A Separation(5)

He is doing research.

The man held his hands up, as if I had said something unnecessary.

We will need to begin packing his room now. Perhaps you could accompany me?

I waited as he returned to the desk to retrieve a key. Together, we walked to Christopher’s room, which was located at the opposite end of the hotel, on the top floor, the man—whose name was Kostas, according to the badge that was pinned to his jacket—explained to me that Christopher had been staying in a suite. The room had wonderful views of the bay, should I decide to extend my stay, he could recommend it wholeheartedly, it would become available once the honeymoon couple left, perhaps by that point my husband would have returned.

When we reached the room at last, Kostas knocked on the door with the discreet but somehow still peremptory gesture common to hotel staff, his hand already on the knob—for a moment, I hallucinated a vision of the door opening and Christopher standing before us, surprised but not entirely displeased—and then Kostas unlocked the door and we entered.

The room was unrecognizable to me. Christopher was not fastidious by any means, but he was not slovenly and he rarely inhabited a space that was not clean (it was not that he tidied the space himself, he had people who did that for him—the cleaning lady, for a time it had been me). The room—although large, with a separate sitting area and a remarkable view, Kostas was right, it was an excellent room and must have been one of the more expensive at the hotel—was entirely disordered.

The floor was strewn with discarded clothes, at least several days’ worth, the desk was covered in books and papers, by the side of the bed there was a tangle of electrical cords, headphones, a camera, his laptop lay on the floor with the lid open at an oblique angle. There were remnants of room service trays, pots of coffee and half-empty bottles of water, even a plate covered in crumbs—I could not understand why the maid had not at least taken away the dirty dishes. Meanwhile the bed sat in the center of the room, unmade and covered in newspapers and notebooks.

The surfaces had been wiped and the floor vacuumed but it was almost as though the maid had worked around the mess, in order to preserve it. He told the maid not to touch anything, Kostas said. He shrugged. People make requests, we just follow orders. But you see—

He stepped to the wardrobe and opened the doors. More soiled laundry lay on the floor inside. Above, a selection of shirts and trousers, all of which I recognized—the patterns and fabrics, the minutely frayed hem on one of the cuffs. The sensation of being in the room remained one of severe dissociation and yet here—and here—and here—in these objects, which I had lived with for many years, there was a stab of recognition, the recollection of the owner, the man, who was here and also not here.

Kostas clapped his hands together.

So. We’ll pack it up? This is fine with you?

I nodded as I looked down at the papers and books. They were uniformly about Greece, there was even a Greek phrase book among them. I opened a notebook, but I could not decipher Christopher’s tight, messy script. I had never been able to read it. Kostas used the room phone to call the front desk and request a chambermaid, who appeared several minutes later and began packing the clothes. He apologized, but it was now nearly one, the new guests would be arriving at any moment and I could see there was a great deal to be done before the room would be ready.

My phone was ringing. I reached inside my pocket. It was Isabella, she had impeccable timing. I answered, a little short, but she didn’t notice, she didn’t even bother to say hello before she asked where Christopher was and if she could speak to him.

I could hear a recording of Britten’s Billy Budd playing in the background. Isabella and Mark were opera fanatics and had once taken us to see a production of this particular opera at Glyndebourne. It had been an unhappy expedition. By that point, the cracks in our marriage were beginning to show. Christopher and I were barely on speaking terms, but Isabella and Mark were blithely, almost aggressively unaware of the tension between us. There was something single-minded about their interest in opera, and never more so than on that evening.

I remembered sitting in the theater in a state of numbed contemplation—of the music, the awkwardness of the situation, I was not a fan of Britten, which did nothing to endear me to Christopher’s parents. Now, as I heard the familiar strains of music, I thought how integral distance was to the story, which takes place almost entirely at sea. Without that distance, even the basic mechanics of the plot would be impossible—no threat of mutiny, no reliance on martial law, no death of Billy Budd. If I did not care for the opera—the music was too dense, like staring at a stone wall—the story was still compelling, it offered the opportunity to peer into the world of men, in a different time, when men went away, to war or to sea.

Now, they no longer went away—there was not, at least for most of them, a sea to roam or a desert to cross, there was nothing but the floors of an office tower, the morning commute, a familiar and monotonous landscape, in which life became something secondhand, not something a man could own for himself. It was only on the shores of infidelity that they achieved a little privacy, a little inner life, it was only in the domain of their faithlessness that they became, once again, strangers to their wives, capable of anything.

Abruptly, the music cut off and Isabella repeated her question, Where is Christopher? After a brief pause as I stared at the room’s wreckage, I told her that I hadn’t found him. But you are there? You are in Mani? Yes. But Christopher isn’t here, he isn’t at the hotel. Then where is he? I don’t know, I said. He’s taken a trip somewhere, he hired a driver. His phone isn’t ringing, probably he left his charger—as I spoke, my eyes fell on the device’s cord, hanging limp in the socket by the bed—here at the hotel.