The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  — 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?

  — Va bene.

  Un piccolo chalet in Wiltshire where stones talk walk make love until they come to a standstill. Welcome back Liebes to the freedom of the air and the precision of the mouthpiece in your nineteenth year and plus as he picks up the broken bits, working with eyes and hands as well as with his ears and voice. He lipreads the speaker and in the next split second utters the same syllables of half-love and bantering allusion that need no simultaneous interpreting by the code of zones flown over descended into half-visited on swift conducted tours with groups from Agricultural Aid Commissions, Conferences of Irrigation Engineers and even Congresses of Semiologists for example in palaces castles university buildings town halls, together sometimes or with say Signor Ingegnere Giovanni-Battista di Qualcosa or Comrade Pan Bogumil Somethingski, according to the requirements of language topic time available since the return to the precision of the mouthpiece at nineteen or twenty-nine even.

  In fondo a sinistra the men in the café sit transfixed by the flickering local variation in the presentation of opposite viewpoints on every aspect of an instant world through faceless men who have no doubt acquired faces for them as their arch-priests of actualitá that zooms flashcuts explodes to OMO! Da oggi con Perboral! Lava ancora più bianco! Gut-gut, Più bianco than what? We live in an age of transition, perpetually between white and whiter than white. Very tiring. Zoom. Applicate il numero di codice. The matchbox on the table shows a small postman in green with a large orange postbag on a blue background. The postman holds a letter with 00147 Roma written on it. Two orange arrows say il numero di codice and point to 00147 Roma. The orange bag twice as large as the postman says Applicate il numero di codice as Siegfried lights up with do you know the number of your zone and which represents reality the old towns like museums visited on conducted tours or the modern hotels we stay in all alike?

  Sometimes however the bathroom door faces the built-in cupboard in the entrance passage to the room so that the bathroom has no window, only a ventilation shaft. Sometimes it faces the door of the room, occupying more generously a space in width not length with its own window on the street the sea the mountain the roof on which a wizened woman washes in eight cataracts affording a glimpse of something real surely below the sex-mime of a blear-aged man with tongue and mouthpiece or a car revving up in Danish. Sometimes the blear-aged man tries the locked door in drunken stupor with his key that doesn’t fit and slinks away at the Was suchen Sie in fury and the change in the expected person. Sometimes the number on the key remains several weeks running in the four hundreds or three then suddenly drops to 5, 2, 4, 12, so that the smattering of the mouthpiece can proudly ask the the receptionist for beş, iki, dört unless dwanaście, depending on the size the time the place and whether canyons or rocks create great holes of air into which the heart sinks. Sometimes a chambermaid serves Frühstück or Micul Dejun in camere. Or a smooth floor-steward in white unless a waking call with collazione down below in a black plastic bar. Sometimes the bathroom flanks the cupboard facing the bed or beds themselves together or separate or longwise foot to foot along the left wall or even the right. Few hotels have single rooms these days it doesn’t pay and single rooms seldom have a shower or bath or private loo, only a biddy and a wash-stand on one leg blue green white pink yellow or fixed to the wall with a thick metal tube lewdly protruding underneath but curving up again not always visibly however so that the empty bed lies empty and tightly made unless the puffed up eiderdown buttoned up in sheeting looks virgin-bellied untumbled or the bright orange blanket folds back within the sheet in two parallel white runways from which memories take off and disappear into the blue the cloud the fog.

  Ausgang. Exit. Push. Tirez. Drücken. Déclarez s’il vous plaît si vous avez des plantes ou parties de plantes avec vous, loyalty for example or a simple enthusiasm for warming slippers on a late return from the club the office the journeys the philandering with the precision of the mouthpiece at conventions, conferences, commissions, congresses. Or else inside the whale, who knows, in the foetus position with diagrams of a fish thrown upside down for three days, three lives of maybe hell. Between loving and not loving the body floats.

  On one side of the broad yellow arrow diagonal from corner to corner of the square card the razor-blade, printed in green, has a white narrow bar representing the slit, crossed at one end with a short vertical bar then a small diamond shape and another short bar, a space, a circle in the centre then a space, a bar a diamond and a bar. On the other side of the broad yellow arrow two pink lips slightly separated echo the white slit in the green razor blade. The yellow arrow points downwards across the cardboard square pinned up in diamond shape to cover the squares of paper and bears the lettering Pentru ştergerea lamei de ras şi a rujului. Pour le demaquiage spelt wrong et pour les lames de rasoir. For remove the make-up and for something in Russian then German last. Sometimes German comes first then English then French in endless permutations with the language of the country always at the head however such as Toaleta Femei unless TOAΛETHA with care not to enter Bărbaţi when the door bears no skirted figurine or high-heeled shoe in the imprecision of a mere smattering acquired with the descent into new matter. Or just enough to say muchas gracias dowidzenia dove? In fondo a sinistra.

  So that Siegfried picks up the broken bits working with his ha
nds voice mouth eyes ears and more than his five senses into the vessel of conception CV 52 lipreading and in the next split second uttering the same syllables of half-love bantering allusion to the medal of St. Christopher between the breasts and other circumstances that need no simultaneous interpreting by the code of zones flown over descended into half visited on swift conducted tours together sometimes or separately and alone according to the requirements of conventions conferences congresses in castles palaces public buildings university halls where no communication of course ever occurs. Ever? You exaggerate. Something gets across.

  — Criss-cross.

  — Crease-crasse? God, verr god. The short gentleman with straight black hair in a black suit labelled Laos says god, verr god indeed. The Gairmans they applause their speakers. The English they applause their speakers. The French they say alone the French make intellectual contribution. Only Laos delegation praise all.

  — And the Japanese. Don’t forget the Japanese.

  — They praise, yes mademoiselle, also.

  — Presumably everyone comes for that. They certainly can’t come for information since it all gets published anyway and they could simply read it.

  — Information? My dear good girl unless perhaps du ernst German Mädel or my sweet more likely how naïve can you get? After what three, four years on congresses and commissions you should know better than that.

  — Yes, well they might at least make a show of listening. Each speaker waits impatiently for his turn to read an interminable paper that has nothing to do with anything said before, you know, each one more concerned with output than intake.