The White Hotel (4 page)

To the Secretary
Goethe Centenary Committee
The City Council
Frankfurt

Dear Herr Kuhn
,

I am sorry to have been so long in replying to your kind letter. I have not, however, been inactive in the meantime, when the state of my health has allowed, and the paper is finished. My former patient has no objection to your publishing her compositions along with it, and so these too are enclosed. I hope you will not be alarmed by the obscene expressions scattered through her poor verses, nor by the somewhat less offensive, but still pornographic, material in the expansion of her phantasy. It should be borne in mind that
(
a
)
their author was suffering from a severe sexual hysteria, and
(
b
)
the compositions belong to the realm of science, where the principle of
nihil humanum
is universally accepted and applied, and not least by the poet who advised his readers not to fear or turn away from “what, unknown or neglected by men, walks in the night through the labyrinth of the heart.”

Yours very sincerely
,
Sigmund Freud

1

Don
Giovanni

1

I dreamt of falling trees in a wild storm
I was between them as a desolate shore
came to meet me and I ran, scared stiff,
there was a trapdoor but I could not lift
it, I have started an affair
with your son, on a train somewhere
in a dark tunnel, his hand was underneath
my dress between my thighs I could not breathe
he took me to a white lakeside hotel
somewhere high up, the lake was emerald
I could not stop myself I was in flames
from the first spreading of my thighs, no shame
could make me push my dress down, thrust his hand
away, the two, then three, fingers he jammed
into me though the guard brushed the glass,
stopped for a moment, staring in, then passed
down the long train, his thrumming fingers filled
me with a great gape of wanting wanting till
he half supported me up the wide steps
into the vestibule where the concierge slept
so took the keys and ran up, up, my dress
above my hips not stopping to undress,
juices ran down my thighs, the sky was blue
but towards night a white wind blew
off the snowcapped mountain above the trees,
we stayed there, I don’t know, a week at least
and never left the bed, I was split open
by your son, Professor, and now come back, a broken
woman, perhaps more broken, can
you do anything for me can you understand.

I think it was the second night, the wind
came rushing through the larches, hard as flint,
the summer-house pagoda roof came down,
billows were whipped up, and some people drowned,
we heard some waiters running and some guests
but your son kept his hand upon my breast
then plunged his mouth to it, the nipple swelled,
there were shouts and there were crashes in the hotel
we thought we were in a liner out to sea
a white liner, he kept sucking sucking me,
I wanted to cry, my nipples were so drawn
out by his lips, and tender, your son moved on
from one nipple to another, both were swollen,
I think some windowpanes were broken
then he rammed in again you can’t conceive
how pure the stars are, large as maple leaves
up in the mountains, they kept falling falling
into the lake, we heard some people calling,
we think the falling stars were Leonids,
and for a time one of his fingers slid
beside his prick in me there was such room,
set up a crosswise flutter, in the gloom
bodies were being brought to shore, we heard
a sound of weeping, his finger hurt
me jammed right up my arsehole my nail began
caressing where his prick so fat it didn’t
belong to him any more was hidden
away in my cunt, came a lightning flash
a white zig-zag that went so fast
it was gone before the thunder cracked
over the hotel, then it was black
again with just a few lights on the lake,
I think the billiard room was flooded, we ached
he couldn’t bring himself to let it gush
it was so beautiful, it makes me blush
now to be telling you, Professor, I
wasn’t ashamed then, although I cried,
after about an hour he came inside,
we heard doors banging they were bringing in
the bodies from the lake, the wind
was very high still, we kept
our hands still on each other as we slept.

One evening they rescued a cat, its black fur
had been almost lost against the dark-green fir,
we stood naked by the window as a hand
searched among the foliage, it scratched,
it had been up there two days since the flood,
that was the night I felt a trickle of blood,
he was showing me some photographs, I said
Do you mind if the trees are turning red?
I don’t mean that we literally never left
the bed, after the cat was taken down, we dressed
and went downstairs to eat, between the tables
there was a space to dance, I was unstable,
I had the dress I stood up in, no more,
I felt air on my flesh, the dress was short,
weakly I tried to push away his hand,
he said, I can’t stop touching you, I can’t,
please, you must let me, please,
couples were smiling at us indulgently,
he licked his glistening fingers as we sat,
I watched his red hand cut away the fat,
we ran down to the larches, I felt a cool
breeze blow on my skin and it was beautiful,
we couldn’t hear the band in the hotel
though now and then some gypsy music swelled,
that night he almost burst my cunt apart
being tighter from my flow of blood, the stars
were huge over the lake, there was no room
for a moon, but the stars fell in our room,
and lit up the summer-house’s fallen roof
pagoda-like, and sometimes the white cap
of the mountain was lit by a lightning flash.

2

One whole day, the servants made our bed.
Rising at dawn, we left the white hotel
to set sail in a yacht on the wide lake.
From dawn until the day began to fade
we sailed in our three-masted white-sailed craft.
Beneath our rug your son’s right hand was jammed
up to the wrist inside me, laced in skin.
The sky was blue without a cloudy hint.
The white hotel merged into trees. The trees
merged into the horizon of green sea.
I said, Please fuck me, please. Am I too blunt?
I’m not ashamed. It was the murderous sun.
But there was nowhere in the ship to lie,
for everywhere there were people drinking wine
and gnawing chicken breasts. They gazed at us
two invalids who never left our rug.
I went into a kind of fever, so
besotted by your son’s unresting stroke,
Professor, driving like a piston in
and out, hour after hour. It wasn’t till
the sun drew in, that their gaze turned away,
not to the crimson sunset but the blaze
coming from our hotel, again in sight
between the tall pines. It outblazed the sky
—one wing was burning, and the people rushed
to the ship’s prow to stare at it in horror.
So, pulling me upon him without warning,
your son impaled me, it was so sweet I screamed
but no one heard me for the other screams
as body after body fell or leapt
from upper storeys of the white hotel.
I jerked and jerked until his prick released
its cool soft flood. Charred bodies hung from trees,
he grew erect again, again I lunged,
oh I can’t tell you how our rapture gushed,
the wing was gutted, you could see the beds,
we don’t know how it started, someone said
it might have been the unaccustomed sun
driving through our opened curtains, kindling
our still-warm sheets, or (smoking was forbidden)
the maids, tired out, lighting up and drowsing,
or the strong burning-glass, the melting mountain.

I couldn’t sleep that night, I was so sore,
I think something inside me had been torn,
your son was tender to me, deep in me
all night, but without moving. Women keened
out on the terrace where the bodies lay,
I don’t know if you know the scarlet pain
of women, but I felt the shivers spread
hour after hour as the calm lake sent
dark ripples to the shores. By dawn, we had
not moved apart or slept. Asleep at last
I was the
Magdalen
, a figure-head,
plunging in deep seas. I was impaled
upon a swordfish and I drank the gale,
my wooden skin carved up by time, the wind
of icebergs where the northern lights begin.
The ice was soft at first, a whale who moaned
a lullaby to my corset, the thin bones,
I couldn’t tell the wind from the lament
of whales, the hump of white bergs without end.
Then gradually it was the ice itself
cut into me, for we were an ice-breaker,
a breast was sheared away, I felt forsaken,
I gave birth to a wooden embryo
its gaping lips were sucking at the snow
as it was whirled away into the storm,
now turning inside-out the blizzard tore
my womb clean out, I saw it spin into
the whiteness have you seen a flying womb.

You can’t imagine the relief it was
to wake and find the sun, already hot,
stroking the furniture with a serene
light, and your son watching me tenderly.
I was so happy both my breasts were there
I leapt out to the balcony. The air
was balmy with a scent of leaves and pines,
I leaned upon the rail, he came behind
and rammed up into me, he got so far
up into me, my still half-wintry heart
burst into sudden flower, I couldn’t tell
which hole it was, I felt the white hotel
and even the mountains start to shake, black forks
sprang into sight where all was white before.

3

We made dear friends who died while we were there.
One was a woman, a corsetière,
who was as plump and jolly as her trade,
but the deep nights were ours alone. Stars rained
continuously and slowly like huge roses,
and once, a fragrant orange grove came floating
down past our window as we lay in awe,
our hearts were speechless as we saw them fall
extinguished with a hiss in the black lake,
a thousand lanterns hidden under drapes.
Don’t imagine there were never times
of listening gently to the night’s
tremendous silence, side by side, untouching,
or at least only his hand softly brushing
the mount he said reminded him of ferns
he hid and romped in as a boy. I learned
a lot about you from his whispers then,
you and his mother stood beside the bed.
Sunsets—the pink and drifting cloud-flowers, churning
off snowy peaks, the white hotel was turning,
my breasts were spinning into dusk, his tongue
churned every sunset in my barking cunt
and my throat drank his juice, it turned to milk,
or milk came into being for his lips,
for by the second night my breasts were bursting,
love in the afternoon had made us thirsty,
he drained a glass of wine and stretched across,
I opened up my dress, and my ache shot
a gush out even before his mouth had closed
upon my nipple, and I let the old
kind priest who dined with us take out the other,
the guests were gazing with a kind of wonder,
but smilingly, as if to say, you must,
for nothing in the white hotel but love
is offered at a price we can afford,
the chef stood beaming in the open door.
The milk was too much for two men, the chef
came through and held a glass under my breast,
draining it off he said that it was good,
we complimented him, the food was cooked
as tenderly as it had ever been,
more glasses came, the guests demanded cream,
and the hot thirsty band, the falling light
spread butter suddenly on the trees outside
the great french windows, butter on the lake,
the old kind priest kept sucking me, he craved
his mother who was dying in a slum,
my other breast fed other lips, your son’s,
I felt his fingers underneath the table
stroking my thighs, my thighs were open, shaking.