Day 2 – Unexpected Solace
Susan awoke the next morning to the sound of the foreign music, and with a strange taste in her mouth.
Dinner in the small suite had been uneventful, as she picked at the French food that she had yet to find appealing, and the baby had cried and refused to be fed.
Yet all the time the music had not stopped, and now here it continued, the voices wailing in the darkness of her room. The spectral closeness of it suddenly frightened her, and she fumbled for matches to light the lamp.
Finding none immediately, she fled the room, only to find the sitting room just as dark.
Her fear mounted as the voices permeated the darkness, like ghosts searching for someone to listen to their cries.
She ran for the door to the hall and bumped into one of the trunks still standing by the door. Pausing only for a moment to rub her foot, she raced out into the hall and toward the stairwell where she knew the light was waiting.
Her breathing slowed as the darkness eased to gray and she reached the stairwell with its small, high window. She had to look up, as the window was far higher than she was tall, and all she could see were the gray clouds above the sea.
But it was still light.
Suddenly the music, momentarily forgotten in her relief, became louder, and she glanced back down the hall where the sound was coming from. Silhouetted against the dim gray light was the figure of a man leaning out of one of the doors. He appeared to be looking at her.
She didn't get the chance to think anything of it, because at that moment her father, clad in his nightshirt, rushed out of the suite, glancing both ways down the hall and ignoring the other man.
"Susan!" he called when he espied her, "What on earth are you doing? Come back to bed this instant." He was at her side almost instantly and pushing her back toward the dark door, not even allowing her the chance to explain.
"I'm sorry if she disturbed you," he finally acknowledged the stranger from whose room the strange music came, though he barely glanced at him. All Susan could see while being ushered into their suite was the man's slippers and the hem of a dressing gown.
Susan's father sat her in the large armchair and then he collapsed tiredly onto the sofa, rubbing his tired eyes. She looked at him curiously a moment, until he began to scold her for hallway excursion.
She leaned forward and rested her chin in her hands. She had had enough scoldings on this excessively long holiday to last her a lifetime.
Her mind wandered to the music, which had become quieter now. The man must have gone back inside his room.
And there had been that same gray light in his room that was in the hall. He must have a window. And a view of the beach and the sea.
"Susan? Are you listening to me? Well, if you don't care about the way you make us look to other people, you can go back to bed until you're ready to pay attention.
Susan slipped off the chair and trudged sullenly back to her room and the darkness.
Climbing into the still warm bed, she stared up at the darkness as the music filtered through the walls. For some reason, it didn't sound so mysterious anymore.
"Do you speak English?" her mother asked the well dressed woman who was seated on the settee of the downstairs parlor.
Her mother had insisted that they mingle with the other guests, so they had gone, baby and all, down to take afternoon tea with the bevy of people who accumulated at that hour.
So now she was seated in one of the plush but worn chairs, perfectly straight and still, holding her tea-cup in one hand and her plate with its small, solitary biscuit in the other.
She sipped at the hot tea carefully, pinching her lips at the heat of the bitter liquid.
Susan did not like tea.
She carefully replaced the cup on the plate, not wanting to spill any of the beverage on her white voile day-dress, and then began to nibble at the tiny biscuit. She wanted to make it last as long as possible, because her mother had said only the one.
She turned her gaze to the woman her mother had addressed. A gray haired, buxom woman, dressed in a full skirt, spencer jacket, and a massive bustle. Susan wondered how she walked, let alone sat in that costume.
And apparently she did not speak English, for she immediately answered her mother in French, talking endlessly about who knows what, but looking directly at her. Perhaps she thought her mother spoke French?
"You see Susan? This is why I want you to study the languages," her mother said, somewhat flustered. She then turned back to the woman and tried to make her understand that she didn't speak French.
Uninterested in learning French, Susan looked at the other occupants of the room. There was her father cradling the baby in the chair next to her, and two young women with heavy French accents were accosting him for permission to hold the child. There was also an extremely elderly man on a chaise. Susan wondered how he could sleep with the hubbub in the room.
He was awfully still. Maybe he was dead?
She decided to investigate, so she walked toward the man, quickly finishing the biscuit and washing it down with a sip of the cooling tea.
She carefully balanced her tea-cup in both hands as she gazed at him. His many wrinkles and thin white hair spoke of death, so much so that she was almost afraid to be near to him. She thought she could see his chest rising, but it was so slight she wasn't certain.
She was mustering the courage to poke him, just to be sure, when suddenly the boy she had seen the other day jumped up from under the chaise with a loud cry of "boo!"
Susan squealed in surprise and stumbled backwards, spilling the tea all over her dress and falling hard on the parlor rug. The liquid had already soaked through the thin layers of her skirts, and was now dampening her stockings.
The old man sat up with a start at the activity around him, effectively proving to Susan that he was alive despite his appearance.
The boy started laughing incessantly, but he stopped abruptly when the flamboyantly dressed French matron cried out in a shrill, patronizing voice.
"Adrien! Vous venez ici!" The boy grew pale and walked toward the woman as Susan slowly righted herself, placing the now empty tea-cup on its saucer. She watched with interest as the woman berated the boy in French. She decided he must be her grandson.
After some telling gestures from his grandmother, the boy walked sullenly over to the old man and said something to him in French. The man, clearly angered from having his rest disturbed, stomped out of the room with a vigor he should not have at his age, muttering all the while.
The boy seemed unaffected and turned to Susan just as she stood up, trying to hold her wet stained skirts away from her.
"Je suis désolé. I am sorry," he said to her. She might have believed him were it not for the poorly suppressed snicker and mischievous gleam in his eyes as he glanced down at her soiled skirts. She made a face at him and he simply walked back to his grandmother, putting on a fake look of repentance.
But his grandmother said something else to him which brought a look of shock and true discontent to his face. The woman then turned to Susan's mother and said something, to which Susan's mother shook her head.
"I'm sorry, I—" but she was cut off by the French boy.
"My grandmother says she is sorry for my rude behavior to your daughter and if it happens again she will box my ears," he mumbled, eyes downcast.
"Oh," Susan's mother raised her eyebrows in surprise, "Well, tell your grandmother that isn't necessary. My daughter should not have been behaving in such an unladylike fashion. Honestly Susan," she turned to her, "staring at a gentleman while he sleeps? Just what were you thinking?"
Susan was too shocked to answer, and was saved from having to do so as the boy began translating to his grandmother, and she replied back.
"My grandmother says yes, children are not as behaved as they were in her day," the boy spoke for her again.
Susan's mother smiled and sat down next to the woman on the settee.
"They really aren't. I must tell you about the time…"
Susan tuned out her mother's voice as she set the tea-cup and plate back upon the tea service. She started toward the lobby when her father caught her by the arm.
"Really dear, you must learn to behave," he said with a calm but direct gaze, "Now run along and change. Leave your dress in the laundry for the maids."
When he released her, Susan ran from the parlor through the lobby and up the stairs.
She had intended to go to her room and cry for awhile, but a change in the hallway scenery caught her attention.
Outside the door the man had emerged from that morning, was a cart with a dinner tray. It appeared to be untouched, except possibly for the tea. Most of the food was covered, but there was one dish that was not.
Susan forgot about her soiled dress as she moved forward and stared at the plate that held the two large chocolatines.
That biscuit had been so tiny. And it appeared as though the man would not be taking his supper. It would be a shame to waste such finely prepared pastries.
"Susan!" she jumped at the sound of her mother's voice, "Come away from there this instant and attend to your washing. Look, even your stockings were soiled. Go on now, get to it!"
Susan hurried into the suite and to her room, where she hastily began changing. The foreign music was still playing, she noticed, and it seemed to be slightly louder than before.
From her parents' room, she heard the baby begin to cry, and her mother's soft voice trying to calm it.
Susan heard her father enter the suite, and her mother went to the sitting room to greet him.
"Will you please speak to the gentleman?" Susan heard her mother address her father, "The baby cannot sleep with all that opera playing."
"I doubt the fellow would be sympathetic."
"What do you mean?"
"You remember those young French ladies in the parlor? They told me all about him."
"Oh?" Susan could hear her mother's suspicion in that one word after her father had mentioned the young women, but he either ignored it or did not notice.
"They used to have a suite on this level, but moved downstairs because the fellow in 119 never turns off that gramophone."
Susan did not know what a gramophone was. But the idea of something that could make all that music fascinated her. And what was opera?
She finished tying the sash on the dress she had changed into, and opened her door a crack to listen.
"Never?" her mother spluttered, "But we can hardly sleep let alone the baby. You must ask him to turn it off at least for a few hours of the day so the baby can nap. And certainly at night so we can all sleep."
"It would do no good Pearl. Apparently the man has been here for over two months already, and has done nothing but listen to Verdi's operas since the day he moved in."
"Well that is certainly queer!" her mother said, still upset.
"And the ladies said he never leaves that room either, and when bothered he only increases the volume of the music."
"Well! Of all the inconsiderate, ill-mannered things to do! Really Manfred, I do not understand the French culture sometimes."
"Oh, but this fellow is English."
"No, he couldn't possibly?"
"That is what the ladies told me," Susan saw her mother bristle slightly at the mention of the ladies, "And I've seen the man myself. This morning when Susan ran out of the room she disturbed him enough to give him cause to open the door. He is most decidedly English in his appearance."
"What? Susan ran…?" At that moment her mother glanced toward her room and saw Susan peeking out. Susan tightened her grip on the doorknob, knowing what was to come next.
"Susan!" she was surprised only in that it was her father's voice and not her mother's, "Come here."
That she had not expected, but she obeyed, her bare feet making no sound on the dark hardwood floor as she approached her judgment.
Her mother opened her mouth to speak as she approached, but her father silenced her with a glance.
"Susan, it is impolite to listen to other people's private conversations." Susan thought of telling her father that she could hear through the walls, but realized it would only be seen as defiance. So she nodded her head in agreement and was immediately sent back to her room, her parents having no need of her after administering the reprimand.
"Oh, and Susan?" she turned from her door to meet her mother's eyes, "Do try to learn some of the French language. I would like to think your education was not too terribly set back by our little holiday."
Susan did not answer, but entered her room and continued her dressing, trying to focus on the music instead of her parents' voices.
The music, which had terrified her only hours before, had become a strange sort of comfort in this place.
Exactly where did the music come from? What was this gramophone?
And what was opera? The way her mother spoke of it, it seemed as though she meant the music itself.
There was only one logical course of action. She would have to find the answers to all of her questions, she decided, as she fastened the last buttons of her boots.
Author's notes: I'm leaving ample clues, but if you're still confused I don't blame you. But I will leave nothing unexplained, so fear not; the solution will soon present itself.
