Spotlight on … Marie Redonnet Hôtel Splendid (1986)

 

‘Structure or composition is a determining factor. Each book adheres to a rigorous structure, at the same time mathematical, architectural, and musical, which transforms itself from book to book: the elements multiply, the combinatorial system grows richer, space and thus mobility becomes more important, the story grows more complex. This structure is part of the language that I invented for myself in order to write, a language built from a lexical and syntactic emptiness that I had to impose on language. Maybe this very idea of structure takes the place of that lost rhetoric, becoming a means of generating another language, and thus another history.

‘The reader creates the film of the story as he or she reads, a private cinema. This requires a release of the imagination if the book is not to remain forever closed to the reader… [T]he fact that the image is born of the power of language alone means that it is not only an image, but also a thought that creates meaning.

‘I would like that to be my revenge as a writer, at a time when we are entering into a culture of the all-powerful image, which threatens to kill literature: to invent a language that would be capable, by liberating the vital forces of imagination and thought, of resisting the images– seductive, manipulative, stultifying, alienating — that invade us from all sides.’ — Marie Redonnet

 

‘Marie Redonnet, one of France’s leading progressive writers, has called called Samuel Beckett her literary “grandfather.” But she said she had to abandon his literature of eternal death and never-quite-ending endings. Like Beckett, Franz Kafka, or the present-day literature of magic realism, Redonnet’s stories are extremely vague. There is no way to tell where or when they are happening, or if the plot has any sort of historical significance at all. By slipping free of historical data, Redonnet’s stories become parables, like Bible stories or Aesop’s Fables. But, Redonnet has said, she’s tired of writing parables, and hopes that Nevermore will be her last. Instead, she is interested in the beginnings that can result from endings. She said she hoped to find away to escape the entire cycle of beginnings and endings and eventually discover a more meaningful vision of truth.’ — The Daily Nebraskan

‘HÔTEL SPLENDID is one of marie redonnet’s trilogy of death — the others are FOREVER VALLEY and ROSE MELLIE ROSE. i haven’t read the last, but like FOREVER VALLEY, HÔTEL SPLENDID is a thin book packed with modern anxiety in an oddly proto-modern setting. this time we’re in a rustic hotel set amidst a sucking, sulfuric swamp. less effective for me i think than FOREVER VALLEY (possibly because the hotel is a more familiar device and thus more in danger of being used as a cliche) HÔTEL SPLENDID was still impressive for its accumulative feeling of anxiety. its main character’s desperate attempt to keep up the rotting, leaking building as well as attend to her sisters ailments and hostilities, was perfect allegory for the burden of all our constant anxieties: bourgeois real estate phobias, hypochondria and contagion paranoia, and the melancholy in seeing the flesh’s various evidence of its encroaching age.

‘redonnet’s work is particularly virtuosic with time. time contracts and leaps in her writing. within a paragraph, between sentences, we can oddly jump weeks and then linger for pages on a single incident only to pass through a night in a phrase’s brief flourish. the effect is somewhat like reading an irregular diary — quickpenned and intense during moments of drama but languishing for long trials or spurted into with a feverish insight. and yet also her writing undercuts this diary-like inconsistency with its repeating, inescapable and unchanging obsessions. maybe a better comparison than diary is the fever dream, which moves forward in jumpcuts and then traps you in over-hot, looping nightmare scenes.’ — Eugene Lim

‘Each [novel] in Marie Redonnet’s Hotel Splendid features a commanding female protagonist trapped in her place of origin, neither able nor wanting to escape from the home that gave her life but which now threatens to destroy her. The narrator of Hotel Splendid never questions her doomed quest to keep the establishment running, the girl in Forever Valley leaves only when dam construction forces her to, and Mellie turns down several job offers on the continent and submits to nature’s call to death. Redonnet’s prose reads like the barest of poetry, devoid of description, while still managing to paint vivid pictures of the rich landscapes that play a vital role in every story. Most impressively, these three tales represent an evolution of the feminine from the alienated, sexless martyr to the prostituted prepubescent on the verge of self-knowledge to the self-loving, self-determined Mellie, who dies to give her baby a chance at a better life. To her credit, Redonnet packs these jewels with much more: Highly personal images of utopia, the importance of heritage, the necessity of burying the dead to approach the future. Like traveling a very long, very dark tunnel into a blinding bright beautiful light.’ — Kirkus

 

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Further

Marie Redonnet Website
Marie Redonnet @ goodreads
Marie Redonnet @ Les Éditions de Minuit
Marie Redonnet @ Editions POL
Marie Redonnet’s ‘Ist and Irt’
MR’s ‘Understudies’ reviewed @ Women Writers
‘Check-out time at the Splendid Hôtel: Marie Redonnet’s new mythological space’
‘Separation and Permeability in Marie Redonnet’s Triptych
‘Marie Redonnet: resistance, barbarism, and self‐satisfied contemplation’
‘Entre minimalisme et quête identitaire. Le corps dans l’oeuvre de Marie Redonnet’
MR texts set to music as art song or choral works
‘Writing Otherwise: Atlan, Duras, Giraudon, Redonnet, and Wittig’
‘Marie Redonnet’s L’Accord de paix: The question of resistance and the turn-of-the-millennium novel’
‘FILLING IN THE BLANK CANVAS: MEMORY, INHERITANCE AND IDENTITY IN MARIE REDONNET’S ROSE MÉLIE ROSE’
‘Material Girl: Becoming and Unbecoming in Marie Redonnet’s Forever Valley’
‘Marie Redonnet Un monde à part’
Buy ‘Hôtel Splendid’

 

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Ist and Irt
Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

 

Towards the south, the lake recedes, its waters are filled with fewer fish. Doubtless it is for this reason that the fishermen of the lake never settled there. It was there, nevertheless, that Ism and Isl decided to live after they met. They bought a new boat, they constructed a cabin. The spot truly pleased them. Ism fished, Isl dressed the filets and went to sell the fish at the market. Ism caught nothing but little fish. That’s how it was around this part of the lake; all the fishermen knew. As he was a good fisherman, Ism caught a lot. But his catch was poorly rewarded, because only the big fish brought a good price. Ism didn’t regret having settled there with Isl. He had few needs. And they had enough to get by with the money from the little fish.

At the market where she made her way each day, Isl was courted by the most famous fisherman on the lake, Irg. He was always the one who sold the biggest fish. One day, he offered one to Isl. She carefully prepared it for the evening meal. She wanted to surprise Ism. But Ism was somber, and he didn’t look the same when he saw the plate which Isl presented him. For some days now, the fishing had been bad, the fish had gotten smaller, and less numerous. Ism feared that the fish were disappearing from this part of the lake. He said nothing about it to Isl. And Isl wasn’t bothered by having fewer little fish than ever to take to sell at the market. Besides, she always brought home a big fish from Irg. Chance had smiled upon her. She concluded that Ism had no taste for fish. She had to eat it all herself. In the days that followed, Ism became still more somber, and he brought home fewer and fewer fish. He didn’t talk to Isl anymore, he acted as if she didn’t exist.

One night, Isl didn’t come home from the market. She had accepted Irg’s offer to go and live with him at the other end of the lake, there where big fish could always be found. Ism stayed by himself with his boat and his cabin. He kept on fishing. But his fishing got worse and worse. His filets became shreds, the little fish hid themselves in bigger and bigger holes. One day, Ism didn’t catch any fish at all. At the market, Isl triumphed. She sold the best fish in the lake. She was happy. She gave birth to a son, Irt.

Ism decided to leave the lake, and move upriver. After several weeks of journeying, he came upon a second lake, smaller than the first. peaceful and fringed with forests. Ism quickly found a spot which suited him, along an isolated and well-protected creek. The next morning, he went fishing. He brought in some big fish. Ism had done well to move upriver. It was on the banks of this river that Ism wanted to live ever after. At the market, he was proud of his fish. Each morning, he went fishing, and each time he caught big fish. At the market, he met a young lake girl, Isn. She pleased him right away, and he asked her to come live with him. Isn was happy with Ism. She went to sell the fish at the market, she dressed the filets. She gave Ism a daughter, Ist. Ism and Isn passed their days along the edge of the lake.

One day, a young fisherman arrived. He was called Irt, he was the son of Isl. He had come up the river, he wanted to settle along the edge of this lake. He built himself a cabin in a little cove at the lake’s edge. At the market, Ist now replaced Isn. She and Irt met. Irt had had no luck since settling. He had fished out only little fish in little quantities. Ist was sad for him. She frequently offered him one of Ism’s beautiful fish for his evening meal. Irt was ashamed of catching nothing but little fish, and he didn’t dare tell her he was in love with her. So it was Ist who took the first steps. A few days later, Irt asked for her hand.

Ist and Irt decided to more up the river, in search of another lake where they might settle. They journeyed long before they came upon a very tiny lake which resembled a lagoon. It was there that the river had its source. The water in the lake was transparent and very deep. Ist and Irt settled along the edge of this lake, they built a cabin. Ist didn’t want to stay at home when Irt went fishing. She wanted to go with him. So they went fishing together, each at one end of the boat. They caught some small fish and some big fish.

The years passed. Ist and Irt had no children. They fished all the time, but they had caught only small fish, which just sufficed to keep them alive. The big fish had disappeared from the lake. Then the little fish began to disappear. Ist and Irt were now very old. Every day, they went to the middle of the lake to fish for the last little fishes. Their boat was very leaky, it took on water. While Irt rowed, Ist emptied the water from the boat. One day, Ist no longer had the strength to bail all the water rushing into the boat. And Irt continued to row as if nothing were wrong. When they arrived at the middle of the lagoon-transparent lake, very softly, very gently, the boat was swallowed up, along with Ist and Irt.

 

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Extras

Marie Redonnet – La femme au colt 45

Arno Bertina et Marie Redonnet / Hors Limites

Gérard Pesson / Marie Redonnet – Projet Personnel

from a production of ‘Seaside’, a play by Marie Redonnet

 

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Interview

 

Once a work has been published, the author’s actual “work” is done, but the media and many readers have taken an increased interest in the author himself. He is then invited to talk shows, for example, where, in addition to personal questions, a kind of interpretation of his work is often requested/expected. What do you think of this curiosity about the “person behind the printed word” – isn’t the work itself neglected here?

Marie Redonnet: The author would indeed have to have finished his work by then, at least that’s how I understood my position as an author at the beginning. But it needs a mediator between the book and the reader. If these intermediaries are exclusively the media, what kind of literature is being promoted?

One should therefore invest in alternative spaces in which readers and authors reflect together on what is written, reinventing the discussion, the controversy, the polemic, the passion, the desire for contemporary literature. A book is written to be discussed, to spark a conversation, to spark different reflections. It must nourish social life, in a space of turmoil, disorder, questioning and the freedom that is its own. A book only comes to life through the reader, through its being passed on, through its transformation into new points of view, new formulations…

There are readers who find contemporary literature monotonous because many authors present topics such as the search for identity in a similar way and with similar characters and styles. It is not uncommon for the accusation that “old literature” has more content and variety. What would you say here?

MR: In the years 2006-2007 I was in charge of the French department. Literature at the University of Colorado in Boulder, a master’s seminar on contemporary French Literature. We read Jean Echenoz, Jean Philippe Toussaint, François Bon, Pierre Bergounioux, Pierre Michon, Marie Ndyae, Marie Redonnet, Michel Houellebecq, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, Hervé Guibert, Eugène Savitzkaïa. I was amazed at the variety of styles and issues that reflect the crises, uncertainties, disruptions and doubts we live out; undoubtedly this majority literature exists, it gives us food for thought.

Comparing the new with the old literature in order to take refuge in the old, which is richer, more elaborate, etc…, was always a reflex and an alibi not to find oneself confronted with flight and inconvenience within the new. One sees the same reaction in contemporary art… The contemporary reader must also read against the tide, he must become an explorer, not content with the books that everyone is talking about. The reader should risk, adopt a new reading, not look for the old in the new, not the known in the unknown… Our world is undergoing such a threat, such a change, that there is necessarily a plethora of books trying to tell of it . Literature is more the order of the day than ever, provided that there are capable authors, editors and readers who take the risk of this adventure that is not always easy to find and that does not follow well-trodden paths.

In your novels Splendid Hôtel, Forever Valley and Rose Mélie Rose the aspect of reduction plays a decisive role. The characters are described only rudimentarily, the local and temporal information is vague and the syntax often consists of short, incoherent sentences, repetitive phrases, collectivizations and omissions. This has the effect that the focus falls on the language itself. As a reader, I now have to break these down into their individual components – linguistically speaking – and redefine their content. Is that one of the “tasks” of the reader for you – to assign meaning – and to pay more attention to the medium of language instead of to the narrative itself?

MR: What you call the “aspect of reduction” is in fact writing reduced to the essentials, stripped of rhetorical effect, breaking with the tradition of the French language in beautiful style. I describe very little, sketchy. It’s up to the reader to imagine [the scenery] with a few given elements. The reading therefore demands the creative activity of the reader, the mobilization of his imagination, his thinking.

The temporality of my novels has become clearer and since “Diego” it has been exclusively about the present, which the writing tries to capture in an unrealistic way. The space is often fictitious, but only to represent our world beyond the known images. My books propose an own vision of the world and the present, reinventing characters of that time.

My syntax, as you say, consists of short and very simple sentences, but I don’t think they are disjointed. She invents her logic, her order. Isn’t it the essence of writing that through language it invents another language that is secondary, strange, peculiar and reveals a different view and a different thought?

The reader who reads my books forces himself into an experience of disruptive language, which may also lead to a frustrating first read, but I want it to lead to a different perspective, different emotions, a different subjectivity. On the other hand, I believe that my narrative remains very important in my novels, or rather the fiction, because what is usual in my narrative texts is characterized by my parsimony: description, psychic analysis. I belong to a literary history, I started writing after a large number of radical literary events (Surrealism, Nouveau Roman, the works of Kafka, Céline, Michaux, Beckett, …) I cannot write as was written before their time. The current trend in writing novels is not to ask questions about literature, as if the story never existed. At best, this gives books in the good “classical” sense, but does not invent a new vision of the world in which we live.

A recurring theme in your novels is upheaval. Do you also see this in a figurative sense in literature – so contemporary literature should leave the “shackles” of the past behind and thereby find its own voice?

MR: Yes, I could put it this way: breaking free from the shackles and riches of the past to find his/her own voice/s, which in the image of a world in transition are necessarily different will.

There are critics who attest your novels a “stylistic poverty” because their sentence sequences do not allow for psychologization. So instead of making out rich phrases, the reader will find in your works a word structure that has been stripped down to its basic structure. Could this view, this method, be described as the “original state” of language, the actual expressiveness of which is the non-statement of the concrete?

MR: No doubt we find in it stylistic poverty in relation to what might have been the “Golden Age” of French literature, which I am by no means trying to preserve or desperately want to revive, as I am at odds with it stand. What art and music have experienced has also happened in literature. The expression “word structure stripped down to the basic framework” is pretty accurate.

I wouldn’t speak of the original state of language now, I don’t feel this nostalgia at all, I don’t have any desire for the origin. I would rather speak of a destroyed, lost, unfilled area and with these basic materials, that is what is left, the literature in my case reinvents itself. It results in an abstract form, but the concrete elements are necessary to bring the text to life.

In addition to your novels, you have also published a collection of short stories and poems, as well as plays and a short story (“Villa Rosa”) illustrated with pictures by Matisse. How important is diversity and genre to you? Do you see these digressions as an enrichment, a change or an “escape attempt”?

MR: It may be that I mainly wrote novels because my publishers (who are also tied to the market) asked me to do so. Right now I must have frustrated her because my novels weren’t written as closely to market norms.

I really love writing for the theater, I feel good there. I also loved the story, based on Matisse’s “Tablets”, which was a request. Likewise the short texts. I also feel the need to write about the non-fictional. So marching through genres is something essential for me. I’m not a novelist, I dare a literary experiment.

What role does the (real) reader play for you? Is this present in the back of your mind while you work, or do you see it as part of an anonymous crowd that later only reads your work?

MR: I write for the reader that my books appeal to. But I make no concessions to him, I don’t write to make him happy, not to give him what he expects, not for the “anonymous masses”. I am looking for encounters, mutual exchange.

As a writer, are you also your harshest critic or do you leave this task to professional critics or other people in general?

MR: Both. Only strictness allows me to surpass myself. I need the rigor of others, because one is always a little disarming in front of oneself, with a lack of critical distance, a laziness too, at least in my case.

One of the inevitable questions in interviews is always about the source of inspiration. Please forgive us, we are just as curious and would like to know how the subject of a novel takes shape step by step for you.

The literature of my early writings depended on a diverse lineage: Poetry, Kafka, Beckett, Duras. Then Genet, about whom I wrote a thesis that eventually became an essay “Jean Genet, le poète travesti” (“Jean Genet, the poet in disguise”).

But the cinema, the cinematic fantasy, also inhabits me and possibly inspires me more than the books do. At the moment, the images of the world and what is happening there are my inspiration.

During the break before and after a new work, can you actually act completely “non-writing” or are you unconsciously always thinking about new projects and ideas?

MR: I cross long dry stretches. But I’m always preoccupied with the question of what to write about. Even if I don’t know what to write, I’m always looking. The search is constant, the find a moment of grace, and then work.

You now know what it’s like to be a writer. If you were to describe your work, is it more of a profession or a calling for you?

MR: A necessity. Part job.

To describe an author’s work, many critics make comparisons. In your case, for example, analogies are made to Kafka or Beckett. Do you see such comparisons as a distinction or honor, or do you see them more as unconscious pressure to have to meet certain expectations on the part of critics and readers?

MR: An honor maybe… but because I’m not them and by being compared to them I can only disappoint…

As already mentioned, your works are not characterized by impressionistic images, metaphors or a series of descriptive adjectives, but the reader still gets a very clear picture of the people, places and objects. It seems as if it is not the words themselves that speak to the reader, but a power of meaning that lies behind or beneath them and shines forth. Is this impression intended by you or is it more of a reader’s overly glorified interpretation?

MR: I think your analysis is very accurate. She touches me a lot right now. My very simple words, my sentences should in fact be animated by a secret expressiveness, so that the text can be turned into literature, otherwise it must be considered a failure. In that sense, it resembles a poetic experiment. I walk a little over a rope, a step off and the text falls into nothingness. It’s a risky game.

How do you relate to your own work? On the one hand you are the product of your imagination, on the other hand the readers comment, criticize and interpret all sorts of aspects into you. How close or how far away are you from your “creations”?

MR: They’re moving away from me and I hope that bit by bit they’ll come down to the reader, appropriate them and bring them to life. I understand the relationship to my books in a similar way. The only book that’s really close to me is the one I’m working on right now.

If you read yourself, how do you read – as a “normal” reader or as a writer who thinks about style, content and character constellation or perhaps criticizes them?

MR: I’m not exactly a big reader. There are authors I like, not necessarily because I want to measure myself against them, but rather because they give me a strong aesthetic emotion. Rather, the great authors who dared to carry out a radical writing experiment. They push me to go beyond myself, to dare, to do what could be considered a true writing experiment; they are the “beacons” in the Baudelairian sense.

I read my contemporaries without always feeling close to them.

You can be completely frank: Which question (from readers or in an interview) do you no longer hear or which do you find particularly annoying and/or amusing?

MR: Of course I like to talk to readers who have bothered to question my attempts at writing than to those who ask completely outlandish questions.

 

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Book
Marie Redonnet Hôtel Splendid
University of Nebraska Press

‘These three short novels are the first works to appear in English by a remarkable contemporary French author, Marie Redonnet. Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban lycée before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry Le Mort & Cie appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.

‘In translator Jordan Stump’s words, these three novels, “unmistakably fit together, although they have neither characters nor setting in common. Redonnet sees the three novels as a triptych: each panel stands alone, and yet all coalesce to form a whole.” Each is narrated by a different woman. Hôtel Splendid recounts the daily life of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of a swamp; Forever Valley is about a sixteen-year-old girl who works in a dance-hall and looks for the dead; Rose Mellie Rose is the story of another adolescent girl who assembles a photographic and written record of her life in the dying town of Ôat.

‘Redonnet’s novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett’s work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature. “Where Beckett’s characters slide almost inevitably toward extinction, resignation, and silence,” Stump points out, “Redonnet’s display a force for life and creation that borders on the triumphant. . . . [They] retain even in the darkest situations a remarkable persistence, openness, and above all hope, a hope that may well be, however unspectacularly, repaid in the end.”‘ — University of Nebraska Press

 

Excerpt

The Splendid is not what it used to be since grandmotherdied. The lavatories always need unblocking. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls because of the damp. The Hôtel Splendid is built over an underground lake. It’s grandmother’s fault. No one had ever built a hotel on the edge of the swamp. Having her own hotel had always been her dream. She wanted to do things properly. She had lavatories installed in all the rooms. There was not another like it in the region back then. She was proud of the Hôtel Splendid. There is a photo of her taken the day of the opening. She is standing very straight, with a cane. Her cane was for effect, because she always walked well, up until the end. The photo still makes an impression in the foyer. But the Splendid has lost its reputation. My sisters keep themselves up in spite of their isolation here. Adad yes her hair, and Adel’s is still very black. Of the three of us, I am the youngest but I look the oldest. Ada spends hours making herself up. It makes her look healthy. You would never think she was so unwell. She has always been unwell. She faints often. Adel can’t bear the sight of Ada when she has fainted. I am the one who helps her back to consciousness. Afterwards, it is as if she didn’t know who I was. I have no will. She takes advantage of that. I do everything she asks. That amuses her, I am sure. She complains about the food. She has bruises all over her body because of her bad circulation. Her nightstand is covered with medicine and jars of makeup. She wants me to wash her. That’s hard for me because she has an odor that makes me queasy. She has never worked. Mother used to support her, and now I do. I inherited the Hôtel Splendid. But in exchange, I owe an allowance to my sisters. They chose to come and live at the hotel instead of taking the allowance. Here they are housed, fed, and served. Maybe I should not have agreed to this arrangement. Ada and Adel left the hotel very young with mother. They never came back until mother died. I am the only one who never left the Hôtel Splendid. But now that they have settled in, they are not about to leave. They have made themselves at home. They have taken the two nicest rooms, but that does not prevent them from complaining about the Hôtel Splendid’s poor condition and lack of comfort. I should not let them get the better of me. I keep them alive, thanks to my work and the hotel. But the Splendid brings in less and less. It needs repairs. I don’t have the means. Grandmother left a great many debts when she died. She never finished paying her bills. Mother said it was up to me to pay them, since I was inheriting the Hôtel Splendid like grandmother wanted. She left me to get by on my own. She never took an interest in the hotel. The Splendid brought in a lot back then. But all the money I earned went to paying off grandmother’s debts. Grandmother hoped the hotel would increase in value. She thought the railway would transform the region. But the railway is still under construction. That’s bad for the hotel. The guests are not the same. It isn’t a vacation hotel anymore. I had to lower the prices. What can I do? Grandmother should not have built the hotel so near the swamp. They warned her, but she was stubborn. The Splendid is harder and harder to keep up. The guests are careless. The lavatories are in bad condition. Little by little the Splendid is becoming unrecognizable. When you look at the photo in the foyer, you would never think it was the same hotel. It has kept only its name, Hôtel Splendid, which still shines at night when the neon lights are on. I do everything I can to run the hotel as well as grandmother did. I have no room of my own. I want all the rooms to be available for the guests. When there is an empty room, that is where I sleep. When the Splendid is full, I stay in grandmother’s little office where I keep my belongings. The mattresses are bad in all the rooms. The bedding needs to be changed. The guests complain that they don’t sleep well. You can hear everything through the walls. Grandmother was careless about the walls. They are much too thin, and hollow as well. The lavatories are noisier and noisier, especially the flush valves. I get up every night to make sure Ada doesn’t need anything. She sleeps with her mouth open. She seems to have trouble breathing. She wakes up with a start every time. She gives me a resentful look as if I were disturbing her on purpose. But I am only there to remind her to take her medicine. Her kidneys do not work well. She says it’s starting up again, like at the clinic. She has spent her life going from clinic to clinic. I open the window to get rid of the smell. She thinks I am trying to give her a chill. She is coughing louder than she used to. The hallway light is acting up. I run into things as I walk down the hall, and I have bruises like Ada. Back in my bed, I can’t manage to fall asleep again. I think about Ada. Her cheeks are becoming hollow, in spite of all her eating. Nothing does her any good. Every morning, I unblock the lavatories in all the rooms. The drainage is worse and worse, in spite of my work. The guests are careless. It is because of them that everything is becoming blocked up little by little. The light is on all night in Adel’s room. And yet I told her she must not waste light. What can she be doing all night with her light on? She cannot be rehearsing her lines at night. Even though she has retired to the Splendid, she has not given up on her theatrical career. She writes to theater directors to ask about parts. She doesn’t have much of a voice for an actress. She has never played anything but small roles. She has never had the chance to play the big roles she rehearses in her room. She says she must not lose her talent no matter what. I know nothing about the theater. In her room, there used to be a suitcase full of her old costumes. I threw them away. They were moth-eaten and crawling with vermin, a real breeding ground for disease. Adel never goes to see Ada. She never asks after her. She can’t complain about her room. It is the only room on the ground floor. She has plenty of privacy to rehearse her lines. She doesn’t bother the guests. Her lavatory is like new. It was grandmother’s room. It could have been my room when grandmother died. But I didn’t want to live in it. I left it empty until Adel came, and never rented it. That’s why the lavatory is in such good condition. It is the guests who damage them. Ada can’t complain about her room either. She has the only room with two beds in the hotel, at the end of the hall. It was Ada and Adel’s room when they were little, back when they lived at the Splendid. Mother left all of a sudden with my sisters, leaving me alone with grandmother. She never came back. When mother sensed she was dying, she wanted Ada to go back to her old room so she would not feel lost. But Ada says she no longer remembers the room. I am sorry she took it because it was the guests’ favorite room. Ada sleeps in the same bed as when she was little. Now Ada and Adel live at opposite ends of the hotel. Adel’s old bed is empty next to Ada’s bed. Sometimes I sleep in it when Ada is worse and needs me to be with her all night. Ada is afraid at night. At the clinic, there was always a night nurse at her bedside. Mother insisted. She paid extra. According to grandmother, mother always put Ada in the most expensive clinics. Apparently she ruined herself for Ada, she killed herself working to pay for clinics that were beyond her means. Ada never got better. She always needs something. She is never happy. All she does is complain about the damp in the Hôtel Splendid. She says it’s the Splendid that is making her unwell. But she doesn’t know where she would go if she left the hotel. The Splendid is really very near the swamp. The heat is becoming unbearable. When you go into the garden, you can already smell the swamp. It spreads a little every year. In grandmother’s day, it was full of hunters. During the season, they stayed at the hotel. The canal that runs along the far end of the garden leads to the swamp. The Splendid has direct access to the swamp thanks to the canal. Now the hunters have changed swamps. There are many swamps in the region. I never stop mending the mosquito nets. The nets are torn everywhere, and the guests complain about the mosquitoes. Ada says she was bitten on the eye. Her eye is all swollen. She can’t see clearly. But it might not be because of a mosquito like she thinks. It might come from inside, like everything else. The nets keep out the mosquitoes less and less. This heat is bad for Ada. Her spells are more frequent. She also smells more strongly because of the sweat. She complains that her make up will not stay on. I put cold compresses on her forehead. Having the swamp so close makes her nervous, especially on these hot days. Ada hates the swamp. Mother used to criticize grandmother for not thinking things through before she bought this land. She thought it was grandmother’s fault that Ada was unwell. But even away from the Hôtel Splendid, Ada never got better. So her sickness is not caused by the swamp like mother thought. You can see the swamp is spreading because the far end of the garden is becoming marshy. It was not that way in grandmother’s day. The gardener used to put his prettiest flower beds at the far end of the garden. Grandmother’s gardener has been dead for a long time. The garden is in an awful state. It isn’t even a garden anymore. Grandmother knew the swamp well. I know it well too. I taught Adel about it. That made her happy. But she never forgets about the theater. She is waiting for answers to her letters. She has not given up on getting a part. She doesn’t think her career is over, probably because her career never really began. She never had any training. Maybe that is why she never got any real parts. That’s what Ada thinks. Ada is worried about Adel. She asks after her. She says mother was always very concerned about Adel. She really wanted her to have a wonderful career. Adel is developing a stoop. It is not good for an actress to be stooped. I don’t like Adel’s voice. It is not an actress’s voice. How could she have had a career with a voice like that? Ada has a beautiful voice. She is the one who should play Adel’s roles. There is a piano in the foyer. Grandmother knew how to play it. She always played the same songs. She tried to teach me to sing so I could accompany her. I never could learn. I don’t have any kind of a voice. Adel knows how to play the piano. She plays the same songs as grandmother, the only ones she knows. But she doesn’t like the piano. Her voice is on key. I like her voice better when she sings. She was angry when I told her she should sing instead of rehearsing her roles. She has not touched the piano since. She says it’s worthless and out of tune. Grandmother always said it was an expensive piano and that it must be taken care of. It still makes a good impression in the foyer. It’s a shame it is always closed. Grandmother used to say there should always be music in the Hôtel Splendid. That was why she played the piano, not because she loved music. The guests were happy. The hotel was lively back then, and busy. Now, none of the guests are unhappy to see the piano closed. The guests are not interested in music. It’s a stroke of luck that they are building the railway. They say it will run along the edge of the swamp. All the guests come from the work site. They would rather stay at the hotel than sleep in the tents thecompany gives them. Even if they complain about the state of the lavatories, the Hôtel Splendid is a blessing for them. I do all I can to be pleasant towards them. I pay particular attention to the lavatories in their rooms. Especially with this heat, you have to make sure everything is flushed away. The workmen are grateful. I need them. It isn’t like that with my sisters. I could do very well without their presence. I have never lived with them, and now here they are sharing my life. It was mother who asked them to come back to the Splendid, a little before she died. She never asked me what I thought. She wanted me to look after my sisters because she would not be there to look after them anymore. But I would rather look after the Splendid’s guests than my sisters.

The hotel is full every night. It is becoming hotter and hotter. The workmen stay up late because of the heat. They talk in the garden in spite of the mosquitoes and the smell of the swamp. Adel keeps them company. She tells them about the theater. They have never been. It is a real break for Adel to have such an attentive audience. She puts on makeup and nice clothes as if she were going to a party. She wears very low-cut dresses. But she is not that young anymore, and her dresses don’t do much for her. She is not afraid of showing herself. The workmen seem to appreciate her in spite of her flaws. She knows how to talk to them. The younger ones gather around her. Adel is making good use of this heat wave. She likes the long nights in the garden. She has even cleared the brush around the hotel to make the garden more pleasant. But the mosquitoes bite her. She is covered with spots. If I were her, I would not wear such low-cut dresses. I have never seen her like this before. The workmen drink a lot because of the heat. Their throats are dry. I serve them drinks until late at night. The money is coming in. I am not complaining. Ada’s medicine is expensive. When I am not serving drinks, I go up and see Ada. She has trouble breathing because of the heat. The voices coming from the garden keep her awake. I fan her. As soon as I stop, she asks me to give her more air. It gives me cramps in my hands. Ada thinks it’s natural that I should spend the night giving her air while Adel is enjoying herself in the garden. Adel is behaving strangely. She is the last one to leave the garden. It is as if she were waiting for something that never comes. In the daytime, when the hotel is empty, she seems lost. She comes and goes. When night falls, she shuts herself in her room to get ready. Her dresses hang loose on her. You can see her sagging breasts. She has no modesty. I can’t help but look. That irritates her. When she goes to bed, there is always one of the workmen following her into her room. I should have known. It is not my concern what Adel does. I should not interfere. When the workmen talk to me, it is always to ask for a drink or to ask me to go and fix their lavatories. I am always busy with Ada. She can’t bear to be left alone in her room while everyone is in the garden. Her body is clammy. I have to dry her off. She has slack, white skin. I do not like Ada’s skin. I leave the door of her room open to let in the breeze. I am not like my sisters. Ada is always talking about Adel. Adel has begun performing in the garden for the workmen. They listen in silence, and then they applaud. Adel thinks she is in the theater when really she is in the Splendid. Ada also listens to Adel from her room. She isn’t bored at night anymore. As soon as Adel is done, Ada has a coughing fit. It gives me a scare every time. The medicine is not helping her. I don’t like the heat. There is nothing I can do about the heat or the way it brings out odors.

I have never left the Hôtel Splendid. My sisters did a lot of traveling with mother. Adel says mother never stayed in one place. She used to sing in hotels, accompanying herself on piano. The guests appreciated her. Adel is becoming more talkative. She needs to confide in someone. I don’t know why grandmother never told me mother used to sing in hotels. She used to sing at the Splendid as well, before I was born. Grandmother accompanied her at the piano. Adel says mother would have liked to study voice, but grandmother was against it because she wanted her to devote herself to the Hôtel Splendid. Adel thinks mother had a pretty voice. She spent all her life with mother, much more than Ada who was ill too often to take part in their travels. Every day, mother wrote a letter to Ada. Adel is amazed that Ada is still alive while mother is dead. Now that mother is dead, Adel would like to devote herself to the theater. But she can’t find any work. She is not discouraged, she still has hopes. All those letters she wrote trying to find a part. She thinks she will get an answer in the end. It is lucky for her the workmen like to listen to her perform. It gives her confidence. She perspires a great deal as she declaims. It is best not to see her too close up. She gesticulates too much as well. It would be better if she stood still. She would perspire less. She has gaps in her memory. The workmen don’t notice. She is rehearsing in her room more than ever. I hear her while I am working at unblocking the lavatories. Ada is doing worse. She is taking a new kind of medicine. We have to wait. She has abscesses. Her fever will not break. It must be an infection caused by the abscesses. With this heat, the mosquitoes are vicious. Ada complains about them. The mosquito net doesn’t protect her completely. But her abscesses do not come from the mosquitoes, no matter what she says. I almost never leave her anymore. I sleep in the bed next to hers. It was Adel’s bed when she was little. I sleep, in a manner of speaking. Ada keeps me up, even when she is asleep. I am too afraid she will take a turn for the worse. Now Adel is the one who serves drinks to the workmen. But the men have fevers. There is an epidemic. A lot of the men can no longer work because of their fever. The work isn’t going anywhere. There are unforeseen complications. That is the way it always is with construction. The company is worried. There was a leak in one of the rooms on the second floor, a hole in a pipe. The entire room was flooded. I tried to fix it myself, but it would not hold. I called the plumber. He complained about the state of the pipes. He is afraid his repair will not hold and that soon there will be leaks all over the hotel. As if it weren’t enough that the lavatories are blocked. The wood of the balconies is beginning to rot. It will not be long before it becomes dangerous to walk on them. I wrote up a little notice for the guests. I put it up in the foyer, on the board where grandmother put up the house rules of the Hôtel Splendid. In my notice, I ask the guests not to go out on the balconies anymore. It is a question of safety. I also ask them not to throw anything into the lavatories, or else I cannot guarantee proper drainage. The guests didn’t look happy when they read the notice. But they have got to do their part, instead of making everything dirty like they do. I have to boil the linens longer and longer to get them white. This epidemic comes at a bad time. The men don’t stay out in the garden at night anymore. They go up to their rooms and try to sleep, to break their fever. Adel has a fever too. I am the only one who comes and goes. I am acclimated to the swamp. The germs could not make me sick. Everything will be better when the hot weather is over. We will have to wait. Every year it is the same. What bothers me isn’t the epidemic, but the Hôtel Splendid. No matter how hard I work to take care of it, I can see it is falling apart. The materials grandmother chose are not resistant enough. All she thought about was comfort and lavatories, and she did not even notice they were badly installed. Now the Splendid is showing the flaws in its construction, now that it is too late and the harm has been done. I don’t know anymore how to maintain the hygiene necessary for the functioning of the hotel. Adel has cramps. She has stopped rehearsing. She says she will never go back on the stage, she is finished, she never should have come to the Splendid, it was fatal to her. She skulks in the hallway. I scarcely recognize her. She went up to see Ada and accused her of contaminating the whole hotel with her sickness. Ada is sad, but she is not angry at Adel. She says Adel is to be pitied. The guests are beginning to leave the hotel. There are unoccupied rooms. They have stopped the construction. I put the vacancy sign back on the front door. It rains at night. That cools off the rooms. The heat is subsiding. Ada always has the same dream. She dreams she is not Ada but Adel. The guests are asking for their bills. The Splendid is quiet all of a sudden. I take advantage of the calm to clean the rooms from top to bottom. They need it. The workmen did a lot of damage. I will not miss them. It is best that they leave the Hôtel Splendid.

The railway line is not close to being finished. The worksite is deserted. All the men are gone. Apparently the project was badly designed and they have to start over. The heat broke all of a sudden. Adel has started working on her lines again. Ada gets up sometimes. She walks through the hallway and goes into the empty rooms. She eats a lot, at any time of day. She has a sly look, it seems to me. She has stopped taking her medicine. She wastes her make up. She likes to cause difficulties. I have caught her several times throwing cotton balls into the lavatories. It is the offseason. There are not many guests. Ariel is always peering at them, but they pay no attention to her. I have a little time to myself. I use it to go to the swamp. The swamp does not change. It is larger than it looks. You really have to know the swamp to keep from getting lost. My sisters do not trouble themselves about the Hôtel Splendid. They don’t care that it is falling apart. As long as they are waited on and never have to do anything. It is as if they were on vacation here, an endless vacation. I make their lives too easy. I even wonder if Adel is working seriously on her acting. It looks to me like she is only pretending. She is always going and prowling around by the work site. Maybe the future of the railway interests her more than the theater. She must not be very sure anymore of having a future in the theater. The construction of the railway has become her favorite topic of conversation. She thinks I should change the name of the hotel, and call it the Railway Hotel. But there is no talk of starting up the work again. The swamp deserves more attention. It is a real nature preserve. There is always more of it to explore. Ada seems to be convalescing. The empty hotel is good for her. Even though she has always hated the swamp, she asked me to take her there for a walk. I was sure the swamp would do her good. That is the first time Ada has asked to go out. But she was disappointed by her walk. She couldn’t bear the odor of the swamp. She thought it was always the same, no matter which way you turned. She couldn’t stop shivering, in spite of the blanket she was wrapped in. When we got back, she went straight to bed. She had a high fever. I had to give her a hot-water bottle. It did not warm her at all. She says her limbs are like lead. She blames the swamp for her relapse. She will never go back there again. The walk was not a success. She is staying in her room again. She calls me for no reason, because her hot-water bottle isn’t hot enough. She complains that the fire will not stay lit. And yet the amount of wood she burns in her fireplace is incredible. Her blood doesn’t circulate properly. Her limbs are like ice. It is cold outside all of a sudden. It’s almost always like that after the really hot weather, the cold blows in violently. Ada did not take the temperature change well. Her cough is back. Adel complains about Adds cough. She says it’s unbearable, and that Ada is doing it on purpose to disturb everyone in the hotel and to drive the guests away.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Shane, Hm, very unlikely, I would think. But I’m kind of a vey logical person, so I might not be the best judge. Hail. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I’m so non-TV that I’ve never even seen ‘The Sopranos’. Crazy. ** Misanthrope, I don’t remember Jack Hannah. Maybe he was an East Coast thing? My parents took me to see JackLaLane pull a whole bunch of cars down a street with a rope between his teeth once. I guess it’s really a lot about genes or whatever, right, lucky or unlucky, or so they say? ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, that was a stretch. ** David, I used to paint and draw a lot when I was a teenager and before I realised I had no talent. I think my mom just threw all of that stuff away. Congrats on the diminishing poundage. What’s that saying … you gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them … I guess it’s a song lyric. ** Tosh Berman, Brand Books, yes! I loved that place. I almost always found books there I couldn’t believe I’d found at such an easy price. It was kind of my go-to used bookstore. You were a denizen, I assume. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, that’s right, the Nick Zedd SCAB quote. Two weeks?! New SCAB?! Yay after yays! Ooh. Book banning is obviously evil, but, you know, in the case of the books that your love is banning, let’s make an exception. And to think a lot of people would read that sentence and start salivating. What a world. Love turning every building into a steep rocky cliff with a massive waterfall falling from the roof and making the buildings’ entrances into hidden cave mouths and their internal halls and stairways and rooms into a complicated cave system (with central heating because love is nice), G. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, It’s true you have be imaginative with tofu and season it and add stuff to it to make it delicious. Anyway, I prefer seitan. You can’t argue with seitan. Ha ha. Oops, shit, I’ll go check my taps. Happy day, gang! ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Oh, right, yeah, I get what you mean. It’s funny: I was discussing that very topic yesterday with my friend Ange (actor/writer/co-star of Zac’s and my new film). And about all these people who consider themselves serious film buffs but who think any film more experimental/adventurous than, say, Scorcese or Kubrick is unwatchably weird. Depressing. I’m excited to hear about what you do in your class’s director chair. Maybe an adaptation is a good place to start? So you don’t overly intimidate yourself? I don’t know. ‘Mon Oncle’, so great! Tati is such a total god. I’m not a big Araki fan. I like the really early Godardian ones the best. But his fondness for stupid snarkiness drives me kind of batty. Film stuff: some of it is just waiting and praying that some seemingly promised money comes through because, if it does, we’ll basically have the funds we need. So nail biting. Also, early on when we were planning to shoot ‘Room Temperature’ in French, we got a small grant to revise the script from a region here in France. We don’t really think the script needs much revising (they just didn’t understand the film), but we have to fake-up a ‘revised’ script to send to the grant committee so they’ll release the funds. So yesterday I spent most of the day trying to make cuts and things that would hopefully satisfy them. We’ll see. Enjoy your day off, or sleep it off, or both. Later gator. ** Okay. Marie Redonnet is one of the most interesting contemporary French fiction writers, and ‘Hôtel Splendid’ is arguably her greatest novel, and, thinking that some you might not know it, I turned my blog’s spotlight onto it so you will. See you tomorrow.