Читать книгу Torch for a Dark Journey - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 8

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A quarter mile inside France the massive wrought-iron gates of the Hotel Spa Bonnar glowered on the dusty farm road. The hotel itself sat on a height of ground about a hundred feet above the road. So precipitous was the incline that the driveway from the gates to the hotel’s entrance swept around in a wide circle in order to modify the grade. Guests lounging on a flagstoned terrace in front of the canopied entrance had the impression of directly overlooking the Bonnar River. In reality not only the road lay between the terrace and the river, but there was also a grassy bank on which nestled a few small houses which accommodated those of the hotel’s servants who did not live in the town.

The view from the terrace was indeed lordly. A wooden bridge spanned the river well below the hotel’s property so that guests might have an unimpeded view of the stream, of the picturesque old town of Bonnar clustered against the opposite bank, and of the farmlands beyond. It was a feudal setting, designed to give to the new aristocracy of Europe, those willing to pay the spa’s charges (which the old aristocracy would have rejected as outrageous), an assumption of infinite superiority to the inhabitants of the town and to the tiny figures that trudged behind plows in the far fields.

Commanding and substantial as it appeared in its red sandstone façade, the Spa Bonnar was a small hotel. It contained but forty rooms and suites. The architectural motif might be described simply as oval. The principal building, only two stories high, was oval; and connected at both extremities by covered walks were two smaller, one-story structures, also oval. One of these contained the dining salon and the other a gaming casino. The lower floor of the central building consisted entirely of public rooms and was enclosed on all sides by a solid row of french windows. These opened on the terrace in front, and in the rear on a garden which contained an oval swimming pool.

An overwhelmingly rich décor in the main lobby blended great sweeps of copper-tinted, stained mirrors between shafts of polished mahogany. However, the most distinguished feature was a wide, grandly curved staircase which led to the apartments on the upper floor. A small elevator shuttled up and down in a corner of the lobby but this was scarcely run except for the aged and the rheumatic because the staircase lent an exceptional air of elegance to those who used it. Each room on the upper floor boasted a private balcony which no doubt added to the pleasure of the guests but gave the structure a topheavy appearance.

Why the hotel was called the Spa Bonnar had never been explained. There were no mineral springs in the vicinity nor did the management claim that a sojourn would improve the health of its guests. It was likely that the gambling syndicate which built the place in 1936 had so named it for the sake of fashion. The reason for its isolated location was abundantly clear. The syndicate had planned a gaming resort on the Meuse below Namur but failed at the last moment to make satisfactory arrangements with Brussels for a gambling concession and therefore moved the project across the frontier where French government officials were more tractable and the rich Belgian clientele not too far distant.

The hotel operated for three prosperous summer seasons before the war closed it down. It remained shuttered until 1942, when it was requisitioned by the German high command as a rest center for officers of general rank. At that time a small garrison was established in the town to assure protection and peace of mind for the vacationing generals. In August of 1944 the hotel served briefly as Field Marshal von Model’s headquarters. A month later the American First Army swept over the area and used the lobby as a temporary command post. A signal section of that army occupied the place during the winter of 1944-45, and although the unit numbered only thirty men it succeeded in delivering the coup de grâce to as much of the luxurious furniture and interior fittings as had been spared by the Germans.

When the fighting ended, the Spa Bonnar sat shabby and desolate on its beautiful hill, a miniscule reflection of the Europe which lay around it. Its lawns were holed by slit trenches and rutted with tank tracks. The swimming pool had become a receptacle for garbage. Not a pane of glass in its three wings remained intact and the snows of succeeding winters swept through its bare public rooms. The furniture that had not been broken for firewood by occupying troops had been looted by numberless bands of refugees. Rusted food tins littered the lobby and made the deserted place a spawning ground for rats which grew to ferocious size.

Early in 1948 the surviving members of the syndicate, those who had not been imprisoned for collaboration with the enemy, commissioned an Alsatian named Henri Gutzmann to restore the Spa Bonnar to its former glory.

Gutzmann, a frail, graying, effeminate man in his fifties, had been a well-known maître d’hôtel on the Côte d’Azur before the war and therefore had a wide acquaintance with the class of clientele the Spa Bonnar might expect to attract. Despite his delicate qualities he drove a shrewd bargain. He assured himself a partnership in the syndicate and the sole direction of the hotel before he accepted the commission.

But once the arrangements had been completed, he applied himself to the task with a fierce purpose which at first was a matter for scoffing in the neighborhood. There was no idle labor available in the entire district. Furniture was simply unobtainable in nearby Charleville and Reims, even in Paris. Glaziers were out of the question. Linens could not be purchased even if one had gold to offer. Where on earth could one obtain carpets? Paints? Cutlery?

It was midsummer of 1948 before Gutzmann managed to hire a dozen lazy, grumbling men of no particular skill. He cajoled and drove and implored, and did more work himself than the whole of his labor force. He roamed the nearby cities and in the wake of his journeying huge express vans filled with crates rolled up to the hotel. He was carpenter and architect, gardener, painter, black-marketeer, draper, bricklayer.

The work proceeded through the following winter, and soon the villagers of Bonnar developed a new respect for this delicate madman. From their homes on the opposite bank of the river they could see the Spa Bonnar slowly returning to its prewar grandeur.

The spring was long in arriving that year, and not until mid-April did the sun break out warmly on a refurbished Spa Bonnar and an exhausted Henri Gutzmann. Now he was aided in putting the finishing touches to his handiwork by two colleagues. One was the new maître d’hôtel, a slim, wavy-haired young Italian, Gianelli by name, who had been Gutzmann’s assistant on the Riviera.

The second was Oscar, a dark, heavy-set Swiss who had spent the war as concierge in a Genoa hotel. To him went the task of gathering up the Spa Bonnar’s permanent staff. Having been a servant most of his life, he knew discipline and how to apply it to those beneath him in the rigid caste system of the backstairs world. He recruited most of the staff among old acquaintances in Paris, and a few in the neighborhood of Bonnar, only after he had assured himself that those in a position to make the biggest gratuities would give him a substantial cut of their earnings. He hired the chambermaids and scullery girls with a practiced eye, for he prided himself on his swarthy masculinity and he estimated that at least two or three of them would eventually come to require his personal services.

In the month of May tasteful folders appeared in the travel racks of the Ritz in Paris, La Réserve in Beaulieu, and the Hassler in Rome announcing the grand reopening of the Spa Bonnar on June 1, 1949.