by Arezu Weitholz
sample from the novel „Hotel Paraíso“, published 2024 by mare, Hamburg
foreign rights: Literarische Agentur Kossack
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
(W.B.Yeats)
Here, there are no windblown trees, the wind comes from all sides. Here, it is easy to forget, who you were.
(from the notebook)
Sooner or later you´ll want to know if I ever found my biological parents. Yes, I did. Did I meet them? Yes. And how was that you´d ask me then. It doesn´t matter I´d tell you. I can´t say anything familiar about them. What is strange is not my origin, even though that could become an interesting novella. What´s strange is you. Other people.
Everything is true. Nothing is accurate. You choose.
extract
page 45.
The waiter addresses me in Portuguese. They always talk to me in their native tongue. It has nothing to do with how I look. In Sweden they talk Swedish to me, in Finland Finnish, in Italy Italian, in Spain Spanish. Maybe it´s because I act as if I belong here. I have been practising belonging since I was seventeen. Whenever I go to a new place, I act if I have been there already at least a hundred times. I do that in restaurants, in airports, in department stores, in offices, at universities. Even at a party, where I don´t know anybody, because I am the plus one of somebody, I barely know myself. I look around, faking boredom, while in reality my eyes are scanning the room: Where does that door lead to, where is the bar, who is talking to whom, what kind of music is on, is somebody dancing, is somebody looking at me, and if yes, how. What are the others wearing, does my outfit stand out. Cigarettes used to help, you had something in your hand, had something to do, back then people smoked everywhere, in toilets, in trains, in planes. What helps too is ignoring what could go wrong. By the way, I believe courage has a lot to do with intentional blindness.
In English I order an Americano and I ask myself why we always order coffee when we simple want to sit somewhere? Why can´t you order an eight minute sit down on a chair plus a visit to the bathroom? The coffee is just a parking ticket.
Four elderly people are sitting at the other end of the terrace. “Rüstig” – a word, that tastes of copper. Their Nordic walking sticks are leaning against their chairs. What a joy it must be, being old, hanging out in Portugal, the sun shines, you have company and walking sticks to support you in the sand.
They are German. I listen in.
“We come every year for three weeks, at least. – Us, too. Four weeks this time. – We´re staying till after New Year´s. – We´re going to Olhão soon. It´s near Faro. You have to go. – Do they have good coffee? – Oh, yes. The coffee´s amazing. You have to order Galão. – How do you spell that? – I´ve no idea how you spell it. If you´re in Olhão, go to the harbour, there´s a café there. Just sit down and say ‘Galão`. Wonderful! – Yes, we´ll do that.”
The man with the horn-rimmed glasses gets up, stops at my table, points to the rest of my uneaten cheese sandwich. Is it any good, he wants to know. In English.
“Why don´t you try”, I answer him in German, “I cannot eat any more.”
He hesitates, but maybe because he is too old to feel awkward, he picks it up, takes a bite, chews and says with his mouth full, “Oh, the Oregano is amazing!”
I smile, because we agree even though we are strangers.
“Where are you from?”, he asks.
“From Berlin”, I answer.
“Ah, the air in Berlin” he says, and I refrain from telling him that the air in Berlin is among the worst in Germany.
My grandfather always used to ask the same thing: “Where are you from?” To him people were like maps. He wanted to know the names of the childs´ parents, the mother´s maiden name, where they lived, with whom they worked, until he found somebody he knew, so he could say “Ach, Heini from Holtensen! We went to school together. He married into Groß-Lyhren, a Riechers, and her sister had herself a son, and that´s your dad? No, your uncle? You don´t say!” When I visited other childrens´ houses nobody asked me that. But to my grandfather this was important.
If I was asked “Where are you from?” I always hesitated for a split second. The petrol station was my home. That was where we all lived, where we worked and ate and talked and played although, the adults never played, they were always working. The bungalow was the house to which we returned in the evenings: first my mother with me in her car, my dad following later on foot or in another car. Most of the time he drove. The distance between the petrol station and the bungalow was only 600 metres, but they wanted to park their cars at “home”.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that in a novel places like petrol stations are easily forgotten because they blend into nothingness after you´ve described them. They are non-places.
Let me tell you about our petrol station.
It was a Shell garage, with a huge yellow and red scallop hanging on a high pole above the roof. Back then, we didn´t know yet about the Exxon Valdez oil spill or other environmental disasters, so as a child I was incredibly proud of the shell. For me it was a bit like the emblem of an exclusive club to which only we were admitted: my dad, my mum, my grandparents and I.
During the 70s, our petrol station was identified by this pole and our big, white petrol station roof. We had three pumps for petrol and diesel, a small pump for two-stroke-fuel, a carwash, two garages, and also a disused blacksmiths, an electrical workshop, a shop for lamps and electronic appliances. There was a constant coming and going of people, cars, tractors, motorbikes and mopeds – so as far as I was concerned, this was where life was truly lived.
As a child I used to play with tin cars, cables, phase-testers and luster terminals. I performed petrol-duty, meaning, I guarded a silver book, in which the villagers would write down the amount of fuel that they owed, and once a month they came to pay. I sold fan-belts, spark plugs, light bulbs, jump leads, windshield wipers and motor oil. Sometimes I washed cars, cleaned car windows, pumped two stroke fuel, and on Sundays I sold “Bild am Sonntag” from a kidney shaped table in the filling station office. To this day, when I smell petrol, I feel a slight drag in my tummy, that one could confuse with homesickness.
So, any time I was asked where I was from, I´d say, “the petrol station.” Come to think of it that must have stung my mother a little. The bungalow was her kingdom, immaculate, modern, filled with the latest kitchen appliances, marble and parquet floors, a fireplace permanently without fire, wallpapers in gold, white and blue, all of it surrounded by a well-tended garden with a lawn and bright red geraniums growing from a small and elegant balcony. My parents even planned to build a swimming pool in the basement but, due to the 1970s energy crisis, never got round to finishing it. Apart from a big hole in our cellar, our bungalow was a bit like somebody all dressed up for the dance, waiting to be picked up.
I wasn´t allowed to touch anything in the kitchen; shoes had to be left at the entrance in the hallway. When I closed a door behind me, I could hear a rubbing noise from the other side: my mother, removing invisible spots of grease, where my hand had touched the wood. Back then I told myself I would never inherit this mania for cleaning. And look at me today. Everything parallel on the desk, no piles, no clutter. I get nervous when I don´t know where things are.
When I’d wake up my father would already be at the workshop, my grandfather at the petrol station and my grandmother busy laying the table for breakfast. My mother and I would drive the 600 metres down the hill, we’d have breakfast together and I´d walk to school from there. For lunch my grandmother would leave a plate to be warmed up since people in the countryside always eat at noon, not at 2pm when I came home. Coffee and cake were always at 4pm.
Early on my life took place between two places. In the in between.
After the buildings were sold, I avoided driving through the village. I took detours. I didn´t want to see their decay. Eventually, the new owner tore everything down. Today tractors park there.
I head back to the Paraíso. It´s already four in the afternoon and I haven´t done anything this morning except feed the birds, collect flotsam and wander around, thinking. The electric gate grinds open, and there it is, the empty hotel. The cones of the Araucarias look like worms, they lie everywhere on the cobbles of the driveway. The stillness of the hotel, surrounded by the sound of the waves. Is anybody there? Who knows.
Suddenly a flash of black fur runs towards me. “Otto!”, I shout and see João approaching, carrying a huge bag. The black Labrador hops up and down.
“This is his stuff”, says João and hands me the bag. Rubber balls, food, bowls, blankets, a leash and a plastic toy, resembling a naked chicken, that looks like it´s been run over by a car.
“The chicken is called Frango”, João says, “he loves it. If he is scared he fetches Frango. If he is happy he fetches Frango. If he likes somebody he fetches Frango.”
“Frango”, I repeat and think how beautiful it must be, when a chicken can be everything.
João hands me a piece of paper of Otto-speak, a mix of Portuguese, German and English. Chega means off, Fica means stay. Otto loves oysters and smelly cheese. But he´s got some things the wrong way round. When you say “down” he sits. When you say “sit” he lies down.
“So, you suffer from left-right confusion, too”, I say.
Otto wags his tail. Suddenly questions run through my mind. Questions, I hadn´t thought of before. What if he runs away? What if he runs away and doesn´t come back? What if he runs away and hurts himself? What if he doesn´t like me?
Later I learn that walking the dog has nothing to do with the concept of me walking him.
“Chega!”, I yell.
He doesn´t listen.
“Fica!”, I yell.
He is obviously deaf.
“Otto!”, I yell, picturing myself, a German woman screaming “Otto!”, pulled through a Portuguese village by a black dog.
He drags me down the road, along the shuttered apartment houses and empty hotels. Here and there he leaves his mark, abruptly changing direction, almost dislocating my shoulder. The familiar surroundings drive him crazy, as if he wants to mark the whole world in a hectic zigzag. I don´t want to hurt him, so I let him pull me through the abandoned holiday village like a stuffed human toy. At the turning that leads back to the Paraíso, he wants to go straight ahead, his nose close to the bushes and corners, but I have had enough. I stop. He almost throttles himself. Panting, he trots back, sits down, as if nothing has happened.
When the electric gates close behind us, I take the leash off and he races off. He runs between the trees, back to me, circles an Orange tree, throws himself onto the lawn, sprawls, jumps up, vanishes behind the spa building, returns, a yellow chewy ball in his jaw, hops up and down, and when the ball squeaks I realise why people have dogs, to keep reminding them what it´s like to have fun.
When I was a child, dogs and cats were wise not to show up in our backyard. Whenever one made it into our garden, the adults chased it away. For mysterious reasons everybody, except me, hated dogs and cats. Maybe, no surely, this had something to do with the war.
I hear my steps in the hallway. Otto trots behind me. We go up to the first floor, then down again. The floor is covered with plastic, every mirror is veiled, empty vases sit on the dressers. I listen to the waves. A deserted hotel doesn´t breathe. An empty hotel awaits.
“When you air the rooms, leave a light on at night”, the owner had advised. “Choose rooms at random and go at different times. Sometimes a night porter is there too but even he comes and goes irregularly.”
I fetch three keys from the main office. Rooms number 7, number 3 and number 2 are on the ground floor. Inside the rooms are gloomy. Cushions piled upon the mattresses. Every room is decorated in beige, brown, white, only the bathrooms are tiled with coloured Azulejos, those famous Portuguese tiles that owe their name to Moorish architecture and culture. In the past, they were made in Portugal, painted, fired and glazed. These days they are imported by ship from a factory in Morocco. I know this because the owner told me.
During the summer months, the bare terracotta floor must feel gloriously cool on your feet. When it is hot outside, too hot, you will want to sit in the shade on the terrace, under the Bougainvilleas and the Ivy, drinking ice-tea. Maybe you sit there and wear a sun hat with a wide rim, a book on the table that you are too tired to read. Measuring the seconds in waves.
I open the terrace door. Light and the sound of waves come in, followed by cool air. I lie down on the bed. Otto sits on the floor. What fills a room, when it´s empty? Or isn´t it empty at all? Are the memories of the guests still here? Did they just roll under the bed or vanish in corners, like lost earrings or pieces of paper or cut toe-nails? Like children that were forgotten and get to live another life. A life into which they have to grow, because the new one doesn´t fit them, it´s too narrow at the feet and too wide around their shoulders.
When they were children, my grandparents used to walk ten, fifteen kilometres to school in the next village. Later, after the war, when travel was possible again, they would take the bus to Bad Salzuflen or go to Verdun with the War Graves Commission. My parents dreamed of Italy, but every summer we would go to the Baltic Sea, and every winter to the Harz mountains. Never too far away from home, just like swimming not too far away from the floating platform into the sea. This is how I travelled until I was seventeen. If I had become a famous philosopher, I would probably have been asked, “so, as a child you didn‘t know foreign places?” And I would answer, “no, quite the opposite. I knew more than one place where I did not feel at home.”
page 54