It Was Cold That Year…
I never heard anyone raise a voice in this hotel. No one. The conversations developed in a void, as if the sentences meant nothing, were intended to mean nothing, in any case. And a sentence, once begun, suddenly remained in suspension, as though frozen by the frost, starting over afterwards, no doubt, at the same point, or somewhere else. It did not matter. The same conversations always recurred, the same absent, low, monotonous voices. Everywhere there were signs, Silence! Quiet! The servants were mute. The games were played in silence. And when you joined in their conversations, you spoke with a liveliness that seemed false. Now I am beginning to remember. They were all dressed in formal attire, and engaged in polite murmured conversations while standing about decorously, in the unobtrusive manner of well bred people.
I have a recurring memory of moving slowly through the hallways, galleries, and salons of the hotel´s endless passages. I am walking on, again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this sun-king splendour of a forgotten era, this enormous, ornamented, pompous, empyrean hotel, where hallways succeed endless hallways, silent, deserted hallways overloaded with a faded, insipid ornamentation of woodwork, stucco, mouldings, marble, smoked glasswork, blackened oil paintings, columns, heavy fabrics, ornamented architravings, series of entrances, landings, transverse hallways, that open in turn on dusty salons, floridly decorated atriums, deserted palm courts. When did it begin? Yes, it must have been last year in Marienbad. The hotel was just like this one. You just giggle. Sometimes, you seem to be distant or indifferent. But, of course, you do remember. You must remember. One cold evening, I went up to your bedroom. It was a plush bedroom of creamy satin drapes, Moorish looking sofas and Persian rugs. It seems as if you were waiting, silently, seductively, lying across the sateen sofa your face unnaturally pale. The details seem indistinct to me, now, but you accepted that you did remember, eventually. Behind us, the silhouette of the castle grew menacingly larger against the dark night sky as we fled. The grounds of this palace were a kind of park a la francaise without any trees or flowers, without any foliage. A conceptually simple design with no organic shapes, geometric, angular. Gravel, stone, marble and straight lines marked out rigid spaces, surfaces with little mystery by day. It seemed, at first glance, impossible to get lost here. Straight paths extend into the distance, between lines of fantastic statues with frozen gestures casting grotesque shadows from their granite slabs… on, along, across, down, intersection after intersection… you are lost. There had to be a way, a strategy to solve the endless enigma… Already lost yet the shadow of the house still envelopes you, lost forever, in a silent icily cold night, alone with me… until nest year… in Marienbad.
Its characters dress as though they are from the early thirties, and comport themselves with the demure etiquette of an epoch long gone. The weather was cool that year. The rooms seemed icy cold. A drama was being performed at the hotel as entertainment. Its plot was a love triangle presented in a stilted and melodramatic style. The stage actors were posturing rather than acting like ordinary people. You have always been afraid. But I loved your fear that evening. I watched you, letting you struggle a little. I loved you. There was something in your eyes, you were alive. Finally, I took you, half by force. Uh no! Not by force. I think it was not by force. But you are the only one who knows it. Are they awake or dreaming, human or robots? Can they remember? I cannot remember events perfectly, in a perfect sequence. Time seems jagged like a broken mirror. They leave and reappear. As if in a dream, they are in different places at the same time. I leave him by the grand staircase and enter the conservatory, and here he is again, smiling, challenging me…
Memory is fallible. It is hard to be sure quite what happened that year at the hotel. Was it there? It does not matter where. Recollections are a private world. A world that seems like a dream. It seemed to me like a temporal hologram, as if everything happened simultaneously with no beginning or end. All of your thoughts are in your head together. Sometimes it is hard to keep them in the right sequence. Is there a right sequence? I think it was her. We had met before. I am sure it was her. Myth is like thoughts, it stands for what is continuous. Good and evil are always in conflict. Michael did not fight the dragon, he is always fighting it. Unceasingly. Memory is like myth, and myth is the basis of ritual. We ritualize things, and must then do them continually. Myth tells us why, but represents actions that never cease. Dare we let them cease? If they were to cease, would life then cease too? Perhaps our habits are necessary. The wolf habitually howls to its god, the moon. Must he do it? … and next year! …
