Chapter Text
A postcard arrives:
In London. Fucking crowded. Smells like a sewer. Buildings v. ugly. Not like Lutz.
D.D-U-T
Gustave tucks it away in a small diary which houses his better attempts at poetry. The little pieces he spouts when inspired and wants to remember for later.
Before Dmitri left he had given Gustave Boy with Apple and hadn’t cursed.
The border had closed in October in 1932. Zero remembers seeing men in black. He had once explained to Agatha that memories were like cooking. You choose which flavours to emphasise and which ones to down play. If a chilli is too spicy a chef adds a tablespoon of lime to cut it. Zero does the same.
This war isn’t helping. It’s like chilli powder on top of two tons of pepper. No yogurt to dull the pain.
Memories are, for Gustave, a finely painted masterpiece. He chooses the colours and the position and when he regales stories he makes sure that the frame suits the moment and that the audience hears only what he wants them to hear.
On a train, between countries, Dmitri had asked about his family. Gustave had changed the subject.
Here is a selection of post cards and notes sent from a certain Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis to a certain Monsieur Gustave H of the Grand Budapest Hotel.
- Rainy. Foggy. Haven’t seen the sun in a fortnight. I hate Scotland.
- In perfume shop in York. Smells like l’air de panache only with more vanilla. If possible. Fucking hell what has become of my life. I hate you.
- This is a picture of a remnant from Hadrian’s Wall. Not impressive. Roman Aqueducts near Nebelsbad much better. Found Latin graffiti. Tried my schoolboy Latin on it. Says the following: Marcus screwed Letizia’s husband Gaius last Tuesday.
- Re: Latin Graffiti – we humans have not changed. In the Ritz in London. Found easily ten women who would suit you and your peculiar tastes.
- There is a dead fruit fly in my glass of wine. Fuck my life.
Newspaper headlines in the Trans-Alpine Yodel read: Bombings in London. Gustave tells Zero that he wishes the paper wasn’t so depressing all of the time.
He goes up stairs, to the second floor bar, drinks half a bottle of champagne and looks at a cheap lighter which he places in front of him on a square bit of white napkin. Next to it is a pack of rolling paper.
The women always remain the same. Blond, needy, vain, selfish – oh fuck it.
Agatha becomes pregnant. She is elated. Zero is terrified.
Dmitri is in London when the bombings first start. When they hit, he doesn’t really connect the reactions of the physical world around him with the reality he knows to be true in his head.
In short he is stunned.
Then he is running and sort of falling because when the ground is shaking you can’t really stand up, can you? It’s fucking difficult, really. And fuck it all.
Then he doesn’t really remember anything else –
Gustave wakes up, reviews accounts of the hotel – they’re suffering. Wartime means the tightening of belts and the pushing away of pleasure. Only the most dogged of people are coming.
When Gustave looks at Boy with Apple he wonders if life would have been simpler if he and Zero had managed to sell it. He dreams at night of the French Riviera. He dreams at night in technicolour and bright lights and noise. When he wakes he feels that everything is in grey and the noises have been dulled. Even gunshots sound like silencers.
Dmitri wakes. He is in hospital. So is that one eyes dog-walker who had been ahead of him when it had all started.
‘Did they win?’ He asks as a nurse comes to his bedside.
‘I think they did for that little bit. But don’t worry, we’ll give it right back.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
The old one-eyed dog walker is named Maurice Topsom and he’s from Manchester but had been visiting London to see his daughter-in-law and his grandson.
‘My boy’s off fighting. Do you remember the Great War?’
‘A little.’
‘What a war that was. I thought we were all done with wars after than one. Seems we weren’t. A shame.’
‘Quite.’
‘Where you from? You sound proper foreign.’
‘A little place. Zubrowka.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘No.’
‘Where abouts is it?’
‘The alps. Western bit. Though we have ties to the east. My mother was always better with the history than I.’
‘Sure. Mothers are. You’re country been invaded yet?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Any loved ones there?’
‘My sisters. One’s in Italy, though that’s hardly safe, of course.’
‘No wife? Children?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, well. Look, lost me eye in the last war. Were you in it?’
‘No.’
Dmitri looks out of the window. The skies are grey.
Rations are set in Zubrowka. Meat and cooking oil and vegetables and linen and petrol and rubber and sugar and coffee and chocolate and bacon and butter and everything in between. There are coupons issued. The Grand Budapest is requisitioned by the government to be a hospital. Gustave shrugs and says that it’s better than it being a barracks.
The baby is born. It’s a boy to be named Mehmet Gustave Charles Mustafa. Agatha asks, Why Mehmet? Zero replies, It was my father’s name. Gustave is elated with his godson. He devotes hours to the baby’s amusement. He wishes the war would end so the boy would know only summer in his childhood.
France falls.
Further post cards and notes sent from a certain Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis to a certain Monsieur Gustave H of the Grand Budapest Hotel.
- In hospital. I hate being in hospital. I think the fucking nurses are out to get me. Won’t let me smoke the assholes. Not all right with any of this.
- Heard the eastern front in Zubrowka is under attack.
Do you remember being on the eastern front –I hope you and the hotel are keeping well. One damaged crenulation and I’ll be fucking furious. - England has the worst food in the history of countries with terrible food.
- Here is a picture of Westminster Abbey and London pre-bombings of course. I had one of the nurses fetch it for me. I visited it about four months ago. V. pretty. Scratched my name onto the back of the throne in it because I could. You would have been appalled, I think.
- The dreaded nurses allowed me to walk about the ward today. Picture on this card is of a boy by a window. He shares a resemblance to our painting, I think. Less fruity of course.
Some cards make it through the front. Some don’t. Dmitri writes from habit. The ones that Gustave receives he reads and saves in his journal. They are memorized. He feels he would know Dmitri’s handwriting anywhere. He hates himself for it.
Agatha coughs into her elbow, laughs at Zero. Why the worried face? You always are worried, dear. Don’t be. I love you.
‘I love you, too.’ Zero replies. Between them their young son sleeps.
Winter in war is worse than winter in normal years. Coal is rationed. Fire wood is limited. The Grand Budapest is very cold.
Dmitri sits by Portrait of Lord Widmire and looks out the window. There is a light dusting but the English are acting as if it’s a large dumping of ten feet of snow. He wonders what spring wild flowers look like here. In Zubrowka they are purple and pink and yellow, mostly. With tarweed and thistles in-between. In Zubrowka he doesn’t really care about nature. Finds it a necessary nuisance. In England it’s a thought that carries through the day and keeps him awake instead of asleep because suddenly time awake is precious and feels just as rationed as the sugar supplies.
Gustave lingers by the front desk more than up in the first floor bar. He helps Zero with accounts and guests and the supply chain now necessary for a makeshift hospital. Agatha has joined the nurses because, as she explained to Zero one night, pastry chef is nice and all during the peace but this is the time to be useful and pastry chefs in war are distinctly not useful.
She follows the Sister Superior around and has learned all the basics. She is excited, thinks she might take up the career after the war. Go to school, even. There’s a thought.
Gustave asks Zero, ‘do you think it’ll be an early spring?’
‘I couldn’t say M Gustave.’
‘No, I suppose not. It tends to be, at wartime, that winters last longer and springs are too short.’
. . .
. . .