But when the time came, she had completed her school education, it was a different time. Another time. The great fathers lost power, lost hold, the countries that had made a vast union under one name, broke apart. The intellectuals and others the fathers had feared and imprisoned were let out. The world outside told, now all would be free. Bring the computers, bring the casinos, bring whatever the West says that makes happiness that we’ve never tried, couldn’t have. And they did. And the new Government that had never done business the West’s way didn’t do well, now in business with them.
Factories closed without the market for their products that had existed conveniently in the vast union. Elena’s mother lost her job when the catering firm failed in competition with what were called fast-food chains with American names which replaced many restaurants, Elena could not study to become a teacher or a computer operator. She had to find work, any work. Foreigners come to do business lived in hotels refurbished, by the international chains that had taken them over, to make them feel they were in an hotel in the West. Her mother could not believe it: her daughter, so clever, who was going to make a career in that very world, the new world, came home one day to tell that she had found work: as a chambermaid in one of the hotels. She was instructed to wear a skirt, not jeans, and supplied with a uniform apron. She passed doors hung with the sign ‘Do Not Disturb’ in English, French, German and Japanese, and knocked softly on others. If there was no response, she was to go in, make the beds, vacuum the carpets, clean the bathroom, replace the towels, soap and whatever was missing from the basket of free miniatures of bath-oil, shampoo, provided in the high cost (payable in dollars only) of the room. The sheets were stained with semen. The drain-traps of the bathtubs were blocked with pubic hairs. The lavatory bowls often were not flushed of traces of shit. Socks stiff with sweat and shirts dirty at collar and cuffs had to be picked up off the carpet and placed neatly on a chair. The housekeeper came regularly to see if such things were correctly done.
Sometimes when the chambermaid knocked there was no reply and she went in, there was someone there, a voice from under the shower, and she would apologise and leave at once. There were times when she entered after no reply and a man was standing, half-dressed, and while she apologised he would smile and say, go ahead, I’ve finished with the bathroom. But she had her instructions: I’ll come back later. There was the morning when she knocked and someone answered in a language she didn’t recognise as English (learnt a little at school), German, French or Japanese. She turned away but the door opened and a man in the white towelling dressinggown the hotel provided in the bathrooms blocked the light of the room. — No Italian? — okay, understand English? Come please. — She followed him to the bathroom and he pointed to the bathtowels that had fallen from their rail into the water. She signalled: I bring some more. When she came back with the towels he thanked her, smiling, shrugging effusively at the good service, — You Russian? Yes, I’m sure you’re real Russian girl. First one I know! — She smiled back as a maid should, polite to a guest, never mind their dirt. Nodded determinedly. — Russian, yes. — She said it in her language, and he cocked his head a little as if hearing a bird call. They both laughed, and she left. Next day when she knocked at 507 the door opened at once. He was a large man, the Italian, tall and broad but not fat, with a fancy belt that still met above a strong belly, and a fresh full face, black thick-lidded eyes, and a glossy crest of grey hair worn consciously as a cock his comb. The age of many of the foreign guests, somewhere at the end of the fifties. She saw all this, really, for the first time: he was presenting himself.
Again he signalled her into the room. He had unpacked some purchase; there was a jumble of cardboard box, bubble wrap, plastic chips. Could she do something about this mess? They communicated well by signs and their few English words, her willingness, his appreciation brought laughter. He helped her gather the pieces from the carpet, fill the box, picked it up and made to carry it to the door for her, while she protested, trying to take it from him. It fell and spilled again. He threw his hands above his head in mock culpability. When they came down again they went round her, he was rocking her against him, laughing. She pulled away. He let her go. — Don’t be cross. Come sit down. — She did not know what she was supposed to do. You must not be rude to a hotel guest. He sat on the velvet chaise-longue and patted the place beside him. She came slowly to the summons. Now he put his one arm round her shoulders and turned her to him, kissed her. His lips were warm and pleasant, a change from the dirt she associated with hotel guests, he smelled of pine aftershave. He pressed her closer and put his tongue in her mouth. The caress, the advances came from that other world, outside, the world of computers and travel, even while she resented what he was doing, it took her there, away from the chambermaid.
He was waiting, every morning. He would be in the dressinggown at his laptop computer or on the telephone, surrounded by a calculator, another — a mobile — phone and spread documents. She could see he was a big businessman of some kind. This was the equipment they all had in their rooms. He would gesture her to him and run a free hand down her buttocks while he argued, agreed, lowered his voice confidentially, raised it confidently in Italian. Business over, he made love to her on the bed she would make up afresh in the course of her work, later.
She had been clumsily penetrated by a youth who ejaculated halfway but she did not know the act could be like this. The entry of this man was an exquisite opening up of all that must have been secret inside her and when some sort of flame jetted from his strong movements within the sheath he wore she was lit up all through her body down her shuddering thighs and he had to shush her cry — there might someone passing in the hotel corridor.
She had her rooms to clean; he had his appointments to meet. He found a better arrangement: what was her lunch-hour? He would arrange his meetings accordingly, his business lunches could be scheduled late. Between embraces he would feed her cherries and slices of peach from the bowl the hotel kept replenished on his coffee table, poor little girl, no time for her to lunch.
His stay at the hotel was longer than usual for foreign businessmen; he must have had complex financial deals that meant waiting for the opportunity to make this connection or that with an intermediary. She was told nothing of this, or anything else about his life where he came from, Italy, but she saw how he was often exasperated when he put down the telephone or grew impatient with the fax facility attached to it. The third week, must have been — one lunchtime he looked at her lying under him, rising on his elbows for a better perspective. His mouth shaped and reshaped as if he were urging himself to make some gesture not physical, toward what it was time to leave behind: pleasures dictating one course, judgment the other. When she was dressing he watched her. That responsive body concealing itself; he had had many responsive bodies coming and going in his life, but time was passing and one more …