On reaching the hotel, Karl was taken straightaway to a kind of office, where the Head Cook, holding a notebook in her hand, was dictating a letter to a young typist. Her very precise dictation, the subdued and elastic tapping of the keys overtook the intermittently audible ticking of a clock on the wall, which now indicated almost half past eleven. ‘There!’ said the Head Cook, and she snapped the notebook shut. The typist leapt to her feet, and draped the wooden lid over the typewriter, without taking her eyes off Karl as she performed this mechanical action. She looked like a schoolgirl still, her apron for example had been very carefully ironed, with little ruches on the shoulders, her hair was piled up on her head, and after such particulars it was quite a surprise to come upon the serious expression on her face. First bowing to the Head Cook, and then to Karl, she left the room, and Karl involuntarily looked inquiringly at the Head Cook.
‘I am glad you decided to come after all,’ said the Head Cook. ‘What about your companions?’ ‘I didn’t bring them,’ said Karl. ‘They probably have to make a very early start,’ said the Head Cook, as though to explain it to herself. ‘Won’t she suppose that I’ll be setting off with them?’ Karl wondered, and therefore, to settle any doubts, he added: ‘We had a falling out.’ The Head Cook seemed to treat this as good news. ‘So you’re at liberty?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I’m at liberty,’ said Karl, and it seemed the most worthless condition. ‘Listen, wouldn’t you like to get a job here in the hotel?’ asked the Head Cook. ‘Very much,’ said Karl, ‘but I am shockingly unqualified. I don’t even know how to type, for example.’ ‘That’s not the point,’ said the Head Cook. ‘For the time being you would start off in a very small job, and then it will be up to you to try and work your way up by industry and application. To say the least, though, I think it would be better for you to settle somewhere than to go tramping through the world. You don’t seem to me to be cut out for that.’ ‘My uncle would agree with that,’ Karl said to himself, and he nodded his consent. At the same time, he remembered that he – the object of such concern – had yet to introduce himself. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘I haven’t introduced myself, my name is Karl Rossmann.’ ‘You’re German, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ said Karl, ‘I’ve only been in America for a little while.’ ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘From Prague in Bohemia,’ said Karl. ‘Well I never,’ exclaimed the Head Cook in German with a very strong English accent, and almost threw up her arms, ‘then we’re compatriots, my name is Grete Mitzelbach, and I come from Vienna. I know Prague extremely well, for half a year I worked at the Golden Goose on Wenceslas Square. Just imagine!’ ‘When was that?’ asked Karl. ‘It’s many, many years ago now.’ ‘Because the old Golden Goose,’ said Karl, ‘was torn down two years ago.’ ‘Oh really,’ said the Head Cook, lost in memories of bygone times.
Then suddenly becoming animated again, she seized Karl’s hands and cried: ‘Now that it has emerged that you are my fellow countryman, you mustn’t leave here at any price. I won’t let you do that to me. How would you like to be lift-boy, for example? You only have to say the word. If you’ve been around a bit, you will know that it’s not particularly easy to get jobs like that, because they are really the best openings imaginable. You get to meet all the guests, you’re always on view, you keep getting little jobs to do, in short, every day you get a chance to better your status. Leave all the rest to me!’ ‘I wouldn’t mind being a lift-boy,’ said Karl, after a short pause. It would have been very foolish of him to hold out against the job of lift-boy on the strength of his five years in secondary school. Here in America it would be more appropriate to be ashamed of those five years of school. And in point of fact, Karl had always liked lift-boys, he thought of them as an ornament of hotels. ‘Don’t you need languages?’ he asked. ‘You speak German and good English, that’s perfectly adequate.’ ‘But all my English I’ve learned in just two and a half months in America,’ said Karl, thinking he shouldn’t hide his one light under a bushel. ‘That says everything about you,’ said the Head Cook. ‘When I think of the trouble I had learning English. Admittedly that was thirty years ago now. I was talking about it only yesterday. Yesterday was my fiftieth birthday.’ And with a smile she turned to see what impression such a great age made on Karl. ‘I wish you many happy returns,’ said Karl. ‘That would always come in useful,’ she said, shook Karl’s hand, and was once again half melancholy at the old phrase from home, which had come to her as she spoke German.
‘But you mustn’t let me detain you,’ she cried. ‘I expect you’re very tired, and we can talk about everything much better in the daytime. My delight at meeting a fellow countryman has made me quite inconsiderate. Come on, I’ll take you to your room.’ ‘I have another favour I’d like to ask you, cook,’ said Karl, looking at the telephone apparatus on the table. ‘It is possible that tomorrow, perhaps very early, my former companions may bring in a photograph that I need urgently. Would you be so kind and telephone the porter to send them up to me, or have me brought down to them.’ ‘Of course,’ said the Head Cook, ‘but wouldn’t it do if he just took receipt of the photograph? What is the photograph of, if I may ask?’ ‘It’s a photograph of my parents,’ said Karl, ‘but no, I need to talk to them myself. The cook made no reply, and telephoned the porter’s lodge with the instructions, giving Karl’s room number as 536.
They went out through a door opposite the one he had come in at, on to a little passage where a little lift-boy was asleep on his feet, leaning against the railing of a lift. ‘We can help ourselves,’ said the cook quietly, and ushered Karl into the lift. ‘A ten or twelve hour day is just a bit much for a boy like that,’ she said, as they rode up. ‘But America’s odd like that. Take that little boy, for instance, he only arrived here with his parents six months ago, he’s Italian. At the moment, it looks as though he couldn’t possibly stand up to his work, his face is gaunt, he falls asleep on his shift, even though he’s a very willing lad by nature – but give him another six months of working here or somewhere else in America, and he’ll take it with ease, and in five years’ time he’ll be a strong man. I could regale you for hours with cases like that. I’m not even considering you, because you’re a strong lad. You’re seventeen, aren’t you?’ ‘Sixteen next month,’ replied Karl. ‘Only sixteen!’ said the cook. ‘Well, courage!’
Upstairs, she took Karl to an attic room with a sloping ceiling that looked very cosy in the light of two electric lamps. ‘Don’t be put off by the furnishings,’ said the cook, ‘it’s not a regular hotel room, but one of the rooms in my apartment, which consists of three rooms, so you won’t be bothering me in the least. I’ll lock the connecting door, so you’ll have absolute privacy. When you join the hotel staff tomorrow you will of course be given a little room of your own. If you had brought your companions, I would have had beds made up for all of you in the staff dormitory, but as you’ve come on your own, I think you will be better off here, even though you’ll be sleeping on the sofa. And now I hope you sleep well, so you’ll be refreshed for work tomorrow. It won’t be too tough to begin with.’ ‘Thank you for all your kindness.’ ‘Wait,’ she said, stopping on her way out, ‘you would almost have been woken up.’ And she went over to one of the side doors of the room, knocked and called: ‘Therese!’ ‘Yes, Head Cook,’ the voice of the little typist replied. ‘When you come to wake me tomorrow morning, will you go via the corridor, I have a guest sleeping in this room. He’s terribly tired.’ She smiled at Karl as she said this. ‘Do you understand?’ ‘Yes, Head Cook’. ‘Good night, then!’ ‘Good night.’
‘You see,’ said the Head Cook, by way of explanation, ‘for the past few years I’ve been sleeping extremely badly. I am happy in my job, and don’t really have anything to worry about. So my sleeplessness must be caused by the worries I had earlier. I count myself lucky if I fall asleep by three in the morning. But seeing as I need to be back on the job by five or half past at the latest, I have to be woken up, and very carefully at that, so that I don’t become even more nervous than I am already. And so I have Therese wake me. But now you’re fully informed, and I’m holding you up. Goodnight!’ And in spite of her bulk, she positively skipped out of the room.
Karl was looking forward to his sleep, because it had been a long day. And he couldn’t wish for any cosier place in which to have a long and untroubled sleep. His room wasn’t intended as a bedroom, it was more of a living-room, or really a salon for the Head Cook, and a washstand had kindly been provided especially for that one evening but in spite of that, Karl didn’t feel like an intruder, but all the better cared for. His suitcase was in order, and it probably hadn’t been so secure for some time. There was a low chest of drawers with a loosely woven woollen rug thrown over it, with various framed photographs standing on it, Karl stopped to study them as he was inspecting the room. For the most part they were old photographs, and they were mainly of girls in uncomfortable old-fashioned clothes, with little hats perched on their heads, their right hands resting on parasols, facing the viewer but still somehow avoiding his glance. Among the male portraits, Karl was particularly struck by the picture of a young soldier who had set his cap down on a little table, standing there stiffly with his wild black hair, and a proud and repressed humour. The buttons on his uniform had been retouched in gold on the photograph. All these pictures probably came from Europe, you could probably read on the back just where, but Karl didn’t want to pick them up. He would have liked to display the picture of his parents in his own room in just the same way as these photographs were displayed here.
He was just stretching out on the sofa, looking forward to his sleep after thoroughly washing himself all over, as quietly as possible on account of his neighbour, when he thought he heard a quiet knocking on the door. He wasn’t quite sure which door it was, and it might also have been just a noise. There was no immediate repetition of it, and Karl was on the point of sleep when it happened again. This time there could be no question but that it was a knock, coming from the door of the typist’s room. Karl went over to the door on tiptoe and asked, in a voice so quiet that it wouldn’t have woken his neighbour if she had happened to be asleep: ‘What can I do for you?’ Straightaway, and just as quietly, came the reply: ‘Won’t you open the door? The key is on your side.’ ‘Of course,’ said Karl. ‘Just let me get dressed first.’ There was a slight pause, and then: ‘You don’t have to. Open the door and go and lie down in your bed again, I’ll wait a moment.’ ‘Very well,’ said Karl, and did as she suggested, only he turned the electric light on as well. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, a little louder. And at that the little typist emerged from her dark room, wearing exactly the same clothes she had had on downstairs in the office, she probably hadn’t thought about going to bed in all that time.
‘Do please excuse me,’ she said, standing at Karl’s bedside, leaning over him a little, ‘and please don’t give me away. I won’t keep you long, I know you’re dead tired.’ ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Karl, ‘but perhaps it would have been better if I had got dressed after all.’ He was forced to lie flat, in order to remain covered up to the neck, as he didn’t have a nightshirt. ‘I’ll just stay for a moment,’ she said, and reached for a chair, ‘or can I sit down on your sofa?’ Karl nodded. And then she sat down on the sofa, so close to him that Karl had to move right back against the wall in order to be able to look up at her. She had a round face, and regular features, only her forehead was unusually high, but that might just be on account of her hairstyle, which didn’t quite suit her. Her dress was very clean and tidy. In her left hand she was squeezing a handkerchief.
‘Are you going to be staying here for long?’ she asked. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ replied Karl, ‘but I think I’d like to stay.’ ‘That would be a very good thing,’ she said, and passed her handkerchief over her face, ‘because I’m so lonely here.’ ‘You surprise me,’ said Karl, ‘the Head Cook is very nice to you. She doesn’t treat you like an employee at all. I thought you might be a relation.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘my name is Therese Berchtold, I come from Pomerania.’ Karl introduced himself too. Thereupon for the first time, she looked him full in the face, as though by telling her his name he’d become a little stranger to her. For a while neither spoke. Then she said, ‘You’re not to think of me as ungrateful. But for the Head Cook, I’d be in a far worse position than I am. I used to be a kitchen maid here in the hotel, and I was in grave danger of being sacked, because I couldn’t do the heavy work. They ask an awful lot of you here. Last month a kitchen maid fainted through sheer over exertion, and spent two weeks in hospital. And I’m not very strong, I had a difficult childhood and I’m a bit underdeveloped as a result, you’d never guess I’m eighteen now would you. But I’m getting stronger now.’ ‘The work here must be very demanding,’ said Karl. ‘Just now I saw the lift-boy downstairs asleep on his feet.’ ‘But it’s the lift-boys who have the best of it,’ she said, ‘they get a pretty penny from tips, and don’t need to slave away nearly as much as the people down in the kitchen. But I was really lucky, the Head Cook needed a girl once to fold the napkins for a banquet, and she sent down to the kitchen where there are about fifty of us girls, and I just happened to be available and she was very pleased with me because I’ve always been good at folding napkins. And from that time on she kept me at her side and gradually trained me to be her secretary. I’ve learned a great deal.’ ‘Is there such a lot of writing to do?’ asked Karl. ‘Oh, a great deal,’ she replied, ‘you probably can’t imagine it. You saw how I was working up until half past eleven, and today’s just an ordinary day. Admittedly I don’t spend all my time writing, I also have a lot of errands to run in the town.’ ‘What town is that?’ asked Karl. ‘Don’t you know?’ she said, ‘Ramses.’ ‘Is it a big town?’ asked Karl. ‘Very big,’ she replied, ‘I don’t like going there. But are you sure you don’t want to sleep now?’ ‘No, no,’ said Karl. ‘You haven’t told me why you came in yet.’ ‘It’s because I don’t have anyone to talk to. I don’t feel sorry for myself, but if you don’t have anyone, it makes you happy to find someone who will listen to you. I saw you when you were in the dining-room downstairs, I was just on my way to collect the Head Cook, when she led you off to the storerooms.’ ‘That dining-room is an awful place,’ said Karl. ‘I hardly notice it any more,’ she replied. ‘But I wanted to say that the Head Cook is as good to me as my dear departed mother. Only the difference between our ranks is too great for me to be able to talk to her freely. I used to have some good friends among the kitchen maids, but they’ve all moved on, and I don’t really know the new girls. Sometimes I think my new job is even more demanding than my old one, and I’m even less up to it, and that the Head Cook only keeps me in it because she feels sorry for me. You really need a better education than mine to be a secretary. It’s a sin to say so, but very often I’m afraid I may go mad. For God’s sake,’ she suddenly said much faster, and clutched Karl’s shoulder, as his hands were under the bedclothes, ‘you mustn’t breathe a word of this to the Head Cook, because otherwise I really would be done for. It would be unpardonable if, on top of the dissatisfaction she must feel with my work, I were to hurt her feelings as well.’ ‘You may rest assured that I won’t say anything to her,’ replied Karl. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and I hope you do stay. I’d be pleased if you stayed, and if you like, we could be friends. The first time I saw you, I felt I could trust you. But at the same time – honestly, this is how bad I am – I was afraid that the Head Cook might make you her secretary in my stead, and get rid of me. Only when I was alone for a long time when you were downstairs in the office, I thought it over, and it seemed to me it would be just as well if you did take my job, because you’d be much better at it than I am. If you didn’t want to run errands in the city, I could go on doing those. Apart from that I’m sure I’d be far more useful in the kitchen, especially as I’m a bit stronger now.’ ‘The matter’s taken care of,’ said Karl, ‘I’m going to be a lift-boy, and you’ll go on being a secretary. But if you so much as hint of your plans to the cook, then I will go and tell her all that you’ve told me today, even though it would make me very upset.’ Therese was so shaken by his tone that she threw herself down on his bed, pressed her face against the sheets and sobbed. ‘I won’t give anything away,’ said Karl, ‘but you’re not to say anything either.’ Now he couldn’t remain completely hidden under the bedclothes any more, he stroked her arm a little, and could think of nothing comforting he could say to her, and only thought how bitter life here must be. Eventually she calmed down enough to be ashamed of her tears, and she looked gratefully at Karl, told him to sleep in tomorrow morning, and promised him, if she got a chance, to come up at around eight and wake him. ‘You’re famous for waking people up, I’ve heard,’ said Karl. ‘Yes, there are one or two things I’m good at,’ she said, ran her hand gently over the blanket in farewell, and scurried back to her room.
The next day Karl insisted on beginning work right away, even though the Head Cook wanted to give him the day off for sightseeing in Ramses. But Karl replied frankly that there would be opportunities for that later, and the most important thing for him now was to start work, because he had already once had to break off a career in Europe without anything to show for it, and he was starting as a lift-boy at an age in which the more advanced boys at any rate were almost ready to move on to better jobs. It was perfectly right and proper that he should be starting off as lift-boy, but by the same token he was in a hurry. Under the circumstances, sightseeing in the city would be no pleasure to him at all. He wasn’t even prepared to go for a short walk with Therese. Always at the back of his mind was the thought that, if he didn’t apply himself, he might finish up like Delamarche and Robinson.
At the hotel tailor’s, he tried on the lift-boy’s livery, which looked very splendid, with gold braid and gilt buttons, but Karl shuddered a little as he put it on, because the little jacket was cold and stiff and at the same time chronically damp under the arms from the sweat of the lift-boy who had worn it before him. The uniform had to be altered for Karl, particularly across the chest, because not one of the ten available jackets was anything like wide enough. In spite of the sewing that was necessary – and the tailor seemed very pernickety, twice sending the finished article back to the workshop – it all took barely five minutes, and Karl left the workshop already looking like a lift-boy, dressed in tight trousers, and, the tailor’s firm assurances to the contrary, a constricting little jacket, which kept making Karl do breathing exercises as he wanted to ascertain whether it was possible to breathe in it at all.
Then he reported to the Head Waiter under whom he was to serve, a slim, handsome man with a big nose, who was probably already in his forties. He had no time for any conversation whatsoever, and merely rang for a lift-boy, it happened to be the very one Karl had seen the day before. The Head Waiter called him by his christian name, Giacomo, as Karl only learned later, because the name in its English pronunciation was unrecognizable. That boy was given the task of showing Karl the essentials of lift work but he was so bashful and so hasty, that, though there was little to learn, Karl didn’t even learn that. Giacomo was probably annoyed besides at having to leave the lift service to make way for Karl, and to be assigned to helping the chambermaids, which seemed to him, on the basis of some experiences he didn’t care to divulge, dishonourable. It came as a particular disappointment to Karl that the lift-boy’s only contact with the machinery was the simple pressing of a button, whereas for any repairs to the mechanism, the hotel’s team of engineers were exclusively responsible, so that Giacomo for instance, after six months on the lifts, had not seen the motor in the basement or the machinery inside the lift with his own eyes, even though he would have liked to very much, as he stressed. All in all the work was monotonous, and because of the twelve-hour shifts that alternated between day and night, it was so exhausting that according to Giacomo’s reports it was completely unendurable without the odd catnap on one’s feet. Karl said nothing to this, but it was clear to him that it was this skill of Giacomo’s that had cost him his job.
Karl was very glad that the lift to which he had been assigned was one that travelled to the upper floors only, so that he would be spared any dealings with the wealthier and more demanding hotel guests. Granted, he would learn less as well, and so it was only good for a start.
By the end of the first week, Karl could see that he was well up to the job. The brass trim on his lift was the most highly polished of all, none of the other thirty lifts could compare with it, and it might have gleamed still more if the boy who worked on the same lift as him had been anything like as conscientious, instead of taking Karl’s diligence as an excuse for his own sloppiness. He was an American by birth, Rennel was his name, a vain boy with dark eyes and smooth, somewhat concave cheeks. He had an elegant suit of his own, in which on his evenings off he would hurry, lightly perfumed, into the city; occasionally too he would ask Karl to fill in for him in the evening, as he had to go off for family reasons, and it didn’t bother him that his appearance seemed to be rather at variance with such claims. In spite of that, Karl liked him, and he liked it when, on such evenings, Rennel would stand around by the lift with him in his going-out clothes, say a few more words of apology as he pulled his gloves over his fingers and then stroll off down the corridor. Besides, in covering for him, Karl was only doing a favour, as seemed prefectly natural to start off with, for a colleague older than himself, it wasn’t meant to become a permanent state of affairs. For this continual riding up and down in the lift was tiring enough anyway, and in the evening there were almost no interruptions.
Soon Karl also mastered the quick, deep bows that the lift-boys were expected to perform, and he could catch tips in mid-air. The money vanished into his waistcoat pocket, without anyone being able to tell from his expression whether it was a large sum or small. For ladies he opened the door with a little show of gallantry, and swung himself into the lift slowly behind them, as they tended to get into it more hesitantly than men, afraid for their dresses, their hats and wraps. During the ride, he would stand, as this was least obtrusive, hard by the door, with his back turned to the guests and hold the handle so as to be able to push it aside the instant the lift stopped, without causing any undue alarm. It was rare for anyone to tap him on the shoulder during a ride to ask for some piece of information, in which case he would promptly turn round, as though expecting it, and reply in a clear voice. Often, in spite of the great number of lifts, especially after the theatres let out, or after the arrival of certain express trains, there would be such a crush, that barely had the guests got out at the top than he had to race back down to pick up more waiting downstairs. By pulling at a wire that ran through the lift, he had the option of increasing the usual speed, although this was forbidden by the lift regulations, and was supposed to be dangerous as well. Accordingly Karl never did it when he had any passengers on board, but when he had dropped some off upstairs, and there were others waiting below, he would be ruthless, and pull strongly on the wire, hand over hand, like a sailor. He knew that the other lift-boys did this as well, and he didn’t want to lose his passengers to the other boys. Certain guests, who had been staying in the hotel for some time, which seemed to be quite common practice here, would occasionally smile at Karl, to show that they recognized him as their lift-boy. Karl was grateful for their attention, but took it with a stern face. Sometimes, when there was less traffic, he was able to take on little special errands, for instance, in the case of a hotel guest who didn’t want to go all the way back up to his room to fetch some small item that he’d left behind, he would rush up alone in the lift, which seemed particularly close to him at such moments, step into the strange room, which usually contained extraordinary things he had never seen before, strewn around or hanging from coat-hangers, breathe the characteristic smell of a particular soap, perfume or mouthwash, and without loitering at all, hurry back down again, having found the object in spite of the generally unclear instructions. He was often sorry not to be able to take on larger commissions, because there were waiters and errand-boys specially set aside for these, who did their work on bicycles or even motorbikes, it was only for errands involving the rooms and dining-rooms or gaming-rooms that Karl was able, unless otherwise engaged, to be used.
When he came off the twelve hour shifts, at six in the evening on the first three days, and at six in the morning for the three following, he was so tired that he went straight to bed without paying any attention to anybody else. He was in the dormitory for lift-boys. The Head Cook, whose influence wasn’t perhaps as great as he had thought that first evening, had endeavoured to find him a room of his own, and might even have succeeded, but when Karl saw the trouble it put her to, and the number of times she spoke on the telephone to his superior, that terribly busy Head Waiter, on his account, he abandoned the idea and convinced the Head Cook that he was serious by arguing that he didn’t want to incur the envy of the other boys by obtaining a privilege he wouldn’t have been able to secure for himself.
Now this dormitory was anything but a quiet place to sleep. For, since each of them divided up his twelve hours off, between eating, sleeping, pleasure and work on the side, there was a loud and continual commotion in the dormitory. There were some who were asleep, with the blankets pulled up over their ears in order to eliminate the noise; but if one of these was awakened, then he would scream so angrily at the shouting of the others, that none of his fellow sleepers could remain so. Almost every one of the boys owned a pipe, pipes were their luxury, Karl had acquired a pipe for himself too, and soon got a taste for it. Now smoking on duty was not allowed, and as a result everyone in the dormitory who wasn’t asleep would be smoking. Each bed was swathed in its own individual cloud of smoke and a general pall hung over the whole room. In spite of a theoretical agreement to that effect, it proved impossible to maintain the principle of having light at only one end of the room. If that suggestion had prevailed, then the ones who wanted to sleep could have done so quietly in the darkness of one half of the room – which was a large one, containing forty beds – whereas the others could have played dice or cards in the lighted half, and whatever else they needed a light for. If one whose bed was in the light part of the room wanted to sleep, he could have lain down on a vacant bed in the dark half, because there were always sufficient beds, and no one ever objected to the temporary borrowing of a bed by someone else under such circumstances. But there was never a night on which such a division was practised. There would always be a couple of boys, say, who having used the darkness to get some sleep, then felt like a game of cards in their beds, laying a board between them and of course switching on a handy electric light, whose piercing beams would startle the sleepers on whom they fell and wake them up. A sleeper would toss and turn for a while, but in the end there was nothing for it but to start a game with his neighbour, who had been similarly awakened, and with additional illumination. And of course all puffed away on their pipes. There were some – Karl usually among them – who wanted to sleep at any price, and who instead of laying their heads on their pillows covered their heads or rolled them inside their pillows. But how could you remain asleep when your next door neighbour would get up in the dead of night in order to seek some pleasure in town before the beginning of his shift, when he washed at the ewer at the end of your own bed, splashing loudly, when he not only pulled on his boots with much clattering, but stamped his feet to get them properly in – almost all of them had boots that were too small for them despite being of American design – and then finally, missing some item of apparel, raised the pillow of the sleeper, who by now would be long awake and only waiting to have a go at him. And then they were all athletic, young, strong lads, reluctant to let slip any opportunity for physical exercise. So you could be sure that when a great noise startled you out of your night’s sleep you would find two boys wrestling on the floor beside your bed, bright lights, and all around standing up on their beds in shirt and underpants, giving expert commentary. In the course of one such nocturnal bout, one of the combatants fell across Karl’s bed as he lay sleeping, and the first thing Karl saw on opening his eyes was the blood pouring from the boy’s nose, and soaking the bedclothes before anything could be done to prevent it. Often Karl would spend his entire twelve hours attempting to get a couple of hours of sleep, though he was also very tempted to join in the amusements of the others; but he kept thinking that in their lives they had an advantage over him, which he needed to make up for by greater industry and a certain self-denial. Even though his sleep was very important to him, principally for the sake of his work, he didn’t complain about conditions in the dormitory either to the Head Cook or to Therese, because in the first place all the boys more or less endured them without serious complaint, and secondly the torments of the dormitory were an integral part of his job as lift-boy, which he had gratefully accepted from the hands of the Head Cook.
Once a week, when the shift pattern changed, he got twenty-four hours off, which he used to pay one or two visits to the Head Cook and to have a few little chats with Therese whose precious free time he would share, in some corner somewhere, in the corridor, or more rarely in her room. Sometimes too he would accompany her on her errands in the city, though these had to be done in a great hurry. They would almost run, Karl carrying her bag, to the nearest underground station, the ride was over in a flash, as though the train was being pulled by an irresistible force, and already they were out, clattering up the stairs instead of waiting for the lift which was too slow for them, the great squares appeared, out of which the roads flew apart in stellar patterns, and with them a bewildering confusion of traffic all of it flowing in straight lines, but Karl and Therese hurried, close together, into various offices, laundries, storerooms and shops, to place orders or make complaints where it wasn’t possible by telephone, things that were usually less than momentous. Therese soon realized that Karl’s assistance on these missions was not to be despised, rather it brought a great acceleration to many things. In his company, she was never made to wait, as happened often when she was alone, for over-occupied business people to listen to her. He stepped up to the counter and drummed on it with his knuckles until someone came, he shouted in his utterly distinctive, over-precise English across walls of humanity, he went unhesitatingly up to people, even if they had arrogantly withdrawn into the furthest recesses of seemingly endless premises. He didn’t do it out of hubris, and he respected resistance, but he felt he was in a strong position, the Hotel Occidental was a client that couldn’t be mocked, and finally Therese, for all her business experience, needed his help. ‘I wish you could always come along with me,’ she said sometimes, smiling happily when they returned from a particularly well executed campaign.
Only on three occasions during the month and a half that Karl spent in Ramses did he stay longer than a couple of hours in Therese’s little room. It was of course far smaller than any of the Head Cook’s rooms, the few belongings of Therese’s were grouped around the window, but after his experiences in the dormitory, Karl keenly appreciated the value of a comparatively quiet room of one’s own, and though he didn’t say anything to Therese directly, she still understood how much he liked her room. She had no secrets from him, and indeed it would have been difficult for her to have any after her visit to him that first evening. She was an illegitimate child, her father was a builder’s foreman, and had sent for the child and her mother from Pomerania, but then as though that represented the limit of his obligation, or he had expected other people than the exhausted woman and sickly child he greeted at the harbour, he had emigrated to Canada shortly after their arrival, without much explanation, and they had received no letter nor any news of him, which wasn’t all that surprising as they were hopelessly lost in the cramped ghetto in the Eastern part of New York.
Once – Karl was standing next to her at the window, gazing down on the street – Therese had talked about the death of her mother. The way that one winter evening her mother and herself – she must have been five at the time – each carrying a bundle, chased down the street, looking for a place to sleep. The way her mother at first led her by the hand (there was a blizzard and it was hard to make any headway) till her hand relaxed and she let go of Therese without looking to see what became of her, and she had to strive to grab hold of her mother’s skirts. Often Therese stumbled and even fell but her mother seemed possessed and wouldn’t stop. And the snowstorms in the long straight streets of New York! Karl hadn’t experienced a winter in New York. If you walk into a swirling headwind, you can’t open your eyes even for a second, the wind is incessantly rubbing snow in your face, you walk and walk and get nowhere, it’s quite desperate. Of course a child has a certain advantage over a grown-up, it can walk underneath the wind, and is still able to enjoy everything. And so Therese hadn’t quite been able to understand her mother at the time; and she was firmly convinced that if she had behaved more sensibly that evening with her mother – but she was just a little girl – she wouldn’t have had to suffer such a miserable death. Her mother had already been without work for two days, they didn’t have a penny piece, they had spent the day in the open without a bite to eat, and all they had in their bundles were useless rags which they were only afraid to throw away because of superstition. Now her mother had been offered work on a building site the following morning, but as she told Therese all day long, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to take up this good opportunity because she was dead tired, that morning to the alarm of passers-by on the pavement she had coughed up a lot of blood, and all she wanted was to get in the warm somewhere and rest. But on this one evening it was proving impossible to find a place. Anywhere that the janitor hadn’t evicted them from the doorway of a building, and in which there was at least a little protection from the weather, they would hurry through narrow icy passages, climb long flights of stairs, circle the narrow courtyards, knocking randomly on doors, sometimes not daring to speak, at others asking anyone they met, and once or twice her mother would squat down breathless on the steps in a quiet staircase, pull Therese, in spite of her resistance, to herself, and press her lips against her so hard that it hurt. When she knew later that those were the last kisses, she couldn’t understand how even if she were a little shrimp, she could have been so blind as not to see that. In some of the rooms they passed, the doors were open to let out some suffocating fumes, and from the haze that filled the room like smoke from a fire, a human figure would loom in the doorway, and either with a curt word or by its mute presence communicate the impossibility of finding shelter in that particular room. Looking back it seemed to Therese that her mother had only been serious in her search for the first few hours, because after midnight or thereabouts, she no longer asked anyone, although she didn’t stop rushing around till dawn, with short interruptions, and even though there is always life in those buildings where neither the gates nor the doors to individual rooms are ever locked, and you keep running into people. Of course it wasn’t as though they made much headway with their scurrying about, it was simply the utmost exertion of which they were capable, and perhaps in reality it was no more than a crawl. Nor could Therese be sure whether they had tried their luck in twenty houses between midnight and five o’clock, or two or even just one. The corridors of those tenements are cleverly designed to make the most of the space, but without regard to easy orientation, so how many times they might have gone down the selfsame passages! Therese had a dim memory of leaving the entrance of a building having spent an eternity looking up and down inside it, but she could also remember how they had turned on the pavement, and plunged straight back inside the building again. For the child it was incomprehensible suffering, now held by her mother, now holding on to her, without so much as a comforting word, being dragged along, and in her incomprehension the only explanation she could find for the whole thing was that her mother was trying to run away from her. Therefore Therese held on as hard as she could, even when her mother had her by the hand, she still gripped on to her skirts with her other hand, just to be sure, and cried at intervals. She didn’t want to be abandoned here among the people who stamped up the stairs ahead of them, or came up behind them, still hidden behind a turn in the stairs, who would meet and quarrel in the corridors outside a door, and push one another into rooms. Drunks wandered round the building singing faintly, and Therese and her mother were just able to slip through a group of them as it was closing around them. They could surely, late at night when people weren’t so absolutely insistent on their rights, have found their way into one of the general dormitories, that were rented out by speculators, of which they passed several, but Therese didn’t understand, and her mother didn’t want to rest any more. At daybreak on a fine winter morning, they both leaned against the wall of a house, and perhaps slept a little, perhaps just stared in front of them. It turned out that Therese had lost her bundle, and her mother was going to punish her for her carelessness with a beating, but Therese heard no blows, and could feel none. They went on through streets that were just beginning to wake up, her mother walking by the wall, they crossed a bridge, where her mother’s hand brushed the frost from the railing, and finally, Therese at the time accepted it, today she couldn’t understand it, they arrived at the building site where her mother was supposed to start that morning. She didn’t tell Therese whether she wanted her to wait for her or to go away, and Therese took that as an order to wait, which was what she wanted to do anyway. So she sat down on a pile of bricks and watched as her mother untied her bundle, took out a coloured rag and tied it over the kerchief she had worn all night. Therese was too tired even to think of helping her mother. Without reporting in the site office, as was customary, and without asking anyone, her mother had climbed straight up a ladder, as though she already knew what task had been allotted to her. Therese was puzzled, because women helpers were usually kept on ground level and told to slake lime, pass bricks and do other simple things. So she thought her mother wanted to do some other, better paid form of work today, and she smiled sleepily up at her. The construction was no great height yet, the ground floor was barely completed, though the scaffolding for the upper floors soared up into the blue sky, although as yet without any cross planking. Up there, her mother skilfully went round the masons laying brick on brick, who surprisingly didn’t ask what she was doing, she held delicately on to a wooden crate that served as a railing, and Therese in her doze below, marvelled at the surefootedness of her mother, and thought she caught a friendly glance from her. Then her mother came to a little pile of bricks marking the end of the railing and probably the path as well, but she didn’t stop, she walked up to the bricks, her sure-footedness seemed to have deserted her, she kicked over the bricks and fell with them over the edge. Many bricks fell after her, and some time later a heavy board became detached and crashed down on top of her as well. Therese’s last memory of her mother was of her lying there with legs apart in the checked skirt she had brought with her from Pomerania, the rough plank on top of her, almost covering her, people running together from all directions, and from up on the site some man angrily shouted something.
It was late when Therese came to the end of her story. It had been unusually detailed for her, and, especially in unimportant places, for instance the description of the scaffolding poles each soaring into the sky, she had had to stop with tears in her eyes. After ten years, she still remembered every detail of what had happened, and because the sight of her mother up on the partly finished ground floor was her last memory of her mother’s life, and she couldn’t relate it clearly enough to her friend, she wanted to go back to it again after the end of her story, but she faltered, buried her face in her hands and didn’t say another word.
But there were happier times in Therese’s room as well. On his very first visit there, Karl had seen a manual of business correspondence lying there, and had asked to borrow it. It was then arranged that Karl would do the exercises in the book and take them for approval to Therese, who had already studied the book for what was relevant to her own little tasks. Now Karl would spend whole nights with cotton wool in his ears, downstairs on his bed in the dormitory, in all possible positions for variety, reading the book, and scribbling out exercises in a little notebook with a fountain pen the Head Cook had given him as a reward for organizing one of her large inventories in a tidy and practical way. He was able to turn the interruptions from the other boys to good account, by asking them for little English tips, until they got bored and left him alone. It often surprised him how reconciled they were to their present position, seemingly oblivious to its provisional nature – there were no lift-boys older than twenty at the hotel – and didn’t see the need for a decision about any future employment, and, in spite of Karl’s example, read nothing but detective stories at best, tattered copies of which were passed from bed to bed.
When they met now, Therese would go over his work with excessive pedantry, they had differences of opinion, Karl called in evidence his great New York professor, but his views on grammar counted for no more with Therese than those of the lift-boys. She took the fountain pen out of his hand and crossed out the passage she was convinced was wrong, while in such doubtful instances, though there was usually no higher authority than Therese who would see the exercises, Karl usually put a line through her crossings-out to record his disagreement. Sometimes though the Head Cook would turn up and she invariably decided in Therese’s favour, which didn’t prove anything at all, as Therese was her secretary. But at the same time she did effect a general reconciliation, because they had tea and biscuits, and Karl was made to tell her about Europe, albeit with many interruptions from the Head Cook, who kept asking questions and exclaiming in surprise, which made Karl aware of how much had changed there, quite fundamentally, in a relatively short space of time, and how much must have changed already in his own absence, and was changing all the time.
Karl had been in Ramses for perhaps a month, when one evening Renell told him in passing that he had been spoken to outside the hotel by a man called Delamarche, who had asked after Karl. Renell had no reason to keep quiet about anything, and he had truthfully reported that Karl was working as a lift-boy, but, as he enjoyed the protection of the Head Cook, he had excellent prospects of promotion. Karl noticed how carefully Delamarche had treated Renell, even asking him to dinner this very night. ‘I’m not having anything more to do with Delamarche,’ said Karl. ‘And you should be on your guard with him!’ ‘Me?’ said Renell, and he stretched and hurried off. He was the most delicate boy in the hotel, and there was a rumour circulating among the other boys, whose source was unknown, that he had, to put it no higher than that, been kissed in the lift by a posh lady who had been living in the hotel for some time. For anyone who knew the rumour, a great part of its charm was in watching that self-possessed lady, whose exterior gave no clue to the possibility of such behaviour, going past with her light quiet tread, delicate veils, and sternly corseted waist. She lived on the first floor, and so Renell’s lift was not hers, but of course if their own lifts happened to be engaged, one couldn’t forbid the guests from stepping into another. And so it happened that the lady did occasionally ride in Karl and Renell’s lift, and in fact only ever when Renell was on duty. It might be pure chance, but no one thought so, and when the lift went up carrying the two of them in it, a barely suppressed commotion went along the whole line of lift-boys, which had necessitated the intervention from one of the head waiters. Now, whether it was the lady or the rumour that was the cause, Renell had changed, he was even more self-confident, he left all the cleaning and polishing to Karl, who wanted to have a word with him about it, and he never set foot in the dormitory any more. No one else had so completely quit the normal orbit of the lift-boys, because in general, in questions of duty they all stuck together, and had a union that was recognized by the hotel management.
All this passed through Karl’s mind, and he thought of Delamarche as well, as he went on doing his work. At midnight he had a little relief, because Therese, who would often come with little surprises, gave him a large apple and a bar of chocolate. They chatted awhile, barely put out by the interruptions of his taking the lift up and down. Conversation turned to Delamarche, and Karl realized that, in thinking of him as a dangerous person for some while now, he had allowed himself to be influenced by Therese, because that was how he appeared to her from what Karl had told her about him. Basically, though, Karl thought he was nothing worse than a scamp who had been turned to the bad by his misfortune, but with whom one could perfectly well get along. Therese though, took issue with that, and in long speeches pleaded with Karl to promise her that he would never exchange another word with Delamarche. Instead of making such a promise, Karl pressed her to go to sleep, it was already long past midnight, and when she refused he threatened to leave his post and take her up to her room himself. When she finally agreed to go, he said: ‘Why do you worry yourself unnecessarily, Therese? If it makes you sleep any better, I’ll gladly promise you that I won’t speak to Delamarche unless I absolutely have to.’ Then many rides were required of him, because the boy in the next door lift was called away on some errand, and Karl had to look after both lifts. Some hotel guests spoke of disorganization and one gentleman who was escorting a lady went so far as to tap Karl with his walking stick to make him hurry, something that was not called for at all. If only the guests would see that there was no boy standing by the other lift and would all come over to Karl’s, but no, they went to the other lift and remained there, with their hands on the door handle, or they even walked straight into it, which was something the lift-boy had to prevent at all costs, it was the strictest item in the rule book. The result for Karl was a lot of very fatiguing coming and going, and even then he didn’t feel he was discharging his duty properly. At about three in the morning, a porter, an old man with whom he was vaguely friendly, asked him for some help with something, but he was unable to give it, because there were groups of guests standing in front of both his lifts, and it needed great presence of mind to decide in favour of one of them, and promptly stride towards it. He was relieved, then, when the other boy returned and he called out a few words of reproach to him for his long absence, although it probably wasn’t his fault. After four o’clock there was a small lull, and not before time. Karl leaned against the railing beside his lift, slowly eating his apple, from which a strong sweet aroma rose from the very first bite, and looked down the lift-shaft, which was surrounded by the large windows of the storerooms, behind which great bunches of bananas glimmered faintly in the dark.