The Little Hotel Read Free

very high official; and Roger got the impression in a few minutes’ conversation that it was better not to inquire too much; better to leave things as they were. Roger, though inquisitive and suspicious, is prudent; and so we did leave it at that.
    Such scenes would take place in the morning, say. Then the Mayor would go off somewhere to Zurich or Evian-les-Bains or to his doctor. He never went to Geneva which is the nearest of all, because, he said, you met too many international types there, spies, globetrotters, who might recognize him; and he was here incognito. If in the hotel, he would dodge in and out of his room and the office talking to me or playing with my little boy, Olivier. The Mayor told me it wouldn’t be safe for him to hold too much property in his own name and he had so much now that he had to give some of it away. For one thing he would have to pay too many taxes; and then if the Russians came in he would be considered a bourgeois and stood up against a wall and shot. At this he would laugh loudly. Or, the Russians might just allot him one room in the back of the hotel, and where would be his advantage? He was always calculating how long it would take the Russians to occupy Belgium—seventeen hours at the most. He laughed a lot and did not seem to care; and he used to comfort us and laugh at the other guests who thought the Russians might drop in any day. Roger did not like this. He likes to take things seriously.
    People would gather round when the Mayor started to talk about the Swiss mountains, the foreign gold hidden there and what the Russians would do with it. All the guests became excited and Madame Blaise, who is from Basel, a rich town in a flat watery country, would say the Russians particularly wanted the flat country, the Rhine valley and the waterway to the sea; while Mrs Powell, the old American woman, would raise the dust about ‘the Swiss trading with the enemy’; and Madame Blaise would say roughly: ‘Why don’t the Americans use the atom bomb on the Russians now? A surprise attack. What are they playing games for?’ Mrs Trollope, an English lady who had spent all her life in the East, would say quite unexpected things, such as:
    ‘I don’t see why the Russians wouldn’t win. We are always shouting all our secrets from the housetops. They only have to wait.’
    Mrs Powell, who was partly deaf, would say to me, in her loud rough way: ‘There are communists even in this country, in Switzerland. Why don’t you get busy and stand them all up against a wall?’
    To this everyone would agree, except the Mayor, who had been in a position of authority; and who would laugh at everyone, though why I never was sure. Naturally, he hated the Russians, but he would listen to each one with a quizzing smile; suddenly you would see a profound smile crease his face; and he would begin to laugh aloud. For example, on one occasion, Madame Blaise said she had it all planned. Her son was in New York, she herself had a lot of property in New York; she liked America and she was going to hire a plane and fly off. She said: ‘In any case, I have to go. I have millions lying there in different banks and I must make them give it back. That is why my son is there, waiting for me.’ At this moment the Mayor smiled profoundly, as if he had discovered a case of champagne; he burst out laughing. Madame Blaise seemed a large fat goose; don’t misunderstand me, I think she was a very cunning, very clever and very rich woman, but being a heavy rude selfish woman she was not quick to take a hint; so she simply went on saying:
    ‘The Americans are not such fine people; don’t think they care for us and our problems. For them it’s Number One; let them get their paws on our money and they stick to it. I have been fighting for years to get my money back and it is still sequestered. You see, it was war conditions; it could not be put in people’s own names; they had to trust Swiss people; and some of us did not