Hotel Iris by Yōko Ogawa

butcher’s storeroom.
    The sun was disappearing into the sea when I got back to the Iris. Showers were running in several rooms—guests cleaning up after a day at the beach. Swimsuits were drying outside the windows in the courtyard. The light of the sunset dyed red the curls of the boy with the harp.
    “What have you done to your hair?” Mother noticed immediately that something was odd.
    “It caught on my hat,” I said, trying to sound natural.
    “Well, it’s a mess. You can’t work at the desk like that.” She dragged me off to the dressing table and put up my hair exactly as she had that morning, despite the fact that I would soon be taking it down again for my bath. I worried she would be able to tell what the man had done, but I also knew shewouldn’t. I had gone somewhere far away today. Far away over the sea, to a place she could never reach.
    We had tried to fix my hair in his bathroom.
    “No, that’s not it. She’s going to be furious.”
    “But it’s very pretty,” he said, trying to console me.
    “Mother is insane about my hair. She’ll notice even one pin out of place.”
    His bathroom was insane in its own way, each surface carefully polished, from the sink to the mirror in the medicine chest. The old-fashioned faucet with no hot-water knob, the razor blades and toothbrush, the new bar of soap.
    His comb was too fine for my thick hair, and we had no camellia oil. I tried to tie it up while he gingerly stroked my neck, afraid to get in the way. He was suddenly timid again, plucked out of our private world and returned to normal. But I knew how I had looked and felt just a few moments before. As I carefully replaced each pin, I wondered when the storm would come again.
    “You are so lovely,” he said, speaking to my reflection in the mirror. Then he put his hands on my hips and drew me gently to him. It was a simple gesture, but it thrilled me as much as his tongue running over my naked body. It made us terribly sad to part.
    “Well, I don’t want you wearing a hat anymore,” Mother said. “Why should you hide such a pretty face?” He had said almost the same thing. “I’ve told you before, you should show off your hair. You can spend all kinds of money on clothes and makeup, but your beautiful hair is free.”
    We could hear guests in the lobby, probably on their way out to dinner. Someone put a room key on the front desk; children were arguing. Mother pulled so hard on my hair that my eyes watered, but it didn’t hurt at all.
    In my heart, I told her that her pretty little Mari had become the ugliest person in the whole world.

F I V E
     
    The slip I was wearing that day has disappeared. I had hidden it at the bottom of a drawer full of underwear. So why did she take that, of all things? It was cheap, and the lace was in tatters from so many washings. But she doesn’t care—she seems to need the thrill of taking things from me.
    Perhaps she put it on and admired herself in the mirror before coming to work. She’s quite thin, though she eats well enough. Her jaw is pointed, her arms and legs are like twigs, and her ribs stick out—a body suited for stolen underwear. But I didn’t really care that she took it. He tore it off me in an instant and tossed it under the couch. It was useless—there was no need for such things between the translator and me.
    The summer season had begun in earnest now, and we were busy at the Iris. The rooms were full almost every day. Guests would check in, have their swim, stroll along the seawall,sleep in our beds—and then check out again. The maid, our resident thief, began coming to help out in the evenings as well as during the day.
    A letter from the translator arrived every three days. The handwriting and the polite words were always the same—and so different from the way he had treated me that day. I enjoyed reading his formal, almost humble, letters and remembering what had happened at his house. When I finished reading them, I would mix