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Authors: Enrique Vila-Matas
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with a recollection that among the ancient Egyptians, everyone had two names: their inconsequential name (known to all) and their true or great name, which they kept hidden. After reminding the reader that the name of Rome was also secret, he went on to reveal the real name of our portable society. He did! That name which you now shudderingly recall!
“One afternoon, Valery Larbaud and five other colleagues visited Céline in his hotel and discovered this manuscript. To find it they had to go inside a tent he’d set up in the middle of his room. Enraged,
Larbaud reminded him of Quintus Valerius’s fate when, in the last days of the Republic, he was executed for revealing Rome’s true name.
“Duchamp, Tzara, Vallejo, everyone there, made it clear to him that he might share Quintus Valerius’s fate, but Céline’s response was to smile the twisted smile of one who knows how to make the foulest, most underhanded intentions smell sweet. Faced with this attitude, they burned the tent and, with it, the manuscript.
“Céline barely flinched. He seemed very comfortable in his role as the traitor, and, a few days later, he showed up again at Café Slavia, the place where we met every afternoon. He came in shouting, flanked by two professors from Madrid, even more bothersome and clingy than he was. One of them boasted of having translated Joyce into Spanish—which couldn’t but fill us with misgivings since, as you well know, it was quite a while ago that Joyce parted company with us, thinking he’d have to pay a monthly membership fee. The other professor, who went by the surname Diego, claimed he was a Castilian seafarer, and proceeded to discourse on Greenland’s solitary inlets, and about certain hot springs at the North Pole. An utter bore, believe me!
“We had a few truly awful days of being pursued by these clingy professors, who, in concert with the traitor, even came to defy us when we went out to Prague’s purlieus, its most sequestered spots. We couldn’t find a way to shake off these damned professors, who were clearly spying on us. This made many of our number feel like turning into ghosts or invisible beings. And this added to the numbers taking part in the secret expedition to the International Sanatorium, situated on the outskirts of the city, where I’m writing you from today.
“Here, away from the persecution of the traitor and his underlings, we’re on a run of extraordinary, feverish creativity. All thanks to this attempt to betray us. And also in part thanks to the owner and director of the Sanatorium, whom we call Mr. Marienbad, because he doesn’t want his true name revealed to anyone.
“I do not believe you’d like Marienbad. This is a man who always wears new clothes. He is a poor conversationalist, an indefatigable chatterbox. He wears an enormous, carefully sculpted beard that makes him seem all the more corpulent. He subsists on buttermilk, rice pudding, and slices of banana with butter. A lover of women, he conceals, with his unctuous ways, a brutal disposition, in turn betrayed by his flat feet, his spatula-like fingernails, his steady gaze, and ecstatic smile.
“A scientist, man of the world, and gymnastics buff, he goes around to the international gymnastics meets escorted by a number of his nurses, who, under his personal supervision, frequently win all the top prizes. Marienbad is something akin to a demagogical toiler, tirelessly churning out heavy tomes not in the least bit portable and filled with banalities; he is nonetheless growing accustomed to seeing his massive volumes published and immediately translated into several languages. Innumerable newspaper pieces have spread his name, and it would not be surprising if with his new venture, the Anonymous Kafka Society, he goes on to achieve even greater renown.
“And the thing is, Marienbad loves money. I’ve been able to find out that he kidnapped his wife a number of years ago, a rich Jewish hunchback with an enormous
“One afternoon, Valery Larbaud and five other colleagues visited Céline in his hotel and discovered this manuscript. To find it they had to go inside a tent he’d set up in the middle of his room. Enraged,
Larbaud reminded him of Quintus Valerius’s fate when, in the last days of the Republic, he was executed for revealing Rome’s true name.
“Duchamp, Tzara, Vallejo, everyone there, made it clear to him that he might share Quintus Valerius’s fate, but Céline’s response was to smile the twisted smile of one who knows how to make the foulest, most underhanded intentions smell sweet. Faced with this attitude, they burned the tent and, with it, the manuscript.
“Céline barely flinched. He seemed very comfortable in his role as the traitor, and, a few days later, he showed up again at Café Slavia, the place where we met every afternoon. He came in shouting, flanked by two professors from Madrid, even more bothersome and clingy than he was. One of them boasted of having translated Joyce into Spanish—which couldn’t but fill us with misgivings since, as you well know, it was quite a while ago that Joyce parted company with us, thinking he’d have to pay a monthly membership fee. The other professor, who went by the surname Diego, claimed he was a Castilian seafarer, and proceeded to discourse on Greenland’s solitary inlets, and about certain hot springs at the North Pole. An utter bore, believe me!
“We had a few truly awful days of being pursued by these clingy professors, who, in concert with the traitor, even came to defy us when we went out to Prague’s purlieus, its most sequestered spots. We couldn’t find a way to shake off these damned professors, who were clearly spying on us. This made many of our number feel like turning into ghosts or invisible beings. And this added to the numbers taking part in the secret expedition to the International Sanatorium, situated on the outskirts of the city, where I’m writing you from today.
“Here, away from the persecution of the traitor and his underlings, we’re on a run of extraordinary, feverish creativity. All thanks to this attempt to betray us. And also in part thanks to the owner and director of the Sanatorium, whom we call Mr. Marienbad, because he doesn’t want his true name revealed to anyone.
“I do not believe you’d like Marienbad. This is a man who always wears new clothes. He is a poor conversationalist, an indefatigable chatterbox. He wears an enormous, carefully sculpted beard that makes him seem all the more corpulent. He subsists on buttermilk, rice pudding, and slices of banana with butter. A lover of women, he conceals, with his unctuous ways, a brutal disposition, in turn betrayed by his flat feet, his spatula-like fingernails, his steady gaze, and ecstatic smile.
“A scientist, man of the world, and gymnastics buff, he goes around to the international gymnastics meets escorted by a number of his nurses, who, under his personal supervision, frequently win all the top prizes. Marienbad is something akin to a demagogical toiler, tirelessly churning out heavy tomes not in the least bit portable and filled with banalities; he is nonetheless growing accustomed to seeing his massive volumes published and immediately translated into several languages. Innumerable newspaper pieces have spread his name, and it would not be surprising if with his new venture, the Anonymous Kafka Society, he goes on to achieve even greater renown.
“And the thing is, Marienbad loves money. I’ve been able to find out that he kidnapped his wife a number of years ago, a rich Jewish hunchback with an enormous
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