The White Hotel

by D. M. Thomas

  The young woman was overcome by the sadness of her dream, and disinclined to dispute my interpretation to any serious extent—except on one point, of a melancholy nature, which she did not have the heart to tell me about, and which I myself will reserve till the proper time. In any case it did not affect the overall meaning, which was altogether apparent.

  During our discussions, while I was questioning her about the nature of the young man’s overfamiliar attentions on the train, she recalled a forgotten fragment. She did not think the new material of any importance, but I have learnt from experience that dream elements which are forgotten at first but remembered subsequently are usually among the most vital. So it was to prove in this case, though its full meaning was not to become clear until much later on in the analysis.

  I said to the young man I was going to Moscow to visit the T_____s, and he replied that they wouldn’t be able to put me up, and I’d have to sleep in the summer-house. It would be hot in there, he added, and I’d have to take all my clothes off.

  The T_____s, she explained, were distant relatives on her mother’s side, who had settled in Moscow. Her mother and aunt had spent holidays with them in their youth, and they had maintained affectionate contact with Anna’s mother after her marriage. Frau Anna had never met them, but according to her aunt they were a warmhearted and hospitable couple. Her aunt, in fact, had mentioned them only the day before: recalling wistfully the holidays she had spent there, and wishing she could take Anna to meet them, since she was sure a break would do her niece a world of good. But they were old now, and might not even have survived the troubles.

  The fragment appeared to me to express the young woman’s yearning to free herself from the sad constraints of her present life and to reclaim the lost paradise of the years with her mother: that is, in effect, to be naked in the “summer-house” or house of blissfully hot summers. She did not disagree with this interpretation; and also brought to mind a memory of those far-off years which she found amusing, as well as affecting, to recall.

  Their house in Odessa lay in many acres of semi-tropical trees and shrubs, which ran down to the very edge of the sea. There was a tiny private beach. The summer-house was in the midst of a grove of trees in a remote part of the garden. The previous owners had let it go to ruin, and as a result it was little used. One scorchingly hot afternoon, everyone had scattered in the grounds and the house, driven into isolation by the heat. Anna’s father was probably at work, and she believed her brother had gone off for the day with some friends. Anna was hot and bored, playing listlessly on the beach, where her mother was standing at her painting easel and so not willing to be disturbed. Having been scolded for chattering, Anna thought she would try to find her aunt and uncle. She wandered through the grounds, and eventually came upon the summer-house. She was pleased to see her uncle and aunt inside, but they were behaving in a way she could not understand; her aunt’s shoulders were naked, though normally she kept them covered from the sun, and her uncle was embracing her. The embrace continued, they were too absorbed to notice Anna’s approach through the trees, and she slipped away again. She returned to the beach to tell her mother the strange story; but her mother had abandoned her easel and had gone to lie on a flat rock, and appeared to be sleeping. The child knew there were two circumstances when on no account must she disturb her mother: when she was painting and, even more so, when she was asleep. So, disappointed, she wandered away again, back to the house, to have some lemonade.

  What was I to make of this memory? It was very much an adult’s view; but this was not proof that we were dealing with a phantasy. I have my doubts if we ever deal with a memory from childhood; memories relating to childhood may be all that we possess. Our childhood memories show us our earliest years not as they were but as they appeared at the later period when the memories were aroused. The young woman was amused by her recollection of her first glimpse of adult sexuality; while at the same time her heart was touched by the knowledge of her aunt’s tender intimacy with her uncle, in the recreative atmosphere of a summer holiday in Odessa; more especially as her aunt now found it too painful to talk about those times.

  However, it was necessary for me to ask whether she had perhaps witnessed more than she recalled? If she had, her memory could take her no further; and indeed it seemed highly improbable that a young married couple, who might withdraw to the privacy of their room, should take such a risk of embarrassment. Nevertheless, the memory’s appearance in Frau Anna’s dream seemed to suggest that it was significant. It was not impossible that it was connected with her hysteria; for those whom Medusa petrifies have glimpsed her face before, at a time when they could not name her.

  The days and weeks following brought little advance. For this, probably both patient and physician were to blame. Frau Anna, for her part, withdrew altogether behind her defences, and sometimes made a worsening of her symptoms an excuse for not coming to me. To be fair to her, I am sure that she felt her pains to be unbearable. She pleaded with me to arrange for an operation, for the removal of her breast and her ovary. For my part, I confess that I grew irritated by her unhelpfulness, and infected by her apathy. She remarked once that she had thrown a scrap of food to a dog in the street and it was too feeble and emaciated to crawl to it; and that she herself felt much the same. I found myself abandoning analysis altogether, on occasions, and simply urging her not to think of taking her life. I pointed out that suicide is only a disguised form of murder; but it would be a pointless exercise, unlikely to have any effect on its intended victim, her father. Frau Anna said it was only the unspeakable pains which would ever make her think of ending it all. She was quite rational during these discussions. Apart from her debilitating symptoms, no one would have taken her for an hysteric. There was something impenetrable, which increased my irritability. I considered using her evasiveness as an excuse for bringing the treatment to a close; yet in fairness I could not bring myself to do this, since, in spite of everything, she was a young woman of character, intelligence and inner truthfulness.

  Then occurred a melancholy event which might have provided me with a perfect excuse for breaking off treatment: the sudden and unexpected death of one of my daughters.1 Perhaps my oppressed mood of the preceding weeks had been a preparation for it. Such an event is not to be lingered over; although, were one given to mysticism, one might well ask what secret trauma in the mind of the Creator had been converted to the symptoms of pain everywhere around us. As I was not so given, there was nothing for it but “Fatum & Ananke.” When I returned to my duties I found a letter from Frau Anna. Besides condoling with me on my loss, and informing me that she had gone with her aunt to spend a short holiday at Bad Gastein,1 her letter contained an allusion to the dream of some weeks previously. “I have been sorely troubled by the element of prediction in my dream. I would not mention it except that I am sure it will not have escaped your memory either. At the time, I was half convinced that the man who received the telegram was you (at least in part) but I feared to upset you needlessly, knowing of your tender feelings for all your daughters. I have long suspected that, together with my other infirmities, I am cursed with what is called second sight. I foresaw the deaths of two of my friends in the war. It is something I have inherited from my mother’s side, apparently—a strain of the Romany; but not a gift that gives me pleasure—quite the reverse. I hope that this will not have upset you more than you already are.”

  I have no comment to make on Frau Anna’s “prediction,” except to say that the sorrowful news did arrive (not unusually) by telegram. It seems plausible that the patient’s sensitive mind discerned in me anxieties, much below the level of consciousness, over a daughter with small children, living far away, at a time when there were many epidemics.

  What happened on Anna’s return from Gastein was totally unexpected and illogical. So much so that, were I a writer of novellas instead of a man of science, I should hesitate to offend against my readers’ artistic sensibilities by describing the
next stage in our therapy.

  Arriving five minutes late for her appointment, she breezed in with the carefree air of someone merely wishing to say hello, before going off to meet a friend for the theatre or the shops. She spoke loquaciously, in a firm, vibrant voice without a trace of breathlessness. She had put on perhaps twenty pounds in weight, so gaining, or regaining, all the attributes of personable womanhood. There was a lively glow in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She wore a new dress of an appealing style, and a new coiffure which suited her face. Here, in short, was not the painfully thin, depressed invalid I expected, but an attractive, slightly coquettish young lady, bouncing with health and vigour. She hardly needed to inform me that her symptoms had disappeared.

  I had often spent vacations at Gastein, but never in my experience had its thermal springs been so miraculous. I said as much, adding drily that perhaps I ought to abandon my practice and become a hotel-keeper there. She positively roared with laughter; then, recalling my bereavement, fell into a penitential expression at her thoughtless gaiety. I assured her that her good spirits were a cordial to me. However, it soon became apparent that, far from her having thrown off her hysteria, it had simply changed direction.1 Whereas before, it had sapped her bodily strength with fierce pangs, yet left her mind rational, now it had released her body at the cost of her mind. Her unbridled talkativeness soon gave evidence of a wild irrationality. Her cheerfulness was the desperate humour of soldiers joking in the trenches; and her efforts at a sustained discussion drifted into a dreamlike monologue, almost a hypnotic trance. Before, she had been miserable but sensible; now she was happy and demented. Her speech was full of imaginative products and hallucinations; at times it was not so much speech as Sprechgesang, practically an operatic recitative, elevated and lyrical-dramatic. I should add that, since joining the orchestra of one of our leading opera companies, she had become devoted to the art.1

  She seemed unconscious of the effect she was producing, and remained joyfully convinced of a full recovery. Failing to make any sense of her account of her stay at Gastein, I suggested to her that she try to write down her impressions. She had, on a previous occasion, responded well to such a proposal, since she had a taste for literature and enjoyed writing—she was, for example, an inveterate letter-writer. However, I was not at all prepared for the new Anna’s literary productions, with which she came armed on the day following. Hesitantly she put into my hands a soft-covered book. I saw it was the score of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. She had, I discovered, written her “impressions” of Gastein between the staves, like an alternative libretto; and had even attempted rhythm and rhyme, of a sort, so that her script could be read almost as doggerel verse. Had Frau Anna’s version of Mozart been sung in any of our opera houses, however, the house manager would have been prosecuted for the abuse of public morals; for it was pornographic and nonsensical. She had used expressions heard only in slums, barracks and male club rooms. I was astonished where she had learnt such terms, for she had not, to my knowledge, frequented the places where they were spoken.

  At first glance, little was evident to me except some references to her hallucinations, and a bold acknowledgment of the transference. In her phantasy Don Juan’s place was taken by one of my sons—with whom, I need scarcely add, she was unacquainted. It was fairly clear that she was expressing a wish that somehow she might take the place of my missing daughter, through marriage. When I confronted her with this inference, Anna rather shamefacedly said it was only a joke, “to cheer me up.”

  Finding the flood of irrational images too much to deal with, I invited her to go away and write down her own analysis of the material she had produced, in a restrained and sober manner. She took my request not unreasonably as a rebuke, and I had to assure her that I had found her “libretto” of great interest. After a gap of several days, she handed me a child’s exercise book, filled with her untidy writing. She waited breathlessly (literally so, for she had suffered a slight return of the asthmatic symptom) while I glanced through a few pages. I saw that, instead of writing an interpretation, as I had asked, she had chosen to expand her original phantasy, embroidering every other word, so that I seemed to have gained nothing except the herculean task of reading a document of great length and untidiness. Though she had, to some extent, tempered the crudity of the sexual descriptions, here was still an erogenous flood, an inundation of the irrational and libidinous; the billows were less mountainous, but they covered a greatly enlarged terrain. I was now dealing with an inflated imagination that knew no bounds, like the currency of those months—a suitcase of notes that would not buy a single loaf. We spent a fruitless hour, after which I promised I would read her document carefully when I should be at leisure. Upon doing so, I began to glimpse a meaning behind the garish mask. Much was the purest wish-fulfilment, mawkish where it was not disgusting; but here and there, also, were passages not without a touch of skill and feeling: natural descriptions of an “oceanic” kind, mixed with the erotic phantasy. One could not avoid thinking of the poet’s words:

  The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

  Are of imagination all compact…1

  By the time I had put down the notebook I was convinced that it might teach us everything, if we were only in a position to make everything out.

  There is a joking saying that “Love is a homesickness”; and whenever a man dreams of a place or a country and says to himself, while he is still dreaming: “This place is familiar to me, I’ve been here before,” we may interpret the place as being his mother’s genitals or her body. All who have hitherto, in a learning capacity, had the opportunity to read Frau Anna’s journal have had that feeling: the “white hotel” is known to them, it is the body of their mother. It is a place without sin, without our load of remorse; for the patient tells us she has mislaid her suitcase on the way, and comes without even a toothbrush. The hotel speaks in the language of flowers, scents and tastes. There is no need to attempt to apply a rigid classification of its symbols, as some students have done: to claim, for instance, that the vestibule is the oral cavity, the staircase the oesophagus (or, according to others, the act of coitus), the balcony the bosom, the surrounding fir trees the pubic hair, and so on; what is more to the point is the overall feeling of the white hotel, its wholehearted commitment to orality—sucking, biting, eating, gorging, taking in, with all the blissful narcissism of a baby at the breast. Here is the oceanic oneness of the child’s first years, the autoerotic paradise, the map of our first country of love—thrown off with all the belle indifférence of an hysteric.

  Here, it seemed to me, was evidence of Anna’s profound identification with her mother, preceding the Oedipus complex. Nor, except in its degree of intensity in Anna’s case, should this particularly surprise us. The breast is the first love object; the child sucking at the maternal breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. The finding of a love object, in puberty, is in fact a refinding of it. Anna’s mother, warmhearted and pleasure-loving, bequeathed to her child a lifelong auto-erotism,1 and therefore her journal represented an attempt to return to the time when oral erotism reigned supreme, and the bond between mother and child was unbroken. Thus, in the “white hotel” there is no division between Anna and the world outside; everything is swallowed whole. The newly born libido overrides all potential hazards, like the black cat she describes as making hair-raising escapes from death. This is the “good” side of the white hotel, its abundant hospitality. But the shadow of destructiveness cannot be ignored for a single moment, least of all in the times of greatest pleasure. The all-giving mother was planning her visit to the doomed hotel.

  I now had the ludicrous sensation that I knew absolutely all there was to know about Frau Anna, except the cause of her hysteria. And a second paradox arose: the more convinced I grew that the “Gastein journal” was a remarkably courageous document, the more ashamed Anna became of having written so disgusting a work. She could not imagine where she had heard the indelicate expressions,
or why she had seen fit to use them. She begged me to destroy her writings, for they were only devilish fragments thrown off by the “storm in her head”—itself a result of her joy at being once more free from pain. I told her I was interested only in penetrating to the truths which I was sure her remarkable document contained; adding that I was very glad she had evaded the censor, the train guard, on her way to the white hotel!

  It was only with the greatest reluctance that the young woman would consent to go through her narrative with me, pausing where any associations occurred to her. Her slight recurrence of breathlessness having passed, she was convinced she was fully cured, and could not understand my insistence that we press on. Fortunately the effect of the transference made her also reluctant to bring the analysis to an end.

  “The white hotel is where we stayed,” she began. “I loved being in the mountains, it was such a relief after the miseries of Vienna; but I wanted a lake too, a huge one, because I feel freer beside water. The hotel had a green swimming pool, so I allowed it to grow into a lake! Most of the people were guests at the hotel. There was an extraordinary mixture—people trying to take up their habits again after the war, I suppose. For instance, there was an English officer, very straight-backed and courteous, who had been shell-shocked in France. He wrote poetry, and showed me one of his books. It took me by surprise; even though it didn’t seem very good, so far as I can judge English. He kept mentioning a nephew who was going to join him later, to go skiing. But I heard someone say his nephew had been killed in the trenches. The major summoned us to a meeting once, to say we were under threat of attack. I thought I would weave an amusing scene around it—because after all there are so many things we don’t understand, such as leaves in autumn and falling stars.”