188
LILLIAN HELLMAN
attaches and bring the screams to their attention. This was done,
and the Japanese attaches, evidently awake and prepared for the
summons, padded down the hall in Bond Street dressing gowns car–
rying a long pole used for opening windows and several smaller
im–
plements. They broke open the door. On the floor, in a corner, were
two crouching women, one of whom had her leg stretched at an odd
angle. (It was later found that she had a broken foot. She told the
police that she had fallen over her girl friend during a game of
tipsy
hide and seek.) Several windows were smashed, all mirrors were
broken and an overstuffed chair was slashed to pieces. At this mo–
ment, the hotel manager pushed his way through the crowd, entered
the room, held up his hand for silence and said in English, "I wish
to say that this is simply not nice."
There are, of course, many quiet days at the Metropole.
Last
week very little happened. A journalist returning from London
brought a girl he knew three pairs of nylon stockings. She thought
them a mingy, unloving gift, so she wrote a short account of their life
together and sent one copy to his newspaper and a carbon to
his
wife. A code clerk in a minor embassy slapped the oldest child of
the Russian tenor and the Russian tenor says that he regrets his re–
turn from Shanghai into the company of barbarians. One of the
fur buyers received a box of eggs that exploded in the main lobby
with such force that the manager had him frisked for a gun.
The night the child got slapped John Hersey and I went to the
opera. The streets around the Bolshoi were as crowded as they
al–
ways are on the night of any performance. The Tchaikovsky-Push–
kin
Pique Dame
was being performed. The cold, tired, hungry au–
dience seems to feel at home with the lush ninteenth-century aristo–
crats on the stage. Maybe they would enjoy the comedy dramas in
the Metropole across the street.
