My thoughts seem to come slowly, solemnly and monotonously, and my imaginings seem as interminable as the architecture. My recollections seem insane, but the ambience revives something seemingly timeless, something abyssal from long ago. Is memory so fallible? It is hard to be sure quite what happened that year at the hotel. Was it there, or somewhere else? It does not matter where. Memory is a private world. A world that seems like a dream. It all seems now so holographic in time, as if everything happened simultaneously with no beginning or end. Walking, waiting! Alone, I was waiting for you, very far away from this empty place, where I hear you sobbing, still waiting for the love or enchantment, that no longer threatens to come to separate us again, to take you back. Are you coming? The curtain falls to polite applause. Now, I seem to remember—a play, a production put on for the guests, it was so cold.

I was a hotel devoid of memory, but 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. 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. When did it begin? Yes, it must have been last year in Marienbad. The hotel was just like this one. You just frown. Sometimes, you seem to be nervous or worried. But, of course, you do remember. You must remember. One bright but icily cold Saturday I went up to your bedroom. It was a plush bedroom of finely embroidered damask wall coverings, anachronistically modern furnishings of chrome and glass. It seems as if you were waiting, silently, seductively, lying across the sateen sofa invitingly drawing me to you. The details seem indistinct to me, now, but you accepted that you did remember, eventually.

I strived to make you recollect that which you must have subconsciously blocked from your memory. You were increasingly resistant, denying it, calling me insane, and always trying to get away, to avoid me, but, as the weeks went by, you stopped denying it. Yet you remained distant and indifferent. You could not deny the evidence I had, the intimate details I could recall. Remember, at that hour I came to your bedroom when he was at the gaming table. I had told you I would come. When I came, all the doors were ajar. There were always walls, everywhere, around me, white, marbled, polished, like a mausoleum, there were always walls. These walls, and corridors and passages seem to be the very recesses of the soul. Nothing ever changes at the resort. No one seems to arrive or depart. The park’s clipped bushes and criss-crossing pathways are like an unthreadable maze. We tread them as if in an eternal ceremony, an eternal drama, real but unreal. It is as if we are meticulously following prescribed mechanical rites. As we walked with hurried steps, the house seemed to loom even larger to us.

This year you promised to elope with me, to leave him. Slowly I convinced you. The past is a stifling, lifeless place. It all seemed to me strange, even indeterminate. Did things happen quite like that? It sometimes seemed not to make sense. It seemed ambiguous and uncertain. Remember? After speaking to you in your bedroom, he left to join the others at the shooting gallery. I came to see you while he was busy, but he returned holding a tiny ivory handled ladies’ Beretta. Could it have been yours? He seemed to be in a jealous rage. He fired several shots. You fell onto the fleecy rug (or was it silk?), lying inadvertantly in a seductive posture, lying provocatively. At that moment I seemed to die too. In a sepulchral pose… you looked as diaphanous as your dress. Through the mist of time, it seems clear to me, though so long ago. I can imagine it. You must remember it. It seemed he had killed you. Wait! … Can it be right? No!… It … cannot be right. Time swirls, plays tricks. So hard to remember. Memory is unreliable. I need you alive, as you were then. It was not like that. No, that is not the way of it. You are alive, must be alive. It is a mistake. I must clear my head. Work it out better. You are not dead. You understand. You will know. I shall explain to you. You will know then. You will remember… 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… … Why couldn’t you let me forget this… this catastrophe?! Why couldn’t you just let me sleep…forever?! …why?