168 Correspondances carte blanche Baden-Baden : thermal energy There is more to the Black Forest spa than detox and strolls in the park. The place possesses a timeless mystery. To take the pulse of Baden-Baden, the Black Forest spa town, just dally for a while in the lobby of the Brenners Park- Hotel & Spa. The revolving door never stops deliveringup its contents, like a casino card dispenser, a roulette wheel or a merry-go-round on Goetheplatz. Everyone on the planet passes through. All the world’s continents make their appearance, each in turn, different eras, different generations. Kids in their Sunday best, jostling groups of spa-goers and bodyguards with a hand to their earpiece. Flashy cars, walking sticks, alpenstocks, wheelchairs, stiletto heels. It’s like an open fre : you can gaze at it forever. It might even conjureup ghosts from the past—once the effects of the deep-action treatments begin to set in. But you won’t notice a thing. They take care of everything here—rheumatism, sciatica, « ailments of the joints, » as the voluble PR lady puts it. HermannHesse quite forgot who he was, enfolded in that embrace of eucalyptus, camphor and limping solitudes. In his A Guest at the Spa (Kurgast, 1925), he vacillates between acrimony and good humor, depending on his mood. He observes sickly people tottering, limping and crawling, and sees in them his double. He scrutinizes the sumptuous dinners served by exquisite young women to people who have no appetite. Nothing much has changed. His mood swings constantly. He takes a violent dislike to his neighbor in room No. 64, a Dutchman, who is staying there with his wife. « I have never seen anything so laughably unreal as you, you rheumatic, you spa guest !... You are no object, you are no human being, you are an idea, a barren abstraction. » Whirlwind of life Baden-Baden, a place that leaves no one indifferent, was pretty much born on a hunch. When Paris decided to ban gambling in the 19th century, France’s neighbors took pity on its forsaken roulette players. A Frenchman namedJacques Bénazet promptly opened a casino in 1838 in this sleepy spa town 13 kilometers from the border. And he had the bright idea of making more of it than nymph-dotted ceilings and crimson velvet. He brought along actors and singers, and introduced horse racing—the perfect combination for any Black Forest confection worthy of the name, alternating layers of lightness and sinful richness, with the obligatory kirsch-soaked cherries. The town methodically set about singing and gambling, and generally having a good time. Other countries joined the party. The Russians, in particular, brought to it a dimension it was lacking, adding the golden onion dome of the Orthodox church and that sense of feverish excitement described in a splendid, littleknown tome, Summer in Baden-Baden, by Leonid Tsypkin. Rhythms and rituals The door is still revolving at the Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa. What time is it ? For the hands of the clock are revolving, too. The passing hours mark the resort’s rhythmic shifts in mood. Baden-Baden and its repetitive kneading of temperamental muscles. Between the pointed fngers of the dark forest, sky and earth answer each other in a refrain. On the nearby Mummelsee, stretching out like a pool of ink, pine-green paddle boats trace swirls on the water’s surface. Baden- Baden’s binary rhythms echo other contrasts : the divas and Berlioz, the waters and the spas, War and Peace (Tolstoy played for high stakes at the casino), Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky wrote it here), the slot machines and the baccarat tables ; the triple-cream cakes and the gluten-free cookies, the Mephistopheles