Did I ever really visit the hotel when I was a child? You may think it strange that I am in doubt about such a simple question. But life is so uncertain these days, everything that happens makes me more and more unsure of myself or of anything else, so that I really can't speak positively about events that took place so long ago. Practically each day one is confronted by some manifestation of precariousness, some proof of the unreliability of one's judgment and senses, so that it becomes impossible to make a definite statement about anything that one sees or hears. And if this is true of contemporary happenings how much truer it is of things belonging to the remote past which are in any case subject to distortion through the mere accumulation of hours. Why, I could cite endless examples of deceptive appearances, of perplexing, dubious and enigmatic events, inexplicable and disturbing discrepancies by which one is continuously surrounded and with which one is expected to cope, heaven knows how.
One seems to be living in a perpetual fog; and it's because of all this obscurity that I feel in doubt about the hotel. Perhaps I did sit, a small, serious and rather lonely figure with straight fair hair, under the electric brilliance of those enormous crowns illuminating the dining-hall. Perhaps I did occupy myself with mysterious and solitary pursuits, too grave to come into the category of games, among the speary cannas that towered over my head like a fabulous jungle growth bursting aloft into an orange and vermilion fire.
Or perhaps it was really only a picture of the hotel that I saw in an album of photographs at my old home. I remember so well the album bound in some very soft leather and embroidered in coloured beads with an Indian symbol. Is it really the soft roughness of the leather, not unlike velvet, that comes back to me along with the slim elegance of satinwood furniture and the stippled scentless rain of hydrangeas? Or is this, too, just an illusion and the blue-tinted photograph, round which constellations seem to be wheeling, no more than a shadow in an old dream?
I'm no nearer to knowing the answers to these questions than I was when I first saw in one of the southern shops a postcard with a picture of the hotel. The sight on the prosaic card of that curious rounded tower had a violent effect on me. I immediately made up my mind to visit the place and at the first opportunity I asked my friends to drive me there in their car. At first they hesitated, disconcerted, I could see, by my direct request, and displaying the same unaccountable resistance that I had previously noticed in regard to their attitude towards the hotel.
At last I persuaded them to do as I asked. It would have been difficult for them to refuse without actual rudeness for I was not to be shaken in any way from my determination.
An afternoon was decided upon for the expedition and we set out. I was excited and gay. My companions, as if making the best of a bad job, now that they were irrevocably committed to the undertaking, started off cheerfully enough. But as the drive continued their mood changed: long pauses punctuated the talk and it seemed to me that I could detect in their manner and in the looks which they exchanged traces of reluctance and even of anxiety. When I tried to discover the reason for their disquietude, asking them if they disliked the hotel, if it were too expensive, if the road to it were bad and so on, they returned evasive replies, forced themselves to talk carelessly for a while, but soon lapsed into silence.
Gradually I myself became infected by their uneasiness. The look of the landscape, too, through which we were travelling was not reassuring. For some time after leaving the town we had been driving across a flat, parched, yellowish plain, uninhabited apparently, and useless as pasturage, for the short lion-coloured grass was brittle and dry and no trees gave their shade. A range of low mountains sullenly barred the earth from the sky which was now invaded by strange upright clouds as by a battalion of ominous ghosts.
The way must have been longer than we anticipated as the day was fading into a thundery half-light when we reached the narrow peninsula at the end of which the hotel was situated. Here there was nothing on either side of the road but a few sand dunes patterned with coarse grass and beyond that the two vast expanses of calm and uncoloured water. We drove for what seemed a long time along this road before we reached the hotel. The monotonous lava-grey continuity of sky and sea exercised a hypnotic effect on the eye. All existence seemed to have dwindled to that one narrow, monotone and trance-like progression between languidly droning seas.
How can I describe the dramatic way in which the appearance of our destination broke into this tedious enhancement? Suddenly the evening mists cleared away, a pure, cool light, not sunshine, but the aftermath of the sunset glow, filled the western sky and touched the long backs of the waves with an ethereal radiance. A million luminous scales shimmered on the breast of the little harbour where yachts were moored. The hotel stood on higher ground overlooking the harbour. Many of its windows were already lighted, and as I gazed at the strange rounded bulk of the tower a flock of large birds in wedge formation flew very high above it towards the west.
I got out of the car and hurried up the steep incline in front of the building. My friends tried to detain me, calling out that they wanted to look at the harbour while some daylight still remained, but I paid no attention.
Perhaps it would have been better if I had waited for them and we had gone all together up to the hotel, the ramifications of which, not lofty, but rambling and spacious and decked out with creepers and balconies, reminded me of one of Genji's summer palaces.
But would it have made any difference after all? Would the presence of other people have deterred the small figure with straight fair hair who gravely approached me between beds of cannas that twilight had already deprived of their colours? And after all, why should I deny her? In this world of false friends and dangerous ambiguities where nothing is what it seems, isn't it best to accept whatever comes without resistance or inquiry, relying only upon the unassailable knowledge that in one's heart a hyacinth is secretly and inviolably blooming?
OUR CITY
‘I did believe, and do still, that the end of our city will be in Fire and Brimstone from above.’
I
How often one hears our city spoken of as ‘cruel’. In fact, this adjective is used so frequently that in many people's minds cruelty has become accepted as the city's most typical and outstanding attribute: whereas there are in existence a great variety of other qualities, probably equally characteristic and certainly just as remarkable.
To my mind, one of the most astonishing things about the city is its plurality. In my own personal experience, for example, it has, during a comparatively short space of time, displayed three distinct manifestations of its complex being. And if it is possible for one individual in one brief period to witness three such changes, just imagine the astronomical number of different forms in which our city is bound to appear through the centuries to the millions of its inhabitants.
In my case, the first metamorphosis was, I think, the most unexpected; for who, even among the unprejudiced, would expect the city to show itself as an octopus? yet that is exactly what happened. Slowly, with deliberation, and at the same time as it seemed almost languidly, a blackish tentacle was unfurled which travelled undeviatingly across the globe to the remote antipodean island where I imagined myself secure. I shall not forget the tentacle's deceptive semi-transparency, something like that dark Swedish glass which contains tints both purple and black while still keeping translucence. The tentacle had the same insubstantial, ethereal look: but it had also a strength many times greater than that of the strongest steel.