Page 58 of The White Octopus Hotel
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The rest of the day passed quickly with octopus-hunting. They were up to thirty-four of the sea creatures now and ten clocks, leaving only two octopuses and two clocks to go.
“Still no sign of the Sugar Room,” Eve said later that afternoon. “I don’t understand where it could be. Do you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen or heard of such a place here.”
Eventually, they retired to the Reading Room, where Eve opened up a sketchbook and began doodling out a map of the ground floor. Max welcomed the opportunity to sit quietly with his thoughts for a moment, replaying the encounter with his horse over and over again. His skin still tingled with the thrill of it, the deep joy of being reunited with an old friend. At the same time, theshock felt a bit like a blow to the head; he could hear the echoes of it ringing inside his ears. The same thought flew through his mind.
This is the end of the road.
I will never see 1936.
I will never check out….
Did that mean he was going to die? Or simply vanish? Perhaps get lost within the hotel’s walls, like the octopus on the sixth floor? He recalled what Eve had said about how he’d visited her in 2016 as an old man.Couldthat be possible? It didn’t make sense, but then nothing much in this place seemed logical. The thought of old age was suddenly exhausting and unwelcome. He took a deep breath and looked out the window. Now, as in 1918, there was something about looking at the lake and the mountains outside that was deeply soothing. They were so old, so still, so unmoved by all of mankind’s trials and troubles. They’d been here long before Max arrived, and they’d still stand many years after he was gone. The thought was comforting. He was glad to have his trench watch back, although it was strange to see it ticking out the seconds normally. It was the last thing his mother had sent him before she died. A precious part of life before. Holding the watch in his hand made him feel closer to her than he had in many years.
Eventually, Max put the watch back in his pocket, beside the fumsup, and went over to look at Eve’s map. It was functionally accurate, showing the correct position and proportions of the various rooms. But the map was more than a map. It was beautiful too. She had decorated it with sketches of the golden palm trees in the Palm Bar, the fan mirror in the Smoking Room, the grandfather clock in the lobby, and a shower of musical notes made from water in the Fountain Room. In a separate building she’d drawn the steam baths, with their various chambers. There was a perfect charcoal sketch of Stranger in the frigidarium—a dirty war horse, stark against the splendour of Italian mosaics and Moorish arches.
“That is remarkably lovely,” Max said. He had to resist the urgeto ask if he might have it, this perfect sketch of his most loved horse.
Eve glanced up. “I was hoping it might reveal the location of the Sugar Room, but I’ve mapped out the entire ground floor and there isn’t space for it anywhere. It must be a secret room, like the corridor I found. Mrs. Roth told me it appears at different times, for different reasons. It could be anywhere—on the roof, or in the nonexistent basement, or in the steam baths.”
At the mention of the steam baths, Max felt the sudden urge to apologise again for something that had happened seventeen years ago for him but hadn’t yet happened for her at all. Something he had believed at the time that they both wanted but later realised she hadn’t wished for at all. Even now, the regret was like a small piece of shell fragment that he couldn’t dig out of his skin.
“Perhaps it’s back there,” Eve suddenly said.
“What? Where?”
“The Sugar Room. Maybe it’s back there in 1918.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I saw a painting in the walls, of the three time-travelling keys.”
“There are three of them?”
“Mmm. Mine and two others. Perhaps one of them goes back to 1918.”
“Perhaps, but what has that got to do with the Sugar Room?”
“The keys all turned into sugar,” Eve replied. “While I was looking at them. And there was a guest in the Palm Bar last night. I heard her say that one of the octopuses is hidden in the past.”
“I don’t know,” Max replied. “I already told you that I didn’t see the Sugar Room, and I never heard anyone else mention it either. Let’s eat. They’ll be serving dinner by now.”
“All right. Shall we meet back downstairs in twenty minutes?”
Max nodded. “See you then.”
Chapter 39
Eve—The White Octopus Hotel, 1935
Before changing for dinner, Eve wanted to check Rooms 17 and 7 again, to see if they were still unoccupied. As before, there was no answer to her knock on either door and no sign of occupancy. On her way down the corridor, she realised that she had left her map of the hotel downstairs in the Reading Room and made a mental note to go back for it after dinner.
In Room 27, she dressed quickly in a pale green lace gown edged with pearls. It had thin straps and fell low at the back, and her octopus wouldn’t keep still. It drifted up her arm, across her collarbone, over her right shoulder, down between her shoulder blades. And although Eve looked in the wardrobe for a shawl or cape or jacket, or perhaps another fur, there was nothing to cover her shoulders. Well, so be it. People would just have to see the octopus.
As she went downstairs, she was aware of some of the guests pointing it out to one another and exclaiming in surprise, but no one seemed particularly bothered. There were far stranger things, after all, in this hotel. When she joined Max in the restaurant, he couldn’t fail to notice the tattoo, now on her shoulder, and, to her surprise, he blushed.
