Page 12

Chapter Twelve

Remember there’s a war on? Remember there’s a war on? How could June forget! In addition to having a hotel full of enemy aliens, her day-to-day work was now increasingly complicated by issues that would have never come up in peacetime. The day before the diplomats’ arrival, the Grotto’s butter-pat machine had broken (ordinarily it made one hundred pats of butter a minute, but it quite suddenly began to only produce one extruded pat roughly in the shape of California). It would have to stay broken. It seemed to require a special part that was in high demand due to also being useful to some instrument of war, an unhappy coincidence that put the Avallon on the low side of priority. It was only the first. Her entire desk, in fact, was quickly covered with sloping stacks of PD-1A forms rejected by the War Production Board, leaving an increasing number of vacuums, tractors, and elevators without replacement parts. Three of her porters were drafted at once, forcing Griff to hastily promote and train three junior valets. They’d have a valet shortage later, but currently, so few people were allowed cars on the property that it was a problem for the future. In the staff canteen, staffers busily passed around images of legal versus illegal fashions. Anticipating shortages, the WPB had just set its sights on clothing. Hemlines, cuffs, balloon sleeves, belts: they all had to shrink for the war effort. Skirts with twelve pleats became skirts with eight. Five-inch wool belts became one-inch leather. Overcoats with gathered, waspish silhouettes became plainer and more dutiful. Pocket flaps atrophied. Dresses ebbed upward, knees coming into view with the change of tide. One-piece swimsuits became two, the precious inches of fabric previously covering midriffs now covering America’s fighting men.

“Pity the children!” said a maid.

“Baby clothes are exempt, Verna,” June told her. To the cafeteria worker: “Fruit salad, please.”

“Poor Zara’s wedding!” exclaimed a laundress.

“Wedding dresses are exempt, Bertha Mae.” To the next cafeteria worker: “One egg will do me fine, thanks. Oh I don’t mind if it’s sunny side. Whatever you have that no one else is eating.”

“Our uniforms aren’t in compliance!” said her guest history manager.

June tried to reassure them that the WPB wasn’t interested in existing uniforms or home-sewn clothes, which was what most of them were wearing anyway, but she could tell that soothing wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted to tug this rope back and forth until both ends were frayed. Energy was slowly building in the mountains. War fever.

June said, “There’s no law against mending, Luellen, only making.”

“I thought you said meddling,” said Luellen.

“You’d better hope there’s no law against that, either,” June said, “or they’d come for you tonight.”

Remember there’s a war on! Wretchedly, the diplomats were already getting bored. At the Avallon, boredom, like many maladies, generally only afflicted the young and the weak. Everyone else battled it with a robust schedule full of physical and mental stimulation. Winnet and tennis, horseback riding and swimming, taking in the mountains, taking in the water. All these were forbidden to the diplomats. And even if they were not, the diplomats had not chosen the Avallon. They could not forget this truth. Border Patrol agents swarmed the grounds. Avoiding the word detainees didn’t make the Avallon any less of a detention center.

A week into March, Angela Bickenbach said goodbye to Gerhard Bickenbach, the commercial attaché, on the Avallon’s front steps; her paperwork had finally been approved for her to take advantage of her American citizenship. When June had asked her how her husband felt about being repatriated to Germany without her, Angela had said, Obviously, he’s crushed , but she had sounded pleased. June had felt a little sorry for the future Angela Bickenbach. Present-day Angela was too overwhelmed by the intoxicating discovery that her husband still loved her enough to weep at losing her, combined with the lurching, chaotic joy of making a big, sweeping choice in a situation that had taken away most of them. Later, when her commercial attaché was in a different country and letters did not get delivered with reliability and news from the front sounded grim and the war dragged on over years and she began to dully realize she would never see Gerhard again, future Angela would perhaps wish that she’d lingered longer in the farewell.

Two other American wives were leaving that day with their children; June found these littles hard to watch. During their stay, the youngest members of the Japanese legation had been uncannily well-behaved, but on the front steps of the Avallon, these five mewled just as much as any American child might have. Even if the children had received a fairy-tale version of that day’s events, they could still see that their luggage was leaving the Avallon and their fathers were not.

One of the Japanese husbands, dry-eyed but gray-faced, formally shook the hand of his weeping son.

“I never thought I’d be feeling sympathy for Jerry and the Japs,” Griff said, “but this is a pretty rough deal.”

The windows of the hotel, including the one in room 411, were dark with watchers. In the closest faces, June saw both empathy and envy. How terrible to divide a family, they thought. How wonderful to fly the coop, they thought.

These weren’t lessons June wanted the sweetwater to learn.

After the American wives had departed, June begged the Swiss legation to find out if there were any new activities the Germans and Japanese were allowing the American diplomats to do (praying that “visiting hot springs” was not the answer). To her relief, she received a useful reply a few days later: they were allowing the Americans to read Approved Printed Material . One newspaper. Selected novels.

Yes! Novels! Stories! If Gilfoyle had lingered, he might have already suggested it; as a boy, he had always had a book on his person. When they played games on the back lawn, he stood like a flamingo, one foot on the ground, one leg crooked into a triangle, foot braced against his own knee, a book in his hand. After he and June had kissed their lips red and raw, he lay hidden away with her on his chest, a book in one hand while he absently stroked her hair with the other. He read the dullest possible texts, nonfiction and fiction alike groaning with naval encounters and military hardships and economic dalliances. Without these volumes, he became irritable and neurotic. He wouldn’t have lasted a day at the Avallon without them, much less a week or more.

What needed to be Approved about the Printed Materials ? The Swiss conductor told June that it was less about what was Approved than what was Disapproved .

Disapproved:

Information about American infrastructure

Themes of extreme nationalism

Narratives about rising up against captors

Narratives about running away into the mountains

Generalized espionage

The Triumph of Captain Future , by Edmond Hamilton (an addition by the Swiss conductor, who found it such an insult to literature that he felt neither Axis nor Allies should read it)

June mobilized a unit of staff members to search the hotel for suitable texts. Although most of the Avallon’s catalogue was nonfiction—law, geography, geometry, dead politics governing dead men—it had a respectable collection of fiction left behind by guests who only had time for stories while they were in the suspended landscape of the Avallon. After only a few hours, her staff had assembled a pile of Approved Printed Materials .

They would not present the books in a pile, of course. No, this was an excuse to let the Avallon do what the Avallon did best. A literary event, complete with music and themed refreshments, was exactly what was needed.

The water had cheered her up in the ballroom. It was time to return the favor.

Pull out all the stops , June told her staff. Remind the diplomats they are at the Avallon Hotel June sometimes wondered about her. At the time, the new attention from the Gilfoyle family had been all that odd young June could ponder, but older June wondered what circumstances had led to Sandy, an obedient and expensive child, getting away from his nanny. Sandy only barely remembered the day himself; there was no centralized head of nannies to ask. Unlike June, who had gained Toad as a guardian the moment she donned a maid uniform, the hotel’s nannies had neither direct managers nor advocates. All the autonomy and responsibility of the hotel physicians with none of the power.

What was her name?

June, there’s no way I will remember that after all this time.

She was watching your son when he nearly died. Who was watching her? What if that had been one of the guests’ children?

Mr. Francis had laughed, both amused and disbelieving. Are you trying to say it was my fault?

She was on the Avallon’s payroll , June had replied. It was.

When June became staff captain, she set her sights on orphan positions. Nannies, sign painters, gatekeepers. Before, there had been no one between them and Mr. Francis apart from staff captain, a position that oversaw hundreds of people. June’s reorganization meant gatekeepers reported to the front desk manager. Sign painters reported to advertising. Nannies reported to Toad. The head of housekeeping had protested bitterly, but June had replied, Who knows more about lost children than you?

These days, staff could only get into as much trouble as their status allowed. Sandy’s nanny would still have her job; Sandy would have never been lured to the Avallon IV; June would have never saved him; Mr. Francis would have never seen her; she would have never saved the Avallon during the Depression. Where would they both be now if not for that nameless nanny?

“This is for everyone,” June told Emmi Polk, the German nanny. “Have yourself a grand time.”

Emmi’s eyes moved over the room, awed. June could tell the bookish affair in the Tapestry Room still had a forbidden air. “It is so beautiful.”

It was so beautiful. The octagon-shaped Tapestry Room was tucked in an intersection of hotel wings. Each of its eight walls was covered with a historical tapestry. The club chairs were patched in ancient tapestries too damaged to make sense anymore. Persian rugs covered the floor. Hand-dyed silks twice as long as June were hung freely from the ceiling; they could also be knotted to decorative brass anchors positioned to make a view break. It was a sensual, unusual room only made possible by the fortuitous but rare combination of money and artist. It was just as groundbreaking and successful as when 411 had installed it, twenty years before.

June and some repurposed elevator operators handed out novel after novel as the diplomats murmured and laughed and mingled. Happiness radiated from them. This was the power of surprise; before their detainment at the hotel, this would have been just another party. Here, where they did not expect to be feted, it was the height of luxury. Amazing how combining the same ingredients in different proportions created an entirely new dish.

The Keys of the Kingdom , How Green Was My Valley , Mr. Skeffington . How long had it been since June had picked up a novel for herself? Thanks to her father’s insistence on five years of school, she was literate, unlike her mother, but it had been nearly two decades since she’d had time to read Madeline and Carrie’s cast-off titles during the slow winter months. For an idle few seconds, she thought about what it might be like, curling up in the Lily House’s sitting room, her novel lit by the golden light of the Tiffany lamp. Gilfoyle at the other end of the sofa with one of his terrible books, her feet in his lap. Could she imagine it? It was hard enough to conjure the Lily House as hers. The fictions were even more difficult: Gilfoyle pausing his frantic adult life long enough that his mail no longer had to chase him from city to city. June finding someone who could take on more of her duties. Not just someone who could, but someone who would . Impossible. It had taken Mr. Francis nearly forty years to find her, after all.

June had handed out probably twenty books when she came across one ( Lamb in His Bosom , by Caroline Miller) that wasn’t quite square. Someone had inserted a flat paper airplane—folded from a piece of Burns Night poetry—between its pages. Beneath the typed poem (“The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, / Is king o’ men for a’ that”), a man’s cramped handwriting said: JH— This is how easy it is to pass communications in printed materials, which is why we have discouraged them. Meet me in the Smith Library. —TRM

She snapped the book shut. She had not so much as glimpsed the FBI agent that day, although it seemed their paths must have crossed in order for the note to find its way to her. How else could Agent Minnick have been certain that June, and not one of her other two helpers, would intercept this novel? How did he know she would find the note rather than simply hand the book to a diplomat? How did he know how long it would take her to find it?

And what did he want?

Before June could excuse herself, a piercing scream froze the room.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah

Before she could even identify the scream’s owner, there was another, identical to the first.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah

Then another.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah

They were evenly spaced. Machine perfect.

June heard someone say, softly, mysteriously, “ Not again .”

Aaaaaaaaaaaah

The source: Hannelore, Sabine Wolfe’s observant daughter. The girl stood in the center of the partygoers, face blank, hands fisted, screaming. It was astonishing. An infant would scream; a toddler might throw a fit. To see an older girl such as Hannelore red-faced and apoplectic was to upend the natural order of the upper class. It called to mind the sort of charged words that were whispered rather than spoken, in order to prevent them from accidentally coming to pass: possession, hysteria .

June’s first thought was: Did the water turn without me knowing?

Sabine Wolfe addressed the room with the gentle regret of a hostess calling an event for bad weather. “I’m so sorry.”

She made no effort to rebuke Hannelore; it was clear she felt her daughter’s behavior was immutable. This had happened before. This would happen again. Apart from the girl’s age, this was nothing extraordinary. It was a good old-fashioned tantrum.

As the dachshunds cowered behind June’s legs, she was reminded of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

June’s father, Doc, used to recite this to her mother as a way of talking about their odd daughter; June hadn’t realized it was a poem, not a song, until long after he was dead. She wasn’t sure her father even knew. He had been like that, always collecting phrases and habits from the families and farms they visited on his house calls. As a child, she had taken it for granted that Doc was a legal title, but as an adult, she was fairly certain he’d acquired his medical knowledge the same way he picked up anything else. Perhaps a year or two of study had formed the foundation, but otherwise, he just worked with what he had. Pluck and charm. Mr. Francis would have liked him, too.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah

Hannelore continued to scream.

“Do you mind if I try talking to her?” June asked.

She just had time to see Sabine’s contemptuous expression when they were joined by Friedrich Wolfe, Lothar Liebe, and Dr. Otto Kirsch. So far, every request from the German legation had come through one of them. When the Germans wanted to know if they could swim in the indoor pools (no), have access to more newspapers (the Americans could have one newspaper, so the Germans would have to be content with The New York Times ), or have permission to use the Conservatory as a temporary schoolroom (of course, with the understanding that no additional books could enter the hotel)—one of these three men was the one to ask. They had a commanding and comradely way about them. June recognized the shape between them; it was similar to the one between her and Griff and Toad Vance.

As the screaming continued, Friedrich lifted a hand, as if hailing a cab or drowning. All the Germans immediately took their leave, new books in hand. The tactful Japanese followed suit. The Italians, who had been waiting in the hall for the other Axis powers to leave before they could enjoy themselves, simply dispersed.

Lothar Liebe asked Sabine, “What was it this time?”

Sabine’s voice was low. “I explained she could only have one book.”

Dr. Kirsch set a small bag on a polished side table. “How are you doing, Sabine?”

Friedrich Wolfe took his wife by the shoulders and turned her around so that she was not facing Hannelore.

“It is a pity,” Dr. Kirsch said to June as he sorted through his bag, calmly and methodically, as if preparing to tune a piano or shoe a horse. “Hannelore is such a beautiful girl. So very smart. I have never seen a young woman as smart as her. She hears something once and she remembers it forever; she picks up knowledge like other children pick up pebbles. Of course you would never know if you did not see her writings, because she does not speak. It is a tragedy she was born this way. This is her curse; she will fight her entire life against it. Imagine if she did not have such a handicap on her incredible intellect.” He was drawing up a syringe. “I dream of a world where no one has to live like this. In the future, we will have found ways to put a stop to it.”

June was surprised first by his words and then by the presence of the syringe. It seemed like the political circumstance that called for federal agents to open everyone’s mail would also be a circumstance that disallowed syringes. She wondered if the Feds knew of its existence. Surely they must. All the diplomats’ sidearms currently languished in a safe in Gilfoyle’s office; it felt like a syringe was of the same class of object. But Dr. Kirsch made no effort to hide it as he went about his business, just as he had made no effort to hide his thoughts on how to put a stop to girls like Hannelore in the future.

She asked, “What is that?”

“This is a mild sedative,” the doctor said.

Sabine’s nails clawed into her wrist, but she did not turn around. Hannelore was going hoarse.

Principles warred mightily inside June. She was not there to parent her staff; she was not there to parent her guests. But drugging a child? Particularly a child like Hannelore, who had reminded June so strikingly of herself as she stared owlishly around the lobby on the first day—

The screaming faded.

Hannelore Wolfe hung in her father’s arms. Dr. Kirsch stepped back, shaking his head, tucking away the empty syringe. The new silence in the room felt scabbed and malevolent.

“You’re doing well, Sabine,” Lothar Liebe said. “We are all very impressed with you.”

“Thank you, Lothar,” she replied, barely audible.

“I will put her to bed,” Friedrich said.

They spoke so naturally of it, not minding June’s presence, assuming she saw no fault in the process. She felt complicit in the actions of these men. These guests . Friedrich Wolfe, cultural attaché to Nazi Germany. Dr. Kirsch, member of the Nazi Party. Lothar Liebe, Gestapo man. June was not supposed to know so much about who they were outside the hotel. America was at war? Her heart was at war.

That syringe.

With effort, June put all this away. It was not as easy as when she had swallowed her reservations before. She reminded herself that the Avallon was for everyone who came, not just those who deserved it. She reminded herself this was what it meant to be front of house. What it meant to be Hoss.

When she had been worried the staff wouldn’t be able to handle this assignment, she had forgotten to be worried for herself.

She asked, “Can I—is there anything I can do?”

Sabine’s voice was frosty. She said, “There is absolutely nothing you can do, Miss Hudson.”