The Grasshopper

Chapter 36

In the dense darkness Pascal sat on the bed and lowered his feet to the floor. “My telephone’s gone!” he thought as he searched his jacket pockets. “Of course it’s gone. Why am I surprised? Who in their right mind would leave their captive with a telephone? Something soft beneath my feet.” Pascal slid his shoes along the floor. “Carpet.. I’ll get up.” He rose suddenly, staggered and sat back down on the bed. “This drug of Raul’s is still… Slowly… It was too quickly…”

He stood up slowly, managing to maintain his balance. He took a step. One step… another… He hit his knee on a hard object. It seemed to him that even that faint sound echoed through the complete silence. He stood there for a while, listening.

“Did someone hear that? Again nothing, silence… No one heard me. Or they did but are not reacting.”

He bent over to touch the object that he had hit. He passed the palms of his hand over the flat surface. He spread his hands as much as he could, but he still didn’t touch the edge. “It’s long. Like a low cupboard… a dresser. Let’s see how wide it is,” he moved his palms forward, leaning his knees on the object. He immediately touched the end. “A wall”, he passed his hands across the wall in front of him. “Wait, wait… bed, dresser, wall. I’ll go to the end of the dresser… there’ll probably be some door or window with the blinds drawn… something… a light switch. No, no… if this is… and it looks like a hotel room… the light is… the nightstand!”

He stepped back, felt the bed under his knees and sat down on it again. He propped himself up with his hands and moved his body along the edge of the bed. With the outside of his thigh he felt a low hard object. “There it is!” he touched the object with his hands. “It must be a nightstand,” he thought excitedly. “And on it a lamp,” he concluded as he passed the palm of his hand over its entire surface. But he didn’t feel anything. “Then it’s a wall-mounted lamp. Above the nightstand.” Still sitting, he ran his fingers over the wall and found a switch. He pressed it. The room was lit up by a lamp on the wall, placed slightly above the switch.

Pascal closed his eyes because even this weak light bothered him at first. Then slowly, squinting through his eyelashes, he looked around himself. He was in a typical bedroom. The bed was large, a double bed covered in an elegant silk dark-red cover with a black rose embroidered in the middle. There were two nightstands, on each side of the bed, and along the walls – two dressers made of the same dark wood. The bed practically took up the entire length of the room. Between the end of it and the opposite wall there was just enough room to open the door.

“A door! And how about window?” Pascal wondered. It was only then that he noticed that the room didn’t have any windows. “What is this? Some luxurious solitary confinement cell?”

He went to the door and put his ear against it. Complete silence again. He turned the doorknob and the door opened.