The White Hotel

by D. M. Thomas

  I have to confess that I actually wrote the verses—“doggerel” as you so rightly say—while I was at Gastein. The weather was atrocious, and for three days we couldn’t set foot outside because of a snowstorm. There was nothing to do but eat (which I did compulsively), read, observe our fellow guests, and phantasize about the young man. The English major gave me the idea of writing some poetry. He showed me one day a poem he’d just written, about his school days, lying during the summer holidays with a sweetheart (of doubtful gender) in an English garden under a plum tree. It was sentimental and terrible. I thought I could hardly do any worse, and I’ve always enjoyed trying my hand at poetry. Never successfully, of course. I wanted it to be shocking, or rather, I wanted it to be honest to my complicated feelings about sex, and I also wanted my aunt to know what I was really like. I left it lying around and she read it. You can imagine how horrified she was.

  Well, when you suggested I write something, I thought I’d try you with the verses. So I copied them out in my score of Don Giovanni. I don’t know why I did that. It shows I was crazy. When you asked for an interpretation I thought I’d turn it into the third person to see if that would help me make more sense of it. But it didn’t. It needed you to do that, and I think it is remarkable the way your understanding of it seems to have deepened in the intervening years. Your analysis (the mother’s womb, and so on) strikes me as profoundly true, though much too charitable towards its grossness.

  The corset as hypocrisy—yes! But also the restraints of manners, traditions, morality, art. In my indecent revelations I feel as though I were standing before you uncorseted, and I blush.

  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I’d already written “Don Giovanni.” I don’t imagine it’s important. But there are other deceptions which were, and I’ve decided I ought to tell you about them, for you may feel that your case study needs changing—or even abandoning. I shan’t blame you if you hate me for all the lies and half-truths I told.

  You were right about my memory of the summer-house being a screen for something else. (Though the summer-house incident also happened.) On one occasion in my childhood I wandered on to Father’s yacht when I wasn’t supposed to, and I found my mother, and my aunt and uncle, there all together, naked. It was such a shock, I thought I was seeing my mother’s (or perhaps my aunt’s) face reflected in a mirror, but no, they were both there. I thought my mother (or perhaps my aunt) was kneeling in prayer, my uncle kneeling behind her. Quite clearly it was intercourse a tergo. You can be sure I didn’t stay to inquire…. Apparently I was three when that happened.

  This only came back to me about five years ago, after a very emotional discussion with Aunt Magda. I heard from my brother Yury (in Detroit) that my father had died. He’d lost his business and his house, of course, and had been living a lonely life in one room. I didn’t exactly grieve for his death, but the news affected me, and I was determined to have it all out with my aunt. Poor thing, she was devastated with remorse. She obviously wanted, deep down, to make a clean breast of the only wicked thing she’s ever done. She confessed that two or three times in Odessa she and my mother had gone to bed with my uncle. She could only explain her allowing it to happen by saying that a wife will do many things to please her husband, and I can understand that. It seems that my mother and father had had a white marriage for a long time. My uncle persuaded Aunt Magda it would be harmless and even kind…. Well, anyway, it happened, but she was thoroughly miserable about it, and when I toddled blithely in, that time, it was the perfect excuse for saying, No more. They all hoped I was too young to understand.

  After that, my aunt thought they had all come to their senses. She made her confession (I suppose), and hoped the whole shameful business was in the past. She had no idea they continued to see each other—going to extraordinary lengths to meet, during the winter months, and that it must have been, not just a physical attraction, but a genuine love affair. She only found out when a policeman knocked on her door, hoping to find a son or daughter—because, according to the hotel register in Budapest, both she and my uncle were dead…. I was right, by the way—Uncle Franz was at a pedagogical conference!…The bodies were burnt beyond recognition. It wasn’t until they showed my aunt some jewellery belonging to the dead woman that she recognized her sister’s things. And had to send a telegram to my father. You can imagine that…. If I hadn’t already forgiven my aunt for the sordid events at my home, I should have had to forgive her when I learnt what a nightmare she had been through. Another thought tormenting her was that maybe their “trio” was not the beginning, that perhaps they were laughing at her. That’s something we’ll never know

  My aunt is convinced she’ll go to Hell for her part in the tragedy, though I’ve tried my best to persuade her we all do dreadful things but can be forgiven. Of course, when my father died, and all this came out, she also felt dreadful guilt at the way the three of them had deceived him. I too have my own “amends” to make to my father. I was not at all fair to him in my analysis. If there was a bad relationship between us, a lot of it was my fault. You see, I think I knew even then (don’t ask me how) that my mother’s death had something to do with the scene on the yacht I’d stumbled into, and I’m sure—in the illogical way of childhood—I blamed him for not having been there. I blamed him for mother’s death. And it’s true to the extent that, if he’d been with us more, none of it might have happened. It wasn’t only his business affairs, by the way, he was also involved in the Bund, the Jewish democratic party. He had a lot on his mind. I should have been more tolerant.

  I plead guilty also to slandering Alexei (A). That weekend on the yacht in the Gulf of Finland—it was a beautiful weekend, except for some talk of violence. It was the first occasion on which we slept together, and for me at least it was wonderful. I hallucinated a little—the “fire”—but nothing to compare with the joy of being completely at one with the man whom I loved. The incident I described didn’t take place. Alexei was very correct, even puritanical, where sex was concerned. He was quite capable of shooting people and blowing them up—and obviously has done so since—many times—but not of making love to another girl in my presence. He was very wary of letting emotions get in the way of the cause, in fact, to be honest, we should have been lovers much earlier if it had depended on me. I’m sure it hurt him to abandon me, but he saw marriage and a child as threatening to destroy his mission in life. The young woman with whom he left Petersburg was more a comrade, I think, than anything else. She probably suited him—I was too emotional, too frivolous, to be the comrade of a revolutionary.

  But to return to the yachting weekend…After we had made love, I believe I woke up, in the middle of the night (but it was still quite light in our cabin), and I caught sight of my face in the wardrobe mirror. I believe I must have recollected then that childhood scene of my uncle with the twin sisters. Probably, when you asked me about intercourse a tergo, I remembered remembering, and confused the two yachts. That’s the only way I can explain, or excuse, my gross lies. I’m not even sure if I knew I was lying. I was so angry with Alexei for throwing away all we had, I wanted to accuse him of some grossness. I’m sorry. As I said, I think I was incapable of telling the truth. I could easily let myself get carried away in a phantasy. I’m sure I enjoyed the idea of me swimming away from the yacht.

  He didn’t even singe my hair with his cigar. I saw the flash of your match, over my shoulder, and remembered my hair sizzling, but it wasn’t on the yacht with Alexei, it was earlier in Odessa when I was “captured” by the sailors. That was more vile and frightening than I let you believe. They weren’t sailors from the Potemkin as I think I said, but from a merchant ship that carried grain for my father. They recognized me in the street as his daughter and forced me to go back to the ship with them. They had been burning and looting and drinking, and were altogether in a frenzy. I believed they were going to kill me. From the deck, I could see the burning waterfront across the water (I think that’s the burning hotel). They d
idn’t say anything about my mother being loose—as you wisely surmised, I made that up. No, they reviled me for being Jewish. Until then, I hadn’t realized there was something bad about being Jewish. There was a lot of anti-Semitism in Russia at that time, as well as revolutionary feeling. There was even a disgusting organization advocating the extermination of the Jews as a race. My father gave me one of their pamphlets to read, as part of my “education” in being a member of a persecuted clan. But I only learnt of such things later, after my baptism on the ship. The sailors saw my father as a filthy exploiter (perhaps I was), and didn’t even know he was politically on their side. They spat on me, threatened to burn my breasts with their cigarettes, used vile language I’d never heard. They forced me to commit acts of oral sex with them, saying all I was good for, as a dirty Jewess, was to—But you’ll guess the expression they used.

  Eventually they let me go. But from that time I haven’t found it easy to admit to my Jewish blood. I’ve gone out of my way to hide it, and I think that may have something to do with my evasiveness and lies generally—earlier in my life, and particularly with you, Professor. Because I knew you were Jewish, of course, and it seemed shameful to be ashamed. I think that was the most important thing I kept back from you. I tried to give you hints in the “journal.”

  My father was very good to me, after that episode, but again he was to blame, in my eyes, for being Jewish. What upset me, what I found unbearable—and I still don’t understand it: perhaps you can help—was that on looking back at those fearful events I found them arousing. You say I responded to all questions about masturbation as if I was the Virgin. Well, you were quite right to suspect I wasn’t telling the truth. I certainly didn’t act as the Virgin would have, not, at least, after the affair on the ship—I honestly can’t recall anything earlier in my life. I would lie in bed and repeat to myself the words they had used, re-enacting in my imagination what they had forced me to do. To a “pure” girl such as I was, taught by my Polish Catholic nurse that the flesh was sinful, my reaction was more horrible than the event itself. Perhaps that’s why I developed “asthma” not long after. I think I recall reading in one of your case histories that symptoms of throat infection, etc., stem from guilt about such acts.

  I poured my complicated feelings and phantasies—even then !—into terribly bad poems and a private diary. One day I caught our Japanese chambermaid reading my diary. I don’t know which of us was the more embarrassed. Actually it led to our lying on the bed together, kissing. Ah! you will think, it’s just as I always said! She admits it! But isn’t adolescence a time of experimentation? It was all very innocent, and never happened again, with her or anyone. We were both lonely and craving affection. I think also—on the basis of what you’ve taught me—I was trying to move closer to my father, by means of an intermediary. You see, it was fairly clear (in fact she admitted it) that one of her functions was to see to my father’s physical needs occasionally. She wasn’t alone in this respect. I think almost everyone, from the housekeeper down, had had their “call.” He was charming and handsome, and of course wielded absolute power. Sonia, my governess, went away for a while in very suspicious circumstances, and I’m sure he’d arranged for her to have an abortion. But the very pretty Japanese girl was his favourite at that period. (She left for home, shortly before I went off to Petersburg.) By getting her to kiss me, that one time, I must unconsciously have been both “touching” him and also paying him out for his neglect of me.

  I realize I seem to be going back on what I’ve said before. He did try his best to make contact with me, was generous with money, and scrupulously avoided favouring my brother. Yet I always felt it was a struggle for him, a matter of duty. Possibly he feared women, and was happier with casual contacts. He must have been capable of passion, otherwise he would never have married my mother, against all the odds. But I presume he came to regret giving way to his emotions. When I knew him he seemed cool and calculating, throwing all his energies into his business and—in a hush-hush way—political intrigue on behalf of the Bund. After the shipboard episode I think he realized he’d “lost” me, and made a special effort to be nice. He even took me on a skiing holiday in the Caucasus. It was disastrous, because I felt he was begrudging every moment away from his work. By now, anyway, I had started to blame him for my terrible crime of being Jewish. We were both infinitely relieved to get home.

  I come now to my husband. He and all his family were horribly anti-Semitic. Much more than I allowed you to think. True, I don’t imagine he was anything out of the ordinary in that respect—but literally everything was the fault of the Jews. In all other ways he was very pleasant and kind-hearted, and I was extremely fond of him. I didn’t lie about that. But you see, I was living a lie. He said he loved me, but if he had known I had Jewish blood he would have hated me. Whenever he said “I love you” I understood it as “I hate you.” It couldn’t have continued. It upset me dreadfully, though, for in many ways we were well matched, and I wanted to settle down and start a family.

  That brings me to the night when I remembered the summer-house incident, and perhaps other incidents. For a few moments I was filled with happiness! Do you understand? I was convinced that my father wasn’t my father, I wasn’t Jewish, and I could live with my husband, and get pregnant, with a clear conscience! But of course, I couldn’t cope with feeling glad that my mother was an adulteress and that she might have passed me off to her husband as his child—so unutterably sordid and wicked. To be glad of such things! And so, as you know, I “buried” it.

  We did get an annulment, by the way. I heard he remarried and moved to Munich after the war.

  So you see, our separation had very little to do with sexual problems. I have always found it difficult to enjoy myself properly, knowing there were people suffering “just the other side of the hill.” And there always are. I can’t explain my hallucinations, but I do know they were distinct, in some peculiar way, from the pleasure (which I continued to feel). It was the same with Alexei, and I have to confess that I “experimented” with one of the orchestra players from the Opera, not long after my husband left to go into the army, and I felt the same with him too (though the pleasure was of course superficial in the extreme, and tainted by guilt). I was not lying when I said the hallucinations were bound up with my fears of having a child. If I am right, I should now be in the clear, so to speak, because I have begun to miss my periods—rather early…. But there is in any case no prospect of my putting it to the test.

  I cannot explain my pains either. (They have recurred from time to time.) I still think they’re organic, in some peculiar way, and I keep expecting, every time I visit a doctor, for him to say I’ve been suffering from some outlandish disease in my breast and ovary for the past fifteen years! The “asthma” at fifteen may have been hysterical, I grant you that, but I don’t think the rest is. Let’s try to look at it afresh. I lost my mother when I was five. That was terrible, but as you say, there are orphans everywhere. She died in dreadfully immoral circumstances—and very painfully. Yes, but I could come to terms with it. Is there any family without a skeleton in the cupboard? Frankly I didn’t always wish to talk about the past, I was more interested in what was happening to me then, and what might happen in the future. In a way you made me become fascinated by my mother’s sin, and I am forever grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to delve into it. But I don’t believe for one moment that had anything to do with my being crippled with pain. It made me unhappy, but not ill. And lastly, yes it is possible there may be a slight bisexual component in my make-up, but nothing specifically sexual, or at least nothing I haven’t been able to cope with very easily. On the whole I feel my life has been more bearable by reason of my closeness to women.

  What torments me is whether life is good or evil. I think often of that scene I stumbled into on my father’s yacht. The woman I thought was praying had a fierce, frightening expression, but her “reflection” was peaceful and smiling. The smiling wo
man (I think it must have been my aunt) was resting her hand on my mother’s breast (as if to reassure her it was all right, she didn’t mind). But the faces—at least to me now—were so contradictory. And must have been contradictory in themselves too: the grimacing woman, joyful, and the smiling woman, sad. Medusa and Ceres, as you so brilliantly say! It may sound crazy, but I think the idea of the incest troubles me far more profoundly as a symbol than as a real event. Good and evil coupling, to make the world. No, forgive me, I am writing wildly. The ravings of a lonely spinster!

  Hence the mirror phobia I had for a short while. That was when I was reading the case of the “Wolf-Man,” with his compulsive obsession for intercourse more ferarum. (Aren’t we indeed close to the animals?) I knew him, by the way. Or rather, I knew his family, by repute, in Odessa. It was quite clear from the details. That’s why—if I may make a suggestion?—it seems unnecessary to refer to Odessa as “the town of M_____.” It won’t fool anyone close, of whom few remain. Anyone not close will be sufficiently deceived by my being a cellist (l), for which disguise—thank you.

  The Wolf-Man’s story haunted me for years, a kind of Christ figure of our age.

  At least now I have been frank with you, and I can only express my heartfelt regret that I was not frank with you then, when you were spending so much of your time and energy on an unworthy patient. I am touched, beyond words, by knowing that so much wisdom, patience and kindness were devoted to a poor, weak-spirited, deceitful young woman. I assure you it was not without fruit. Whatever understanding of myself I now possess, is due to you alone.