If someone is not there, they aren’t there! If Kaleguropulos finds something not to his liking he can’t put me on a charge. Am I his recruit?’

‘Do you know the owner?’

‘Why should I know him? I’m not interested in new acquaintances. Have you heard the latest? Bloomfield is coming!’

‘Who is that?’

‘You don’t know Bloomfield? He is a child of this town and a millionaire in America. The whole town is shouting: “Bloomfield’s coming!” I’ve talked to his father, as close as I am to you, as I live and breathe!’

‘Excuse me, Herr Fisch, but I think I’ll try and sleep a little more.’

‘Do please sleep! I must tidy up.’ Fisch heads for the lavatory but on the way – I was on the stairs by then – he ran back, ‘Do you believe she’ll pay?’

‘Sure to.’

I opened the door of my room and once again, as on the previous day, I thought I glimpsed a hurrying shadow. I was too tired to look again. I slept till the sun stood high in the sky.

VI

It rang like a wave through the house: Kaleguropulos is coming! He always came in the early evening, just before sundown. He was a creature of the twilight, lord of the bath. Women were detailed to the top three floors to scour the stone floors. One can hear the sound of mops splashing in brimming buckets, the scrubbing of a stiff broom and the gentle slithering of dry cloths along the corridor. A floor waiter is rubbing the door handles, a yellow bottle of polish in his hand. Lights sparkle, push-buttons and door mouldings are shining, still more steam pours out of the laundry and sneaks down to the sixth floor. Men in blue dungarees perch unsteadily on ladders and check the wiring along the ceiling with gloved hands. Maids with fluttering skirts hang out of windows on broad belts, polishing the panes and looking like human flags. The inhabitants of the seventh floor have all vanished, their doors are open and all their untidy household chattels can be seen, bundles hastily thrown together and piles of newspaper burying things which are not permitted.

On the elegant floors the chambermaids are wearing majestic stiff coifs, like nuns, smelling of starch and giving off an air of holiday excitement, like Sunday morning. I am surprised not to hear church bells ringing. Further down someone is rubbing the palms of his hands with a handkerchief. It is the manager himself, whose eye has lighted on an armchair whose torn seat reveals a stuffing of wood shavings. The porter swiftly drapes a mat over it.

Two bookkeepers are standing at the high cash desk, taking extracts. One is leafing through the hotel register. The porter has new gold braid round his cap. A servant comes out of a small cubby-hole wearing a fresh green apron and blossoming like a meadow in springtime.

Stout men are seated in the lobby, smoking and drinking schnaps whilst hurrying waiters flit about them.

I order a schnaps and take a seat at a table at the furthest edge of the lobby, close to the carpet along which Kaleguropulos must come. Ignatz passed by, nodded more amicably than usual, looking dignified in a way which ill became a lift-boy. He seemed to be the only person in the house who had kept calm, his dress was unchanged and his cleanshaven face, bluish about the chin, was today just as parsonical as usual.

I waited half an hour. Suddenly I saw activity up front in the porter’s lodge, the manager seized the cash book, waved it high like a signal, and ran up the steps. A fat guest put down the glass of schnaps which had been half way to his lips and asked his neighbour, ‘What goes on?’ The neighbour, a Russian, said indifferently, ‘Kaleguropulos is on the first floor.’

How had he reached it?

In my room, upon the bedside table, I found a bill, with a note stamped on it.

OUR HONOURED GUESTS ARE POLITELY REQUESTED TO PAY CASH. CHEQUES ARE NOT ACCEPTED ON PRINCIPLE.

RESPECTFULLY

KALEGUROPULOS, HOTELIER

The manager appeared a quarter of an hour later and apologised. It was an oversight and the bill had been intended for a guest who had asked for it. The manager took his leave. He was really put out and there was no end to his apologies. He was overcome with remorse as if he had condemned an innocent man to death. He bowed again, deeply and for the last time, holding the doorknob and shamefacedly hiding the bill in the tails of his cutaway.

Later the house came to life, a beehive into which the residents swarmed with their loads of honey. Hirsch Fisch came, and the Santschin family and lots of others whom I did not know. Stasia came, too.