept on calling me German. Roger, of course, saw him with different eyes. In the end he telephoned the Town Hall of B. He could not tell whom he spoke to, but he was told that our Mayor, though not the Mayor, was a very high official; and Roger got the impression in a few minutes’ conversation that it was better not to inquire too much; better to leave things as they were. Roger, though inquisitive and suspicious, is prudent; and so we did leave it at that.
Such scenes would take place in the morning, say. Then the Mayor would go off somewhere to Zurich or Evian-les-Bains or to his doctor. He never went to Geneva which is the nearest of all, because, he said, you met too many international types there, spies, globetrotters, who might recognize him; and he was here incognito. If in the hotel, he would dodge in and out of his room and the office talking to me or playing with my little boy, Olivier. The Mayor told me it wouldn’t be safe for him to hold too much property in his own name and he had so much now that he had to give some of it away. For one thing he would have to pay too many taxes; and then if the Russians came in he would be considered a bourgeois and stood up against a wall and shot. At this he would laugh loudly. Or, the Russians might just allot him one room in the back of the hotel, and where would be his advantage? He was always calculating how long it would take the Russians to occupy Belgium—seventeen hours at the most. He laughed a lot and did not seem to care; and he used to comfort us and laugh at the other guests who thought the Russians might drop in any day. Roger did not like this. He likes to take things seriously.
People would gather round when the Mayor started to talk about the Swiss mountains, the foreign gold hidden there and what the Russians would do with it. All the guests became excited and Madame Blaise, who is from Basel, a rich town in a flat watery country, would say the Russians particularly wanted the flat country, the Rhine valley and the waterway to the sea; while Mrs Powell, the old American woman, would raise the dust about ‘the Swiss trading with the enemy’; and Madame Blaise would say roughly: ‘Why don’t the Americans use the atom bomb on the Russians now? A surprise attack. What are they playing games for?’ Mrs Trollope, an English lady who had spent all her life in the East, would say quite unexpected things, such as:
‘I don’t see why the Russians wouldn’t win. We are always shouting all our secrets from the housetops. They only have to wait.’
Mrs Powell, who was partly deaf, would say to me, in her loud rough way: ‘There are communists even in this country, in Switzerland. Why don’t you get busy and stand them all up against a wall?’
To this everyone would agree, except the Mayor, who had been in a position of authority; and who would laugh at everyone, though why I never was sure. Naturally, he hated the Russians, but he would listen to each one with a quizzing smile; suddenly you would see a profound smile crease his face; and he would begin to laugh aloud. For example, on one occasion, Madame Blaise said she had it all planned. Her son was in New York, she herself had a lot of property in New York; she liked America and she was going to hire a plane and fly off. She said: ‘In any case, I have to go. I have millions lying there in different banks and I must make them give it back. That is why my son is there, waiting for me.’ At this moment the Mayor smiled profoundly, as if he had discovered a case of champagne; he burst out laughing. Madame Blaise seemed a large fat goose; don’t misunderstand me, I think she was a very cunning, very clever and very rich woman, but being a heavy rude selfish woman she was not quick to take a hint; so she simply went on saying:
‘The Americans are not such fine people; don’t think they care for us and our problems. For them it’s Number One; let them get their paws on our money and they stick to it. I have been fighting for years to get my money back and it is still sequestered. You see, it was war conditions; it could not be put in people’s own names; they had to trust Swiss people; and some of us did not know, so we put it into the U.S.A. Supposing Switzerland were invaded; why would they want our mountains? For the money! We are the richest country on earth. Why should we have all this worry? We must protect ourselves. So you see,’ (she said to Mrs Powell) ‘You should not think only of self, but you should see the Russians destroyed, because it is to your interest too. If we go down where will you be? All Europe is your buffer state.’
‘Not the English: you have a socialist government; you are collaborators with the Russians,’ said Mrs Powell turning accusingly to Mrs Trollope.
Roger and I used to get them to disband as soon as we could; they all agreed in hating the Russians but they began to dispute, each blaming the other for their present worries. I had time to think that if Madame Blaise had property sequestered in America, since she is not an enemy alien, but a Swiss, then that property must have been enemy alien property entrusted to her, which she was now claiming. She would not be the first one. During the war many Swiss took charge of German property to prevent its being confiscated; some did it for kindness, others made a profit.
One evening the Mayor said he would draw up a document giving his property in Zurich to my five-year-old son Olivier. It was only a temporary document, not witnessed or properly drawn, but he labelled it
Document 157.
He said we must call it between ourselves Document 157; never mention it to Roger and never refer to it when with others; and he told me to put it away in the safe. My safe was getting full.
Apart from the Mayor’s papers, I had a parcel of jewels belonging to Madame Blaise and a packet containing thousands of Swiss francs and American dollars belonging to Mrs Trollope and her cousin Mr Wilkins. Madame Blaise would examine her jewels from time to time, for, she said, with Italians about, there was no security; then she would do it up again ready to fly with her to America.
Mrs Trollope’s parcel was a source of worry too. It was labelled
Property of Robert A. Wilkins
, which was the name of Mrs Trollope’s cousin, but the money it contained belonged to Mrs Trollope. I never knew why it was there; for they had bank accounts in the local banks. But Mrs Trollope would come to me almost every day talking about it, crying about how short of money she was. Supposing something happened to Mr Wilkins, ‘which God forbid’? The odd thing about this was that Mrs Trollope was an heiress, richer than her cousin. That was a mixed-up story. Mrs Trollope told me everything and I soon understood; yet you are always astonished at how people can muddle their lives.
Most of our guests are in bed by eleven, a middle-aged set. But we have a year-long contract with the local night-club, the Toucan, to lodge their touring artistes and we put up the road companies who play the Casino. The artistes for the Zig-Zag Club are a poorer crowd and put up in working-class pensions. We like the Toucan people. They are well-behaved and some of them come back each season. They get up at five or six in the evening, have coffee and rolls, lunch at the night-club and eat a snack in their rooms before going to bed. About this time there came back to us Lola-la-Môme, who does apache and South American and other dances. She is forty-two, short, strong and plump with thick black hair which she dresses like a savage; and she is still healthy and sexy enough to get applause doing belly-dances and acrobatics with her partner. Her manager is her husband, who is a few years younger; and her partner is her lover and about twenty-five. The three of them go about together and are quite famous. They quarrel and fight in public, but never here. The husband doesn’t like his position but can’t afford to lose Lola-la-Môme and her partner. But Lola insists upon picking up rich tourists in the night-club. It is dull enough here, let us admit it, at night; and all the places but night-clubs close at midnight. We’re a Calvinist country, very gaitered and neckbanded, parsonical. So after twelve the rich tourists resident in neighbouring towns have only the Toucan and the Zig-Zag and sometimes the Casino to go to. When Lola suggests bringing the men home, the men are eager, you can’t blame them. When her partner or her husband object, she says she will leave the act; and she has left them once or twice.
She explained to me that I had no idea how dull it was living with two men who are always putting up with each other, and holding on to her; and I could understand. I told her she ought to live with just one man like I do; it is more difficult and you are never sure you can hold him. Lola thinks she can get a rich lover any time she wants to; that is an illusion, I suppose.
Lola is a vulgar woman who wants to get money out of these rich tourists. I forbade them to dance in the house; they just talk, drink and make love. It is all upstairs out of sight on the top floor. The artistes get reduced rates, so they live in the smallest rooms and you can imagine that in so small a space it gets stuffy; the people often quarrel. The night-porter has to watch them and go up and knock on the door. Then Lola-la-Môme comes out and says she is just having a party. We can hardly prevent stage people from staying up at night after their work; and after one warning Lola usually cools down for the rest of the season. She does not want to go and live and eat in the working-class pensions where people go to sleep early and nothing of that sort would be permitted. Most of our guests know nothing whatever about Lola unless they go to the night-club.
But how could you prevent the Mayor from knowing? He went to the Toucan many evenings. He bought drinks for Lola and her family and came home with them. They started to sit up all night and since the Mayor does not concede that they have to work, but pretends they are out for a good time, we had him running up and down the stairs and wildly about all night, singing and executing funny little acts on the carpet-runner on the landing. Some of our guests slept through it all; others became curious. Not to explain further, the Mayor began to do a strip-tease in order to dance an apache dance with Lola, although Lola told him over and over, and I believe this, that the male apache does not have to be naked to dance. She does a strip-tease at the club and ends her dance in nothing but a few beads, as my father used to say.
Mrs Trollope said: ‘I have never seen anything quite like Lola’s act; it’s unnecessary to go so far, though it is a night-club. And Mr Wilkins and I are broadminded; we have seen a good deal.’
I began to wish the Mayor would move to another hotel. We have had troublesome guests before and the servants can always get rid of them without anything having to be said by me. For instance, we had the Admiral here. She was an old Englishwoman who must have been a society beauty. Her fine white hair was always done as if a maid had done it and in it she wore at dinner a pale blue velvet crescent set with pearls. She had magnificent blue eyes, her skin was soft and her flesh so firm that everyone thought her about sixty-five. She was really eighty-two. Her voice had broken, she was deaf and had aristocratic manners, abrupt, overbearing or suddenly sweet and conciliating.