Futh is told to leave Hellhaus

Futh is told to leave Hellhaus Hotel after arriving late, spending the night there, and returning to the bar the next morning to ask about breakfast. The expulsion is decisive not because Bernard explains a charge or dispute, but because he gives Futh only a brief instruction in German that Futh cannot confidently understand. Between Ester’s hurried exit from Futh’s room and Bernard’s refusal to say more, the hotel’s ordinary duties of lodging and service give way to exclusion; Futh leaves with his questions unresolved and the silver lighthouse still in his possession.

Arrival and the night at the hotel

Futh arrives at Hellhaus Hotel carrying anorak and wheeled suitcase after Ester has waited for him through the afternoon and evening. The new girl at the bar does not understand his attempt to introduce himself in German, so he turns to Ester, repeating his name and explaining that someone is expecting him. His appearance is conspicuously dishevelled: gravy marks his chin, shirt, and trousers. The suitcase’s clacking wheels carry him across the floor to Ester, who has been waiting for him.

Ester takes his suitcase upstairs and prepares the supper plate that had been made at lunchtime and kept under clingfilm in the refrigerator. She brings it to his room, lets herself in with her master key when he does not answer, and finds him in the shower, singing. Although she is annoyed that he is late and has not apologised, she feels obliged to feed him and recognizes her own desire to feed men. Her service is practical and personal, but she would rather avoid a conversation with a guest who keeps addressing her by name as if he knows her.

While Futh is in the shower, Ester finds the silver lighthouse among the clothes on his bed. She drops it back onto the pile and starts to leave; after hesitating and stepping towards the bed again, she turns away when she hears him coming out of the bathroom. At the far end of the corridor, a door marked PRIVATE separates the guest rooms from the rooms occupied by Ester and her husband. Bernard comes through it and sees Ester hurrying out of room six. A moment later he sees Futh, partly concealed behind the doorway and naked, looking towards the stairs before withdrawing into the room. The door closes and its key turns. The following night’s brief, violent storm passes with little notice, a disturbance that echoes the encounter without resolving what Bernard will do.

The breakfast exchange

Early on Sunday, Futh goes downstairs with his supper plate. Ester is at the bar eating an orange and drinking coffee. He sees a new bruise on her face beneath her makeup, thanks her in German, and stands smiling for a moment. He considers asking about breakfast, but before he can form the sentence Ester takes the empty plate and walks away. He watches her go, smelling orange zest, good coffee, and an undernote of disinfectant. The service he had expected does not materialize, and he is left without an answer from Ester.

Futh looks around the bar, where vacant chairs and bare tables leave him unsure where to sit, then approaches the man behind it. An enormous wall clock catches his attention; the furniture polish reeks, with a trace of camphor. The well-dressed barman spreads his manicured fingers on the counter, and a fly rests on his shirt collar. Futh recognizes him as the man he saw in the corridor the previous night, whom he had taken for another guest. He asks carefully in German about breakfast. The man shakes his head. When Futh persists by asking what time breakfast is, the barman looks him silently in the eye and tells him, “You should go.”

Expulsion and departure

Futh does not know enough German to be sure of the words or their tense. He thinks he may understand the instruction, but it makes no sense to him: he has paid for bed and breakfast, and he cannot identify any problem that would explain being asked to leave. He tries again to get an answer to his original question. Bernard stares at him and says nothing more. The refusal is therefore both an order and a failure of communication: Futh receives a direction to go, but no account of why it has been given.

Futh returns to his room and packs, still unsure whether the hotel’s suitcase-collection service will work as expected. His equipment is carefully prepared for the walking holiday: waterproofs, maps, compass, guidebook, English-German dictionary, food and drink, spare socks, first-aid supplies, cutlery, and an emergency sewing kit. The silver lighthouse is in his shorts pocket. He nearly leaves his book under the bedside lamp, then finds the previous night’s moth lying on its cover. These small acts of packing contrast with the abruptness of the decision imposed on him: the journey continues, but the hotel has not provided the uncomplicated rest and breakfast he had paid for.

Before going out, Futh realizes he is still holding a pair of pink satin knickers. He lays them very carefully on the landlady’s check-in desk beside her ledger, embarrassed and glancing around; the barman who refused him breakfast watches. Futh steps into the sunshine and knows the man is still watching him leave. The east-facing front of the hotel is so bright that he squints when he looks back. He then walks alongside the Rhine to the ferry, eats a biscuit while waiting, and crosses the river with another biscuit, looking back at Hellhaus and the green hills and rocky outcrops behind it. He remains bewildered both by the missing breakfast and by the instruction to go.

Aftermath and significance

The dismissal does not settle Futh’s practical or personal questions. Later, after bathing, he discovers that he has not seen the silver lighthouse in his suitcase. With his supper absent and closing time near, he goes downstairs in his pyjamas to look for Ester, but the girl behind the bar answers in German and turns back to a customer before he can ask her to repeat herself. He sees Bernard at a small table and decides not to approach him in his pyjamas. Instead, after hesitating in the corridor, Futh pushes open the door marked PRIVATE and enters the space beyond it. The expulsion thus forms part of an unresolved chain: the hotel’s refusal to engage him does not end his search, but helps propel him across the boundary between guest rooms and the couple’s private quarters.

As an event, the episode exposes how little the formal transaction of hospitality protects Futh once Bernard has decided he should go. Futh has paid for his accommodation, carries his plate back, asks a straightforward question, and tries again when he receives no answer. In return, he gets a silent refusal, a short command, and the barman’s watchful gaze as he leaves. The scene’s central imbalance is between Futh’s effort to make himself understood and the hotel staff’s withholding of explanation. Bernard’s earlier sight of Ester leaving Futh’s room gives the order an immediate context, but the narrative does not state Bernard’s reason; Futh himself leaves unable to connect what happened in the corridor with the loss of breakfast and his expulsion.