I might not have thought any more about it — after all, they were probably just business people: a company director and his secretary — but then, two days later, I saw another couple. They were sideways-on to me, at the far end of the corridor. The woman lay on her back, though her shoulders were taking most of the weight. She was folded almost double, her heels tucked into the old-fashioned radiator that stood under the window. Blue light flashed on the stretched backs of her thighs as a tram rumbled past outside. The man, dark-haired and muscular, half-stood, half-sat above her, knees slightly bent. As he pushed downwards, into her, he happened to glance round. A gold medallion swung across his chest, one stroke of a pendulum, and came to rest. Did he see me standing there in the shadows by the stairs? And, if so, was he reassured by my dark glasses and my white stick?
That was Saturday. As chance would have it, during the next week, the lift was either in use or out of order (for reasons I was now beginning to understand); most nights I was forced to climb the eight floors to my room. On Monday I saw the woman I’d last seen trapped in the lift doors. This time she was bent over the small table that had the hotel telephone on it. She was naked and a man was standing behind her, wearing a tuxedo and a pair of black socks. I didn’t recognise him. The telephone was ringing underneath the woman. ‘Don’t you think someone ought to answer that?’ I said. They looked at me, but didn’t say anything. On Wednesday night, as I reached the second floor, I saw three girls in black leather sitting on the sofa. They were smoking. One of them wore a long metal ring that extended beyond her middle finger like a second, sharper nail. Halfway along the corridor I could see a short fat man on his hands and knees. He wore a black T-shirt, a black PVC mini-skirt and black high-heels. His legs were shaved. One of the girls stretched her thigh-length boot out as he crawled across the carpet towards her. He bent down and began to suck the toe. ‘You got a problem?’ one of the girls said suddenly (it was the girl with the ring). ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I hurried on up the stairs. On Thursday I decided not to stop on the second floor, no matter what I saw, but as it turned out it was a quiet night. There was a girl in white-lace underwear standing in the doorway of a room. A man in a suit was talking to her. He had his hands in his pockets. The two of them were deep in some private negotiation, though they fell silent as soon as they noticed me. The girl didn’t have the kind of face you’d associate with somebody who was almost naked; it was attentive, businesslike, as if she was in an office, or a bank. The man was probably a pimp, I thought, as I began to climb towards the third floor. At that moment he looked at me, over his shoulder. His face was entirely without expression.
That weekend I met Gregory in Leon’s. I leaned over the table in a conspiratorial manner that I knew he liked and asked him if he had noticed anything strange about the second floor.
‘You mean, at the Kosminsky?’
I nodded.
‘No.’
‘You haven’t noticed anything at all?’
‘Like what?’
I told him to go and have a look for himself. The second floor, I said. From midnight onwards.
That morning, close to dawn, I saw eight people doing it. They were standing in a circle at the top of the stairs, four women and four men. All the women had dildos strapped around their hips. Each person was being fucked and fucking at the same time (somehow it reminded me of a doughnut). You could charge for this, I was thinking. But, at the same time, I was wearied by it and I wished there was another way of getting to my room. I decided to have a word with the management. I wasn’t going to complain, exactly. I’d just mention it. Discreetly.
I found Arnold on duty the next evening and, since he was the more senior of the two receptionists, I thought it was him I should speak to. It was raining outside; water tipped through the rips in the canopy, splashed on to the pavement below. I took him aside and told him of the recent goings-on.
‘Goings-on?’
I leaned closer. ‘On the second floor.’
Arnold lit a cigarette with a snap of his lighter.
‘All right, I’ll be blunt,’ I said. ‘People fucking.’
Arnold’s eyebrows dipped towards the bridge of his nose. Just for a moment they resembled the logo of our national airline.
‘Actually, sir, now you mention it, there have been a few complaints —’
‘There. You see?’
‘About you.’
‘What?’
‘About you loitering.’
‘Loitering?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘It’s probably an over-reaction.’ Arnold inhaled. Smoke poured upwards from his nostrils and his mouth. His whole head disappeared. ‘You’re blind. Blind people — well, you know. They frighten people.’
‘I suppose — yes, that’s true, but —’
‘I’d stick to your own floor in future. I mean, we don’t want to go round upsetting people, do we.’ He smiled suddenly, disarmingly, then he inhaled again.
As I walked out into the rain I pondered Arnold’s attitude. There was only one conclusion I could draw: that part of the hotel was being used as a whorehouse — clandestine, certainly, quite possibly illegal too — with all the rooms, even the corridors, reserved for hookers and their clients. No wonder he wouldn’t admit to anything. He was probably being paid by the Kosminsky brothers to run the place. He probably got commission from the girls. After all, there had to be a reason why the hotel had such a dubious reputation. In retrospect, it had been naive of me to mention it to him.
That night, as I sat in Leon’s, watching the football on TV and waiting for my pig’s heart goulash, I suddenly thought of a name for the second floor. It could be a name known only to a privileged few (though I could also see it in slow-flashing, scarlet neon). THE LOVE STOREY. Should I suggest it to Arnold, who could pass it on to the brothers for me? No, maybe not. To pretend I knew nothing of their operation might be wiser. They weren’t the kind of men who welcomed interference. If they thought you were poking your nose into their business, they’d probably pay someone to cut it off.
Towards one o’clock in the morning the door opened and the draught carried an unmistakable hint of fish. Gregory sank heavily into the chair beside me. He’d spent most of his night off on the second floor. He hadn’t seen a thing.
‘What?’ I said. ‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. Not a thing.’
‘There’s people fucking all over the place,’ I said. ‘There’s couples, there’s threesomes. There’s people sucking shoes —’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘It’s a brothel, Gregory. Haven’t you noticed?’
He began to stammer. ‘Well, of course, sometimes —’
‘You haven’t noticed,’ I said, ‘have you.’
‘Well, no,’ he muttered, ‘not —’
‘You must be blind.’
History could be happening outside his window and he wouldn’t know about it. He’d be too busy wondering what was for supper, which soap-opera to watch. I should never have mentioned it to him. I looked at his hair plastered to his forehead in a frieze of unintelligible hieroglyphics. I looked at his jutting lower lip, his hands fumbling on the table-top. Now I’d upset him. And we were supposed to be friends.
‘Don’t worry about it, Smoke,’ I said wearily. ‘I probably made the whole thing up.’
‘You did?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Sometimes I can’t figure you out, Blom.’