Nowhere by Thomas Berger

striped sponge bag. His hair was covered with a bathing cap of pink rubber. The lower half of his face was all black mustache and beard.
    His silence suggested he had no English. I therefore found employment for the most useful of terms in my limited Italian vocabulary (one can go far on just these two): “ Maestro, complimenti! ”
    Now he smiled radiantly and tossed his fat hand at a jaunty angle. He swept out and rolled down the hallway as if on parade-float wheels.
    I entered a bathroom redolent of the subtle aroma of steam and the bolder scents of soap and cologne. The tub, mounted on high, gilded legs, was of heroic proportions—as it had had to be to hold its most recent occupant. Having taken off the trench coat, I sought a hook on which to hang it, but rare indeed is the sanitary facility, in America or Europe, which meets every simple need: so saith Wren’s Law. Eventually I folded the garment into a parcel and placed it on the marble-topped dressing table, and there noticed, as I had not previously, that the other object thereupon was a tape recorder. The cassette inside it was labeled: “All-Time Greatest Hits of Enrico Caruso.”
    When I got back to the room after my bath, I found a rusty razor, a mangy brush, and a mug containing a cake of brothel-scented shaving soap, and I brought this ancient equipment into play, with ice water, to clean away a day’s whiskers at the wash-stand behind the screen. I combed my damp-blackened hair (normally it is light brown) and donned a keen combo of synthetics: lime-green shirt; lavender trousers supported by a white plastic belt joined by an outsized brass buckle bearing the logo of Coors beer; the madras jacket, the fabric of which had the texture of crepe paper; and loafers made of cordovan-colored imitation leather.
    I went down the hall and rang for the elevator. When the car finally arrived, however, it was filled to capacity by the enormous man who listened to Caruso while bathing. We now exchanged helpless but amiable shrugs, and I used the stairway.
    I didn’t know which of the twin concierges was at the desk, and decided I didn’t care.
    But he told me. “Mr. Wren, sir! I am now rehabilitated.”
    “It wasn’t my idea that you be put in the pillory.”
    “It did me a world of good,” said he. “And the institution also serves to meet the needs of youngsters, who, without the occasional malefactor to taunt and deride as he sits helplessly restrained, might torture animals or mutilate one another. As it is, we have little juvenile delinquency in Saint Sebastian.”
    “Indeed yours is a remarkable country,” said I. “I wanted to ask you where I might go to find out more about it, whom I might interview—?”
    He closed the lid of one eye, leaned across the desk, and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “The public library.”
    At this point the elevator finally reached the ground floor: unreasonably, it traveled more slowly with a heavier load than with a light one. The large man deboarded. I failed to mention earlier that he wore tennis clothes: V-necked white sweater, white linen shorts, white knee socks, and sparkling white sneakers. Again we exchanged gestures: this time a slight bow on my part and an inclination of the head, with a horizontaled forearm, on his.
    I turned back to the concierge. “The public library?”
    He put a fat finger to his lips, and virtually shouted in the direction of the large man, who was moving out the street door, a can of tennis balls in a rear pocket and dwarfed by the massive ham underneath, “A male brothel? But of course, my dear sir!”
    “What are you doing?” I cried.
    The door closed behind the vast figure of Caruso’s fan. The concierge returned to his stertorous whisper. “We must be discreet.”
    “About the public library?”
    He gave me a long stare, then threw up his fat hands. “Well, sir, if you are not concerned for your own reputation, then who I am to be worried?”
    “Let me get this straight: