gruntingslime
05-07-2010, 09:09 AM
I don't intend to finish this story. All that I had in mind when beginning it has slowly come to naught. It's unedited, so I apologize for its choppiness.
Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu
The back windows of the 14 story Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu looked out onto the beach. You were least lucky if you got a room on either side of the hotel and had to look out at the grey walls of your neighbors. Just sometimes were these the most prized rooms, where unforgettable friendships were consummated in window love with the figurine from across the way. No one ever looked out of the front windows, unless they were interested in the rusty brown walls of smoking lounges where goggle-eyed comrades teased each other, puffing on water pipes, kicking their feet under the tables in red or yellow slippers with curled toes.
Because I had advanced into a seasoned guest at the Dipsiz Kuyu, I spent my days wandering through the halls noticing some new treasure every day, like tortoiseshell flower pots hanging under the light fixtures sporting genuine fauna with senile pink blossoms.
One day—I think it was in the beginning of the month of August, when the hotel is really much more crowded than in the other seasons—In fact, often during the months of October and November the hotel is open entirely for my benefit and, a few years back, one other room full of guests whom I’d known since childhood, but all of which had recently died—I was coming out of the door to my room when I was accosted by a young man with a black hat and thick curly hair that sprouted out beneath it. I had seen this man twice before, once on one of my prolonged strolls as he was coming out of an elevator—at that time he had seemed too flustered to have noticed me, although it later appeared that he had—and another time, as I was coming back from one of my walks, he was hanging out of a door two rooms down from my own, eyeing me suspiciously—it seemed as if he had just recently changed rooms as if on purpose, because I had seem him come out of the elevator on another floor and enter a room there. But maybe I’m mistaken and that other hadn’t been his room at all, because now he stood before me, apparently he had been waiting, without knocking, and introduced himself as Mister Torpor, and asked me if I’d seen his “woman. She ran off the other day and won’t see me. But I know she skulks these halls, and you skulk them too.” He told me she wore a nylon sun hat “More like a thing for funerals.” with a garland of red roses. “If you see her tell her to—” did he say, “get to my room.” or “how to get to my room.”? Anyway, I bid him good day and decided, for the woman’s sake, to forget him. He watched me leave.
I had a room on the 14th floor, and took the stairs down to the 10th. The top three flights hadn’t been left unrenovated when the hotel was built. It was my favorite part of the hotel, the only place you could get the genuine feel of cement slab walls and bronze railings. The 10th floor stood out from every other floor in the hotel; its only two rooms on the east side of the building, petering into an overhang. The walls in the hallway were blue like deep under the sea.
At the end of the hall the door to the room facing the beach was left open, as I knew it would be. A cluster of distant family relations sat at a round table pulled into the middle of the room, each of them faced with their back to the door, looking out the letterbox window that extended the whole of the southern wall down at the beach.
There was one troubled youth—younger than all the rest, though not by a decade, the only one without pitch black hair, it was a pale brown—who was up and staggering around the table, desperately throwing up his arms and thrusting forth his jaw at the others, trying to convince them “Cousins. Don’t you want to go out there? Cousins?” His face was pale and coated with so much sweat that it dripped from his hair. “Brother. Let’s go out. We only have—even less than a week! Brother? Come, let’s do something. We have to do something now that we’re here, or what’s the point? Cousins?” But none of them were looking at him, their bodies were all turned and they stared, riveted, out the window, as if at an action-packed screen. The youth flung himself here and flopped himself there, as if blown in the winds of despair, always darting his eyes if they happened to land on me, but as he passed the door he nudged it further open with his foot, as if by accident.
I finally decided to go back to my room and took the elevator, thinking I would only stop there for a moment to pick up my wallet which I had not planned on using, but hunger had since grown within me. I stared down at my feet, through the elevator’s transparent glass floor, and basked in the feeling of light-headedness as the ground was pulled out from under me.
I passed down the pleasing peace halls to my room, marking with satisfaction that Mister Torpor’s door was silent and closed.
I entered my own room, and on second thought closed the door behind me and stood, looking over the artificial surroundings: at my over made bed with three covers and two sheets and a comforter turned down halfway, at the sterile wooden night table with its screwed down lamp, and the bare desk on scrawny wooden legs on the other side of the room. I had packed away all my belongings and suitcase in the closet by the door.
Then I sat on the bed and took my wallet from the night table drawer and indulged in my view from the window. There was rarely a person on the beach, apart from peddlers who stood behind stalls put together with two posts and a striped curtain top, usually white and red or green, maybe one or two lonely people wandered the stand with transfixed eyes stuck open, they were the kinds of people who had jelly tentacles where their limbs should have been, helplessly alone, probably wondering where everyone else had gone.
It was time to go down and eat, for the sake of filling the tank above all else. I decided to get the most mileage out of my fuel and take the stairs, consoling myself with the thought that, if anything happened, I could always take the rail, or at least trust myself to gravity and write off a couple of bumps or twists. I had always thought that hardship was good for development. If the **** ever hit the fan I’d be prepared to take it in the face with a smile like the best of them.
So I went trotting down the stairs, pleased with myself and the repeat of the three cement stories. I was looking up, trying to catch a new crack in the ceiling, or a pocket of cold air, when my foot slid on something soft. I was up in the air thinking Oh no, now you’ve really done it, and came down hard on my tail. I put to immediate practice my trick of ignorance and searched the stairs for the one detail I’d missed turned angel of death out of scorn. There lay a little black glove, sprawled out on a higher step, discarded and collapsed like a corpse of its own, it seemed as though my scorn had done more damage that its fury. I was about to take it, delicately of course, and bring it down in an open palm for retrieval at the desk, but quickly rechecked my follies and left it, for its owner was likely to come back and despair of its absence.
So I continued my trot, when I realized how silly I was being. Wasn’t it just as possible the owner had checked out? and discarded the glove because of the heat?
The lobby of Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu would have been the heart of fashion in the smoky fifties, with the manager standing one foot before the counter in slick prated hair and a pinstripe moustache—bell-boys in tuxes. But when the times started moving the clientele morphed into half-breeds and preferred customers who checked in only for the hour.
Entering the lobby and getting a load of the low hanging yellow light-fixtures and being mesmerized by the suspicious bustle made up only of hotel staff, you looked into the adjoining restaurant with aquamarine walls and a patio sitting over a daytime pool.
(Break in narrative)
Then I saw the lady of roses and thorns, and sure enough she was wearing her funeral sunhat decked in roses.
Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu
The back windows of the 14 story Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu looked out onto the beach. You were least lucky if you got a room on either side of the hotel and had to look out at the grey walls of your neighbors. Just sometimes were these the most prized rooms, where unforgettable friendships were consummated in window love with the figurine from across the way. No one ever looked out of the front windows, unless they were interested in the rusty brown walls of smoking lounges where goggle-eyed comrades teased each other, puffing on water pipes, kicking their feet under the tables in red or yellow slippers with curled toes.
Because I had advanced into a seasoned guest at the Dipsiz Kuyu, I spent my days wandering through the halls noticing some new treasure every day, like tortoiseshell flower pots hanging under the light fixtures sporting genuine fauna with senile pink blossoms.
One day—I think it was in the beginning of the month of August, when the hotel is really much more crowded than in the other seasons—In fact, often during the months of October and November the hotel is open entirely for my benefit and, a few years back, one other room full of guests whom I’d known since childhood, but all of which had recently died—I was coming out of the door to my room when I was accosted by a young man with a black hat and thick curly hair that sprouted out beneath it. I had seen this man twice before, once on one of my prolonged strolls as he was coming out of an elevator—at that time he had seemed too flustered to have noticed me, although it later appeared that he had—and another time, as I was coming back from one of my walks, he was hanging out of a door two rooms down from my own, eyeing me suspiciously—it seemed as if he had just recently changed rooms as if on purpose, because I had seem him come out of the elevator on another floor and enter a room there. But maybe I’m mistaken and that other hadn’t been his room at all, because now he stood before me, apparently he had been waiting, without knocking, and introduced himself as Mister Torpor, and asked me if I’d seen his “woman. She ran off the other day and won’t see me. But I know she skulks these halls, and you skulk them too.” He told me she wore a nylon sun hat “More like a thing for funerals.” with a garland of red roses. “If you see her tell her to—” did he say, “get to my room.” or “how to get to my room.”? Anyway, I bid him good day and decided, for the woman’s sake, to forget him. He watched me leave.
I had a room on the 14th floor, and took the stairs down to the 10th. The top three flights hadn’t been left unrenovated when the hotel was built. It was my favorite part of the hotel, the only place you could get the genuine feel of cement slab walls and bronze railings. The 10th floor stood out from every other floor in the hotel; its only two rooms on the east side of the building, petering into an overhang. The walls in the hallway were blue like deep under the sea.
At the end of the hall the door to the room facing the beach was left open, as I knew it would be. A cluster of distant family relations sat at a round table pulled into the middle of the room, each of them faced with their back to the door, looking out the letterbox window that extended the whole of the southern wall down at the beach.
There was one troubled youth—younger than all the rest, though not by a decade, the only one without pitch black hair, it was a pale brown—who was up and staggering around the table, desperately throwing up his arms and thrusting forth his jaw at the others, trying to convince them “Cousins. Don’t you want to go out there? Cousins?” His face was pale and coated with so much sweat that it dripped from his hair. “Brother. Let’s go out. We only have—even less than a week! Brother? Come, let’s do something. We have to do something now that we’re here, or what’s the point? Cousins?” But none of them were looking at him, their bodies were all turned and they stared, riveted, out the window, as if at an action-packed screen. The youth flung himself here and flopped himself there, as if blown in the winds of despair, always darting his eyes if they happened to land on me, but as he passed the door he nudged it further open with his foot, as if by accident.
I finally decided to go back to my room and took the elevator, thinking I would only stop there for a moment to pick up my wallet which I had not planned on using, but hunger had since grown within me. I stared down at my feet, through the elevator’s transparent glass floor, and basked in the feeling of light-headedness as the ground was pulled out from under me.
I passed down the pleasing peace halls to my room, marking with satisfaction that Mister Torpor’s door was silent and closed.
I entered my own room, and on second thought closed the door behind me and stood, looking over the artificial surroundings: at my over made bed with three covers and two sheets and a comforter turned down halfway, at the sterile wooden night table with its screwed down lamp, and the bare desk on scrawny wooden legs on the other side of the room. I had packed away all my belongings and suitcase in the closet by the door.
Then I sat on the bed and took my wallet from the night table drawer and indulged in my view from the window. There was rarely a person on the beach, apart from peddlers who stood behind stalls put together with two posts and a striped curtain top, usually white and red or green, maybe one or two lonely people wandered the stand with transfixed eyes stuck open, they were the kinds of people who had jelly tentacles where their limbs should have been, helplessly alone, probably wondering where everyone else had gone.
It was time to go down and eat, for the sake of filling the tank above all else. I decided to get the most mileage out of my fuel and take the stairs, consoling myself with the thought that, if anything happened, I could always take the rail, or at least trust myself to gravity and write off a couple of bumps or twists. I had always thought that hardship was good for development. If the **** ever hit the fan I’d be prepared to take it in the face with a smile like the best of them.
So I went trotting down the stairs, pleased with myself and the repeat of the three cement stories. I was looking up, trying to catch a new crack in the ceiling, or a pocket of cold air, when my foot slid on something soft. I was up in the air thinking Oh no, now you’ve really done it, and came down hard on my tail. I put to immediate practice my trick of ignorance and searched the stairs for the one detail I’d missed turned angel of death out of scorn. There lay a little black glove, sprawled out on a higher step, discarded and collapsed like a corpse of its own, it seemed as though my scorn had done more damage that its fury. I was about to take it, delicately of course, and bring it down in an open palm for retrieval at the desk, but quickly rechecked my follies and left it, for its owner was likely to come back and despair of its absence.
So I continued my trot, when I realized how silly I was being. Wasn’t it just as possible the owner had checked out? and discarded the glove because of the heat?
The lobby of Hotel Dipsiz Kuyu would have been the heart of fashion in the smoky fifties, with the manager standing one foot before the counter in slick prated hair and a pinstripe moustache—bell-boys in tuxes. But when the times started moving the clientele morphed into half-breeds and preferred customers who checked in only for the hour.
Entering the lobby and getting a load of the low hanging yellow light-fixtures and being mesmerized by the suspicious bustle made up only of hotel staff, you looked into the adjoining restaurant with aquamarine walls and a patio sitting over a daytime pool.
(Break in narrative)
Then I saw the lady of roses and thorns, and sure enough she was wearing her funeral sunhat decked in roses.