The Night Manager

She permitted Herr Meister to kiss her on both cheeks, Maitre Brandt on one. She smiled at Frau Loring. She placed her arms circumspectly round the undeveloped shoulders of Andre the pianist, who purred, "Madame." Only then did she approach Heir Kaspar.

"What are we wearing on our head, Kaspar?"

"Hair, Madame."

"Whose hair, Kaspar?"

"It is mine," Herr Kaspar replied with bearing.

"Take it off," Madame Archetti ordered. "Or you will never have another penny from me."

"I cannot take it off, Madame. My hair is part of my personality. It is integrated."

"Then dis-integrate it, Kaspar. Not now ― it is too complicated ― but for tomorrow morning. Otherwise nothing. What have you got at the theatre for me?"

"Othello, Madame."

"I shall look at you again in the morning. Who is playing him?"

"Leiser, Madame. The greatest Moor we have."

"We shall see."

Next morning at eight o'clock to the minute Herr Kaspar reappeared for duty, his crossed keys of office glinting like campaign medals from his lapels. And on his head, triumphantly, the emblem of his insurrection. All morning long a precarious hush prevailed in the lobby. The hotel guests, like the famous geese of Freiburg, said Frau Loring, were aware of the imminent explosion even if they did not know its cause. At midday, which was her hour, Madame Archetti emerged from the Tower Suite and descended the staircase on the arm of her prevailing swain, a promising young barber from Graz.

"But where is Herr Kaspar this morning?" she asked in Herr Kaspar's vague direction.

"He is behind his desk and at your service as ever, Madame," Herr Kaspar replied in a voice that, to those who heard it, echoed for all time in the halls of freedom. "He has the tickets for the Moor."

"I see no Herr Kaspar," Madame Archetti informed her escort. "I see hair. Tell him, please, we shall miss him in his obscurity."

"It was his trumpet blast," Frau Loring liked to end. "From the moment that woman entered the hotel, Herr Kaspar could not escape his destiny."

And tonight is my trumpet blast, thought Jonathan, waiting to receive the worst man in the world.

* * *

Jonathan was worrying about his hands, which as usual were immaculate and had been so ever since he had been the subject of spot fingernail inspections at his army school. At first he had kept them curled at the embroidered seams of his trousers, in the posture drummed into him on the parade ground. But now, without his noticing, they had linked themselves behind his back with a handkerchief twisted between them, for he was painfully conscious of the sweat that kept forming in his palms.

Transferring his worries to his smile, Jonathan checked it for faults in the mirrors either side of him. It was the Smile of Gracious Welcome that he had worked up during his years in the profession: a sympathetic smile but a prudently restrained one, for he had learned by experience that guests, particularly very rich ones, could be tetchy after a demanding journey, and the last thing they needed on arrival was a night manager grinning at them like a chimpanzee.

His smile, he established, was still in place. His feeling of nausea had not dislodged it. His tie, self-tied as a signal to the better guests, was pleasingly insouciant. His hair, though nothing to match Herr Kaspar's, was his own and, as usual, in the sleekest order.

It's a different Roper, he announced inside his head. Complete misunderstanding, whole thing. Nothing whatever to do with her. There are two, both traders, both living in Nassau. But Jonathan had been going back and forth through that hoop ever since half past five this afternoon, when, arriving in his office for duty, he had heedlessly picked up Herr Strippli's list of the evening's arrivals and seen the name Roper in electronic capitals, screaming at him from the computer printout.

Roper R. O., party of sixteen, arriving from Athens by private jet, expected 2130 hours, followed by Herr Strippli's hysterical annotation: "VIP!" Jonathan called up the public relations file on his screen. Roper R. O. and the letters OBG after him, which was the coy house code for bodyguard, O standing for "official" and official meaning licensed by the Swiss federal authorities to bear a sidearm. Roper, OBG, business address Ironbrand Land, Ore & Precious Metals Company of Nassau, home address a box number in Nassau, credit assured by the Zürich Bank of Somebody. So how many Ropers were there in the world with the initial R and firms called Ironbrand? How many more coincidences had God got up His sleeve?

"Who on earth is Roper R. O. when he's at home?" Jonathan asked of Herr Strippli in German while he affected to busy himself with other things.

"He's a British, like you."

It was Strippli's maddening habit to reply in English though Jonathan's German was better.

"Not like me at all, actually. Lives in Nassau, trades in precious metals, banks in Switzerland ― why's that like me?" After their months of incarceration together, their quarrels had acquired a marital pettiness.