The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (47 page)

Wherever particular people congregate Siegfried reads from the packet of cigarettes brought by the air-hostess in a wine coloured skirt and white blouse you smoke too much.

— La lune vous rend particulièrement sensible. Vous vous sentirez obstinés, prêts à mal interpreter les intentions des autres.

— Why do you read that stuff?

— Nothing else. Oh yes, the pamphlet,

— Well, we could talk.

— The Museum also contains statues, fragments of
sculptures
and other interesting works of art from the temples and constitutes an interesting collection. Why, we missed that.

What else? London and sometimes Wiltshire where stones talk and walk and make semblance of love have fun until they come to a standstill. All ideas have equality before God remember where you stumbled so why can’t you commit yourself wholly to one of them?

— Ideas? Great Scott, nothing deserves a flow of rash enthusiasm my sweet. For fifteen years or more I have
conducted
my higher education by transmitting other people’s ideas, not to say platitudes, from one microphone into another. No one expects me to produce my own as well.

Et comme l’a si bien dit Saussure, la langue peut se
contenter
de l’opposition de quelque chose avec rien. The marked term on the one hand, say, the feminine, grand
e
, the
unmarked
on the other, say, the masculine, grand. Mais notez bien que le non-marqué peut dériver du marqué par
retranchement,
by subtraction, par une absence qui signifie. Je répète, une absence qui signifie eine Abwesenheit die simultaneously etwas bedeutet.

The road from Idlewilde Airport runs past Jewish cemeteries with tall rectangular tombstones standing close together in miniature forewarning of skyscrapers. Soon some black or white waiter will come with a Manhattan cocktail or else the quiet American whose unquiet eyes will prevent any further quotations from the foolish fond old man called apparently Brutus Caesar who quotes his status as a very foolish fond old man fond, anyway, of whisky lady and bald pahr dessue le marshy, patting his bald marshy so that what can one say but smile agreeably at his charming self-deprecating sense of humour half drowned by the air-conditioning and other circumstantial emptiness amid the roar and whistle of
strident
laughter hum of voices that move about in close national groups.

The murmur of the talking delegates as they wait in the rows of desks like a giant class fills the vast hall. The president of the assembly knocks his hammer on the dais table or merely enters perhaps creating a sudden silence as the
members
dutifully don their listening caps to pick up the broken bits with a great tenderness and kindly observe the
nonsmoking
sign. We note that the consensus of opinion in the Committee seems to favour the draft revised resolution. My delegation will certainly vote for it. We nevertheless have to face the real question, namely, how to implement it through the earphones in French behind the closed eyelids and out into the mouthpiece in simultaneous German or through other mouthpieces Russian Polish Arabic Chinese and him in another booth for simultaneous English no doubt staring at the empty desk.

Siegfried watches the speaker, he works with his eyes as well as ears and voice, even imitating the gestures with his hands. I recall—if you will forgive a personal observation—the first Disarmament Conference I attended in Geneva in 1932 and the interminable discussions we had then as to whether security came before disarmament or vice versa, I recall also the long discussions we had as to which weapons one could call offensive and which defensive, and our
conclusion
reached late one night in a café, that the offensiveness or defensiveness of a weapon depended on whether one stood in front of it or behind it. We seem to have made little progress since then. Nevertheless we should not give up the attempt und so weiter weiter gehen unless merely my
government
wishes to reiterate its whole-hearted support for the United Nations. We shall continue to honour our obligations and shall appoint a sub-committee to inquire into how the crisis has arisen. We live in a time of tension between two social orders and we must learn to resolve that tension. We must emphasise however that a vast cultural revolution has taken place which the world will not find easy to integrate into his quiet disparagement. Nothing deserves a flow of rash enthusiasm my sweet. As for the under-developed areas, we shall organise discussions to find out how best we could help those countries with their external defence problems and adjust their economies to the new situation.

— Gee, I saw you in your glass booth you sure looked dandy, silently efficient you know, unharassed, because of course I couldn’t hear you. I listened to the English versions. That elderly fellow for the French and—

— Elderly?

— Well I don’t know, he had grey hair. I always admire those fellers who do Russian and Polish and things like that. Russians and Poles I guess. You don’t do Russian do you?

— No. French into German.

— German eh? Hmm. D’you like it?

— Do you mean German? Well—

— No I mean the job.

— Oh, this just came as an emergency, they needed extras. But one gets more than usually discouraged, more than with the other stuff.

— What other stuff?

— Oh, you know, literature, irrigation, the
underdeveloped
areas and all that.

— Jeeze. And you know about these things?

— Well on one level one hardly listens. On another one has to understand immediately you see because the thing
understood
slips away, together with the need to understand.

— Gee.

The quiet American with the unquiet eyes full of his upbringing’s mechanically courteous interest in the other and whatever he or she has to say however abstract aphoristic platitudinous misleading looks at the bald and very foolish fond old man who says lirrechur, eh? Tomorrow and
tomorrow
and tomorrow, creeps in this petty place from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted airport-halls with neon airport roads and tall rectangular tombstones standing close together in miniature forewarning of united nations ford foundations wall streets madison avenues where he talks to a young so young beginner in the art of understanding immediately, all channels alert eyes ears mouthpiece and fingers through her long auburn hair. She sneezes through her long auburn hair in the draught from the window skyscraped over the Hudson River so he says Dieu vous blesse into her peals of laughter through her long auburn hair and simultaneously translates back in time with Zounds! Restoration English for God’s wounds you know. I have taken her under my wing, he says, she shows much promise and gets allotted somehow with him to other conferences, congresses, conventions where no communication ever occurs.

— Something comes out of them if only a knowledge of people. She says with her long auburn hair. Unless maybe: Something comes out of meetings or they wouldn’t happen.

— Happenings prove only that something never comes out of them my dear.

— Whatever does that mean? For a chief interpreter you use words most imprecisely darling lost or perhaps not said after all amid the roar the hum the strident laughter no. I use them, simultanément ma chère collègue.

Ma chère collègue. And whatever wing means under which he has taken her. A thing of the intellect perhaps, ideas, a passion they have in common, literature for instance,
irrigation,
ready-made anecdotes for the under-developed areas or a certain verbal anarchy which makes their allusions
intertwine
in the echoing airport lounge as an abstract study in glass metal hot air and coffee-bars where the voice announces Flight KLM 62 to Helsinki delayed by fog.

Away from the road a path leads into the deep cleft between the two masses of the Phaidriades where lies the famous Kastalia spring. The visitor’s attention turns
immediately
to the sanctuary of Apollo situated on the higher slopes of one of the Phaidriades rocks in five terrace-like levels, brilliant with the splendour of its monuments, the Treasures, the Portico of the Athenians, the Temple of Apollo beneath which the famous oracle used to sit and utter cryptic
prophecies
to all who came and consulted it on serious matters like war, alliances, births and marriages. Finally, a little higher up stands the Theatre, famous in ancient times for the performances of tragedy, and beyond the Sanctuary lies the Stadium, where the Pythic Games took place to celebrate Apollo’s victory over Python, the legendary monster.

The visitor’s attention turns immediately to the masculine unmarked and situated on the higher slopes in five terraces none of which deserves a flow of rash enthusiasm. Pupate! Pupate! He drives the hired car regardless of white hands about to signal other cars across. The policeman puts his head in at the window and shouts pupate? pupate? I don’t speak Greek and the policeman waves him on. Quel culot! Insulting me in his own language. Well pu means where, so presumably pupate means où allez-vous, hardly an insult oh shut up you think you know everything don’t you.

— For the phrase-book says listen to this under Marriage Proposal: As I really love you I want to make you my wife. Do you agree? Have you an opinion for the marriage? Did you want to test by means of engagement? Do you want to create our own home? Do you like children? Saith the book, the phrase-book saith.

The visitor’s attention turns immediately to higher things such as Poulet sauté, Forestières, Macédoine de légumes, Riz Pilaff, Poire Belle Hélène, Fromage/Biscuits, Café over the ugliness of the modern capital that recedes as the plane rises swiftly to an outside temperature of thirty-nine degrees and the gods have left this land says Siegfried now the boss. They have their exits and their entrances over blue gulfs blue mountains and through slatted shutters in white cubic rooms where the white bathroom door flanks the pink painted
built-in
cupboard to the left and stands ajar, letting in too much light from a high window on the wall blue-tiled all the way up and the curved edge of the blue bidet. According to legislation into effect you may not take the antiquity out of the country. Wherever particular people congregate, you tap your cigarette more often than necessary into the chromium ash-tray on the round metal table.

— You never smoke it to the end. Just as you get at once on first name terms with everyone and promptly forget their surnames. So why don’t you marry me after all these years?

— You know why.

— Oh that. The Vicariato di Roma. I can’t think why you bother can you?

— No. Not any longer. But after all these years as you say one might as well see it through.

— To an unsuccessful conclusion? Then what?

— Well, one way or the other.

The men who fill the café sit transfixed by the flickering local variation in the presentation of opposed viewpoints on every aspect of an instant world through faceless men who have no doubt acquired faces for them as their arch-priests of faits-divers exploding into OMO! Le plus fort contre la saleté! But what difference does it make?

— How can one tell, until it has made it?

— If it makes it.

— If it does.

Une différence non marquée dérivant du marqué par une absence qui signifie eine Abwesenheit die etwas bedeutet, etwas anderes als ordered. Do you agree? Did you want to test by means of engagement? Or will you take me as you find me we’ll have fun. Wejście/Wyjście. What difference does it make? In/out, up/down, container and contained. To go in you have to go out, up, down and vice versa. Pupate,
pupate?
Que cherchez-vous madame? Ah, l’ascenseur. Au fond à gauche.

Sometimes however the number on the key drops to fifteen from four hundred and twelve so that the smattering of the mouthpiece can proudly utter piętnaście unless onbeş, depending on the size the time the place and whether or not the bathroom faces the built-in cupboard in the entrance passage with no window only a ventilation shaft. Sometimes it faces the door of the room occupying a space in width not length and its own window on the same side as the picture-window with or without balcony on the street the sea the mountain. Here it faces the bed the double bed but
sometimes
two separate or longwise foot to foot along the left wall or the right even. Single rooms seldom have a shower or bath or private loo, only a biddy and a washstand on one leg white pink blue yellow or fixed to the wall with a thick metal tube protruding underneath but curving up again behind not always visibly however, depending on the place the time the theme, whether the hair gets washed and set with rollers in the hotel room or at the hairdresser friseur coiffeur kuaför frizer peluquería through signs with hands low here high at the back in coils, whether some languages for example divide their genders into animate and inanimate while others less primitive into andraic with a flat shoe or male figurine on the door and metandraic which covers objects animals of both sexes and women. Madame désire? OMO. Voici, Ah, un plus petit. Très bien. Madame désire encore quelque chose?

Leider haben wir keins. Die Apotheke, geradeaus dann links. Und haben Sie noch einen Wunsch?

So that the bells in endless crash-permutations on eight unimaginative manipulated notes endlessly permutate over the greenish drizzle from the distant belfry way off beyond the little door. Un cottage? Que voulez-vous dire, un cottage? In Wiltshire where stones talk to themselves and the
greengrocer
says of an old cauliflower did you want it for eating love? And anything else love instead of Madame désire encore quelque chose or Haben Sie noch einen Wunsch. What do you mean, for eating? Oh just my little joke
sweetheart.
An old lady she wanted mushrooms once and I said did you want them for eating and she said no for frying. So the phrase stuck love not to worry it’ll all look the same in a hundred years as I always say it’ll all come out in the wash. Do you want to create our own home? Do you like children? Saith the book, the phrase-book saith. And the shadow of the yellow pelmet cuts across the top of two vertical parallel lines themselves cut through by two horizontal lines thrown on the white-washed wall from the small criss-crossed window under the thatched roof, forming a large dièze the key of G for example on a non-existent stave but bent by the wall that slopes at that point up to the oakbeam ceiling in the
master-bedroom
or vessel of conception empty of master-music or conception or whatever wing means under which he has taken her auburn blonde svelte and dark to their conferences, commissions, congresses, conventions, walking down the airplane steps blue yellow orange white. It all depends on the theme the time the place the climate, whether Pernod for instance, Jerez-Quina Cinzano slivovitz turning his money endlessly over and over before paying as the waiter waits, the guilder francs pesetas zlotys krone half-crowns clinking or crinkling quietly, the only music endlessly permutating on eight unimaginatively manipulated notes over the greenish drizzle. Do si la sol fa mi ré do, do la fa ré, si sol mi do, do si la sol fa mi ré do, do la fa ré, si sol mi do crash permutating through the distant brain way up beyond the yellow curtain and behind no doubt a little door.