Lars sat on a footstool in the window embrasure, looking out at the pine gods. Miss Huk laid the tray on a table, picked up a snifter, and wandered to the window herself. She kept a decent distance from the boy.
“In Buenos Aires people eat live beetles,” she remarked. “A special kind of beetle. For their health.”
Silence.
“The health of the Argentineans,” she clarified.
Silence.
“Not of the beetles,” she said to his reflection.
Silence. Then, “Ulomoides dermestoides,” he said to hers.
II.
TWO DAYS LATER, when she was at the register, “Good morning,” Mr. Albrecht said. He had come soundlessly down the stairs.
“Good morning,” she echoed.
“Is your voice perhaps stronger in German?” he asked in German.
“No. In Hungarian only,” she said in English. “And not much stronger.”
He opened his hands to expose defeated palms.
“I don’t intend to sell the inn,” she said. “No, no,” she answered his raised eyebrows, “you have said nothing about buying it; and yes, yes, you came here because you heard of the unusual properties of the place and you wanted to experience them for yourself.” One of the Belgians walked by, not looking at the businessman. The businessman didn’t look at him, either. “But it is your nature to buy things,” she continued.
“Habit, not nature,” he murmured. “I don’t want the inn, it is your empire.” He carried his own empire in his head, and in his brother’s head. She had read about it; it reached everywhere. “But I have observed you at work,” he went on. “If you ever want a job …”
“Thank you,” she said, meaning no. When she lay on her pallet awaiting death she wanted to remember a life that except for a few years in Budapest was contained here, her steps crossing and recrossing each other on this patch of mountain.
The telephone rang. The voice was hoarse, the language French, she recognized one of a pair of brothers. Bird-watchers. Sunday. “Yes,” Miss Huk said into the volume enhancer.
LONG AGO, AFTER THE WAR, when the inn had been the property of her uncle and aunt, when she had been a little girl and then a bigger girl, reading stories to guests’ young children in her already soft voice … Long ago, the guests had been proper burghers, spending with caution the money they had managed to hoard. There was no Andrei then. On Saturday nights fiddlers came up from Sklar to play old tunes, get paid, get drunk, stumble home across the bridge.
Her kind aunt and uncle sent her to university in Budapest. She studied science. But she could barely breathe in the city; she missed the holy forest air. Amid ordinary citizens she felt misplaced, even stolen. Her voice retreated into her larynx. She recognized solitaries like herself — the man who repaired her shoes, a woman in the park with a wondering look, a mathematics professor. But solitaries don’t gather; someone must collect them.
She managed to stay long enough to earn her degree. Then she went home.
“I will live here,” she told them.
“Oh, dearest, stay in the city, teach, marry. Why did we work except to spare you drudgery.”
“This is my place.”
“So much to do,” they said, and sighed. “A lonely business, you have seen that,” they said. “It is necessary to keep distant from guests, from staff …”
“Yes,” she breathed.
She began as housemaid, at her own request. She scoured the stone floor of the kitchen; she learned the rudiments of the electrician’s trade, the plumber’s, the accountant’s. Her uncle and aunt died, one after the other in the same month. She cried for the old man and she cried for the old lady. But her tears were without salt.
Gradually the inn’s patronage changed. Unimaginative guests gave way to guests with secrets. Families yielded to isolates. Some people brought their own quilts; one old woman who came every summer carried a set of saucepans. Exhausted men drove up and deposited some relative for an unspecified amount of time. Word had gotten around as it always did, carried from village to village like legends brought by midwives — that place near the bridge: odd people could be themselves there.
The staff changed, too. One day the ancient handyman, often drunk anyway, dropped foaming to the ground. Two days later the new one arrived, thighs flapping against each other. Sitting with Miss Huk in the book room, his eyes blue lanterns, he offered the information that he had been accused of unhealthy practices.
“Peeping,” she guessed.
“Yes. Because I like to sit alone in parks, within arcades, on river-banks. I have no worse habits, no tendency. But the children … they tease me. Then they report me.”
She hired him. She pensioned off the old cook. The new cook appeared, her face presented like a hatchet or the result of a hatcheting. The drifty-eyed kitchen maid appeared.
There was so much to do, so blessed much. Food, wine, towels; the register; windowpanes. Now she opened the ledger. Robertson Albrecht had withdrawn to a chair with a book, leaving her to her empire. There were bills to pay. There were new guests to get ready for — the bird-watchers, and a fat English couple with three kids. They came every year. The kids were foster children they had managed to adopt, the mother confided … confided to anybody who’d listen, in tones of urgent secrecy. “Only here do we feel like a family.”
THREE O’CLOCK WAS A LOW TIME for everyone at the inn. Andrei stopped practicing and got into bed. The cook smoked outside. The handyman went somewhere. Guests retreated to their rooms or to the baths.
Often at three Miss Huk went into the kitchen. The kitchen maid was usually sitting beside the discolored samovar. She produced her shy smile. Miss Huk drew a chair up to the table, its top a thick slab for chopping. A cleaver hung from a loop strapped to its side.
Three drifted to three fifteen, to three thirty, to three forty-five. Things began to stir again. Andrei’s afternoon sadness lessened, and he got out of bed. Sometimes the Sklar taxi brought a guest or retrieved one, and the driver came into the kitchen for a drop. The handyman reappeared, lugging a barrel. His form was not ungainly or unsatisfactory, Miss Huk thought: just another way for a man to be. Some nights, tuxedoed behind the bar, his beardless face slightly moist, his lips slightly red, he looked like a beautiful woman in drag.
Today, through the window, she saw him at the woodpile with his ax. A figure moved toward him. Robertson Albrecht. A polite exchange — she could imagine it. I need the exercise; may I? Certainly, sir. The American raised the ax, his muscles alive under their layer of unimportant fat, and he struck, and the wood split as if it were in his thrall.
At four the bell rang in the kitchen. The little kitchen maid carried tea and cake to the parlor. A few minutes later: “A royal banquet,” Andrei exclaimed to Miss Huk, who had slipped into her place behind the register. He said the same thing almost every day. The Norwegian S. smiled at Andrei, exposing long gray teeth. “Oh, join us, Miss Huk,” said the Scottish S.
“I’ve had tea, thank you.” She had in fact had no tea, had communed with the kitchen maid without benefit of nourishment or words; but it would soon be time for a real drink. The little group warmed itself at the hearth. The handyman, now in his monkey suit, opened the bar. A Belgian came down the stairs. The topologist came down. Another Belgian came down. Lars crawled in from the book room — were there woodworms there? oh Lord. The third Belgian appeared. Everyone was assembled except the senior Albrechts — but, no, they were there, standing by the window, so solid, how could she not have seen them come in.