Summer 1943. The English and Americans land in Dieppe and Calais. I didn’t expect El Quemado to go on the offensive so soon. It’s worth stressing that the beachheads he’s won aren’t very strong; he’s got a foothold in France but it will still cost him something to establish a secure position and advance. In the East the situation is deteriorating; after a new strategic retreat, the front runs through Riga, Minsk, Kiev, and hexes Q39, R39, and S39. Dnepropetrovsk has gone over to the Reds. El Quemado has air superiority in Russia as well as in the West. In Africa and the Mediterranean the situation remains unchanged, though I suspect that things will look very different by the next turn. Curious detaiclass="underline" as we were playing I fell asleep. For how long, I don’t know. El Quemado shook my shoulder a few times, saying wake up. Then I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep again.
SEPTEMBER 20
I left the room at seven. For hours I had been sitting on the balcony waiting for dawn. When the sun came up I shut the balcony doors, closed the curtains, and stood there in the dark desperately searching for something to do to pass the time. Taking a shower, changing clothes—these seemed like excellent morning activities, but I just stood there, frozen in place, my breathing agitated. Daylight began to filter through the blinds. I opened the balcony doors again and stared for a long time at the beach and the hazy outline of the pedal boat fortress. Happy are those who have nothing. Happy are those who by leading such a life earn themselves a rheumatic future and are lucky with the dice and resign themselves to living without women. Not a soul was out on the beach so early in the morning, but I heard voices from another balcony, an argument in French. Who but the French raise their voices before seven! I closed the curtains again and tried to undress so I could get in the shower. I couldn’t. The light in the bathroom was like the glare of a torture chamber. With an effort I turned on the water and washed my hands. When I tried to splash my face I realized that my arms were stiffand I decided it would be best to leave it until later. I turned off the lights and went out. The hallway was deserted and lit only at each end by half-hidden bulbs that gave offa faint ocher glow. Without making any noise, I went down the stairs until I reached the first-floor landing. From there, reflected in the huge hallway mirror, I could see the the night watchman’s head resting on the edge of the counter. He had to be asleep. I retraced my steps to the second floor, where I turned toward the back (northeast) with my ears pricked for the familiar sounds of the kitchen in case the cooks had arrived, which was highly unlikely. At the beginning of my journey down the hallway, the silence was complete, but as I walked along I was able to make out an asthmatic snore that, at brief intervals, interrupted the monotony of doors and walls. When I came to the end I stopped. Before me was a wooden door with a marble plaque in the middle, with a four-line poem (or so I imagined) inscribed on it in black, written in Catalan. Exhausted, I set my hand on the jamb and pushed. The door opened without the slightest impediment. There was the room, big and dark, as Clarita had described it. All I could see was the outline of a window, and the air was thick, though there was no smell of medicine. I was about to close the door that I had so boldly opened when I heard a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A voice of contradictory qualities: icy and warm, threatening and friendly:
“Come in.” The voice spoke in German.
I took a few steps blindly, feeling my way along the wallpaper, after overcoming an instant of hesitation in which I was tempted to slam the door and flee.
“Who’s there? Come in. Are you all right?” The voice seemed to issue from a tape recorder, though I knew that it was Frau Else’s husband who was speaking, enthroned on his giant hidden bed.
“It’s Udo Berger,” I said, standing there in the dark. I was afraid that if I kept moving I would run into the bed or some other piece of furniture.
“Ah, the young German, Udo Berger, Udo Berger, are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
From an unfathomable corner of the room, some murmurs of assent. And then:
“Can you see me? What can I do for you? To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
“I thought we should talk. Get to know each other, at least, exchange ideas in a civilized way,” I said in a whisper.
“Excellent idea!”
“But I can’t see you. I can’t see anything… and it’s hard to carry on a conversation like this…”
Then I heard the sound of a body sliding between starched sheets, followed by a groan and a curse, and finally, some ten feet from where I stood, the lamp on a night table came on. Lying on his side, in navy blue pajamas buttoned up to the neck, Frau Else’s husband smiled: Are you an early riser or haven’t you been to bed yet? I slept a few hours, I said. Nothing in that face matched my memories from ten years ago. He had aged rapidly and poorly.
“Did you want to talk to me about the game?”
“No, about your wife.”
“My wife… My wife, as you can see, isn’t here.”
Suddenly I realized that Frau Else was, in fact, missing. Her husband pulled the sheets up to his chin while I scanned the rest of the room reflexively, fearing a practical joke or a trap.
“Where is she?”
“That, my dear young man, is something that neither you nor I needs concern himself about. What my wife does or doesn’t do is nobody’s business but her own.”
Was Frau Else in someone else’s arms? Did she have a secret lover about whom she’d said nothing? Probably someone from the town, another hotelier, the owner of a seafood restaurant? Someone younger than her husband but older than me? Or was it possible that at this time of night Frau Else was taking a therapeutic drive on the back roads, trying to forget her troubles?
“You’ve made a number of mistakes,” said Frau Else’s husband. “The main one was attacking the Soviet Union so soon.”
My baleful stare seemed to disconcert him for a moment, but he recovered immediately.
“If one could avoid war against the USSR in this game,” he continued, “I’d never attack; I’m speaking, of course, from the German perspective. Your other big mistake was to underestimate the resistance that England could put up; you lost time and money there. It would have been worth it to stake at least fifty percent of your forces in the attempt, but you couldn’t because you were bogged down in the East.”
“How many times have you been in my room without my knowledge?”
“Not many…”
“And aren’t you ashamed to admit it? Do you think it’s ethical for the owner of a hotel to snoop around in his guests’ rooms?”
“It depends. Everything is relative. Do you think it’s ethical to try to get my wife to sleep with you?” A smile, wicked and knowing, rose from under the sheets and settled on his cheeks. “More than once too, and with no success.”
“That’s different. I don’t pretend to hide anything. I’m worried about your wife. Her health concerns me. I love her. I’m prepared to overcome any obstacles…” I saw that he had flushed red.
“Enough talk. I have my worries too. About the boy you’re playing with.”
“El Quemado?”
“Yes, El Quemado, El Quemado, El Quemado. You have no idea of the mess you’ve gotten yourself into. He’s a viper!”