Living It Rough at Hotel Calypso (2)

Read Part 1 here.

There was a gentle knock on the door and everyone looked at each other questioningly, with a nervous start. Carmen stood up nimbly and opened the door wide. Marc, the Algerian known as a drug dealer stood with a slightly naughty smile on his bony, swarthy face.

“Hi guys”, he said almost shyly, waving to the seated circle, I just wanted to say a few words to Marian as a farewell, but I’d hate to intrude – Marian, would you…?”

“But do come in, Marc! There’s always wine to spare!” Carmen said in a loud, theatrical manner.

Marc just shook his head and gazed intently into Marian’s eyes, who seemed to get a clue and stood up without a word.

“OK, we just say goodbye and I’ll be back in a few minutes”, Marian said while watching his steps amid the tangle of legs and feet around the table, making his way out. “Take a break and breathe relieved, will you”, he added with an ironical smile to the crowd.

Behind him silence came down like a snow blanket. For a few moments they were indeed relieved, as Marian had instructed them to be, but all the more resenting it. Gaby broke the silence:

“What’s wrong with him, did you give him the wrong cigarettes, Carmen?” He tried one of his cheerful laughs but dropped it when he noticed the gloomy faces around the room.

Carmen’s eyes brimmed with tears but like a brave girl she looked up in voluntary gaiety:

“We hardly slept these nights, Gaby, if you know what I mean – if it isn’t too hard for you to imagine. What am I going to do without him!”

Her voice and, with it, her gaiety broke down under the threat of choking with tears, but she recovered quickly.

“What’s comforting me – and should be comforting all of us, each on their own paths as of tomorrow – is that we’re finally doing what we wanted to do. No matter what Marian says. He’s cross with me, but I guess you can understand that, he’s cross with everything, with life, with Germany, with himself, what not. He’ll be fine. Like all of us!”

She raised her glass again, determined to get back into the party mood.

The other glasses were raised to hers, waveringly, with an indistinct murmur of approval.

“I think I’ll go and draw one”, Mr C said and stood up.

“But you can stay and smoke here”, Carmen replied.

“Oh, no, no, don’t worry, just a few minutes out in the fresh air will do me just fine!”

“I’ll join you”, Gaby said abruptly.

“Sure, let’s draw one together, just like in the army!”

Gaby laughed as if they were old pals.

“Oh no, that won’t be necessary, I’ve got my own stuff, self-rolled, Sophie’s got to master the skill!”

Sophie blushed both embarrassed and flattered. Her husband could be so generous with compliments, though it was just this compliment that she was not sure how she should take. She handed him a deftly rolled cigarette and the two men left the room. Gaby’s shrill voice was still heard a few seconds from the corridor, then muffled behind the terrace door.

“Pallifying”, Lili whispered.

“What?” Carmen asked amused.

“I said, pallifying.” The women watched her, waiting for the punch line. “Making it sound like pals”, Lili explained. “The ha-ha effect, you know”, she added.

The women all smiled and nodded to acknowledge understanding, while turning back their heads and putting their eyes down again.

“Yes, Gaby will do that won’t he”, Sophie replied to supply some responding turn. “Pallifying – I’ll remember that!”

Some more silence.

“Good to be just us, ladies”, Mrs C volunteered.

“Isn’t it”, Carmen agreed absent-mindedly.

Was it? What difference did it make, Mrs C wondered? Sophie was a nice young woman, but she could not be fooled easily. And Carmen was a sly old fox, just about her own age, playing the girl in love in her stretch jeans and slim youthful body. Carmen could get tears welling up in her eyes, she was a good girl in her own way, though she was never quite sure if Carmen’s interest in hearing your trouble was helpfulness or curiosity. “Just us women” often meant a space of time for casual remarks to be dropped about those not present, putting labels on what had happened recently.

“But where’s Nick?” Mrs C threw in some food for conversation. “I haven’t seen him these days!” she added with pointed cheerfulness.

Carmen and Sophie exchanged a look.

“Lili, telephone for you!” a voice called from downstairs. Lili sprang up from bed and rushed out.

The women kept quiet, as if listening for Lili lunging down the staircase. Carmen and Sophie exchanged another knowing look and then turned to Mrs C.

“Oh didn’t you know?”, Carmen whispered in what looked like slight embarrassment.

“What?”

Carmen smiled as if uneasy, eyeing Sophie again, who mirrored her smile and purse of the lips.

“What? Tell me! What have I been missing?”

“Well… there was a… Nick slapped Lili in this room, they were alone here, she ran out, he held her, she started to yell leave me alone leave me alone and he pushed her down the stairs.”

Carmen paused to let her words sink in.

“And? What next?” Mrs C inquired with bulging eyes.

Carmen drew again on her cigarette and behind the bluish veil of smoke she raised her eyebrows as before a kettle of fish.

“Well,” she said picking some tobacco leaf from the tip of her tongue, “neighbours heard her screams and saw her running out of the house on to the streets, where she vanished for several hours. They called the police but Nick was gone too. He’s been gone since. Cops have been here once or twice asking about him. Poor guy, bad luck!”

“Goodness! Bad luck – how do you mean that?”

Carmen was visibly uneasy, as if caught at something wrong.

“Well, I mean, obviously Lili’s been through something awful, sure, no doubt, it’s just that the poor boy… his only chance was the French Legion… and if they arrest him now he’ll be packed up and dispatched to Romania again, with a criminal record too. All this in Calypso, these fourteen months, for nothing.”

Mrs C was flabbergasted.

“But what business did he have to hit her? Is he gone mad? He’s such a bland guy otherwise!”

Carmen nodded slowly, as if to give more significance to her agreement.

“That’s the point, you see”, Carmen replied in a low voice. “I’m not so sure what they were doing in this room alone in the first place – I mean…”

There was a few seconds’ silence. Sophie gazed to the floor intently, making efforts not to say what she was thinking. At last she said in a half doubtful intonation:

“He was in love with her?!...”

Mrs C swivelled her head and slightly leaned aside, as if to distance herself from Sophie and this way be able to determine what she was implying.

“You mean…”

Sophie pursed her lips keeping her eyes down and bending her head left and right like a pendulum of doubt, reproof, or innuendo.

Mrs C turned to Carmen for an explanation. Carmen was the tough girl, who had the guts to call things by their names.

“We don’t know, Mrs C, we can’t know, there were just the two of them here, god knows how it all came to pass… but poor Nick, anyway!”

In the adjoining room, just behind a thin wall, two men were sitting quietly and gazing into emptiness.

“How long are these two bastards going to keep smoking out there?”, muttered one of them.

“Light it up here, who’ll bother?”, replied Marian. “I’ll open the window, look” and he stood up.

The other one kept his eyes set on the invisible dot in front, and he started taking out his cigarettes from his pocket with slow, numb movements.

“Here”, said Marian handing out the ashtray.

 How long was he still going to take until he hit it off, he wondered. With every minute going by, the risk for the other guy to be found here was rocketing.

“Nick!”, he whispered.

Nick turned his eyes listlessly to Marian’s hands and bent over in slow motion to light his cigarette.

“You’d better hurry up, you know”, said Marian in a low voice. “They could burst in any time, and then…”, he left his sentence suspended in the air, like the circles of smoke sluggishly coming out of Nick’s mouth.

“And then they’ll find out the criminal”, Nick said flatly.

“Have you got everything?”

“Everything?”, Nick echoed him enquiringly, with a faint, equivocal smile.

“I mean”, Marian replied impatiently, “everything you need?”

“Too much of it.”

There was another long silence. The late February air rolled in like bales of biting frost.

“Just what happened?”, Marian made a cautious attempt.

Nick nodded slightly and pursed his lips, keeping his eyes glued to the magic dot.

“No idea”, he answered faintly after a few moments. “It just went all black.”

Marian fetched a deep, irritated sigh. If only Nick would tell him, he might be able to help, to explain to the police, to Lili! But as it was, tomorrow he’ll be himself on the road to Hamburg and the whole Calypso story will be lying behind like a dead leaf.

“If only she hadn’t been screaming… the screams were bad…”

Nick looked like he had run out of things to say. Then:

“I just wanted her to keep quiet…”

Another puff of smoke.

“…and falling down the stairs I knew would put an end to it…”

The dot lost its fascination and Nick eyes turned to the floor.

“I knew nothing. I could only see black before my eyes”, he said in a disenchanted voice.

“But how did you get there in the first place?” Marian asked in a rush.

Nick puffed with a lopsided, wry smile on his face.

“Who the fuck knows – how did we get there in the first place…”

He was now drawing deeply and hungrily on his cigarette.

“She was a good girl. Too bad. Good girl - and sweet too.”

A voice called out from downstairs:

“Lili! Telephone for you!”

The room went still. Marian froze at the sound of steps just a few metres away, at the threat that the door might open. Nick was motionless and his cigarette stub glowed away between his fingers.

“That kind of sweetness that’s not deliberate”, he added long after the noise was lost in the monotony of the Calypso voices.

“Nick! Did you try to force her into anything?”

Nick frowned and faced Marian for the first time.

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m just asking.”

“You’re just asking, are you.”

Another moment’s silence.

“Good”, Nick replied and stood up, grabbing the knapsack beside him.

“How are you going to get to the border, will you be all right?”

“Yeah, sure, don’t worry. Marc’s giving me a lift to Saarbrücken”, Nick explained while disentangling the straps of the knapsack.

“Marc?” Marian wondered, frowning. “I hope he’s not landing you into deeper shit yet, with his dealers and all.”

“Ah”, Nick scoffed, “don’t you worry about that.”

“How did you run into him anyway?”

“When I dashed away from Calypso I went straight to the hostel. Just had no other place I knew of. Marc was coming down the stairs and I must have been looking like a ghost. He took me around in his car, and took me to a flat with a few other pals of his. He’s got a big heart, in his way, you know?”

“Is he taking money for this?”

“For what? For driving me to Saarbrücken? Nope.”

He put on his cap.

“Now’s the big moment, brother! Sneaking out of Calypso – for good.”

“I’ll check the landing”, Marian started towards the door. Nick held his arm.

“Before you do that”, and the two put their arms around each other’s shoulders for a few long seconds.

“Tell Carmen, please…” Nick said in a wavering whisper. Marian held his breath. “Ask Carmen to tell her…”

“…if one day…

“… she ever goes into a church…

“… should think of me…

“… maybe forgive me.

“I hope she has a beautiful life.”

Marian clasped Nick’s shoulder.

“I will, don’t worry. Put all this out of your mind for now. Just get ready for the Legion.” The two drew back and gazed into each other’s face, arms still entangled. The darkness of a long journey into the unmapped was hanging heavy in their eyes.

“Just get there first.”

Nick clasped Marian’s shoulders.

“You too”, he whispered with the last of his voice.           

Trotting on the stairs made them look away, listening tensely. The door next door was opened and then slammed to. Lili was back.

“Your mum?”, Carmen asked in a laid-back friendliness.

“Mhm”, Lili smiled blushing. “She wanted to know when exactly I’m arriving.”

“Poor soul, she’s dead worried about you, I bet”, Mrs C contributed. She had to be present in the conversation, as evidence that things were going great.

“Well, she will have me soon”, replied Lili sitting down on the edge of her bed. “It’s only three days from now and I’ll get on that bus.”

“And how long do they take, Lili?” Sophie enquired.

“They say thirty-six hours, including several stops on the way. But mum says there’s big snow back home, roads closed and all. Will see.”

“Goodness, what about you, take care driving, will you!” Carmen turned to Sophie with solicitous concern on her face.

“Yes, that’s the last we needed, on top of everything!” Sophie murmured. “With this van I pray god we get there in one piece anyway – and with that load too…”

“What’s wrong with the van?” Mrs C asked.

Sophie gave her a meaningful glance and pursed her lips, then replied, leaving, it seemed, a lot out between her words:

“It’s ages old and we’ve had dozens of problems with it. Besides, now it’s so full we’re almost touching ground. I’m worried that it won’t start at all. I mean, the engine’s working, but the weight! And we’ll need to unpack and pack again at the border, first here in Germany, then for sure on the Romanian side. They’ll be stunned to see how much a van like this can unpack! And how we are going to put all that stuff in again…” Sophie fetched a deep sigh.

The door opened and Marian came in.

Carmen looked up to him and watched him inquisitively as he took back his seat next to her. He avoided her eyes and seemed determined to pour himself another glass of wine and just take it from there, but Carmen kept watching him.

“Well?”

“What?”

“What did he want?”

“Who?” Marian frowned. “Oh, you mean Marc, right! Hm… he asked me if he could have my bike.”

“Your bike!” Carmen echoed him sceptically.

“My bike. It’s an exclusive one, remember?” Marian replied confidently.

Carmen watched him for another second or two, then left him at it. There was no squeezing anything out of him when he had that set face. But something had definitely been going on, more serious than some bargaining about his bike, exclusive as it was.

“Where are the other guys, are they smoking the whole box?” she changed the topic with smooth and easy cheerfulness.

“I want to give another toast and open the last bottle, we absolutely must drink the whole stuff up! To the last drop! And we must drink our minds till we drop!”

In the general, if reserved, laughter, Calypso was sinking further into the darkness of the February night. Black silhouettes had been sneaking in and out; one of them carrying a knapsack on a shoulder and getting into a car quietly waiting at the end of the street. A plump van of the seventies was parked a little way off, compact with an indiscernible load. One of the windows was halfway down to let two pairs of skis jot out.

Calypso itself was in the dark, but for the windows on the first floor, where quite a few voices could be heard.       

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And you?

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Which character feels most familiar to you? Is it because you’ve met someone like that, or because you can relate to their situation?

Have you been trapped in a place, or situation, like these people? How did you get into it, and out of it again?

Which of these characters you feel most confident will succeed later in their lives?

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