Abjection literally means “the state of being cast off.”
Dora gave Freud fourteen days’ notice of quitting.
She paid Freud for his services, but it was she who gave notice.
FREUD
That sounds like a serving girl, or a governess.
But Freud did not say who, in this scenario, was the server, who was the served.
Dora cast off Freud, in the end. She cast off everyone: her family, their friends. She went away to stay, perhaps, at a hotel, where she was clean, clean as a hotel bathroom. She lived for her studies, and did not think of marriage. She was no longer dirty, was not put to use. She was no longer abject, at the mercy. Maybe it was lonely. Maybe things couldn’t enact, not even words, after she refused to employ any actors. Eventually, said Freud, “life would win her back.” When life won, we hear no more from Dora. Did she lose, perhaps?
I can leave. No one’s stopping me. That’s the difficult thing. No one’s stopping me from doing anything. But it’s so difficult to lack all obstacles.
I must learn to live without the hope of serving, of being served.
I must learn to live without hope.
(This is not as hopeless as it sounds.)
IV
At the end of Grand Hotel, the Doctor (Lewis Stone), who is not the hotel dick, but, as in Room Service, acts as a kind of moral policeman, insists that, in the hotel, “nothing ever happens,” but the old cynic is barking up the wrong tree. We’re meant immediately to notice he’s wrong, as the movie’s full of action — but the illusion is that it ever comes to anything.
Grand Hotel is a movie about illusion, pretense, imitation, including the illusion that its stories have endings. It starts with endings: clerk Kringelein dying, Grusinskaya at the end of her career, Baron (John) Barrymore on his uppers, Beery Preysling demanding more drink to down the dregs of his failing company. “This is the end,” says Garbo/Grusinskaya, “I always said I’d leave off when the time came.” But she doesn’t; at the Grand Hotel no one can. Everyone goes on and on repeating just what they did before. Grusinskaya returns to dancing; Preysling hangs onto his company with a lie; Kringelein, despite his decline, spins out through the hotel’s plate glass revolving door — a style that has migrated from hotels and is now more likely to be found in offices — in the movie’s final shot, Flaemmchen on his arm, with all appearance of gusto, forgetting the Baron’s death in his determination to perform for the next Grand Hotel.
Maybe Kringelein found a cure. It looks like he was never ill.
10 POSTCARDS FROM 26 HOTELS
“Guess Rome was where we saw the yellow dog.”
Hotel A
In a niche set on the stairs between each floor, an artwork representing a woman who was alive once, in the style of artists who also lived, but not painted by these artists, and not painted in the presence of the woman, who died some centuries ago.
Hotel B
In the lift shaft: stencils of skeletal figures by an artist who usually graffitis the outside of buildings.
Hotel C
The ceiling in the restaurant, painted with blackboard paint. Words on it. The chicken: too salty.
Hotel D
A president and a famous movie director have stayed here, among others. I bled on the sheets, unexpectedly, washed them in the shower, and dried them with the electric hairdryer. The mushrooms were salty.
Hotel E
It makes me shy to eat such a grand dinner in the empty restaurant at lunchtime. It makes me shy to swim alone in the circular basement pool.
Hotel F
The basement restaurant where we were served a scotch egg: the smart kind, and perfectly done, but.
Hotel G
On Easter Day they gave us hard-boiled eggs dipped in red or blue paint, at breakfast.
Hotel H
Where there was a rainstorm, and I was tired, so I called up room service, who came with a trolley and on it some slices of the kind of cheese with a straw in the middle.
Hotel I
I was frightened to go to the (excellent) nightly dinner because the waiter did not like that I could not finish the homemade pasta.
Hotel J
I remember the graffiti outside the hotel, but nothing of the hotel.
Hotel K
My deluxe room was “orange.”
Hotel L
I don’t remember staying here at all. Maybe another reviewer covered it. The style in which the hotel is reviewed is, however, indistinguishable from mine.
Hotel M
The skirting board was chipped. While having sex, I noted that, as the hotel manager had told me, I could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance through the window.
Hotel N
The lift shaft rumbled all night. I put my laptop on the windowsill for WiFi. The room was small and unsatisfactory. The steak tartare was good, but not included in the price.
Hotel O
It was expensive, but truly horrible.
Hotel P
The bathwater wouldn’t run warm. I was so tired I could neither understand, nor complain.
Hotel Q
Here I also became ill. Unsure as to whether I would have to pay extra, I skipped the breakfast buffet to go to a cafe with a friend.
Hotel R
In this hotel a friend’s husband got me drunk and tried to sleep with me. That was in older days, (or do I mean younger?) when I was hardly able to recognize what he was trying to do.
Hotel S
It was so hot outside and so cold inside. Elvis Presley played in the lift. The same song, every time.
Hotel T
When I arrived, they brought me tea in a Chinese padded basket, and little cakes. I have never been so grateful for anything.
Hotel U
Was brown. I couldn’t close the skylight. The noise from the club across the road kept me awake all night.
Hotel V
The room was on the sixth floor, an attic. The instructions in case of fire were no more than hopeful.
Hotel W
Was grand, but very ugly. And reception was on the second floor.
Hotel X
In the lounge, they had copper doors with bullet holes from a revolution.
Hotel Y
I got drunk in this hotel, as in several others.
Hotel Z
It was above a pub. I ate raw meat, and cooked potatoes. I am tired of hotels now.
NOTES