Moving Parts

Feuchtmeier. That’s what this man is called. His surname, scribbled illegibly in pen on the appropriate line of the hotel form, now appears in the computerized list of guests. The narrator has checked this by calling the front desk from an ancient black windup telephone for house calls only mounted on the wall by the chest full of obsolete red fire extinguishers, umpteen floors beneath the lobby. The key that Feuchtmeier left at the front desk a moment ago is supposedly in a pigeonhole marked with a room number that could also be called, right now even, from the same antique phone, so as to hear the intermittent buzzing sound. But if Feuchtmeier has left his key at reception, he won’t answer the phone.

His ex-wife is also called Feuchtmeier, like him. But he’s the main user of the name printed on credit cards, engraved on the nameplate at the gate, and appearing on his ID card. Invoked on various occasions, often tossed hurriedly into the middle of a sentence, it has indicated his person in an unambiguous and incontestable way, and for this reason it would be better if, for the woman, along with the surname a first name could be found. As for him, Feuchtmeier sounds good and adequate. It probably does not come from the Fojchtmajers who were owners, let’s say, of the Polish Word publishing house and printing press that was active right up until the outbreak of the second war; but it may have something in common with the easily imaginable, taciturn Captain Feuchtmeier, who wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses and who, without a doubt impeccably dressed, served for example in the navy of the Third Reich. One might mention in passing the captain’s son, a difficult boy who was too much to handle for his aunts as they struggled with the privations of the postwar period. Brought up in orphanages, he did time for auto theft before he settled down. Old age found him the respectable owner of a repair shop, mending crankshafts, arguing with his wife, and watching soccer on television. He took pride in the fact that he never spared the belt, using it on his son to ensure exemplary report cards, which he keeps for old times’ sake in a drawer along with his receipts.