The woman held her arms across her chest and shivered.
As much as it is anyone’s it is mine, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. She put her glass of schnapps down on the table and reclined back into the hollow of her chair. How sad everything is, finally.
Sad? asked the man.
Yes: sad. Everyone goes to bed eventually, don’t they? It’s what happens at night. People disappear. Or they’re not even there in the first place. Life is so wicked. So cruel. And not only the weather. Not even the weather. She was looking not at them, but at some point past them, high above them, in the dim upper netherworld of the lobby.
The man did not know what to say. He was sure that the most necessary thing he had to do was to take his wife upstairs and put her in bed, and get in bed beside her, and hold her until they were both warm and asleep and continue holding her while they slept.
Livia Pinheiro-Rima sat forward, reached out, and stroked the fur coat.
This is bear, you know, she said. Russian bear. Oh God, how I love this coat! I bought it off a White Russian in Trieste in 1938. She wept when she was parted with it. It had been her mother’s, and maybe her mother’s mother’s. God only knows how old it is. Fur lasts, if you take care of it. Your own skin doesn’t, but fur does. I gave her twice what she asked for it, but it was still a crime. If I could find her, I’d give it back to her. The poor dear dead thing. Not the bear, the White Russian. The bear too, I suppose. But you can’t give back to the dead, can you?
Good night, said the man.
Livia Pinheiro-Rima ignored him. She fell down out of her chair, onto her knees, and collapsed forward, weeping, on top of the coat.
He picked up his wife and carried her through the lobby, toward the elevator, but he could not see how he could open the gate and fit himself inside it, holding his wife, and operate it—all this assuming it worked—so he carried her up the five flights of stairs and into their room, which was once again freezing. He laid her gently in the bed and covered her with the sheets and blankets and the gold quilt and then went and crouched beside the radiator and twisted it open, allowing the heat to once again hiss into the room, and then he undressed and got in bed and turned out the lamp and held his wife close to him and eventually she stopped shivering and grew warm and fell asleep and still he held her, he did not let her go.
TWO
When the woman woke up in the morning she felt rested and calm, as if a storm had passed. She heard her husband gently snoring in the darkness. She turned on the bedside lamp and saw that he was sleeping, cocooned, the gold coverlet pulled up over his head. She watched him for a moment and then carefully slipped out of the bed.
In the bathroom she dressed in the clothes she had taken off the night before—because they needed to bring so many things for the baby, they had themselves packed lightly. When she emerged from the bathroom her husband was still sleeping. It was a few minutes before six o’clock and though she wanted to, she did not wake him. Now that they were here she wanted to get to the orphanage as soon as possible. How could they not? How could they wait? How could he sleep?
It was warm in the room. She lifted one of the heavy drapes away from a window but there was nothing to see: just her strange face peering back at her from the darkness. She dragged a chair across the awful carpet close to the bed so that the glow from the bedside light pooled on it, then sat in the chair and began reading The Dark Forest.
As a bookmark she had been using a photograph they had been sent of their child. In it he appeared to be quite beautiful, almost angelic, but the woman was skeptical, because it appeared to be a rather old photograph, like the ones found in photograph albums, the thick paper curling and a bit yellowed around the scalloped edges. Perhaps it was a photograph they sent to all adopting parents as a sort of lure, and their baby would look nothing like the one in the photograph. She had unwisely mentioned this possibility to her husband, who had told her she was crazy. You always expect the worst possible thing to happen, he had said. Yes, he was right about that, but how could she not? And that did not mean she was crazy. It meant she was wise.
When the man woke up, he was alone in the bed. Assuming that his wife had once again bolted, he sat up quickly only to see her sitting in a chair beside her side of the bed, reading. She was dressed and looked unusually alert and alive.
What time is it? asked the man.
A little after seven, said the woman. She marked her place in the book and set it upon the table. Can we go now?
Go? Where?
To the orphanage!
I’m sure it’s too early.
No. They will let us in now, she said, as if she knew.
Can I have something to eat? I’m starving. He stood up. Let me take a shower, and then we’ll go downstairs and get something to eat. Quickly, I promise. And then we’ll go the orphanage. Is that okay?
Yes, she said, it’s fine. She smiled at him.
He walked across the room. The carpet felt unnervingly texturous beneath his bare feet. He leaned down over the chair and kissed his wife’s forehead.
She reached up and touched his cheek, and then his lips. She looked at him, her fingers once again touching his cheek.
I love you, he said. Very much.
She said nothing but smiled at him once again.
The dining room of the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel was at the opposite end of the lobby from the bar and was as large and cold as the bar was cozy and warm. Designed in the style of a ballroom, the vaulted ceiling was gilded and sprouted many crystal chandeliers, as if the huge one in the center of the ceiling had, like some invasive species of plant, sent out ineradicable shoots in all directions. The gleaming parquet floor was crowded with very large tables, all laid with white linen cloths and set with ten places of gleaming silver, porcelain, and crystal. Three of the walls were divided by marble columns into frescoed triptychs illustrating scenes from what appeared to be a belligerent mythology. The fourth wall was punctuated by French doors opening out onto a broad terrace on which stood many snow-covered iron tables. The chairs had apparently been taken away for the season—or seasons, more likely. It was very bright in this room, the light coming mostly from the chandeliers, not from the world outside the French doors, which despite the great white drifts of snow reflected no light from the sky, which was completely dark.
The man and the woman paused inside the doorway, immobilized by the room’s size, glare, and silence. It was the kind of room that one feels reluctant to enter, as if in one of our former lives some great violence had been done to us in a room exactly like this. None of the tables were occupied or gave any indication of ever having been occupied, so complete was the stillness and silence that enveloped the room.
Can this be the restaurant? the man asked. It seems more a banquet hall. Perhaps breakfast is served in the bar.
The concierge did point this way, said the woman.
I suppose we should sit down and see what happens.
Or doesn’t happen, said the woman.
But before they could execute this plan, one of the frescoes on the far wall was bifurcated as half of the panel was swung outward into the room, revealing a large woman wearing a parka over her waitress uniform. She made a lot of noise as she crossed the room toward them, and this journey took some time, as she was forced to tack back and forth between the many tables, no path being cleared among them. As she came closer it became apparent that the noise was a result of the fur-covered mukluks she wore on her feet; some sort of metal contraption was affixed to the bottom of each boot to prevent slippage upon ice. She paused about three quarters of the way across the room and indicated one of the tables she stood amidst. Breakfast? she asked. Two?