Good Morning, Midnight Read Online Free Page B

it makes a noise between a belch and a giggle.
    The bathroom here is on the ground floor. I lie in the bath, listening to the patronne talking to a client. He says he wants a room for a young lady friend of his. Not at once, he is just looking around.
    'A room? A nice room?'
    I watch cockroaches crawling from underneath the carpet and crawling back again. There is a lowered carpet in this bathroom, two old armchairs and a huge wardrobe with a spotted mirror.
    'A nice room?' Of course, une belle chambre, the client wants. The patronne says she has a very beautiful room on the second floor, which will be vacant in about a month's time.
    That's the way it is, that's the way it goes, that was the way it went....A room. A nice room. A beautiful room. A beautiful room with bath. A very beautiful room with bath. A bedroom and sitting room with bath. Up to the dizzy heights of the suite. Two bedrooms, sitting room, bath and vestibule. (The small bedroom is in case you don't feel like me, or in case you meet somebody you like better and come in late.) Anything you want brought up on the dinner wagon. (But, alas! the waiter has a louse on his collar. What is that on his collar? Bitte schon, mein Herr, bitte schon....) Swing high....Now, slowly, down. A beautiful room with bath. A room with bath. A nice room. A room....
    Now, what are they saying? 'Marthe, montrez le numero douze.' And the price? Four hundred francs a month. I am paying three times as much as that for my room on the fourth floor. It shows that I have ended as a successful woman, anyway, however I may have started. One look at me and the prices go up. And when the Exhibition is pulled down and the tourists have departed, where shall I be? In the other room, of course - the one just of the Gray's Inn Road, as usual trying to drink myself to death....
    When I get upstairs the man next door is out on the landing, also yelling for Marthe. His flannel night shit scarcely reaches his knees. When he sees me he grins, comes to the head of the stairs and stands there, blocking the way.
    'Bonjour. Cava?'
    I walk past him without answering and slam the door of my room. I expect all this is a joke. I expect he tells his friend on the floor below: 'An English tourist has taken the room next to mine. I have a lot of fun with that woman.'
    A girl is making-up at an open window immediately opposite. The street is so narrow that we are face to face, so to speak. I can see socks, stockings and underclothes drying on a line in her room. She averts her eyes, her expression hardens. I realize that if I watch her making-up she will retaliate by staring at me when I do the same thing. I half shut my window and move away from it.
    A terrible hotel, this - an awful place. I must get out of it. Only I would have landed here, only I would stay here....
    I have just finished dressing when there is a knock on the door. It's the commis, in his beautiful dressing gown, immaculately white, with long, wide, hanging sleeves. I wonder how he got hold of it. Some woman must have given it to him. He stands there smiling his silly smile. I stare at him. He looks like a priest, the priest of some obscene, half-understood religion.
    At last I manage: 'Well, what is it? What do you want?
    'Nothing' he says, 'nothing.'
    'Oh, go away.'
    He doesn't answer or move. He stands in the doorway, smiling. (Now then, you and I understand each other, don't we? Let's stop pretending.)
    I put my hand on his chest, push him backwards and bang the door. It's quite easy. It's like pushing a paper man, a ghost, something that doesn't exist.
    And there I am in this dim room with the bed for madame and the bed for monsieur and the narrow street outside (what they call an impasse), thinking of that white dressing gown, like a priest's robes. Frightened as hell. A nightmare feeling....
    This morning the hall smells like a very cheap Turkish bath in London - the sort of place that is got up to look respectable and clean outside, the