Out of Season Tale

Out of Season Tale

"Maurice - be reasonable!" came an exclamation from a woman in the
hotel room next door.
Jan looked at her partner David quizzically and he returned the look.
Who was Maurice and why wasn't he being reasonable?
It was an out of season, Sunday afternoon in a tower block hotel in
Haifa. This particular day was gloomy and overcast and the room was
impersonal as hotel rooms tend to be. International class,
internationally impersonal.
David and Jan sat, straining their vision to focus on a tiny portable
TV, which was black and white when they switched it on, becoming colour
as it gradually warmed up. All mod cons.
In the next room, their neighbour was listening to classical music on
the radio. It was background noise. He wasn't really hearing it - the
woman was trying to make him see sense.
"You're a married man, with children - you can't just walk out!"
"I can walk out. I just walked out. Don't you notice - I'm sitting
here now in a hotel room?" Maurice wailed back, unaware that his
domestic problems were being tuned into by the occupants of room 136.
CNN news had nothing on this.
More exchanges floated through the paper-thin walls and words like "20
years...I want out", "in my own time... I"ll think about it, just leave
me alone" breached the partitioning wall to the trembling crescendos of
a Brahms' Violin Concerto.
Jan and David went out and spent several hours away, only returning to
their room towards nighttime. They were surprised to hear the
continuing din from next door, no shouting now, just classical music
pumping out as before. Their neighbour was apparently alone and
probably still thinking over his crisis, and in his cloud of self-pity
hadn't thought to change the radio station. Menuhin was the only
company he wanted, Jan felt sure.
There was a cool chill in the room as night drew on, and a sense of
melancholy descended over Jan, who pictured Maurice next door lonely,
defiant, pacing the room restlessly - the words 'be reasonable' going
over and over in his head. How could he be, after what had happened?
thought Jan. Then she realised she didn't know, but she could only
imagine it must have been something terrible. Yes, some treachery was
behind this.
Meanwhile Chopin switched to Beethoven, Beethoven to Bach and
back...
Outside the hotel it was dark. The port area was lit up and a few bits
of shipping mewed at each other across the lacquer black waters of the
Mediterranean.
Jan wasn't certain, but she thought the volume of the music had gone
down, and she struggled to make sense of BBC News 24 through still
-audible choruses from Verdi's Aida. The welfare of Maurice The
Unreasonable had started to distract her. She was pleased to hear some
rousing music and thought that would cheer him up. He'd reach a
decision, maybe he'd been wrong or hasty. 20 years after all was a long
time. He'd phone his wife, go back and start again.
The music continued into the night. Jan and David lay awake debating:
should they call his room and ask him to turn it down? A reasonable
request at this hour. But he was unreasonable and he'd probably yell
down the phone: "Music is all I have. Leave me alone!"
They rang room 135 and got no reply. Maybe he didn't hear the phone
over the music which was now Verdi's Requiem. Agnus Dei. Jan had
visions of the man hanging by his tie from a hook in the ceiling -
photos of his children strewn across the floor, a chair kicked away in
despair. It was time for action.
David phoned the downstairs desk and asked the clerk to make contact
with the man in room 135.
"Ask him to turn his radio off, it's late and I'm not in the mood for
Desert Island Discs."
After a few minutes they heard knocking on their neighbour's door.
Then everything went deathly quiet as the music stopped. Footsteps. Jan
held her breath. More knocking - this time on Jan and David's door. The
desk clerk, looking like an organ grinder's monkey in an absurd red
uniform, popped his head at a jaunty angle around the door and
said:
"All is quiet now."
"Is everything alright? We heard shouting earlier - a man and woman
were rowing... we were concerned", asked Jan.
The desk clerk looked puzzled.
"There's no one in that room. There was a guy, but he checked out.
Good night!"
So Maurice had seen reason, but he'd forgotten to flick the
switch.
"I could kick myself. To think - we spent an evening putting up with
that racket from an empty room", David muttered angrily, getting into
bed and switching off the light.
Jan lay in the darkness and felt strangely relieved.
Out on the sea, the cargo boats hooted as they passed in the
night.