The Search Read Online Free Page B

building. He felt tense and frightened.
    â€œWe like our guests to pay in advance,” said the dark-skinned man. “How long are you staying for?”
    â€œA week,” said Trevor, not knowing until then what answer he would give. He felt extremely tired after his long journey and nearly fled down the stairs. Why should he be asked to pay a week in advance for such a grimy place? But at the same time he was afraid that if he changed his mind he would be able to find no accommodation elsewhere at such a late hour. He took the required money out of his wallet and handed it over.
    â€œWill you be wanting breakfast?” said the man.
    â€œYes,” said Trevor, “half-past eight if that is convenient.” His voice sounded strange to himself, almost echoing and nervous.
    The man made a note on the pad in front of him and Trevor re-entered the lift. It was while he was travelling funereally down to the floor on which his room was that he suddenly realized that he hadn’t been given a receipt for his money. But he didn’t feel able to return and ask for one. There was something overwhelmingly seedy about the hotel, something almost derelict and evil. He felt that it was a place where transients and vagrants stayed and in his fevered imagination it became a den where knife fights were common, where screams were heard from the desperate and the weak, where there were sudden explosions of violence. A vision of the college rose up in front of him with nostalgic intensity, and he saw a man sweeping leaves from the lawn and dumping them into a wheelbarrow. The man moved with rustic, timeless slowness.
    He wished that there was someone whom he could talk to, confide in, some third person who would be able to confer reality on the flickering world in which he now seemed to be living, some disinterested judge who would be sane and ordinary and clear-thinking. As he scurried along the flaking corridor to his room, he noticed scars on doors, and once he had a glimpse of a huge negro in shirt sleeves coming out of a bathroom. When he had opened the door of his room with the key he had been provided with, he immediately locked it behind him, shivering uncontrollably. Sweating profusely he sat down on the only chair in the room, leaving his small case on the floor beside him.
    He looked around him. There was a cracked basin fitted into the wall, but when he ran the water it made a thunderous stuttering noise as he washed his face which was streaming with perspiration. The walls and ceiling were spotted with brown stains as if there was some disease haunting the room, some sordid plague. As he sat down he heard a high, piercing whine like that of a mosquito. He went to the window to peer out but it was covered with wire netting, though it was partially open. Across from him he could see a dark building which looked like a factory.
    He felt suddenly in desperate need of a pee but at the same time was frightened lest he might be waylaid in the corridor, for he felt himself, in his feverish fear, surrounded by secret, violent people. Throughout the whole hotel there was an ominous, palpitating silence. Eventually he couldn’t contain himself any longer, opened the door carefully and seeing no one crept into the adjacent bathroom where there was a dirty shower and a toilet around which there were old, damp, dirty papers.
    After peeing he returned quickly to his room and locked the door again. He was angry that he had found himself in such a place, angry that he had paid in advance. He sat down on the bed and considered. Now that he had paid in advance he would have to wait there for a week. On the other hand might it not be better to sacrifice the money he hadalready paid and find a better hotel? Still, he wasn’t rich and if he found his brother destitute he would need all the money he had in order to help him. He should have phoned Sheila, that’s what he should have done, but some instinct made him