Prague has a dingy airport still. A mess of huts, a transit-lounge like a canteen just evacuated by an army leaving a scattering of mimeographed news-sheets on the square table and a few tourist pamphlets. Map and Travel Information for your visit to Czechoslovakia. Carte géographique-Informations sur la Tchécoslovaquie. Landkarte der Tschechoslowakei und Turistische Informationen. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic consists of two equally privileged nations, the Czechs and the Slovaks. The highest organ of State power, the National Assembly has 300 deputies elected for 4 years. At the head of the State stands Natural Resources: coal, kaolin, iron, uranium, manganese and copper ore, pyrites, mercury silver, antimony, tin, tungsten, graphite, magnesite, naphtha and natural gas. Transport. Principal Mountain Ranges. Principal Rivers. Folklore Regions. Tourist Season—Czechoslovakia has a year-round tourist season. The mimeographed news-sheet says that the Slovak National Council met in Bratislava yesterday. The Council unanimously re-elected Minister Adam Smetny, member of the Praesidium of the Central Committee, as chairman of the Council. The Minister then took the floor.
Mesdames messieurs. Je tiens d’abord à remercier le Président du Congrès pour ses éloges que je n’ai pas conscience de mériter. We have come here in this beautiful old city to discuss a new and vital theme, The Writer and Communication.
The bottle of Vidago stands on the bedside-table, poderosamente radio-activas, bicarbonatadas, liticas, arsenicais und so weiter as the cock crows loud and long at crack of dawn triumphant in some shed or other on the flat roofs of Lisbon among the hanging sheets and the potted geraniums. The bathroom door faces the bed, at right angles with the window so that it has its window out on to the crowing cock triumphant instead of a mere ventilation-shaft. Soon someone will come in with a breakfast-tray and put it down on the plastic table that flaps out from the seat in front by the small rectangular window beyond which the enormous wing spreads back on the blue temperature of minus forty-eight degrees. The cloud has cleared. Way down below the window-seat the coastline glints metallic to the clay-like sea that divides into two distinct patterns one plain one purl from different winds invisible as Casual girls take the easy way to colour. Smoulder, tempt, threaten. The girl who knows about Lil-lets and widthways expansion feels confident and carefree. Life begins to beam again. You seem mixed up in some artistic venture, such as decorating, designing or painting. You will go to the forefront with original thought and if you want to make an important change do it now before you lose courage. Eine arbeitsreiche Woche—Sie kommen aber zum Zug wo und wann immer Sie jetzt möchten. Vielleicht sollten Sie trotz der enormen beruflichen Chancen das Privatleben nicht ganz ausser acht lassen. Achtung am 20ten. Saturn wirkt sich recht verschieden aus. But on this day or that the corridor encased in teak and glass reaches out to the door of the plane and on into the airport hall of hot air clean teak and glass galleries with black square plastic low armchairs and a board covered with blue messages in alphabetical order. No one calls out no name responded to at any level through the Customs Hall where swift electric trolleys bring the loaded plastic luggage up a sloping-lane at speed and out in simultaneous ownership. In some countries the women would segregate to the left of the conveyor-belt, the men less numerous to the right. But all in all and civilisation considered the chromosomes lie quietly mixed among the hundred million others or so that multiply in geometrical progression while nobody does anything at all.
So that the hum of voices echoes loud in the Palais des Papes as the mayor speaks into a microphone bidding everyone welcome to this ancient city of Avignon, the acoustics of the stone palace carrying the words unheard into the high ceiling as the members of the Congress on Tradition and Innovation unless perhaps The Role of the Writer in the Modern World burble on almost excluding the introduction of Dame Janet McThingummy and Madame Hélène Chose-Truc as well as Monsieur le Maire’s speech on hands across the frontiers over floating stomachs that move about and shshsh! Que cherchez-vous madame? A travers la cour. Au fond à droite. Ah, la sortie? A gauche madame. Oui il fait bon dehors, une belle soirée, comme toujours ici. Vous avez senti le froid dans ces murs de pierre? Or else inside the whale and out in simultaneous wonder. Und haben Sie noch einen Wunsch? Madame désire encore quelque chose? No, nothing at all, just personal effects.
Between the enormous wings the body floats.
nearer the hairline further up the brow but dimmed as in a glass tarnished by the close-cropped mat of hair they peer through
The mat of hair is khaki, growing a bit too low on the brow the nose too big.
Who speaks?
le rétro
more viseur
visible than (some
others) languages
or the vizir looming grey eminence behind the consultan listener how many times leaning a little to the right to peer into how many rectangles a thousand and one in which there is a flaw?
The second pair of eyes are less pale veiled by
the reflected hair crinkly khaki flecked grey
O but handsome all told whatever all is and who
ever tells a young god yet the lower eyes lie
blue to the tarnished replicas higher up the brow
which whoever speaks (Nourennin?) calls too low.
But when the muscular shoulders shift back to the correct position the cars that loom grey eminent into the retrovizor do not look double-faced or even quadruple-eyed top two through crinkly hair, for the hair has moved away out of focus together with the four eyes; the cars untarnished, with single metal grins between two pale gold eyes, one on either side, or else two smaller city slickers lower down but never both pairs together.
BUT
the retrovizor has a bluish tinge. At a flick of a switch the rectangle turns smoky grey to dim the dazzle of floodlights undipped or even gently dipped but the glare is preferable to the sudden isolation of almost not seeing behind a head
The dancing hoops. For the gold eyes when distant turn into hoops (at night in the correct position) of luminous green red amber white bouncing in out of through and through each other narrowing to slim ovals vertical horizontal swaying undoing swiftly changing shape as if juggled by a mad magician or by the black recumbent street beneath overhead bridges that make perhaps the optical illusion?
She shifts the mirror to her rearward glance. It doesn’t work for her the mistress of the moment of sudden isolation at not seeing back to the black magician who fantastically juggles luminous hoops in the retro-rectangular hey put my mirror back.
So it needs adjusting.
Why at that precise point introduce this or that?
Intensity of illusion is what matters to the narrator through a flaw in the glass darkly perhaps making four clear eyes stare back, two of them in their proper place at height of bridge of nose and, further up the brow, the
other two, exact replicas but dimned as in a tarnished reflection, tarnished fay the hairline they peer through. A
second pair of eyes hidden higher up the brow would have its uses despite psychic invisibility or because of. Gazing they do not see themselves. They reflect nothing, nor do they look at their bright replicas below in their proper place on either side of the nose a fraction too large according to whoever speaks in this instance. Only these lower eyes, reflecting the eyes of the real face as it leans for vanity to the right, see the upper eyes, looking up at the brow which some teller or other thinks too low. Who?
Oh her.
w
h
o
’
s
h
e
w
h
e
n
s
h
e
’
s
a
t
h
o
m
e
?
blue lacuna of learning
and unlearning a text within a text passed on from generation to generatio
n of an increasing vastness that nevertheless dwindles to an elite initiated to a text no-one else will read by means maybe of the flick of a switch for the overhead projector and diagrams drawn into a boxed screen to the right of the desk with a spirit-loaded pen thus not losing eye-contact.
The quiver of the bhi on the beeswax
How doth the bithy little Thoth
produthe an endleth piethe of cloth
when thought, that bithy little moth
devourth it all like tho much froth
leaving great holth, tho Thamuth quoth.
a busy competent performance before busy bees
who palp oscult measure time listen see
smell taste imitate suck the performer dry.
Hang it all we have the story of an
O but is not incompetent performance a non-disjunction at level of deep structure? I me if it be possible despite non equivalence to rewrite I as O and O as I
which has been suggested,
here,
you see,
should you start structuring your tethattaway
or the latterway?
Those for: Peter Brandt Barbara Darcy Francesca
Newman Robert Galliard Myra Kaplan Kathleen
O’Shaunessy Ali Nourennin Renata Polanska Lin Su Fu.
Those against: Vittoria Charib Marie Faber Salvatore
Tancredi Michael Mandel Jean-Marie Fèvre Eliza Jones.
Abstention: Paul Stradiver Julia Weintraub Neil Alder.
? Refusal of Vote: Saroja Chaitwantee.
a show of hands within a secret ballot
which is one way of introducing a cast-list.
unless Armel inventing Larissa
or Larissa " Armel
" Armel " Veronica
" Veronica " Armel
" Armel " Larissa
" Larissa " Marco (or is it Oscar?)
" Marco (?) " Larissa
" Larissa " Armel
The other possible permutations do not occur for logical reasons: Larissa could invent Veronica but in a limited subjective way in any case Veronica and she are contradictories not contraries as Socrates explained to Protagoras and Structural Semantics has just reinvented. While Armel could invent Marco or is it Tariel and vice versa but due to the double standard in practice would not stoop or merely would not have the curiosity. Clearly Marco does not invent Veronica nor she even utter Marco (or is it Stavro?) they’ve never met besides Stavro has no imagination.
On the other hand the hypotheses could have been posed anticlockwise:
Larissa inventing Oscar
Oscar " Larissa
Larissa " Armel
Armel " Veronica
Veronica " Armel
Armel " Larissa
Larissa " Armel
Armel " ?
er something’s gone wrong here there seems to be room for some extra who why the mistress of the moment since the man any man must be if not many at least one up who will fairly soon be dropped for she does not see by day the four lies in the retrovizor when shifted to her forward gaze nor dancing hoops by night
But it needs adjusting.
Well then I found myself with a magician on a
helluva stage as his stooge you know in tights
and a sequin bodice and my bust like it was busting
tight out of it and I was handing him coloured scarves
i think and suddenly a prop was missing I forget his
stick I mean his wand anyway it was my fault he couldn’t
Lift the white rabbit out of the hat and the crowd murmured
and even shouted as he signalled frantically like mad
right into the wings but they didn’t get the message and
in the end he walked off leaving me alone on stage to cope
somehow in the glare of lights that hits the mirror and
swings left out of it beaming ahead rewritten now
as two small red eyes in a hunched black shape which is
delineated against forward floodlight the retrovizor re-
opening to the hoops dancing up and down and aside
in the rear distance luminous horizontal ovals oh
no, vertical ovals as if at quarter angle amber red
green white swiftly changing shape and juggled by the
night or by the tall dark house with blue eyes
or maybe by the black recumbent street who
was very short and fat for a magician more than
obese you’ve never seen anything so fat he tried to
reach the switches to calm the audience but he was so
Very fat and short so he lifted me in my tights and bodice
ever so firm under the breasts with them busting
right out of the sequins and I managed to switch them
off and as he brought me down we kissed half
naked ever so sexy and then we started wanting
it like crazy but I said no later we have to
calm the crowd so he got wild and dragged me
after him out of the theatre but I wrenched free
saying the show must go on can you interpret
?
The show within the show
What?
of hands juggling
within a secret ballet of the I
hell honey I guess I just fill the air for you sure that’s what
i like about you oh I thought it was my big beautiful
true blue tits they’re fine too with a show of hands
entering under silk with a secret ballet of fingers on
tiptoe upon soft globed flesh the nipple now rising
hard between the lights the foot pressed gently purring
into a stop the is it sacred belly tensed to the show of
green fingers into the left thigh that jerks open to the
hot human humidity of a sexual humour secreted un-secretly go on then
Doing what?
Oh filling the air. You do
it so much more convincingly
than the others (tit for
tat)
what others?
others who fill the air. Oh
You’re mythologising me.
Oh any time. And then you came with your car and said come
unto me I’ll light the way and well
drove off
did you?
No I didn’t
Dopey relations you have with your magician men.
Yeah but he wasn’t you Stavro that was the first dream
but he was short well you’re short too but he was
immensely fat and couldn’t have strangled an eagle in
the water for anything he’d have sunk you turn left at the
corner
Hey I know.
Yes you should by now but you always forget.
Okay can you see a spot?
Usually there’s one further up on the right. Here.
Too small.
It isn’t. You’ll have to back into it.
True. But it’s still too small.
But Marco of course you can get in.
I’ll say, if you light the way.
Tooshay! You kill me have you no male pride it’s your car.
Come come honey it’s your street.
Hang on I’ll lower the window. Turn full right
yes now left stop straighten oh lordy no you’re
on the pavement all crooked forward a bit straighten her
up no You’ll have to take her out and start again.
Who sez? Some tale-bearer (off) or Other who has got it all wrong
Is it Marco or Stavro? (or Armel?)
There has occurred however the foreshortening of
Armel into Marco
Laretino or is it Tarie
L? of the accurate boymouth (removed?)
whose legs : his body : : his brow : his nose relations in proportion quaternary conjunction or disjunction with the possibility also of non-relations non
-conjunction and even non-conjunction a game
Whereas well Armel
Armel however
The Brooke-Rose Omnibus Page 50
