The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (45 page)

Služi za brisanje. Za skidanje šminke. Für Rasierklingen. Zum Abschminken. Pour le rasoir. Pour le démaquillage. For the razor. To remove your make-up.

Molimo Vas ne upotrebljavajte ručnik. Bitte kein
Handtuch
benützen. Ever at all? Prière de ne pas se servir de l’essuie-main. Please weave no circle round him thrice and kindly do not leave your seats until the aircraft comes to a standstill.

It comes to a standstill. The body strapped under the tightly swaddling sheet and heavy blanket having slept immobile at a speed of nine hundred kilometres height ten thousand metres outside temperature minus something or other and the distant brain way up translating time speed height into locality and channel and descent where the light unrounds the corners of the cupboard dressing-table stool under which bevindt zich uw zwemvest for a bewusteloos persoon who nevertheless fondles the medal of St. Christopher between the breasts below the tightly swaddling sheet. No body occupies the empty space in the large bed nor will use l’essuie-main not für Rasierklingen. No one comes in offering anything not ordered. Soon some bright
chambermaid
will buzz allo? er, hello, seven-thirty, oh, thank you.

The headboard of the double bed forms a recess in the wall of pale turquoise silk, patterned in horizontal flat
diamond-shapes
with a tiny white embroidered circle at the corner of each diamond, forming studs, the lines that join all the studs to form the diamonds made up of minute stitches
trapeze-shaped
in white. A spot of light rests on the left lower line of each silk diamond turning it to silver. The light comes from the striped brown white and blue cotton curtain like a Dutch skirt clashing in style with the silk headboard but the night before in the electric light looking pale blue and gold and Louis Seize, muffling the footsteps made by Dutch people walking in Dutch along the Dutch canal with a Dutch dog barking in Dutch. The number on the key has dropped again to twee. But from the standpoint of the window each bright spot of light has moved to the stud-like dot at the points where the acute angles of the flat diamonds meet, forming a larger less bright patch on every diamond shape in the pale turquoise headboard recessed into the wall behind the empty unmade bed which the night before looked large and empty and made.

The dikes shine in the sun as silver threads between the large fields of pale green absolutely flat except for one
surprising
hill beyond the wing. The hill moves with the wing, rising quite disconnected from the land of unblossomed tulips below. The hill has a hinted halo of propellers almost invisible in their speed and the sun remains ahead from four o’clock to midnight never setting as the plane chases it across the clay Atlantic you could cut with a knife through Chicken
Maryland
, pancake and maple-syrup, cranberry and apple pie and Pouilly-Fuissé made in California. Do you have mineral water please?

— Mineral warrer? Do you mean nachral warrer?

— Nein, er, no thank you. Soda?

— Ow, sora-warrer. Sure. You can have sora-warrer. On the rahks.

— Thank you. Without the rocks please.

The bottle of Vidago stands on the bedside-table,
poderosamente
radio-activas, bicarbonatadas, liticas, arsenicais, fluerotadas, gaso-carbonicas. The cock crows loud and long at crack of dawn or so, triumphant in some shed or other somewhere beyond the slatted wooden shutters that rise easily to reveal the flat roofs of Lisbon and the pale blue temperature of no doubt twenty-two already as announced by the cock triumphant in some shed among the hanging sheets and the potted geraniums. Soon the bent wizened old woman dressed in black shuffles her booted feet noisily through the loose plaster on the terrace roof, drags a large iron-grey basin across from the shed-door to a low
packing-case
stood vertically against the white chimney, lifts the basin on to it, shuffles back noisily through the plaster to the
shed-door,
turns on a tap, fills a metal jug at a resonant distance below the tap, turns off the tap, shuffles across the terrace noisily through the plaster, pours the water into the iron basin at a resonant distance above it, shuffles back, repeats eight times until the basin contains a gallon or so of water for the washing of her wizened face eight times at a resonant distance above it like eight cataracts. A slatted shutter shrieks invisibly from above, another visibly and rising in a window along the right wing of the hotel where a blear-faced blear-aged man in striped pyjamas looks out and down, then up, gazes across, looks startled, sheepish, then licentious, smoothes his hair, makes dog-eyes, protrudes his lips, juts out his tongue slowly, very slowly out, and in, and out again, and round, repeats, cups the air breast-shape in his hand,
protrudes
his tongue slowly, very slowly out, and in, and out again, and round, looks back into the room then across the terrace, shows the palms of his hands in a naõ posso gesture and pulls down his shutter fast. The shutter from above slams down in anger shock regret, who knows to whom the
blear-aged
man has directed his dumb-show unanswered at one level 230 or thereabouts and at another higher unseen 312 perhaps responded to with yearning for romance or lust atingle in the loins unless despair in knowledge of the man exasperation cold indifference with her long blonde hair hanging over the sill sans merci despite desire at sight or lewd suggestion swelling her nipples through the diaphanous nightdress low cut on shapely breasts revealed as she leans forward or merely huge and heavy under flabby chins and a middle-aged face indignant under curlers. The wizened woman in black has gone and the cock crows in Portuguese triumphant somewhere on the flat roofs of Lisbon among the hanging sheets and the potted geraniums.

And yet the man from 230 or thereabouts looked straight across and eyes met eyes. The blear-faced blear-aged man unhesitatingly unanswered at one level. The same question everywhere goes unanswered have you anything to declare any plants or parts of plants growing inside you stifling your strength with their octopus legs undetachable for the vacuum they form over each cell, clamping each neurone of your processes in a death-kiss while the new Lord Mayor of Prague promises to take up the challenge in trying to make you commit yourself to one single idea.

— Ideas? We merely translate other people’s ideas, not to mention platitudes, si-mul-ta-né-ment. No one requires us to have any of our own. We live between ideas, nicht wahr, Siegfried?

— Du liebes Kind, komm, geh’ mit mir. Gar schöne Spiele spiel’ ich mit dir.

— We have played those games mein Lieb.

— Why don’t you marry me?

— You know why.

Such conversations never quite occur in such romantic terms unless in quotes expressing falsely something there no doubt, except in the precision of the mouthpiece at nineteen or twenty-five even. Bright girl, she translates beautifully don’t you think? Says the boss. Meaning in his greying English way come live with me and adorn my gracious Regency London house with your charming French accent not to mention cuisine your German super-Aryan litheness and of course Fleissigkeit as well as your elegant cosmopolitan ways. The divine principle of love or flow of rash enthusiasm descending into matter bumps on the steps of air, lowers its undercarriage touches down speeds along the runway in a whistling roar of jets and strong tension of brakes that slow it to a taxying up the tarmac guided by some distant brain in a green glass booth and small white frogs with yellow discs for eyes until it comes to a standstill. A faint sensation of relief spreads through the body of the plane, slightly animating the chromosomes as if inside a giant centipede. Please declare if you have any plants or parts of plants with you such as love loyalty lust intellect belief of any kind or even simple enthusiasm for which you must pay duty to the Customs and Excise until you come to a standstill.

Soon some young buxom chambermaid in black and white will come in with a breakfast-tray put it down on the table in the dark draw back the curtains with bonjour madame good morning gün aydın who knows, it all depends where the sleeping has occurred out of what dream swerved up with non merci nein-nein danke in a long-lost terror of someone offering etwas anderes, not ordered.

Or a smooth floor-steward in white. On account of whose possibility absurdly the hair-net comes off, the pins picked from the hair which tumbles down seductively for no reason at all despite the greying strand, invisible no doubt in the half light needing that glint of a tint and normally worn scraped up with earphone diadem around the neutralised transmitter in the brain through which flows automatically cet énorme problème de l’humanité trop nombreuse at the International Conference of Demographers in Copenhagen coming out in simultaneous German. La grande leçon des préservatifs which means in fact prevention not preserving proves that the language laughs at the illiterate women of an Indian village taught the natural method with an abacus to count the days in fourteen red balls pushed one by one from left to right you may have intercourse. So that they shove all the red balls together from left to right like a magic spell and come back every one pregnant.

Higienska vreća za binde (Ulošci za dame). Molimo Vas ne bacajte ih u W.C. Sobarica će ih ukloniti zajedno sa vrećom. Sac pour bandes hygiéniques. Prière de ne pas jeter dans le W.C. La femme de chambre les enlèvera. Bag for sanitary pads. Please do not throw into W.C. The
chambermaid
will remove them. Hygienebeutel für Damenbinden. Bitte nicht ins Klosett werfen for 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 an idea that actually means something in the light of that death. Sometimes German comes first then French then English or vice versa in endless permutations with the language of the country always at the head however such as ΣAPIZA APIΣTON EΠITPAΠEZION
IAMATI-KON
YΔΩP hardly worth the effort on account of SARIZA Table Water natural-curative Eau de Table
naturelle-curative.
Analyse de l’eau de SARIZA (en miligr par litre) Silice, Acide Sulfurique, Chaux, Résistivité électrique en Ohms Radioactivité (unités Mache) to the TOYAΛETTA with care not to enter AVΔPΩN by mistake when the door bears no skirted figurine or high-heeled shoe in the
imprecision
of a mere smattering acquired among the Cinzano Jerez-Quina Liquor Beirao ouzo St. Raphael what will you have my dear in low square black armchairs the bar lit up like a reredos. He examines his money endlessly before paying, turning each of the lire douros marks over and over and the same with half-crowns and florins as if lire douros marks. All right then thinks thought will think Siegfried perhaps he will hurt her and I’ll bide my time and gather up the broken bits with a great tenderness and kindly observe the non-smoking sign.

For visiting: (1) The aqueduct which winds from the
wilderness
to the old city wall. (2) The temple of Diana, tall in dark stone columns that make a pleasing contrast with the small white houses crouching around the temple and the Baroque church behind it. Or let us say the aqueduct walks says Siegfried from the wilderness on innumerable brown legs like a brown centipede, pierces the citadel and stops, collapsed, not too far however from the secret mysteries of Diana in broken columns coloured bronze mark you by the setting sun and surrounded with white palpitating stags, perhaps even animal organs not to mention the cross on the curlicued façade so much taller than the small church behind it.

— But stones do talk.

— Statistically, into microphones.

— Du Witzling.

— Witzling-Schmutzling, ja?

— Ein bisschen.

— Ich lieb’ dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt.

— Und so?

— brauch’ ich Gewalt?

Silences differ more than hotel rooms or menus and the washbasin does stand on one lilac leg opposite another leg lilac or blue perhaps next door that gurgles at dawn unless much later to the right of the window beyond which what how when allo? er, pronto? Ah, grazie where the Convention of Acupuncturists presses points through the distant brain way up along the meridian of the vésicule biliaire which although à l’intérieur de la jambe ran once in prehistory on the other side the doctor demonstrates à l’extérieur on account of the foetus position of man with diagrams of a fish thrown upside down on the screen the lantern-slide
projector
behaving like an antipodal eye. He laughs you see how the mechanical breakdown in communication proves my point by telescoping time with an error, errors having frequently led to scientific truth, la pointe pressed home by the next speaker on the meridian of the heart C7 here on the wrist which stops hysteria at once with the vessel of conception CV52 as a recommended alternative for relaxation and the absolute calm she translates with don’t you think? Meaning come live with me and grace my London house with your
elegant
cosmopolitan ways not to mention animal organs and the white Regency façade so much taller than the small
imagination
behind it. Or the box cottage in Wiltshire for escape from the elegant cosmopolitan ways of love in London Paris Oslo Rome between the enormous wings inside the clinical white fuselage of ships, temples of still motion at a speed of light-years bumping down the steps of air lowering their undercarriages and touching ground with a strong tension of brakes that slow it down guided up the runway by the distant brain translating time speed height into locality, channel, descent.

— Un cottage? Que voulez-vous dire, un cottage?

— Hé bien, mon père, une toute petite maison, à la campagne. A box a refuge a still small centre within the village within the wooded countryside within the alien land, where Mr. Jones the builder who converts the bathroom says bee-day? Oh you mean a biddy. Yes I can get a biddy for you but you aven’t got much room ave you? Ah si! Un cottage. The pale fat priest-interpreter looks over his half-spectacles made for reading the sheafs of notes before him. Un piccolo chalet. Va bene così? Un piccolo chalet?