The Hotel Balzaar

Chapter One
In March of that year, Marta and her mother arrived at the Hotel Balzaar. They were given an attic room that contained a bed, a sink, and a battered chest of drawers.
   The small room had a round window that faced east, and the sun, when it rose each morning, shone into the room with a beguiling brilliance—lighting up the bed frame, the porcelain of the sink, and the faded flowers on the wallpaper.
   Every morning, Marta’s mother got up before the sun. She washed her face and put on her uniform, and then she bent over Marta and kissed her forehead and said to her again the words she had spoken on their first morning there: “All day long you must be quiet, quiet. You may leave the room, but wherever you go, you must be as quiet as a small mouse. You must bother no one. You must not be a nuisance, ever. You understand? You can do this?”
   “Yes, Mama,” said Marta. “I can do this.”
   After her mother left, Marta got up and washed at the sink. She brushed her teeth and dressed. She took the back stairs, wooden, worn, and dark (“Not the elevator,” her mother had said. “Never the elevator. The elevator is not for us.”), all the way down to the first floor, to the lobby of the Hotel Balzaar, which was a grand, high-ceilinged room outfitted with potted palms and ashtray stands, velvet chairs and overstuffed couches strewn with cushions of green and gold. The cushions were worn threadbare in places, but they were carefully arranged so that the bald spots did not show.
   In the morning, the lobby was hushed and gray and dim. But by late afternoon, the room was filled to overflowing with light, almost as if someone were standing high above the Hotel Balzaar pouring molten gold from a pitcher and murmuring, There must be more light, more light. More, yes. And yet more.
   At one end of the lobby was a fireplace. Above it hung a huge painting of a brown field and dark clouds; if you looked closely, you could see a single lighted wing emerging from one of the clouds.
   Marta had decided that this wing, with its incandescent feathers, belonged to an angel.
   But why was there only one wing? And was the angel arriving? Or was the angel departing?
   Marta could never make up her mind.
   At the other end of the lobby, there was a large grandfather clock, the face of which featured a cat chasing a mouse through the hours and minutes of the day.
   Every morning, Marta would first go and look at the angel wing, and then she would walk to the other end of the lobby and consider the clock.
   Always, as she stared at the painting and the clock, Marta stood with her hands behind her back.
   “Touch nothing,” her mother had said, “for nothing is yours to touch. Do not sit on the furniture. The chairs are not ours to sit upon. Speak if you are spoken to; speak only if you have no choice. Otherwise, do not speak. Quiet, quiet like a little mouse.”
   So Marta stood—quiet, quiet, hands behind her back—and considered the fate of the clock mouse, to be forever chased by the clock cat. It was good, she supposed, that the mouse would never be caught. But still, he must run and run; the mouse must run without ceasing until the end of time, and that was disturbing to consider.
   Sometimes, it was so quiet in the lobby of the Hotel Balzaar that Marta could hear the mechanical whir the cat and the mouse made as they moved around the face of the clock, chasing each other for all eternity.
   At the entrance to the lobby was the bellman’s stand. This post was perpetually occupied by a man named Norman Francis Binwithier.
   Norman was five hundred, or perhaps six hundred, years old. His teeth were yellow. Huge tufts of hair sprang from his ears. His bellman’s suit was shiny at the knees and the elbows, and he wore his little bellman’s cap at a jaunty angle so that it obscured his left eye.
   Norman could sleep standing up with his back very straight and a smile on his face.
   “A skill, my dear,” Norman had said to Marta the first time he woke and found her studying him, “a skill of incalculable worth.”
   Marta backed up. She felt her face flush.
   “Norman Francis Binwithier, at your service,” said Norman. He clicked his heels together and took the cap from his head and bowed deeply to her.
   “I’m not supposed to talk to anyone,” Marta said.
   “Of course,” said Norman. He put the little hat back on his head and it immediately slid down and covered his left eye.
   “We have not spoken,” said Norman, “you and I. In this business, discretion is everything. Discretion is all. Speaking of discretion, may I say that I have noticed you discreetly studying the painting and also the clock?” He smiled.
   Marta smiled back.
   “I’m Marta,” she said.
   Immediately, she regretted saying her name. She heard her mother’s voice: Speak only if you have no choice.
   “Marta,” said Norman. “Marta, the lady who studies art and time. Marta, whom I have never met, spoken to, or seen.” He winked at her. “Discretion, you see?”
   Norman slept most of the day, always with the small smile on his face.
   If he was awake, he would look at Marta and wink a slow wink. Sometimes, he produced a coin from one of his hairy ears and presented it to her with a solemn bow.
   Marta said to him, “You smile when you sleep. Are you dreaming?”
   “Of course,” said Norman. “Otherwise what is the point to go away so?”
   “What do you dream of?” asked Marta.
   “What a question from someone who is not supposed to speak!”
   Marta’s face grew warm. She looked down at the scuffed toes of her shoes.
   “Shh, shh, so,” said Norman. “I will tell you. I dream of the meadow behind my grandfather’s house. I dream of the blue flowers there, and of the tall grass and the bees buzzing. What do you dream of, lady?”
   “I don’t dream,” said Marta.
   This was not true.
   She did dream.
   She dreamed of her father returning.
   It was a dream in which she opened a window or a door, and a dazzling square of light suddenly entered the room, and then behind the light was her father, wearing a black suit, walking toward her, smiling.
   He walked with his arms stretched out on either side of him—balancing, balancing—and everywhere there was light.
   She did not tell Norman about this dream.
   She did not tell her mother, either—her mother, who slept beside her in the small bed in the attic room of the Hotel Balzaar.
   Her mother who wept, sometimes, in the night.
   What did Marta’s mother dream?
   Marta did not know.
   She was afraid to ask.