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Chapter Twenty-One

Hannelore was quite afraid of Sandy, which meant, of course, that she could not stay away from him. It was not unlike the mountain lion font on her balcony. She did not want to be near it, in case it moved. She did not want to turn her back on it, in case it moved. And deep inside, she could not tell if she was terribly afraid, or terribly intrigued.

Citizen kept trying to get Sandy to pet him. Surely a dog would know if Sandy Gilfoyle was something fearful?

When Hannelore was not in the school held in the third-floor mezzanine (14,400 seconds) or taking piano lessons from Frau Hof (3,600 seconds) or eating meals in the Magnolia Room (2,750 seconds) or searching for snails, she hunted through the hotel until she discovered where he was in that moment. He did not move on his own, of course. He only got from one place to another when his caretaker, Stella, pushed him in his wooden wheelchair, which he never left. Sometimes Stella took him on walks, talking to him sweetly and foolishly the entire time, as if he were a little dog. Sometimes, on nice days (there were more and more of these), Stella read to him on one of the verandas or balconies. Stella read slowly, and the books she chose were very babyish, in Hannelore’s opinion. She read him Mr. Popper’s Penguins more than once.

Most people did not seem interested in him. The staff glanced at him when he entered a room, but unlike Hannelore, who only found him more fascinating the longer he was here, they found him less notable as time went on. The diplomats spared him slightly more attention, but mostly in their exaggerated attempts to appear that they were not giving him attention. They politely averted their eyes from him when Stella navigated him through crowded places. Apart from Stella, the only person who gave him consideration with any regularity was June Hudson, the woman who Hannelore now knew managed the entire hotel.

June Hudson always gave Sandy a full nod when she passed him and Stella in the halls, despite the fact he never returned it, and at least once a day, she talked to him. Sometimes for twenty minutes, sometimes for just a minute.

But other than that, he was mostly left alone. Stella would often push the wheelchair next to a window, pat his shoulder, tell him to have a good day, and wander off.

These were the best times.

Because then Hannelore could creep around Sandy, studying him. At first, she didn’t get close. She hid behind chairs or pressed against the molding or crouched in the mouth of a fireplace to peer at the back of his tousled hair. But as the days went by, she grew bold enough to face him. Eye to eye. His face was frozen in vague distress. When he blinked, slowly and not often, she spooked before returning.

He was so terribly wrong. What had made him this way? Had he been frozen by some horrible witch? Had he gotten ill? Could this happen to anyone? Was this what happened to the mountain lion? Could Hannelore wake up one day to find herself trapped in a chair, too?

It was awful; she could not stay away.

Today, Hannelore had Sandy Gilfoyle to herself in the Portrait Gallery.

The gallery was a very dull room for children, as it only contained four things: sofas, potted plants, mirrors, and dozens of portraits hung on the deep-blue walls. But it had a good view, or so Stella cooed at Sandy Gilfoyle as she parked him by the window, patted his shoulder, and left him there. It was another relentlessly gray day, springlike but not proper spring, with rain pouring endlessly outside, turning the soaked landscape deep green, purple, black.

Hannelore crouched behind one of the sofas to stare at him. She could see his face in full in one of the mirrors hanging on the other side of him.

Her heart was already racing a little.

Footsteps entering the Portrait Gallery made her startle. But the fear soon resolved when she heard voices, speaking in German. “—not as simple as that. Oh—there’s someone here already.”

“It’s only the son,” said the other, and she realized it was her father’s voice. They moved further into view in the mirror; Hannelore shrank back so that she would be hidden from them. It was Lothar Liebe, Dr. Otto, and her father. They all had drinks in hand, except for slender, dark Lothar Liebe, who had a cigarette.

“Should we find another room?”

Dr. Otto pointed at Citizen putting his paws on Sandy’s knees; the young man didn’t move, and eventually the terrier gave up. “The other day, in the arcade, I saw that colored agent spill coffee on him. He didn’t even bat an eyelid! He’s a cabbage. Let him have his view.”

They all sat, the sofas creaking and sighing, and continued the conversation they’d been having, which was intensely dull. After a few moments, staff came to deliver drinks and light refreshments. When the plates clinked against the tables, Hannelore’s stomach growled, much to her horror. To her relief, the waitstaff’s footsteps covered the sound.

Once the staff had gone, Dr. Otto said, “I did not think I could be so bored as I have been here. We have been here long enough for me to become a drunk and then grow bored of drinking and sober up. I feel like that man right there.” He must have been indicating one of the portraits Hannelore could not see from her position. “I have slept with a different woman every night. And I think I’ve come to the end of my choices; I will have to circle back around to start at the beginning again.”

“Begin on the men,” suggested Friedrich.

They all laughed; Hannelore’s cheeks burned ferociously. Sandy stared out the window. For the first time, she noticed three live snails beneath the sofa, moving slowly, one after another, antennae waving.

Lothar Liebe smoked energetically and replied, “Negotiations are nearly done. Lieselotte Berger is coming with us, so there is nothing else to talk about.”

“How do you know?” Dr. Otto asked.

“How does Lothar know anything?” her father replied. “Better not to ask. Lothar, how dangerous will the journey to Portugal be, do we think?”

“It should be marked as a neutral diplomatic craft, so we’ll be as safe as one can be right now,” Lothar said. “How well can you swim?”

This reminded the men of some previous posting, and they fell into reminiscing, as Hannelore’s legs cramped from crouching. She glanced in the mirror. Sandy Gilfoyle still gazed vaguely toward the rain. Citizen wasn’t afraid of him, she thought. She wanted to believe the terrier had secret knowledge about good and evil, but she also knew that he’d vomited the day before after eating trash from the suite’s wastebasket.

“How is Sabine doing?” Lothar asked Friedrich. “Has she stopped fretting about Hannelore?”

Hannelore froze as still as Sandy. No one answered. Had she imagined the question? Or had she missed the answer? The silence felt heavy as custard.

“I think that was a misunderstanding of the situation,” Friedrich said, his voice strange. Squished. “Hannelore just doesn’t do well with change, as you have seen, and she’s hoping to spare her if she can.”

“Surely being separated from her parents would be the biggest change Hannelore could be asked to endure,” Lothar said. “Come now, Wolfman, do not let your wife work you over. I made inquiries. They feel she’s a good candidate for sterilization and, possibly, some mild conditioning. You don’t have to worry.”

Hannelore squeezed tightly against the floor. The conversation made her feel the same way she did when the children from her hate list surrounded her with their impenetrable chatter.

“Friedrich,” Lothar said, when her father had not answered.

Dr. Otto spoke up. “Friedrich, that is a part of her life she is unlikely to even notice missing.”

“Precisely,” Lothar said. “Please don’t ask me to divide my loyalties further.”

“I wouldn’t want to make life difficult for you, a childless, single cad with an ermine’s heart,” snapped her father, sounding so unlike himself that Hannelore would not have thought it him speaking.

“Come here, Friedrich. Look at my face, toast my glass. Do not let this war come between us.”

Glasses chimed against each other. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. Now tell me what the meaning of her song is.”

“Scheibenkleister, Lothar! That’s for Germany.”

Humor had entered Lothar’s voice. “So she is going back to Germany, then.”

It had not entered her father’s. “Lothar, I will strike you.”

“Something I have dreamed about for years,” observed Dr. Otto, lightening the mood.

They fell back into political conversation, but she was not focused on their words. She was thinking about returning to Germany. She was thinking about her mother’s hand on her wrist. She was thinking about sterilization .

The men were leaving. Shuffling and chuckling, clanking tumblers against one another on tables, leaving their cigarettes pushed into the trays. She hadn’t realized how noisy they’d been, but the Portrait Gallery seemed very quiet after they had gone. She could hear the rain pouring outside again.

It was just her and Sandy Gilfoyle.

She waited another short stretch of time (65 seconds) to be safe, and then she stood. She watched the back of Sandy’s head in real life and the front of his head in the mirror as she backed out of the room, feeling her way around the sofa. She made it to the door, which the men had shut behind them. Without taking her eyes off Sandy, she felt for the knob. On the other side of the doorway was the hall and safety.

Instead of finding the knob, however, what she felt was wet .

She had put her hands into the animal-headed font beside the door. The shock of the sensation made her ears hiss. It was inside her, everything being said in the hotel, all at once; she could feel the location of every snail all over the building and grounds and even in a place she could clearly see in her mind: a hot spring and a cold spring emerging an arm’s width apart, the space between covered with green, green, green moss and crawling with beautiful, multicolored snails.

Sterilization , she thought again.

The water filled her with a sensation. But this time, it was not joy or calm .

It was run .

Hannelore staggered. As she did, her attention was snagged by movement. She saw it as if in slow motion: Outside the window, a dark shape plummeted from somewhere above to somewhere below. It was large. At first, she thought it was a part of the roof. Then she thought it was a piece of clothing. Then, no, she realized that it was flesh and bones, it was moving. An animal.

Then she realized it was a woman.

A woman was falling past the window.

Hannelore saw her face for one clear moment. Her eyes were blue.

And then Hannelore began to scream, because Sandy Gilfoyle turned his head.