The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (62 page)

— Mais si. Du reste, vous me le dites.

— Hein?

— Puisque vous me le dites, alors pas besoin de l’imaginer.

— Vous, encore?

— Puisque tu me le dis.

— Ce vous qui me glace, ce tu qui m’enchante. Et puis vous vous moquez encore de moi,

— Mais non.

— Mais j’adore ta moquerie, tes yeux rieurs, tout de toi.

— Même ma fureur?

— Hein? Ah. Non. So he does hear then and he says it only for time to think of some answer truthful in the eyes of some god of love totally blind, du moins, oui peut-être, une fureur amoureuse?

The vaporetto bumps against the jetty of Santa Maria di Salute at the mouth of the Grand Canal that gives out on to the wider waters between San Marco and the unanswered question which remains unanswered for the non-existent future unless perhaps what difference does it make. The narrow street along the narrow canal leads to another narrow street just room for two lined with peeling façades in grey orange yellow and old grey wooden doors that here, nous voici. Le corridor. Je vous mène tout droit au jardin, pour commencer. Car il y a des jardins à Venise, on ne le dirait pas. Hein? Des jardins secrets. Vous connaissez cette belle chanson du quinzième siècle—Quinzième? Ah, vous avancez! Hein? Oh, vous vous moquez de moi, ancora. Mais non, quelle chanson? L’amour de moi. He sings en-clo-o-o-o-o-o o-se. Dedans un jo-o-li-i-i jar-di-net. Comment on the gender of amour. The French say jardine, the Gairmans say jardine und so weiter you see all have the same word so we have no differences. What has love to do with botany or plants that grow on this blessed earth from Persia with the oil-bearing rose ah mademoiselle they have not blossomed yet the season has not yet come unless it has quite passed in the agro-lunar drama and the domestication of Chronos. J’adore cette chanson. J’en ai un disque, je vous le jouerai. Vous aimez mon jardin?

— Oh oui. Je vois que vous avez des glaïeuls blancs.

— Shshsh.

He looks up nervously at the shuttered window. So! The blood drains from the courteous attitude of the middle-aged woman playing at a gracieuse inoubliable dame who suddenly grows cold and pale even as a little girl she always did look pale uninteresting then suddenly hot and flushed as the language that found itself delicious crash-lands in a jardine full of white gladioli shshsh and acid-bearing roses that die have never blossomed Great Scott and gone followed by mais où allez-vous?

No need to run undignified from his absolute standstill to avoid a scene perhaps or out of stunned surprise
incomprehension
pride humiliation revenge non-fraternisation of a language qui peut se contenter de l’opposition de quelque chose avec rien. The marked term say the feminine, the unmarked say the masculine or vice versa can derive from the marked by an absence which signifies eine Abwesenheit die etwas bedeutet.

The visitor’s attention turns immediately to lower things such as the absence of any vaporetto at the jetty and the convenient presence of a gondolier just depositing a female grey-haired tourist ready for another alleinstehende Frau with a glint of a hint of a tint. San Marco per favore. Bene signora and no attempt to look again in an Italian way at a worn-out woman with a slept-on look or unslept-on according to the enemy viewpoint Marianne Lilibet or die Heimat who gets no second glance from any man or boy in the piazza in an Italian way at the flesh between the zest of youth and the wisdom of old age where lies a not so long period of relief repose and resignation called the middle ages that wouldn’t mind having got stuck in the sixth century with the virile Goths in Italy but the twelfth—ugh. And the fifteenth
ugh-ugh
. Nothing deserves a flow of rash enthusiasm my sweet, not even San Marco, which, begun in 830 and completed in 1484, preserves more perfectly than any existing building in the territories once belonging to the Eastern Empire the quintessential spirit of Byzantine art. Inside the porch three red marble slabs commemorate the spot where Henry Otto Friedrich or Barbarossa knelt to receive the kiss of peace from whatever pope non si ricorda esattamente after thirty years and plus conceding however no point of vital substance. The popes have no power now. We have no evidence
whatever
that any human being, let alone an alleinstehende Frau, can so embody the divine principle descending into matter in any behaviour sufficiently organised to prevent empires falling between one war and another to the scheme of l’ourobouros, not merely as a ring of flesh but expressing life out of death, death out of life that turns immediately to higher things, such as the blue temperature of minus fifty degrees or so around the enormous wing, the jet-exhausts invisible in their power or the propellers invisible in their speed save for a hinted halo and from this seat no cloud no man-made object no rectangles of agriculture or jardines passing to show that the heart flies immobile at a speed of nine hundred and ninety kilometres an hour towards the rue du Four.

Inside they have pressurised the comfort. The people sit hidden in their high armchairs that stretch interminably towards the distant brain way up behind the tabernacle and beyond no doubt a little door, except for a few headtops bald fluffy red sleeky black between the port and starboard engines, looked after cradled in their needs, eat drink smoke talk doze dream. Votre filet de sauvetage se trouve sous votre siège. Ce filet peut servir pour une personne privée de connaissance et per assistere anche una persona priva de conoscenza. This life-jacket self-rights itself to maintain the head above water. Omo Schaum-Stop reguliert sich selber, 1. Le sortir de son logement et l’enfiler par dessus la tête. 2. Serrer les cordons autour de la taille. 3. Ne pas gonfler le filet avant de sortir de l’avion. Pour gonfler, tirer la poigneé rouge (1). Pour gonfler à bloc souffler dans le tube (2). Allumer la lampe en tirant à fond la poignée jaune (3). The air-hostess in blue with short fair hair and un amour de soutien-gorge puts down the plastic tray covered with various foods in little plastic troughs representing not a ring of flesh but Poulet Sauté, Epinards, Pommes Frites, Poire Belle Hélène, Fromage/Biscuits, Café. Vous avez de l’eau minérale?

— Non madame. Du Perrier seulement.

— Bon, un Perrier s’il vous plait. Sans glace.

L’eau follement pétillante. The body stretches forth towards some thought some order some command obeyed in the distant brain way up as the wing spreads to starboard motionless on the darkening temperature of minus what, forty-seven, the metal shell dividing it from this great pressurised serenity and absolute calm she translates with from a dead language that compels no passion no commitment no loyalty to anyone and out in simultaneous quiet suspension of judgment as the sky grows dark over the chasms of the unseen Alps and the bright red bar of sunset slices the navy sky like a hot poker in the twilight of the soul and sweet evening conversations. Vénus vous boude. Mars vous contre. La Lune vous rendra particulièrement sensible. Mercure vous donnera des idées plus claires through a swift reintegration into totality by virtue of an ontological recognition that we belong to all of the signs all of the time as the green light winks under the stars on and off in the enormous black behind the rectangular window. It looks like a light on earth but travels with the body of the lit-up plane full of stimaţi pasageri at a speed of total immobility between the invisible wings. The plastic tray remains full of half-eaten sautés skin and bones between the crumbs of roll the cellophane paper and the gulliverised salt and pepper containers. Between the port and starboard engines the body floats, the plastic tray takes off above the breasts of the air-hostess in un amour de soutien-gorge.

The ship bumps down the steps of air, losing height slowly as it nears its expected minute of arrival, the distant brain obeying innumerable instructions that translate time speed height into locality and channel and descent into bright lights. Mesdames messieurs, nous allons atterrir dans quelques minutes à Orly. Prière d’éteindre vos ceintures—
excusez-moi
prière d’éteindre vos cigarettes and laugh as the elegant blue-haired lady next to you laughs so that old age has its attractions still in the freedom of the night lights and the imprecision of nationality through the brightlit signs in French such as MILKBAR Parking Tearoom SOLDES de SWEATERS et de TWINSETS Teinturerie LAVING PRESSING for the improvement of migration statistics and the circulation of such reports to member governments. Nous n’allons pas considérer cependant les très simples instructions de certains codes—le code de la route par exemple qui ne représente qu’un intérêt dérisoire pour la sémiologie nevertheless and necessarily understood immediately and out in simultaneous German. As soon as we pass to other systems of objects and images—as for example the cinema, the press, comics, or, equally interesting, the codes of furniture, of fashion and of food, we find a doubling of the iconic message by language which supports the significations. Above Times Square five letters have gone dark in STU ANT with the eye in an imprecision of nationality reading STUPEFIANT—The International Passport to Smoking Pleasure. Let us return for a moment to the central Saussurean dichotomy of Langue et Parole. La langue in a dumb show consists of le langage moins la Parole, une institution sociale, un système de valeurs which escapes from all premeditation since the individual cannot create it or modify it. La parole on the other hand consists of an individual act of selection and actualisation. This fruitful dichotomy has suggested many others, notably that of Code and Message, or the famous duplex structures which of course you all know and understand immediately because the thing understood passes away together with the need to understand.

The Belgian representative has emphasised that this commission should not limit its discussion to charity towards the handicapped but must encompass all activities aimed at building a better social order. I note that the consensus of opinion in the committee favours the draft revised resolution and my delegation will also vote for it. The question of implementation, however, remains. In semiology this division has led to others, for instance that between System and
Syntagma
. In le Système, sense depends on a relationship which retains only the difference between two things. The U.S. representative, by way of example, mentioned an elephant. He said that the elephant would have to put its first foot on the first stage. But why should the elephant have to put its first foot on evolving a procedure for bringing both sides to the conference table? Let him put his first foot on the procedure to be evolved and his other foot on the de-escalation of the war in the Far East. Or let him put his first, second, third and fourth feet all at once on all types of offensive from escalation to conventional warfare. As for example in a dictionary each apparently positive definition contains words which themselves need defining. Et tous les dictionnaires prouvent qu’il n’y a jamais de sens propre, jamais d’objectivité d’un terme. Le sens propre ne vit que dans un contexte expressif et particulier, such as for instance a study of methodology of diet surveys to assist governments in carrying out surveys.

So that we have le Système et le Syntagme—in food for example the System would consist of functional groups such as entrées, roasts, desserts. The Syntagma would consist of a series of actual dishes available, in other words, the menu which goes all the way to Dar es Salaam but has no personal significance after the coq-au-vin. Similarly in clothing, cars, furniture, architecture und so weiter weiter gehen in a total inability to follow the signification of the paroles that flow through the neutralised transmitter in the brain eyes open on the list of technical equivalences learnt in advance but not quite well enough and out in simultaneous German. Sandra manages smoothly, watching the speaker from under a lank fringe and earphone diadem that doesn’t disarrange it. Françoise and Robert play at noughts and crosses or rude drawings perhaps while waiting for the next speaker in English, one sericulturist, one reeling expert one acidulator needed in Korea.

Now in language we find a vast disproportion between la langue, a finite system of rules, and the actual words or speech which vary infinitely. In the non-linguistic systems studied by semiology however, we find on the contrary une pauvreté de la parole, even, as in the language of fashion, une langue sans parole. In an expression like l’explosion du glaïeul blanc he looks up at the shuttered window and says shshsh—a distinction unknown in language, where one cannot decompose a sound considered as immediately significant into an inert element and a semantic element. Thus one may arrive at a tripartite division: le plan de la matière, le plan de la langue et le plan de l’usage. This allows us to account for systems without execution since the first element ensures the materialness of la langue. For in these systems la langue a besoin de la matière et non de la parole.

Thus one may arrive at no significance at all of an inert element without execution in the exhilaration of freedom from desire love pity for anyone through the neutralised transmitter of ideas none of which deserves a moment of attention in French and out in simultaneous German. Le signifié et le signifiant composent le signe, which occurs in all languages from theology to cybernetics. To establish the full significance of le signe we must remember that this term, and all its replacements such as symbol, icon, allegory signal und so weiter weiter gehen to a relation between two relata, which relation we shall present here in its binary aspect of alternatives—in other words presence or absence. Does the relation imply or not imply the psychic representation of a foolish fond old man left at a total standstill in a doorway of a peeling façade so much more peeling than the powerful erotic imagination behind it. Does the liaison between the two relata of stimulus and response produce or not produce an immediacy of understanding. Do the relata coincide exactly or on the contrary spill over one another in continuing letters unanswered at any level even unread after vous me tuez non pas doucement mais brutalement and filled no doubt to spilling over with incomprehension accusation humiliation revenge unless tact reeducation readministration
Persil-Schein
reorientation fraternisation sex. Die Vitalität des Mannes—Vitalität bedeutet: Spannkraft, Energie,
Leistungsfähigkiet,
auch in sexuellen Bereich. Um Sie zu stärken, stützen, und gezielt zu aktivieren by an absence which signifies what do you mean you’ve bought a car?