I did not look around at him again. But I sensed that he had gone back into his restaurant. It was, of course, my intention to cross the street and return to my hotel. But I did not do so. It seemed to me that the morning lured me into taking a little stroll and I felt that it would be stupid, if not indeed wicked, to return to a stuffy room at a time when one could not say that it was either too early or too late. It was no longer early morning, and it was not yet late. I decided to walk around the block a few times.
I do not know how long I wandered round. When I finally stood in front of the door of my hotel, I could remember no more of my stroll than the uncounted tolling of bells from several unknown church clocks. The sun was already shining strongly into the hall. The owner of the hotel, in pink shirt sleeves, seemed as though he were already perspiring as he did only at noon on other days. At any rate, although he was doing nothing at the moment, he had an extremely occupied expression on his face. I immediately learned why.
“At last a visitor!” he exclaimed, and pointed at three trunks which he had piled up beside his desk. “Look at the luggage,” he said, “and you can see straight away what sort of a visitor we’ve got!”
I looked at the pile. There were three yellow pigskin trunks, and their brass locks shone like tightly closed, golden mouths. Over each lock there stood, in blood-red lettering, the initials: “J.L.”
“He has room twelve,” said my hotel keeper. “Just next to yours. I always put fine visitors next door to one another.”
With that he handed me my key.
I held the key for a while in my hand and then returned it to him. “I will drink my coffee down stairs,” I said. “I am too tired to go up.”
I drank my coffee in the little writing room, between a dried-up ink pot and a majolica vase filled with celluloid violets which reminded me of All Souls Day.
Suddenly the glass door opened and in stepped, no, tripped, an elegant gentleman. From him there emanated, curiously enough, a strong smell of violets, so that for the first moment I thought that the celluloid flowers in the majolica vase had come to life. At each step the man’s left foot — I could see it plainly — described a neat little circle. He was dressed entirely in light gray; indeed he seemed enveloped in a silvery summer of his own. His hair shone blue-black. It was parted austerely down the middle and looked as though it had been smoothed not with a comb but with a tongue.
He nodded to me, amiably and at the same time reservedly.
“Another coffee!” he called through the door, which he had left open.
That “another” annoyed me.
For a long time, for an unnecessarily long time, he stirred the spoon around in his cup.
I was just about to get up when he began to speak, in a voice that sounded like flutes and velvet, like a velvet flute:
“You are a stranger here, are you not?”
It rang in my ears like an echo. I remembered that I had already heard that same question today — or was it yesterday? Yes. That question… the murderer Golubchik had mentioned it… he had spoken it last night; or perhaps it had not been worded quite like that. At the same time I recalled the name: “Jenö Lakatos,” and I saw again the blood-red initials on the yellow trunks: “J.L.”
So instead of answering the man, I asked:
“How long are you intending to stay here?”
“Oh. I have time enough,” he answered. “My time is my own.”
The hotelier came in with a blank registration form. He requested the new guest to fill in his name.
“Write,” I said — although he had never asked me, I being overcome by an access of impertinence for which, even today, I cannot account—“write, under surname: ‘Lakatos,’ under Christian name: ‘Jenö.’” And I got up and bowed and went out.
On the same day I left my quarters in the Rue des Quatres Vents. Golubchik I have never seen since, nor any of the men who sat that night listening to his story.
Notes
* Golubchik means, in Russian, “little dove.”