The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (59 page)

Endsieg.

No trace of them Fräulein, the authorities requisitioned the castle as Nazi-owned and came to chuck them out but they had vanished.

Ah non mademoiselle il n’y a personne sous ce nom-là dans cet immeuble. Un nom allemand? Y avait des boches partout. Et après prrrt ils ont fichu le camp. Avant la guerre? Ah ça alors j’n’en sais rien, y-a-que deux ans que je travaille ici. On l’aura emmenée, probablement, au début de la guerre. Et plus tard, ben, j’sais pas moi.

Plus tard, più tardi, l’altra cosa più tardi non si ricorda
esattamente
comes from the Red Cross and says as far as we can trace the matter your mother left for Germany after the Allied landings in the South of France evidently under the protection of a German officer. Local records show that a person of that name died in Nuremberg during an American air-raid.

— Und haben Sie noch einen Wunsch?

— Nein danke. Ah, doch, ein kleines OMO.

Keiner wäscht reiner. Gebremster Schaum! This would leave a trace. Noch etwas anderes? Nein, dankeschön. Bitteschön Aufwiedersehen. Aufwiedersehen. Omo
Schaum-Stop
reguliert sich selber.

The season has begun. Tourists pour into Paris Rome Belgrade Palermo Tripoli Athens Addis Ababa Istanbul wherever congresses commissions conferences conventions take place in June July August for those professional people who cannot organise their junketings to cut the gloom of winter or bear the thought of a vacation away from leurs semblables in case they miss a contact an idea or an occasion to shine. Well I prefer it Sandra says one gets some extra sun and besides, the excursions at least come off. Remember that terrible drive from Milan to Lake Como and the Dolomites in the pouring rain? I hate empty hotels they give me the willies I like them chock-block full of gorgeous sun-tanned men in open shirts and luscious girls in low décolletage that shows where the brown stops and the white begins. She says in her low décolletage that shows just that and laughs oh yes I like both sexes to look sizzling it keeps me on my mettle. Unfortunately most tourists in fact look horribly middle-aged. Those prosperous Germans ugh! The very same I suppose who came here as conquerors in that crazy war that made our mums and dads so crummily fixated on the forties.

Sandra chatters happily on in un amour de soutien-gorge, belonging apparently to a different species altogether undamaged unconcerned doing the same work with ease and careless poise from the start unretarded by wars national prejudices bilingualism fraternisation sex who learn simply from existing simultaneously on all levels unless they merely block off different ones in much the same swift generalisations brought up to date such as those prosperous Germans ugh who talk of roads endlessly across hotel tables balconies and bright green pools, wow, even as they swim they talk of roads, the Brenner Pass the Autobahn the E 5 the route through Yugoslavia.

The Romantische Strasse between the year-long Fleissigkeit and a place in the sun.

— Do you understand German then?

— Well, no, not really, who wants to? Just enough to get around you know.

Enough for one’s daily needs of bed food and excretion immer geradeaus dann links that will suffice me as far as German goes unless they read their Baedekers very loudly to their fat naked wives by hotel swimming-pools.

— The French talk of roads too, la Nationale 7 la route de Saragosse.

— No. The French talk of property. Elle a tout ce grand terrain, elle pourrait construire et sous-louer. Ah oui, ils ont acheté une maison de grand-standing, avec une vue magnifique sur la vallée de la Dordogne, trois chambres un amour de cuisine salle à manger un living deux salles de bains ma chère et deux W.C.

The number of the room has risen to 217. The bathroom door in pale green flanks the yellow cotton curtains that let in too much traffic from the left on to the double bed where the body lies too hot under the single sheet the pale green blanket folded over the white bedcover on the back of the chair. The time hangs clocklessly around the distant brain way up what forty-three forty-seven? Soon some bright chambermaid will come in with a breakfast-tray and say structures of power in fact depend on the willing cooperation of innumerable individuals for the administration of physical force. This morning we have listened to a belle fiction. Such a principle remains a principle, totally at odds with any real situation in the past or the renovating present. We have no evidence whatsoever that human beings, let alone horses, can so embody the divine principle descending into matter in a behaviour sufficiently organised to force a conqueror down into the earphones and out through exits in simultaneous rejection of le mensonge vital with a double-negation that would reintegrate him into some totality, compared with so many fragile truths that surround us in this our
masculine-dominated
civilisation where the spiral as a sort of stylised maze and magic invisible wall of defence rose like a ziggurat or seven-terraced Tower of Babel in a mass of noussphere to point omega comme nous répète ce grand génie as the woman spins a flaxen spool. The ziggurat lands on the clay-like sea you could cut with a knife to model some sort of earth-goddess if only you could get out. The air-hostess says uw zwemvest bevindt zich onder uw stoel. To inflate pull red toggle (1). To top up blow into mouthpiece (2). But the mouthpiece has no breath on account of the vital lie and all the fragile truths in French and out in simultaneous German. You must hurry, the clay-like sea will liquefy at any moment now and you will need your zwemvest. She walks up and down in absolute calm and relaxation having had acupuncture on the vessel of
conception
CV 52 which has made her orange hair puff up into a huge spiral against the cinema screen. She sure looks dandy, unharassed you know in a low décolletage qui pigeonne formidablement showing just where the brown stops and the white begins bitteschön as the florid Monsignor stands up and leaning right across he photographs her from above to catch just where the brown stops and the white begins. Hurry up hurry up the sea has liquefied and the ziggurat sinks please use the Emergency Exit only but the body lies strapped to the seat by the heat of the safety-belt which burns into the vessel of conception CV 52 knock-knock-knock-knock. The yellow light pours in from the left the bathroom door in green faces the body strapped and the room takes shape quite suddenly with pale blue walls the built-in cupboard in mahogany on the right flanking the door knock-knock. Herein. Come in, er, entrez. Oh, he can’t.

— Kalimera madame. Porte. Fermée.

— Oui. Toujours, la nuit.

— Bien madame. Déjeuner. Lettre. Pour madame.

— Merci. Er, efharisto.

— Ah! Kalo-kalo! Efharisto
sas.

— SAS?

— Nai. Sas. A vous. Merci à vous.

— Ah. Efharisto.

— EfharistoSAS.

Oh God here we go again why won’t he leave the room? Er, echete, er, nero metalico?

— Madame?

— Eau minérale.

— Ah, neró metálico! Nai. He shakes his head from side to side and exit.

Ma douce amour. Ah si je pouvais vous décrire l’émotion que je ressens à la vue de votre écriture maintenant (enfin!) si familière, et du timbre qui change —Marianne, Lilibet, Constantin et la ravissante Anne-Marie, Franco (moins ravissant)—selon les distances hélas toujours plus grandes entre ma princesse lointaine et moi. Je regarde l’enveloppe, je tremble, je m’évanouis presque, je n’ose l’ouvrir de peur de vous avoir contrariée, ennuyée peut-être avec mes tristes désirs impossible, irréalisables, je le sais, o mon amour. Jour et nuit the body lies in bed below the breakfast tray with quiet disparagement from the distant brain way up, suspending all belief in the language of a long-lost code that nevertheless on another level climbs anticlockwise through the centuries, crumbling the invisible wall which rose to a circular dance of simulation vital lies and other frustrations to the true end of childhood. Et puis je lis la lettre—trop brève hélas—où vous me parlez de vos voyages, de votre travail (qui m’intéresse naturellement). Ou plutôt oui, je l’avoue, j’imagine voir entre les lignes, que vous aussi, vous vous sentez bien seule, que vous cherchez quelque chose, et que peut-être, ah, ce grand peut-être, vous m’entrouvrez un peu la porte knock-knock and it opens without pause to admit the floor-steward in white bearing nero metalico and an empty wine-glass on a metalico tray. Efharisto. EfharistoSAS. Merci. The eyes glued on the letter the coffee-cup held half way between the breakfast-tray and mouthpiece meaning go away, vous m’entrouvrez un peu la porte, une fraction, un centimètre, que vous me permettez de vous adorer. He goes. Alors, ma douce amour, je ne me contiens plus, je me laisse envahir par les rêves les plus fous, je me vois dans vos bras, caressant vos—ah non, il ne faut pas continuer.

Il ne faut pas continuer à manger, to bear the weight of a breakfast-tray with the empty coffee-cup the breadcrumbs the jammed plate the gold and silver butter paper il faut enlever le plateau from the loins a tingle underneath the sheet despite the distant brain way up on a higher level of disbelief disparagement despair. Car je vous vois aussi entourée d’admirateurs, pas seule du tout, n’ayant besoin de rien et de personne, ici et là dans toutes ces capitales que je connais, que je hais, ah, pardonnez-moi cette vilaine jalousie. Je n’ai jamais aimé comme ça. So that despite the fact that il ne faut pas continuer he continues the interrupted erotica of
self-indulgent
words that caress up and down in and out and all over dans vos bras. Jour et nuit the body lies in relish of a long lost language that finds itself delicious and winds its way up through centuries into the vessel of conception vieille poire ouvre les jambes unless perhaps into no more than the distant brain way up to tickle a mere thought or two such as why not play a little further at a mere correspondence of love in French la douce inoubliable dame leading by six games to five in the second set. Par à quelle aile? J’vois pas d’aile moi. With the left hand fingering the medal of St. Christopher between the breasts just where the brown stops and the white begins, touching a little brushstroke size over the skin soft still between the breasts and round under the right cupping it caressing it just a little on the nipple that swells under the fingers brushstroke size as the language winds its way through eyes ears mouthpiece hands and more than the five senses.

It doesn’t mean a thing.

Akóma thélo tria kilá sapúni, éna kiló wútiro: I want also 3 kilos of soap, 2 kilo Butter. Give me 2 tins of Milk, half kilo Tea and an envelope of Coffee. I wanted a kilo meat beef. I want also a lamb. As I really love you I want to make you my wife. Do you agree? As we love between each other do you want to create our own home? I want it double-breasted. When shall I come for the rehearsal? In six days I go away.

The road from Kennedy Airport runs past Jewish cemeteries with tall rectangular tombstones standing close together in miniature forewarning of ford foundations wall streets madison avenues united nations where Feind hört mit that we shall continue to honour our obligations towards the underdeveloped areas and appoint a sub-committee to inquire into the way we can stop the war in the Far East from dangerously escalating up the downward path. My government wishes to emphasise that it had not a single warship aircraft-carrier or plane within the area nor sufficient forces to exercise influence one way or the other. But Israel must learn, Egypt must learn that between America and Europe the six hours lost watching a film of love on the return flight cause the sky to darken at the speed of sight at midday as if on Good Friday over the clay-like sea that divides into two distinct unmerging patterns one plucked one undulating from two different winds and suddenly the red bar of sunset slices the navy sky like a horizontal hot poker because le ciel a ses hauteurs tu sais. Or else inside the whale perhaps where the body lies in the foetus position devoured by a long-lost language that breeds plants or parts of plants growing inside you gently wildly obsessively, stifling your strength with their octopus legs undetachable for the vacuum they form under each protein cell, clamping each neurone of your processes in a death-kiss with a half-visualised old man well fifty-nine and plus descending from the distant brain way up the downward path to another level in a
circular
dance of simulation vital lies and other frustrations to the true end of imagination. Oh I see, the imagination. How fascinating. Nothing deserves a flow of rash enthusiasm my sweet.

The decorative metal locks on each door of the cupboard shine in the shaft of light. They have Napoleonic hats and look like Civil Guards. A spot of bright light further up the cupboard imitates the sun. Beyond the wooden shutters and way down below the layered storeys of stunned consciousnesses the murmur of the talking delegates as they wait in rows like a giant class gets picked up by the microphones in the glass booth filling the theatre with tumultuous applause. A quartet of jazz fixated on the forties followed by a saxophone solo represent Catalan culture at a Catalan evening only just permitted by the government as a concession with police lining the space between the columns and the red velvet curtains marked SALIDA in green lights. A female choir in ill-fitting white dresses sings Swing Low Sweet Chariot and I gotta Robe in Catalan. A little girl harmonises behind a smaller little boy cutely Dreaming of a White Christmas in Catalan. Until at last the boy-star with his guitar appears and sobs Com un déu caigut and La Nit, llarga la Nit and Cantarem la vida de poble que no vol morir full of Catalan passion down into the microphone and out in simultaneous passion. Diguem-no! Diguem-no! the bulging theatre demands amid the tumultuous applause but the boy-star stretches out the palm of his left hand and his guitar in the right with a no-puc gesture half indicating the police that lines the theatre. Instead he repeats La Nit, llarga la Nit with Catalan passion down into the microphone and out in simultaneous passion to the tumultuous applause. The members of the congress 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. The eyes close the thumbs touch the fingers join as communication begins. With whom? Du Witzling. Meine Damen und Herren. Mesdames messieurs. Air France vous souhaite la bienvenue à bord de cet énorme problème devant lequel cependant le langage of a long-lost code 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 such as ich lieb’ dich mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt which doesn’t sound at all the same. 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.