HE AWOKE AT 6:30 A.M. Outside the window the darkness and silence seemed total, infinite, as if the night were just reaching its peak. The thought of the woman in bed a floor above him and of the bond he had formed with her last night, as though she now were part of him, made him feel an inner glow. Soon, however, he fell back asleep. Upon awakening a second time, he rose, washed, dressed, and even made the bed, after which he gazed at the rooftops and strips of gray sky that ran between them, and then on the toilet, read about the crucifixion of Jesus. He descended to the lobby, hoping that the legal adviser was feeling better and might be already downstairs. But she was nowhere to be seen. The student on night duty was gone, his place taken by a plump girl of about eighteen who was feather-dusting the old swords. Reddening at the sight of him, she murmured, “Good morning,” in German. Through a narrow, half-open door behind the counter, next to the cubbyholes of keys, he caught a glimpse of a kitchen, dinette, and hallway in which a schoolbag was lying on a chair. It was, it seemed, a family hotel—but where was the family?
Breakfast was already waiting in the dining room: several varieties of sliced bread, little baskets of sausages and cheeses, and a hot plate with a canister of coffee and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. He regarded the food with satisfaction and went up to the legal adviser’s room. At first, he knocked lightly, gently trying the doorknob only when there was no response. True to her word, she hadn’t locked the door. A thin shaft of light accompanied him into the darkened room and fell on her bed, where she lay soundly sleeping like a baby. Possessed by an old feeling of well-being, he went downstairs again.
The plump girl was still dusting the swords. “Madame is asleep,” he informed her when she glanced at him curiously; then, seeing she failed to understand, he pointed to the ceiling, laid a cheek on two folded hands, and went off to have breakfast in the dining room, making sure to take no more than his share, which he piled high on his plate. He poured himself a cup of coffee and began to eat, thinking as he chewed of his wife, who had refused to visit Germany, and of what she might have thought of the odd circumstances that had brought him here. Not that he hadn’t respected her principles, of which her death had freed him, but the fact of the matter was that, had she not been so principled, so critical, so brutally judgmental that he never knew what would annoy her next, she could have enjoyed being here with him. Well, she had had her say, and now he was recuperating from her with a big breakfast in Berlin, of all the places in the world.
He finished eating, even appropriating a slice of bread and a wedge of yellow cheese from the legal adviser’s share of the food, and wrote her a note that said, “Good morning, I hope you’re feeling better and slept well. I didn’t want to wake you, so I ate and went out for a walk. I should be back by nine.” Then he went upstairs, slipped the note beneath her door, descended to his room, donned his coat, and continued on down to the lobby, where he handed his key to the girl with the feather duster, took two more of the hotel’s cards, stuck one in each pocket, and sallied forth. To his amazement, the snow from Paris had arrived silently during the night, thinly blanketing the city. The sidewalks, the fire hydrants, and the house-fronts were all daubed a streaky white, amid which he carefully made his way, heading in a hitherto unexplored direction, along a path already trodden by early risers that soon led him through a maze of little side streets. Thinking of the opera, he recalled how the bare proscenium had suddenly filled with performers, and he imagined faint music playing again while he—only an extra, of course, but an indispensable one nonetheless—took the stage himself, watched by an audience beneath the distant, white trees. He strode on energetically, climbing a little rise until he came to an old church with a golden rooster on its belfry and pausing there for a while, breathing in the frozen air and straining to hear the far-off drums, which were followed by a short flourish of trumpets. Then, as the violins struck up, he walked back down again, surrounded now by schoolchildren who, as though at an agreed-upon signal, had burst from all the houses at once with their bags. Crossing streets and sidewalks, he maneuvered past housewives with their shopping baskets and waited at frozen red lights with men on their way to work while the soft, light, now-familiar snow squished underfoot and the music played stubbornly on. “Just keep going, just keep going,” an invisible director was telling him, and indeed, in the distance, where a golden light had begun to glow in the east, the audience was watching him, transfixed by the new opera in which he was taking part.
It was only when he found himself back on the street of the hotel and heard the church bells strike nine that the dreamlike vision vanished. The girl with the feather duster was no longer in the lobby and had been replaced by an old lady in a black woolen shawl, who sat behind the counter knitting. He smiled at her. “Sechs,” he said in German, taking the key and adding an English comment about the snow. The old lady, however, did not know English. The legal adviser’s breakfast was still untouched.
He hurried upstairs and knocked on the door of her room. Again there was no answer. Silently he opened the door, once more admitting a narrow shaft of pink light that lapped at the foot of the bed. His note was still on the floor and for a moment he experienced a delicious feeling of apprehension. Could she have overdosed on the pills, or did she always sleep late on vacations? Boldly he tiptoed into the room. She was sleeping too soundly to hear him, her face, from which the makeup had rubbed off, pale but peaceful. Standing above her and gazing down on the dry white roots of her dyed hair, he felt an urge to lift the blanket and see if the athletic bandage was still in place. Yet, fearful she might wake and think she had caught him in an obscene act, he turned soundlessly and fled. Descending the staircase thoughtfully, he returned to his room, changed into warmer, more comfortable clothes, and stepped back outside.
The street was full of life now. Workers armed with hoses of hot air were melting the snow with German thoroughness, and vans were unloading large trays of fresh rolls and pastries. He walked around the block for fifteen minutes, fretting over his strange love affair. Could she, he wondered suspiciously, have gone and taken a second pill without asking him? He hurried back to the hotel and opened her unlocked door. Nothing had changed. Quite clearly the drug had knocked her out. He examined the box of Talwin, cursing himself for leaving it in her room. Sure now that she had taken a second pill, he called her name. She stirred slightly, and leaning down, he called again, doing his best not to sound worried. Slowly she gave signs of hearing, struggling to open her eyes and momentarily even succeeding, “What is it?” she asked. “It’s past nine,” he said. “That’s some sleep you had! I just want to know how you are.” Her eyelids drooped again, as if to give her time to think behind them; there was something poignant, almost adorable, in the effort of her once quick legal mind to extract an answer from the depths of her sleep. “I’m fine,” she said slowly and weakly at last, turning over to go back to sleep again, but he was determined not to let her. “Does your foot hurt?” he asked. The silence before she shook her head was so long that it was not at all clear whether she remembered having a foot at all. “Do you want to sleep some more?” he persisted anxiously. “Then go ahead,” he finally added as if giving her permission, despairing of an answer to this too, glancing about the room on his way out to look for something else to do. He was already at the door when the thought occurred to him that perhaps she didn’t recognize him. Could she be brain-damaged? He went back and shook her lightly, his hand on her frail shoulder. “Do you know who I am?” he asked. This time, when her oval eyes opened, he was relieved to see a gleam of understanding in them. “Of course,” she said, not especially enthusiastically—or at least so it seemed to him, and indeed, he was perhaps fatiguing her with his worry and should go away and leave her alone. “Then sleep all you want,” he counseled. “I won’t bother you anymore.” And quickly, his duty done, he walked toward the door. It was, he reflected, a Saturday morning, and perhaps she was used to sleeping late then.