Free The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas Page A

As colour began to leave the sky and the day to darken under the mountain’s shadow, he believed he saw an orange grove floating down towards the lake; and roses too. The impression was strong enough for him to decide to mention it at his next meeting, planned for the next night. The roses matched oddly the vision of the rose seen by the elderly nurse. He had not paid much attention to that before, as she was very nearly in her dotage. He felt sorry for the quiet, sad, charming girl who was in her charge. But maybe she had seen a rose at sunset. The mountain spiderwort—that too was strange. Father Marek began to address the line of stiff, cold mourners, and the major turned his thoughts to the handsome young lieutenant, his nephew, who would be arriving on the first train tomorrow. They would have some good skiing. Up there was his favourite ski slope.
    The universe, thought Bolotnikov-Leskov, is a revolutionary cell comprising one member: the perfect number for security. God, if he existed, would clench his teeth under the bitterest torture, and no word of betrayal would spring from his lips, because he would have nothing to betray, he would know nothing.
    Only half listening to the mumbles of the priest, he looked down with curious dispassion at the coffin lid which hid from sight the naïve young woman who had shared his zeal; so dedicated, in fact, that often she had talked to him about the coming millennium even while they made love.
    Cats, thought Enrico Mori, a violinist, have no one to read consoling lies over them. Cats know there is no resurrection, except in transplantation to my music. He stroked the head of the black cat who had followed them all the way from the hotel. She lay now, purring, in the arms of the cancer-troubled prostitute. He knew she was a prostitute because he had been entertained by her once when he was a music student in Turin. They had recognized each other on the first night, and the whore had flushed, and looked away.
    Father Marek in his address was speaking about the shroud of Jesus, stained with His blood. The miraculous face was saying, Trust in me, I have borne for you the grave’s darkness and chill. Mori noticed that the pastor at the priest’s side was looking uncomfortable. Of course, he thought, he doesn’t like this talk of images.
    As the pastor took up the service, reading the Protestant committal, Mori glanced down and to his right, where a tiny coffin lay. The weeping parents were throwing down flowers. Mori had met the little girl only for a few minutes; the girl had asked if she could try his violin. But they had made friends in those few minutes, and it had shocked him when he found that she had burnt to death.
    He was amused, though, when the black cat sprang out of the prostitute’s arms and bolted down the path as if seven devils were after it. It was soon lost to sight, on the path back to the hotel. Summoned to vespers, thought Mori; for the bells of thechurch that stood behind and above the white hotel had started to chime; the sound carried dimly across the lake, and a lone fisherman in the middle of the lake started taking off his hat. The mother of the little girl, to his right, crumpled to the ground, and, as if on cue, other women fainted in the line. That was the trouble with having a mixed funeral service, thought Mori: it went on too long, it was too great a strain.
    A thunderclap smote in their ears, and Lionheart, looking up, knew that the end had come. He had heard even louder thunderclaps, in his time, and had threaded through safely; but now there was no escape. The mountain peak had dissolved, and giant boulders were rumbling down the mountainside. The mourners had broken into a sustaining hymn, and for a little while it looked as if the music was holding the boulders in mid-air. The ground was opening under their feet.
    The young woman saw the mourners fall, one by one, into the trench, as if intolerable grief afflicted them, one by one. She