“I can get to the Relais on my own.”
“It will look much better if you have Charlotte take you there,” the president said categorically. “Knowing you’ve just come from my office, they won’t ask any questions. Otherwise they’ll wonder what you could be doing at the hotel in this season. Please, stop arguing, trust me. Not to mention”—he smiled knowingly—“that dear little Charlotte has no ribbons, nor even the prospect or the promise of ribbons to come.”
“Again these archaic rituals!” Herman exclaimed, exaggerating his sneer.
“They’re very good, they’re exquisite. They keep me in a state of…of perpetual effervescence.”
And the president laughed again, teasing Herman with gestures he didn’t fully understand, with a friendly, indulgent mockery that Herman found repellent. No one had ever spoken to him with such cajoling condescension. Herman was used to giving commands and directions, and he tolerated no displays of intimacy, however decorous, especially in the absence of a longstanding friendship. He always spoke, and was always answered, with a certain coldness—neck stiff, back straight.
“And why should that change?” he asked himself.
He gave the president a vexed sidelong look. The president called the Relais and curtly ordered that they send Charlotte at once. Then he went back to telling Herman how he would have to behave from now on, as Herman slumped in his chair, drained of all emotion but unfocused hatred, perplexity, and regret, all centered on the president.
He was roused by the appearance of Charlotte. She half-heartedly held out her hand.
“Well, you took your time,” said the president.
She shrugged. He delicately pinched her cheek and chuckled with feigned goodwill. Charlotte’s pale pink face expressed only indifference. She’d hardly glanced at Herman as she said hello.
“Tell your mother to give my friend here room twelve, right next to mine,” the president directed her. “Full meal plan, like me.”
“And how much is this going to cost me?” thought Herman, roused from his torpor.
“All right then, see you this evening.”
“So, ready?” asked Charlotte, seeing Herman still inert in his chair.
He jumped up to follow her down the hallway, still deserted and silent, and his weariness faded, his unease vanished as soon as the president’s door closed behind them. He knew the way, but he didn’t dare walk ahead of Charlotte, or even beside her. He sensed that for the moment at least he had to show absolute obedience to anyone willing to deal with him. But, remembering the president’s words, he felt an irresistible need to defend himself.
“You know, I don’t care what he says, I’m not his friend, not at all,” he told her in a whisper, forcing himself to laugh.
They were passing by the merchants’ meeting room. Herman stopped in his tracks.
“They’re still there?”
“Of course they are, till noon,” Charlotte answered in surprise. “Papa’s leading the deliberations today.”
“Oh, so your parents are members.”
He was impressed in spite of himself. All at once he found the girl more interesting, and not only because the president had told him he’d find his way back to his loved ones by way of the merchants. In truth, he hadn’t even remembered that promise at first.
“You don’t want to be thought of as his friend,” said Charlotte, “but he seems to want only good things for you.”
Herman didn’t answer. He ached to know what sort of things were being talked about on the other side of the wall, in the big conference room, and it was only with great difficulty that he held back from questioning Charlotte. She walked on with a leisurely gait, almost indolent, very different from the taut, resolute stride of the receptionist who’d led Herman down this hall in the other direction. He saw she was wearing the traditional blouse beneath her pink cardigan—no ribbons, just as the president had said—along with a pair of worn, dirty jeans and thick-soled tennis shoes. She wore her hair parted in the middle, and it hung limply down on either side of her face, its color the same whitish blond Herman thought he’d seen on every head in the village and the region. As for the equally blond president, Herman suspected his hair was dyed, though he had not pursued that conjecture with a more minute study.
“And what about me, if I’m supposed to become a real villager…” mused the brown-haired Herman.
He tried to laugh wryly, but a vague anxiety stopped him.
“Listen, tell me, what do they talk about in those meetings? You must know.”
“Business. Who cares?”
“Are you proud that your parents are part of it?”
She shrugged, not turning around. Her voice was as sluggish and listless as her gait.
“This girl is just an idiot,” he thought.
But the fact that on this of all days Charlotte’s father was chairing the meeting, and that, additionally, the president had underscored her lack of ribbons or any hope of ribbons, however off-putting Herman had found that remark, those two pieces of information once again made him more sensitive than he would have imagined to the possibility of getting to know the girl, and perhaps learning more.
“Why doesn’t she have a boyfriend, at her age, with that nice face of hers? And what about that other woman, the receptionist? Oh, they’ll be able to help me,” thought Herman, “each in their way. I have to tell them about my problem first chance I get.”
They made their way down the twisting staircase, ending up in the lobby just as the athletic-calved receptionist was striding by. She frowned and came over, without a glance Herman’s way.
“What are you doing here, Charlotte? You know you have to ask me for a pass before you can go upstairs.”
“I was in a hurry, they called me.”
Charlotte made an impatient little gesture that ended in a limp wave, its cause all but forgotten. The receptionist sighed. A little surprised, Herman sensed that she was deeply agitated, her nostrils oddly flared.
“When you have time,” she said, “stop by my place, okay?”
“Yes, yes, we’ll see,” said Charlotte with a quick, practiced smile.
She picked up her umbrella from where she’d left it by the front door and held it out to Herman, whereupon he remembered the distinctive trait of this region from the first of September to the end of May. The rain was pouring down, the main-street sidewalks were muddy, the light was so dim, even though it was nearly noon, that Herman would have found it hard to orient himself were it not for the glowing streetlights he found as he emerged from the town hall with Charlotte. When he asked, she told him the main street was lit day and night for the eight or nine months of the off season. Suddenly finding it all too much to bear, Herman wanted to run away. Like that morning, everything inside him seemed damp and mortified, shrunken, slowly rotting. He pulled his head down between his shoulders, bent forward, kept his eyes on his feet, and beside him Charlotte did the same, her fists in her jeans pockets. But the Relais wasn’t far. Its wood and brick façade overlooked the main square. In previous years, coming down to the village and vaguely glancing at the Relais’s windows, Herman had often told himself he would never spend a night in such a sad, dowdy hotel if he could help it. And now here was Charlotte ushering him into the little dining room and calling her mother, who soon appeared, slightly breathless, squeezed into her flowered blouse.