The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (44 page)

Mr. Basil McThingummy and the members of the
Congress
burble on over their wine their smørrebrød their smoke and move about in close national groups for those who wish to visit this renowned Town Hall, which as you know surrounds him with a group of women one young wearing a yellow dress and rose-gold hair smoothly piled up in coils and black around her eyes under straight black eyebrows, who shapes her words with gestures that weave circles round him and twine up into the painted ceiling and the
microphonic
words that shshshsh!

The light has quite unrounded the corners of the
cupboard
, made of teak, with plain oak bars for handles. The light pours insulated silence through the brown and orange patterned curtains on the left, despite the yellow Venetian blinds inside the double window behind the cotton curtains. No clock stands on the bedside table the grumpy voice of the hall porter on the telephone saying ten past three madam. Ten past three! How long the night, llarga la nit, on account of the Northern Lights in midsummer. Unless how strange I never carry a watch either don’t believe in them one finds clocks everywhere even if they all disagree according to locality speed height theme of congress and like you I always manage punctuality at work. You see we have much in common. No body occupies the empty bed. No one comes in offering anything not ordered.

Between the dawn and the non-existent night the body stretches out its hundred and twenty ribs or so towards the distant brain way up beyond the yellow curtain that divides the ordinary from the better and no doubt behind a little door.

— Mesdames messieurs. Air France vous souhaite la
bienvenue
à bord de cet énorme problème devant lequel cependant le langage flows into the ear and comes out into the mouthpiece over waves and on into the ears of the multitudes or so in simultaneous German. To the right of the vast metal wing the sun that had almost set before take-off has leapt quite high again above the mountains. It has some way to go before it sets once more.

The white circle surrounded with red contains a black car and a red car but the grey-lined bus swings out to the left lane and overtakes a large dark blue car with pleated nylon curtains over its rear window, the left lane empty of traffic between the closed shops called MǍRUNŢIŞURI, LACTO VEGETARIAN, ALIMENTE, TUTUNGERIE.

Stimate pasager! The pillow stands obliquely in the wall corner of the bed with its ears up, its middle carefully dented. The feather-bed buttoned up in sheeting no longer occurs, only the black and red patterned blanket folded over with the top sheet to form two parallel white borders from which the planes move slowly off, rise suddenly and vanish or come in out of the low grey cloud by radar to the distant brain way up in the long nose-tip. The labelled bottle on the
bedside-table
reads Apă Minerală—Biborţeni—Apă de Masă,
feruginosă
, bicarbonată, calcică, sodică-magneziană,
carbogazoasă,
hipotonă. The bathroom door faces the built-in cupboard of dark oak across the narrow passage leading into the room so that it has no window, only a ventilation shaft. Every few hours or minutes of the night just as sleep comes a great crunch of a key trying the door swerves sleep into half-wakeful irritation though the key won’t fit until fury takes over with a bound and Was suchen Sie in anger through the unlocked open door to a blear-eyed blear-faced blear-aged man who sways in his pyjamas and slinks away into Room 38 and drunk astonishment at such a change of the expected person. Sometimes the number of the key remains several weeks running in the two or three hundreds, then suddenly drops to 2, or 4 or 10 so that the smattering of the mouthpiece can proudly utter doi patru zece at the reception unless iki dört on, depending on the size the time the place and nothing much above 15. Stimate pasager! La cererea clientulul servim MICUL DEJUN in camere. Out of the mouths of babes the Frenchman says with eloquent gestures on the dais beyond the interpreters’ glass booth, la Vérité, la Justice, l’Humanité, Tutungerie in blue beyond the glass between the red black and white patterned curtains and below on the shop window Debit a tutun.

Of course the expected person changes. The menu goes all the way to somewhere or other with the bathroom to the right and the Eau de Vittel—Pureté-Santé to the left but no personal significance after the coq-au-vin airborne three hours ten minutes between the enormous wings. The body stretches forth towards some thought some order some command obeyed in the distant brain way up or even an idea that actually means something compels a passion a
commitment
lost or ungained yet as the wing spreads to starboard motionless on the still blue temperature of minus fifty-one degrees, the metal shell dividing it from this great pressurised solitude. The body floats in a quiet suspension of belief and disbelief, the sky grows dark over the chasms of the unseen Pyrenees. The bright red bar of sunset cuts the navy sky like a horizontal hot poker as the tray comes in to land with its empty plastic cup, the mayonnaise mess in the plastic
side-plate,
the miniature braised beef and outsize roast potatoes and three dices of carrots, the roll the pat of butter in gold the cellophane-wrapped biscuits with the triangle of cheese, the toy salt-cellar and the lilliputian mustard-tube. The stimaţi pasageri huddle in the hundred and ten seats or so between the dark invisible wings, looked after cradled in their needs, eat drink smoke talk doze dream read that casual girls take the easy way to colour, Get that Glint with a Hint of a Tint, and love to your hair as the green light winks under the stars on and off in the enormous black beyond the small rectangular window and still on behind the eyelids closed, open, closed, open. It looks like a light way down on earth but doesn’t pass away, it travels with the body of the plane full of stimaţi pasageri at a speed of total immobility between the invisible wings. The plastic tray remains full of half-eaten trifle and the crumbs of roll, the cellophane paper and the miniature mustard-tube. Between the port and starboard engines the body floats, the plastic tray takes off above the breasts of the air-hostess that point up her white blouse.

The ship bumps down the steps of air, losing height slowly as it nears its expected minute of arrival, the distant brain way up no doubt obeying innumerable instructions that translate time speed height into locality and channel and descent into bright lights. Ladies and gentlemen, kindly extinguish your cigarettes and do not weave circles round him thrice with eloquent gestures that wrap up la Vérité, la Justice, l’Humanité et la Tutungerie.

Siegfried works with his eyes and hands as well as with his ears and voice. He lip-reads the speaker on the dais through the small glass booth and in the next split second hears the expected English syllables of problems we should consider today for the sake of mutual understanding the advancement of learning the true state of things that pour into the
earphones
through the distant brain way up and out into the mouthpiece in simultaneous German. Two channels keep the mind alert he says the eyes the ears or three for he shapes the words with his hands reproducing the speaker’s gestures to keep his mind alert since the delegates in the audience do not watch him in the glass booth but only the speaker or more often each other in whispers or their notes, waiting for their turn to shine.

— How can you work with only your ears and voice?

— Well, and the brain.

The distant brain way up.

— You don’t watch the speaker and you keep your eyes quite closed.

Fixed on the words as they pass through the transmuter in the brain, the hands quite still on the desk, forming a squat diamond space with the two index-finger-tips touching away from the body, the thumbs pressing each other towards it and sometimes all the fingers touching like a cathedral roof. But you never see his gestures. You close your eyes and watch the words as they pass through the transmuter behind your closed eyelids what goes on there?

Steadily, in well formed phrases hitting the German nail on the French pinpoint. Unless alternatively concision shrinks the abstractions like angels to a pinhead and the pinhead pricks the Gallic nuance which escapes like gas depending on the speaker’s nationality in French, Hungarian for instance or Chinese or mediocre, depending on the theme the time the place the climate, whether canyons or mountains create different pressures and great holes of air into which the plane sinks suddenly with a lilt of the stomach as in the Výtah—
—Ascenseur. Přivolávač it says, Appel.

— In der Luft gibts keine Grenzen. The dark handsome Viennese leans right across from the left to photograph the Danube which from der Luft looks actually quite blue to prevent any true exchange of thoughts above the close breath and perhaps intentional nearness unless he genuinely wants to photograph die Donau für die Kinder with a tip of nose in the foreground and maybe a dark green shoulder or curve of bosom even and the enormous wing spreading back moving at speed over the Danube quite blue from der Luft and gone.

— Ah but airports have frontiers. And travel-talk ensues with Herr Helmut von Irgendetwas who travels in textiles as others travel in simultaneous interpretation. To inflate jacket pull red toggle (1). To top up, blow into mouthpiece (2) in order to prevent any true exchange between the close breath and the leaning forward beyond keine Grenzen, obeying the innumerable instructions that translate time speed height desire into locality and channel and the slow descent into matter. You will find your life-jacket under your seat. This life-jacket can serve on an unconscious person. Uw zwemvest bevindt zich onder uw stoel. Dit zwemvest kan dienen voor een bewusteloos persoon. Questo salvagente one day will have no frontiers and no passports per assistere anche una persona priva de conoscenza. Aber natürlich,
selbstverständlich,
hoffentlich und so weiter.

Prague has a dingy airport still. A mess of huts, a
transit-lounge
like a wartime canteen. Just like our first meeting says Siegfried remember? The tannoy voice in the large wooden hut calls out ranks with names attached and even faces over uniforms grey-blue dark olive-green and khaki that wear a listening look for the Dakota aircraft about to take off from Frankfurt to a scattering of mimeographed news-sheets from the square metal table in the transit lounge look, the new Lord Mayor of Prague has promised to build a better one.

The Slovak National Council met in Bratislava yesterday for its first session since the General Election on June 14. The Council unanimously re-elected Minister Jan Trudny, member of the Praesidium of the Central Committee, as Chairman of the Council. Gut-gut. The Minister then took the floor.

— Mesdames messieurs. Aujourd’hui nous allons discuter le problème de la communication, du point de vue which reveals een bewusteloos persoon blowing hot air into the mouthpiece all enclosed in a glass booth going down, after having pulled red toggle (1) pushed the red button
. But R turns out to mean Restaurant in studded black plastic cushioned walls not Rez-de-chaussée at all.

Kein Eintritt. Privat. Que cherchez-vous madame? Ah, au fond à gauche, in fondo a sinistra geradeaus dann links according to the theme the time the place with a flared-skirted figurine on the door. Or a high-heeled shoe perhaps as opposed to a flat foot, MESSIEURS, they have their exits and their entrances he makes his greying English jokes under his greying hair or stands against the gothic pillar telling the one about the elephant perhaps unless ideas that actually mean something to a svelte red-haired lady in a low
décolletage
that speaks ideas? My dear good girl and so forth.