The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (43 page)

To Eva Hesse
with love and gratitude

Between the enormous wings the body of the plane stretches its one hundred and twenty seats or so in threes on either side towards the distant brain way up, behind the dark blue
curtain
and again beyond no doubt a little door. In some
countries
the women would segregate still to the left of the aisle, the men less numerous to the right. But all in all and
civilisation
considered the chromosomes sit quietly mixed among the hundred and twenty seats or so that stretch like ribs as if inside a giant centipede. Or else inside the whale, who knows, three hours, three days of maybe hell. Between doing and not doing the body floats.

To the right of the fuselage the enormous wing spreads back quite motionless on the deep blue of the high sky, the sunlight quiet on the dull-shining metal, the jet-exhausts invisible in their power save for a tremor against the blue or the propellers invisible in their speed save for a hinted halo, no cloud and from this seat no reef of nature no man-made object passing to show that the plane flies immobile at eight hundred and thirty kilometres an hour height twelve thousand metres on a sheet of paper handed over the back of the armchair in front by a black hand above Bordeaux with outside temperature minus forty-two degrees.

Inside they have pressurised the comfort. The people sit hidden in their high armchairs but for a few head-tops bald fluffy blond curly back between the port and starboard engines, looked after cradled in their needs, eat drink smoke talk doze dream and didn’t catch what you said.

— That curtain up there between us and the first class. It reminds me of a tabernacle.

— Oh. Yes.

— Or a Greek Orthodox church. Have you ever—

— Oh yes and travel-talk ensues half drowned in
air-conditioning
and other circumstantial emptiness with the eyes gazing at the blue temperature of minus forty-two degrees.

At any minute now some bright or elderly sour no young and buxom chambermaid in black and white will come in with a breakfast-tray, put it down on the table in the dark and draw back the curtains unless open the shutters and say buenos días, Morgen or kalimera who knows, it all depends where the sleeping has occurred out of what dream shaken up with non merci nein danke no thank you in a long-lost terror of someone offering etwas anderes, not ordered.

Or a smooth floor-steward in white.

The stewardess in pale grey-blue and high pale orange hair puts down the plastic tray covered with various foods in little plastic troughs.

— Mineralwasser bitte.

— Mineralwasser? Leider haben wir keins. Nur
Sodawasser
.

— Also dann Sodawasser.

Which bears no label. Leider nicht.

The decorative metal locks on each door of the cupboard shine in the shaft of bright light coming through from the left where the wooden shutters meet. They have Napoleonic hats and look like Civil Guards, the one on the right door carrying the vertical latch that hangs down in relief like a rifle at rest. Next to the cupboard the smaller doors of the dressing-table repeat the motif darkly and unreflecting. On the two drawers of the dressing-table, above the smaller doors, the Civil Guards lie horizontal.

Beyond the wooden shutters and way down below the layered floors of stunned consciousnesses waking dreams nightmares lost senses of locality the cars hoot faintly
poop-pip
-poop the trams tinkle way down below in the grand canyon and an engine revs up in what, French German Portuguese.

The dark shape of the cupboard unrounds in the half-light. On the bedside-table stands the bottle of mineral water, its label still illegible. No one comes in offering anything.

The florid American priest leans forward, fills the round window as shoulders fill a slipped halo, watching the sea of cloud way down below no doubt, that draws the gaze into an idle fantasy of stepping out and bouncing on it as on a trampoline, unless the cloud has cleared, the window set quite low, the long thin mouth embedded in the cardiac flesh talking of tabernacles which proclaim that the cloud has not cleared, for he turns again and says in some countries the women segregate still to the left of the aisle, the men less numerous alas to the right introducing himself as Father Brendan O’Carawayseed or some such name. The girl lays her rich auburn head on the lap of the handsome man
cross-legged
above the caption He’ll always remember Piquant. Of course the Church must change, but the world can’t call the tune.

The dawn has quite unrounded the corners of the
cupboard
made of teak, built in up to the ceiling and therefore without corners. It has pale oak vertical bars for handles. The light roars full of traffic through the yellow cotton
curtains
on the right.

The label on the bottle says VICHY ETAT—Eau Minérale Naturelle. VICHY. Station du foie et de l’estomac. Toutes maladies de la nutrition. Saison thermale: Mai–Octobre. L’eau de Vichy
CELESTINS
constitue l’eau de régime des hépatiques, diabétiques, dyspeptiques. Prise aux repas, elle facilite la digestion et régularise l’intestin. Elle doit aussi sa réputation mondiale aux résultats obtenus too small however to read in the half light.

And yet the central heating has the unrelaxed intensity of a cold northern night, the sheeted puffed up eiderdown that causes sweat and falls off causing coolness indicates an outside temperature of minus forty-two degrees perhaps although the body stretches out its many ribs in a pressurised comfort as if inside a giant centipede. Or else inside the whale who knows, three hours three nights of maybe hell. Between sleeping and not sleeping the body floats.

The cloud has cleared. Way down below the window-seat through the oval window the rectangles of agriculture
brush-stroke
size, the forest blobs metallic lakes the scatterings of smudged dots the thin white lines curving and straight and crossing one another make up an abstract study of some earth-goddess in brown and green. Valmar girls always get a second glance.

The bathroom door faces the entrance to the room so that the bathroom has an outside window next to the balcony window of the room. Soon some dark waiter will enter with a breakfast-tray and something else not ordered. All ideas have equality before God he will say unless some orator with eloquent gestures outside the glass booth, his words flowing into the ear through earphones in French and down at once out of the mouth into the attached mouthpiece in simultaneous German.

But no, the green or perhaps blue washbasin stands on one leg to the left of the window back to back with its neighbour which runs a small niagara at dawn or so and gurgles loud into the green or perhaps blue washbasin to the left of the window, single rooms not often having bathrooms. The decorative metal locks on each door of the cupboard shine brassy gold in the shaft of distant hoots coming through from the left where the wooden shutters meet. They have
Napoleonic
hats and look like Civil Guards, the one on the right door carrying a rifle at rest, those on the drawers of the dressing-table lying down. A small dot of bright light thrown by the round hole in the shutter further up the cupboard imitates the sun. Or else the telephone rings allo? er, dígame? The bottle on the bedside table says Agua Mineral.

The stewardess in navy blue comes down the aisle, carrying a tray of drinks and a small Schweppes. The menu goes all the way to Santiago. Oslo—Prague, airborne one hour and ten minutes: smørrebrød Scandinave, café. Prague—Geneva, airborne one hour: jus de fruit. Geneva—Lisbon, airborne two hours: oeuf froid italienne, coq-au-vin, pommes
parisiennes,
charlotte russe, café. Lisbon—Monrovia, airborne four hours and twenty minutes: smørrebrød, délice de tartine à la S.A.S., café. Monrovia—Rio de Janeiro, quartiers de pamplemousse, omelette au bacon, Rio de Janeiro—São Paolo, São Paolo—Montevideo, Montevideo—Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires—Santiago but the menu has no personal significance beyond the oeuf froid italienne the coq-au-vin the charlotte russe café and the small bottle of scuse-plisse as the dark Viennese leans right across from the left to
photograph
the Alps in the pink glow of bitteschön, travel-talk ensuing half-masked by air and other such conditioning to prevent any true exchange of thoughts when rhetoric flows into the ear through the earphones in French and down at once out of the mouth into the mouthpiece in simultaneous German. Out of the mouths of babes the Frenchman says with eloquent gestures, la vérité, la justice, l’humanité. The words prevent any true EXCHANGE caught in the late afternoon sun that stripes the airport hall between the slats of the Venetian blinds on the vast wall of glass beyond which the planes wait, move slowly off, rise suddenly and vanish or come in out of the blue over the unseen lake somewhere to the right of the distant mountains.

A voice calls out continuous flight and gate numbers and the murmur of the talking delegates as they wait in rows of desks like a giant class fills the great congress hall. The
chairman
knocks his hammer on the dais table. The congress members dutifully don their listening-caps and the murmur still continuing now comes through the earphones in the glass booth, picked up by the microphones the engineer has just switched on. Siegfried sits to attention, wearing his earphones like a helmet as communication begins.

— Meine Damen und Herren. Kindly fasten your
seat-belts
and observe the non-smoking sign. The animal has filled up again, its body between the enormous wings stretching its one hundred and eighty seats or so like ribs towards the distant brain way up. The large African woman on the right in a long printed dress straps herself with lethargic difficulty as she talks to the man beyond her in a language not understood. Votre poitrine peut se développer et se raffermir facilement. In some countries the women would segregate to the left of the aisle the men less numerous to the right. But all in all the chromosomes sit quietly mixed as the enormous wing spreads back on the port side, catching the last red segment of the sun before it disappears behind the blackened hill.

The shadow of the green pelmet cuts between the light reflected from the pale blue slatted blind, dividing the
reflection
into two giant staves of five lines each, empty of notes above the cubic-looking cupboard in the pale blue cubic room. The double bed feels huge, empty of music in the silent pale blue room. The bathroom door faces the entrance to the room so that the bathroom has an outside window next to the picture-window of the room with its blue slatted blind between its double panes and the green pelmet above, the two green bars of the undrawn curtains hanging vertical on either side. More often the bathroom flanks the entrance in a small passage, facing the built-in cupboard and has a token window on the hotel corridor or no window at all, merely a ventilation shaft. Sometimes it even flanks the bed.

Inside the white circle the red diagonal crosses the black right-angle so that the bus cream-lined and stretching long and tense like a vibrant animal should drive straight on with a clanking into gear and a great roar after the traffic lights between the yellow tram and the white
façades
with their bright letters red green blue Supermarché BRASSERIE UNIVERSELLE Epicerie
Léon
Delhaize
Réductions SOLDES slashed obliquely on glass hiding the mannequins. But no, the bus turns right by the small sign in white letters on faded blue Détournement/Omleiding with a broad white bar in a red disc ahead by a drill vibrating on the cobbles an electric power van and a group of men in a small cloud of dust.

The cloud has cleared. Way down below the window-seat through the rectangular window with rounded corners the sea looks solid earth or clay you could cut through with a blunt knife pick up in handfuls mould perhaps into a moon marine mother of death birth menstruation or fear of
something
else not ordered. Horoskop: Sie haben Appetit auf Neues. Passen Sie zur Zeit so gut es geht dem Partner an.

In fact the bathroom door in pinewood flanks the pine cupboard to the right and stands ajar, letting in too much light from a high glazed window on to the wall pink-tiled all the way up and the curved edge of the black bidet. According to the legislation into effect you may not bring the antiquity out of the country. Please declare if you have plants or parts of plants with you but the blue bus at the frontier post honks for the congress members and interpreters who chose to leave Sofia by way of Istanbul. Please declare if you have plants or parts of plants because one day the man will come and bring you out of this or that zone with a tremendous force and the intensity of a love lost or never gained such as for instance one idea that actually means something in the light of that love. On this day or that the concrete corridor encased in glass slopes up straight from the tarmac where the yellow bus has stopped, and on into the airport hall of clean glass galleries coffee-bars teak stairways with wide frightening space between the steps and queues of plastic luggage moving unowned unmastered up the conveyor-belt over the edge and straight along toward the small swing metal gates where men half-hidden in booths consult secret lists with a quick lift of the eye on to this or that face. He stands alone between his thick black briefcase and his pigskin hold-all.

The menu goes all the way to Mogadishu but has no personal significance after scaloppine di vitello. Between Rome and Khartoum they will eat insalata di cetrioli, pollo arrosto con patate e spinaci, his greying head outlined in the small rectangular window with rounded corners on the blue temperature of minus forty-five degrees. Inside they have pressurised the comfort so that the hum of voices echoes loud in the marble hall as the Lord Mayor speaks into a
microphone,
bidding everyone welcome in inaudible near-perfect English to this ancient city, the acoustics of the marble-hall carrying the words into the painted ceiling and they wind unheard around the marble columns. The members of the Congress burble on move about in close national groups with left hands holding wine-glasses and right hands holding little plates of smørrebrød or vice versa in the crowded hall. He turns his back to the assembly, his greying head outlined against the enormous window that overlooks the fjord, talking to three middle-aged ladies and one young or maybe telling stories the one about the round billiard-table unless emitting ideas that actually mean something or even just listening staring at the fjord holding his glass his smørrebrød, a cigarette lighter perhaps to flame the young one with who puts her plate down on the low long sill and draws his fire and shapes her words with gestures which weave no doubt a circle round him thrice below her black and flashing eyes, her floating hair. Though smooth in fact and neatly piled in shell-formations high pale pink, tinted but effective with a fatal contrast of black around her eyes that flash significance excluding the present introduction of Mr. Bryan
McThingummy
and the speech of the lady in the flowered silk suit at the microphone up in the gallery who has tried for some minutes to address the reception as the members of the Congress burble on in a conducted tour for those who wish to shshshsh!