The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (57 page)

The visitor’s attention turns immediately to higher things such as the red star above the pediment of a grey
mockcolumned
building opposite the hotel with its mere façade of columns that support nothing at all except
MÁVIGAZGATÓSÁG
in red. E allora the languages do not fraternise down the seven-terraced tower which has the structure of the Sumerian ziggurat.

Unless perhaps the seven-terraced tower sits suspended between belief and disbelief at a height of twelve thousand metres outside temperature what, minus forty-nine bumping down the steps of air its under-carriage lowered and touching ground so suddenly that the fingers fondle the medal of Saint Christopher under the blouse the distant brain way up guided by white frogs with yellow discs for eyes until it comes to a standstill and up the concrete corridor into the big hall where concrete men sit hidden in high booths and consult secret lists looking up at the change in the expected person. The plastic luggage moves along the conveyor-belt unowned unmastered then suddenly half-owned again as the concrete man searches, turns out the entire contents of the suitcase this? Rollers. For the hair. Ah. And this? A hair-piece. What? Peruka. Ah. Searching and searching for the face put on and other frustrations to the true end of marriage this? Well! Searching and searching not for intimacy or liquor cigarettes diamonds drugs but ideas in dangerous print and this? A Russian phrase-book do you mind? Ah. Du lieber Gott what an unexpected tribute to the power of literature. Lirrechur etc? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this dilapidated dining-room with galleries cupids on the corner pillars potted plants and a bulging orchestra balcony empty of perhaps balalaikas. The two thumbs press together towards the body, the fingers touch away from it forming a roof with a squat diamond-space between. So you’ve come for an
East-West
writers’ conference on The Writer and Communication well, how very hopeful of them. And me merely for electronics what a well-organised coincidence. And do you still communicate mein Lieb, with whom?

Did you want it for eating love?

Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty place among the potted palms a group of young men in brown nylon macintoshes accompanying girls in skirts and jumpers one in apple-green frou-frou to an adjoining room where the young men take off their nylon macintoshes and dance close to their girls pre-war slow foxtrots lieber Gott has progress
retrograded
to a pre-war slow foxtrot orchestra depending on what you mean by progress. How long have you stayed away lost touch got out of practice or as yet ungained any
confidence
heart knowledge of true love memory taking off into the blue the cloud the fog? Haben Sie Butter bitte? Excuse please? May we have some butter? Bata? Er, mas-wo. Excuse, niet. Oh. Thank you. And how goes the
tennis-match
?

— Oh! That. Well, one takes no notice really.

— One does? Who exactly takes no notice 00147 Roma?

— Oh, you mean Rome.

— What did you think I meant?

— Nothing.

— Well?

— Well, it just goes on. Presumably. In the meantime—

— In the meantime we make love?

— Perhaps.

Siegfried grown totally bald somewhere between Moscow and Retrograd looks Liebes! Seriously? After all these years and despite or while waiting for Defensor Vine? You’ll strike me impotent you will.

— Not you Siegfried.

— You really do want things both ways don’t you?

— Well you’ve tried hard enough to undermine what little faith remained.

— What me?

— Oh and him too. Everyone. And life. And Rome more than anyone. Your other advice found an echo anyway.

— What advice?

— To sell the cottage.

— To sell—I don’t believe it. What, il piccolo chalet, gone?

— Not quite yet, but going.

— I simply don’t believe you. How much? When? How?

— Four thousand. Someone wanted it, and approached an agent, who wrote, and, well, why not, as you said, one should save und so weiter and the rent in Paris went up to almost double after the last demand from Rome and—

— But Liebes! I never meant it seriously. Your box your refuge and all that. And without consulting me.

— Without consulting anyone. It just happened one morning, the letter came, and suddenly it all meant nothing. Why have two pieds-à-terre? Most conferences take place in Paris these days, apart of course from fringe activities like the Dante Centenary not to mention Writers and
Communication.

— Du Witzling. But I don’t understand you. Have you got something up your sleeve?

— Nothing at all, just personal effects.

— And very nice too. No seriously. Have you signed it away? Has it all gone? Il piccolo chalet?

— Not quite. Next week in London. A Medical Congress on the molecules of memory, appropriately enough.

— And you’ll transfer the furniture and stuff to the rue du Four?

— Only some of it. No room as you know. The rest goes up for auction.

— Why do I feel as if I had lost a limb? You must have gone out of your mind.

— Or into it again. Paris has much to offer.

— Ah, gay Paree.

— No not that. Just living in the language of one’s
childhood
. Shopping in French, paying rent and taxes in French, talking to the concierge in French, walking breathing in French.

— Hmm. You can’t Persil-schein your German layers that easily meine Liebe.

— That doesn’t come into it.

— Which reminds me, breathing in French, breathes yet the old French lover?

— Man achtet nicht darauf.

— Man doesn’t?

— Oh, man. Man continues.

— Poor old thing. With no encouragement at all from la belle dame sans merci? Well, gut-gut. But I don’t believe it. Even old Bertrand would give up sooner or later. Your eyes, your emerald furry eyes cannot lie. You have answered him. Nicht wahr? You enjoy it, nicht wahr, reading all that suffering stuff, it does something to you nicht wahr nicht wahr? Oh, Liebes, such an easy prey how can you?

— Only in the most off-hand and neutral way.

— But just non-neutrally enough to keep it going nicht wahr?

— Stop prying and bullying.

— Well, I feel jealous.

— It doesn’t mean a thing.

— No?

— Nothing at all.

— Except perhaps—

— Yes?

— The language, Siegfried. The fact that all this suffering stuff as you call it pours out in French, well, it sort of turns the system inside out, it—

— I see. Yes, I do see. In that case, I can only bow out once again, gracefully I hope as before, as always.

— Oh Siegfried don’t talk like that. It means nothing.

— Hmm. Besides I’d better not attempt once more to seduce you back, not here anyway, they have the charming habit of taking photographs and sending them to one’s wife, boss und so weiter.

— Oh.

— I say that loudly enough to make the large-eared lady’s job easier at the next table. I wish they wouldn’t do it so obviously. Perhaps we should test her abilities and speak Arabic, not that that would flummax a bugged watch. Oh. Meine Liebe! You mean, you really, wanted to?

— Yes.

— As er, as a substitute?

— How can you say a thing like that? After all these years as you say of friendship and even love.

— Take care, Liebes, take care. Oh. Have you any fruit? Obst. How on earth do you say fruit in Russian? Des fruits. Excuse, niet, poodeeng?

You can’t Persil-schein your German layers that easily meine Liebe. Let’s face it you destroy. All that suffering stuff you enjoy it nicht wahr nicht wahr? Aber man achtet nicht darauf. As if languages loved each other beneath their own façades, despite alles was man denkt darüber davon dazu. Then acquires alles a broken up quality, die hat der charm of my clever sweet, my deutsche Mädchen-goddess, the gestures and the actions all postponed while first die Dinge und die Personen kommen. Aber voaus und woein kommen die Personen?

Si les psychologues ont fait de grand progrès dans l’étude de la mémoire et de ses diverses composantes, telles que l’enregistrement such as recording and conservation, on sait par contre bien peu sur le plan purement descriptif de ce qui se produit physiologiquement au niveau cérébral, of the modifications in the nervous tissue through which a person retains events which affect subsequent behaviour. For 2500 years since Plato on propose des images et des concepts such as wax tablets, the tracks of memory, the synaptic recording, the biochemical engraving. Mais cependant un médecin anglais Gomulicki, studying in 1953 could even then deplore the fact that not one of these terms had any real relation either with the general problem, or with any one of the known facts. How far have we progressed since then down through the earphones into the nervous tissue in French and out almost unretained by any molecules affecting subsequent behaviour in simultaneous German. Or down into the earphones over Sandra’s long lank rich auburn hair and out affecting no memory at all in sheer youth and simultaneous English.

Mesdames messieurs je vais vous parler for the twenty minutes at my disposal, de l’hypothèse concernant les relations ARN, ADN et la mémoire, hypothèse certes séduisante et au goût du jour, mais qui manque de bases très solides. Fashionable because DNA and RNA, the molecules which play a key role in protein synthesis, valent un prix Nobel de médecine every few years for those who work on them. Séduisante à plus d’un titre cependant. Mais il semble qu’un des éléments de séduction vient un peu de ce qu’on joue sur les mots, speaking of a
code
retained by DNA and RNA, alors qu’on n’emploie pas ce terme pour d’autres molécules—tout simplement parceque I’ARN et l’ADN interviennent en matière de code génétique. Obviously, if we can describe everything that happens in a living organism—including memory—in chemical terms, one or several types of molecules must
encode
the ideas and the remembered facts. But why should we identify these code-molecules of memory with those of the genetic code?

L’hypothèse veut que si les stimulus de l’environnement, in other words, events, transformed into electrical impulses, modified the sequence of bases in a particulier RNA, this would lead to modifications of structure in the cell containing the RNA and would permanently alter the physical features of the cell, since it synthetises the proteins en fonction des ARN qu’elle contient. This would leave a trace.

The terminology worked up in advance pours smoothly down into the mouthpiece with absolute calm out of the nervous tissue making the protein available to those who desperately need it, spinning to yield products which when properly flavoured closely simulate common foods contra bona indissolubilitatis et prolis. The signature on the deed however leaves no trace of regret for il piccolo chalet in Wiltshire where stones talk walk make semblance of love have fun until they come to a standstill. The yellow curtains the pelmet the carpets and the biddy remain as fittings and fixtures part and parcel of what a shame I’ll miss you love. Not that you came here much lately but then I suppose we all settle for the land of our birth in the end don’t we. Why don’t you come and have a farewell drink with me and my Tom down at the local love where they all sit in a circle transfixed by the blue screen flickering out the 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 archpriests of exploding bombs exploding into Brighter than Bright Cleaner than Clean.

The seductive hypothesis whose seductive element lies in the fact that we play on words and speak of codes, postulates that the stimulus of environment modifies the sequence of bases, leading to the modification of the code within a cell within a body within a box within a village within a wooded area in an alien land. This would leave a trace. So that the child sits at the kitchen table facing a paintbox and dark water in a glass-jar plus a mess of coloured blobs lines smudges on a rectangular sheet of paper and bursts into tears. Mais quoi alors? Pourquoi pleures-tu?

— J’veux peindre.

— Alors peins.

— Mais j’sais pas peindre.

— Alors, ne peins pas.

— Mais j’veux peindre.

— Ah tu m’agaces. Décide-toi. Tu peins ou tu n’peins pas. De toute façon, reste tranquille.

— Und alles ROTE auf der Karte, das gehört ENGland.

The schoolmaster glares round the class, looking for a scapegoat perhaps.

— Und alles GRÜNE auf der Karte, das gehört
FRANKreich
.

The gangling girl in pigtails grows cold and pale even as a girl she always did look pale, uninteresting, then suddenly hot and flushed as the whole class follows the stony glare at the französische Mädchen responsible for the green on the map slightly deeper than the yellowish green vastness of the Soviet Republics right up to Siberia or for that matter Brazil and then again not quite so bright as the bright green United States of America together with Alaska beyond the crimson flush of Canada the pale pink of Greenland (pink?) and responsible also no doubt for the dark and pale das ROTE on account of the Entente Cordiale.

— Der Fuehrer aber hat geschrieben that the gangling girl released from stony glares feels homesick longs for was FRANKreich gehört and stares at the squarish green shape beneath the crimson old lady in a motorcar-driving position which represents apparently ENGland. The crimson old lady sits with legs forward on a blue space dented by a spoke sticking out of the green squarish shape much bigger than her and doesn’t quite hold a crimson haired pink baby like a teddybear who also sits with his legs and arms forward leaning back on a blue space dented by the arms of the old lady unless perhaps he represents a peculiar steering wheel she doesn’t quite hold. Or a doll in a pram. For das deutsche Volk, virile, numerous, hard-working, brave as proved over and over again by history ever since Otto I whose victory on the Lech in 955 finally liberated his country from the Magyar pest, das deutsche Volk no longer has enough Lebensraum. Look now at this map of Europe in the time of Otto. The Holy Roman Empire in its infancy. Das erste Deutsche Reich. Saxony up here. Lotharingia there. Franconia Swabia Bayern you all know Bayern, Karinthia Bohemia Moravia surrounded by a thick black line make up a sort of flying dog with paws curled down into Trieste and the kingdom of Italy as far as below Rome in dotted lines bring the hind legs funnily forward like a flying dog about to land along the Adriatic.