the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel, she said. She did not smile.
Thank you, the man said. We have a reservation.
Your name?
He told the woman his name.
Ah yes, she said. We’ve been expecting you. Did you have a pleasant journey?
It’s been a difficult journey, the man said.
It often is, the woman behind the desk allowed. Your passports?
The man handed these over and they were duly scrutinized and returned. Then the woman turned around and contemplated a huge warren of cubbyholes, each containing an enormous key. She reached her arm up and plucked a key from one of the highest cells. She turned back to them and laid the large iron key, which was affixed to a heavy tasseled medallion, on the counter.
Five nineteen, she said. Your room may be chilly, but if you open the radiators it should warm up quickly. The bellboy is away at the moment, but if you leave your bags, he will bring them up to you later.
I think I can manage them, said the man.
The woman behind the counter said, The bar is open all night. She pointed toward the far end of the vast lobby, where a faint red light shone through a curtain of glass beads. But I am afraid the kitchen is closed.
There’s no food? the man asked.
I’m afraid not. Well, perhaps something inconsequential in the bar.
I just want to go to bed, the woman said. Let’s go.
You’re not hungry? he asked.
I just want to go to bed, she repeated, enunciating each word emphatically, as if it were she who was communicating in a second language, not the woman behind the counter.
The man sighed and lifted the heavy key off the counter and picked up their bags. In an apse behind the reception desk a grand staircase wound up through the dark heart of the building, and a small wire-caged elevator hung from cables in its center. The man opened the outer and inner gates. There was just enough room for the man, the woman, and their bags in the tiny cage, and the limited space forced them to stand so close to each other they almost touched. Their room was on the top floor—the fifth—and each landing they passed flung a skein of pale golden light through the intricately wrought bars of the elevator, so that a delicate pattern of shadow bloomed and faded, again and again and again and again, across their faces.
Surprisingly, the dark gloomy grandeur of the hotel did not extend into their room, which was large and sparsely furnished. The walls were paneled with sheets of fake plastic brick and the floor was covered with a gold shag rug that crunched disconcertingly beneath their feet. The room was, as the receptionist had predicted, very cold.
The woman dropped the bags she was carrying and sat upon the bed. She sat rather stiffly, staring intently at the faux-brick wall.
The man watched her for a moment, and said, How are you feeling?
She turned away from the wall and lay back upon the bed, gazing now at the ceiling. Fine, she said, given that I’m dying.
But we’re here, he said. Doesn’t that count for something?
After a moment she said, Do you want me to live?
What? he asked. Of course I do.
Do you?
Yes, he said.
I think if I were you I wouldn’t, she said.
Of course I do, he repeated.
I think I’d want me to die, she said. If I were you.
I want you to get better, he said. To live.
Perhaps you really do, she said. But it seems odd to me. I know what I’ve become. How I am. What I am.
He sat beside her on the bed and tried to hold her, bend her close to him, but her body remained stiffly upright. He stroked her arm, which felt as thin as a bone beneath her layers of clothing.
Of course you’re the way you are, he said. Anyone would be that way, under the circumstances. But if you recover, you won’t be.
But what if I don’t?
Don’t what?
Don’t recover. Or what if I recover my health, but don’t recover my—I don’t know. You know: myself. My joie de vivre. She gave a hollow laugh.
Of course you will, he said. How could you not?
I think it might be gone, she said. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be like this.
You’re exhausted, he said. But we’ve made it. We’re here.
I don’t feel it yet, she said. Do you feel it?
Yes.
Perhaps if I take a bath. That always changes things, doesn’t it? At least for me it