Remembrance of Things Past – A Fragment

It didn’t take a bit of cake dipped in tea, rather it oozed from my memory like an elderly snake as I paused between steps halted by the accumulation of years. A piece of the past, it came back to me in all its vivid complexity. I was a minor officer for a large medical organization that held its annual business meetings in large super hotels and resorts during the off-season when rates were at their lowest.

The vision that appeared before me was in Nashville – a city I had never visited before and to which I never returned. The entrance to the palace was a vast plain of paved space set amid a forest broadcasting an aura of green splendor. The pavement culminated at a glass door the size of an imperial mausoleum. In front of the door was a phalanx of grenadiers who looked ready to invade Russia. But their less martial purpose was to aid resort patrons in and out of horseless vehicles and assist with their luggage as if the biggest valise was no more formidable than the largest grenade.

I left my cab unfamiliar with their tactics but fell in line behind a six-and-a-half-foot uniform carrying my small overnight bag as if it were a lunch box. He moved with a quick step lacking only a military tattoo. I entered a lobby, larger than Madison Square Garden. The right corner of the space contained the registration clerks. Stretching seemingly to infinity were three restaurants, a helicopter pad directly beneath a retractable roof, and a cascade of shops and other venues that were too distant to be discerned. As for the clerks, a line of them stretched the length of a football field. Each was separated from his colleagues by a transparent panel that rose from waist to head.

I registered without any difficulty even though this was at a time when computer technology was primitive. I was given room 2034. I didn’t realize the significance of the number. I thought it just meant room 34 on the second floor.

After receiving a key and an introductory packet I was driven to my room in a golf cart. Its driver was dressed like a jockey. His colors were metallic gold, black and white. He drove the cart as if in a steeplechase. I was so unnerved by the experience that I can’t say for sure if we hurtled over any obstacles, but I would have lost my lunch if I had eaten it. Following what seemed like the length of three lectures on Proust, we arrived at my room. This brings me to the central part of this reminiscence.

I unpacked my small suitcase and then decided to obtain the lunch I had not lost during the rough ride from the lobby to my room. I intended to visit one of the three restaurants I had glimpsed while checking in. I later learned that the hotel had 32 restaurants. In search of lost lunch rather than lost time, I left my room heading for the lobby.

Fifteen minutes later I realized that I didn’t know the way. So I decided to go back to my room and order room service. It took another 15 minutes to realize I was in no man’s land with no route to either destination before me – lobby or room. My only alternative was to wander in the hope that I would find a marker directing me to a point of reference.

Following another quarter of an hour, I found myself in a dark forest, as the path had been lost. Just ahead of me were a dozen or so cowboys grouped around a campfire. They looked just like the cowboys made famous by Mel Brooks. But instead of flatulence, I heard humming. It was Puccini. I was stunned. Cowboys in Nashville humming Italian opera. They were very good. Enough so that for a few minutes I forgot both my missing lunch and disorientation. I approached the hummers and asked one of them for directions to the lobby. Without dropping a note he gave me a 1904 city map of Dublin and then turned his glance to the campfire. I stayed until the humming stopped. Silence was followed by the opening of cans of pork and beans. Fearful of what might happen next I continued on my wayward trek.

I walked about a mile looking for a hotel map, but all I passed were numerous fire extinguishers and three windmills. From two of the corridors at right angles to the one I was trodding I heard ‘Waltzing Mathilda’ sung by a distant baritone with the appropriate accent. At the next corner, I heard ‘Deserto in Terra’ which seemed appropriate for my current solitary condition. 

This singing almost gave me enough nerve to do what I should have the moment I realized my plight. Knock a door until one opened allowing me to seek aid. But I was afraid that it would be opened by someone who was attending the same meeting as was I and who would recognize me and relate to the entire membership that I couldn’t navigate the trip from my room to the lobby much less define the pathophysiology of hypertension which I had convinced them was within my ken. So I kept on going unwilling to seek succor from an unknown source.

My wanderings had taken on a fugue-like state. I wasn’t sure where I had gotten to. A hotel in Tennesee seemed to have the dimensions of Texas. As movement had produced nothing salutary, I decided to be inert. I unrealistically hoped for a rescue party. What I got was the desert of Louisiana – Sola, perduta, abbandonata described my condition.

A flash of light blinded me for an instant. When sight returned I was sitting on a chair and Fred Astaire was dancing ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’. But instead of appearing in front of a line of clones of himself, the dancers to his rear were alligators and hippos. Fascinated, I watched entranced, and transported to an ethereal realm of terpsichorean delight.

Abruptly, I was seized by two burly men who placed me in handcuffs and said I was under arrest. They did not say for what. They kept calling me ‘K’ despite repeated declarations that ‘K’ was only the first initial of my last name. They left me in a dank room with a solitary light. They attached one cuff to a chair bolted to the floor. After what seemed three days they returned, uncuffed me, and pushed me back into one of the hotel’s corridors.

There was not a trace of the encounters that characterized my attempt to find the lobby. But there was a telephone on the adjacent wall. I grabbed the receiver and was instantly connected to reception. I began to recite the details of my situation, but the voice interrupted me and said, “Don’t worry, this happens all the time. We’ll send some out for you. I can tell where you are from the telephone you’re using.”

In half a trice a golf cart driven by the same jockey who had taken me to my room appeared and drove me to the lobby. I got a ham sandwich at one of the restaurants. The jockey then drove me back to my room. He provided the same round-trip service for the remainder of my stay at the hotel. I attended all the meetings and none of my colleagues learned of my pathfinding ineptitude.

I checked out two days later, my modest reputation seemingly intact. You can easily understand why I have never returned to Nashville. But the memory of my solitary stay there now seems permanent.