Читать книгу Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel - Страница 9

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The two nymphets are rosy-cheeked, and go topless all year round. They don’t wear dresses, just a big sheet over one shoulder. Their hair hangs down in thick coils. They look a little sad, not yet smiling. I try to catch their eyes but never can. I watch them through the window of room 21, in the eaves of the hotel, where my sister and I sleep most of the time.

The nymphs reign like Greek statues on either side of the station forecourt. On the left is the source of the red light that gives the area’s nights their bright, intermittent glow: an enormous Coca-Cola sign. I love the elegant writing with its upstrokes and downstrokes, and the funny name that rings out like a greeting in an exotic language. The light is intense and streams right into the hotel. It also tints the noses and breasts of my nymphs, making them twinkle.

I sometimes stretch my hand dreamily out of the window, watching my arm flush and fade. I am a station nymph, an angel ready to depart, a little girl on a journey. About to fly out of the window like a bird. I watch my flesh become flooded with the soft light, turning my arm, opening my hand then shutting it again. I do a finger-puppet show under the Coca-Cola spotlights and the gaze of my nymphs.

It’s a funny kind of home town, Utrecht: a puritanical, grey, swarming business hub whose visitors are welcomed by two naked women and a huge red neon sign.

The door to my room opens, slowly. My mother pokes her head round it and is astonished to see me at the window in the middle of the night.

‘You’re not sleeping?’

‘No.’

‘And your sister?’

‘Marianne always sleeps well.’

‘The hotel is full. Wake your sister and take her to room 22, I’ve just let this one to a good customer.’

Room 22 is not a room but a cubbyhole, with a skylight in the ceiling and a single bed. When the hotel is full we spend the night there. I pick up Marianne’s hot, limp body, telling her that it’s me and there’s nothing to worry about. I carry her upstairs while my mother tidies the room quick as a flash, and calls downstairs to the customer in her late-night auctioneer’s voice.

The bed in 22 is narrow and cold. The customer in 21 will enjoy slipping into the warmth left by my sister, and fall asleep easily. Not me. I tack up the pictures of Donald Duck that I drag around with me in an effort to recreate a familiar universe.

The skylight is too high to see anything through it except a patch of black sky. I concentrate on this rectangle. What if my mother rented room 22? Where would we go then?