Free The Little Hotel by Christina Stead Page B

cabaret managers, he will come home green and sorry, but will say:
    ‘The lease on the Venice Café can be called in any day. The man was fool enough to trust the good nature of his landlord; and he is going to find himself without a penny next week and will have to start again as head waiter.’
    Roger’s head is always clear, no matter what his stomach says.
    Roger said: ‘We will stop this before it starts.’
    At lunchtime the guests were absorbed as usual by the menu and the poor quality of the meal the poor old German cook served them. If they noticed anything it was Clara’s wonderful good-humour. She was everywhere, chatting with everyone, sweet-tempered, willing, her languages were better than usual, she was happy as a child. Only when Luisa put her head with its pointed tongue in the door of the serving-hatch and sang like Figaro, Nu-me-ro quin-di-ci ! did Clara’s expression change. ‘Fünfzehn you mean,’ she said suddenly in German. I said to Roger, ‘Look at her.’
    He frowned. He is a man of stern unprejudiced justice. As soon as everything was cleaned up and the cook had taken himself off, Roger sent for the servants in a body. He shut the office door and took them into the inner room, the sewing-room. Then he showed them the anonymous postcard suddenly, told them what it said and remarked:
    ‘One of you wrote it. I don’t suppose it was Emma or Gennaro. It is one of you and you had better confess it at once or I shall send for the police. If I find you out and you have not confessed, you will march right out of this hotel without a reference and I will see you get on the police record.’
    Luisa said at once: ‘And also it cannot be Charlie. He is in bed with a floating kidney. And it cannot be me. I am not jealous or mad.’
    ‘You will go out on the landing and come in one by one. Emma will remain here. Gennaro will go out. Emma! Perhaps you suspect someone?’
    Emma gravely shook her head. ‘If I knew I would tell you.’
    I said quickly, ‘I want to tell you that the handwriting is disguised and I think it is a disguised German script and there is a funny mistake in French such as a German might make. I do not think it is any Italian. Now, Emma, who made the coffee on Friday morning?’ (That was the morning the Mayor sent me the Document about it. The coffee was bad.)
    There was no one there but Gennaro himself, and Clara of course.
    They came in one by one but no one confessed. Rosa seemed angry and red, talked about her pride and said she was sorry she had ever left home. I told her the play A Dark Spot had gone to her head; she was only a waitress. She tossed her head.
    ‘I am only a waitress, as you put it; but very soon I shall be in a very different situation. I am merely learning the business for my own reasons.’
    ‘If you are learning the business, you will learn to get rid at once of anyone writing an anonymous letter. Please let us see your handwriting.’
    She said: ‘I’m afraid I’m like yourself, Madame. I don’t write very good French.’
    In the end no one confessed and we had to be satisfied with the idea that Clara had organized the whole thing and had out-manœuvred us. Gennaro and Emma did not speak for nearly two weeks. Rosa left to work in the Hotel Acacias and soon left that to go home. I believe this terrible incident formed Emma’s character, which was always firm. A few days later Gennaro’s mother told me Gennaro’s soul and mind had been warped by his experience as a child.
    ‘He had not a very active mind and was never able to grasp the ideas which I had and his father had: we were pacifists. I made a mistake and did not think the Italian people would accept Mussolini and then I kept saying he would last only another year or two. Gennaro became a blackshirt when he was nine years old. I could not come back to Switzerland where I was born and he was born and I could not explain anything to him because of the terror. At his school when they were only