The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (61 page)

— Oui. Toujours.

— Hein?

With a grimace, turning his right ear anxiously as if deaf in the left oh no. Vous parlez si bas. Mais j’aime vos cigarettes. Elles ont l’air si élégantes. Wherever particular people
congregate
. Ce beau paquet doré! Cette fine baguette blanche dans votre bouche dis, tu m’aimes?

The same question everywhere goes unanswered je t’aime grand comme le ciel et moi aussi mais tu as dis plus éh bien, plus haut, tiens, le ciel a ses hauteurs et papa, tu crois qu’il m’aime? Ah ça ton père j’sais pas où il a fichu le camp. Il a fichu le camp in a language that finds itself delicious par avion but force-lands on a clay-like sea of silence you could cut with a knife pick up in handfuls to mould perhaps a conversation that actually means something in the light of that idiotie, ces règlements, in Italy of all places he has never known une chose pareille, en Angleterre oui, where he has no doubt frequently turned up after ten to call on young secretaries inaccessible on account of quelle idiotie ces règlements as he stares silently waiting for an answer from the goddess aghast at the idiocy she has provoked who looks perhaps not a goddess at all but a desiccated skeletal
alleinstehende
Frau holding une fine baguette blanche in her fine desiccated fingers which tap the cigarette nervously too often into the chromium ashtray as she watches his long veined hands each tensely curved over each of his knees and brings the cigarette up once more to inhale what fifty-nine sixty-two what cheek what damned impertinence and vanity but mutual after all, and out again through the mouthpiece in simultaneous tenderness with, very gently, of course the expected person changes.

E allora the languages fraternise a little as he sips his mineral water without ice under the staring southern eyes that well yes burn. Why do you speak in English? To remind me of the old days and my youth as a simultaneous interpreter of ideas nobody ever acts upon? Vous n’aimez pas ma langue? La langue de mes lettres? La langue—and the tip of his tongue peers out, moves slowly round his open lips, then in, then slowly out again, and in, and out in a dumb show pour éveiller en vous tous les désirs mais si.

— You know, when you came down those stairs—since you prefer to speak English—tell me, do you know Eliot?

— Eliot?

— T. S. Eliot, the poet.

— Oh. No, not really. By reputation. He wrote something called The Waste Land didn’t he?

He wrote something called the waste land of whatever kind of literary conversation do we embark on now that might actually mean something in the light of that too. But when you came down those stairs I thought of an earlier poem of his I have always loved.

— What, more than Rudel or Cavalcanti? Surely you live in the twelfth century?

— Ah, vous vous moquez de moi, cruelle dame. Mais j’aime vos yeux moqueurs, même quand ils blessent. Car vous savez blesser.

— Let’s face it you destroy.

— Hein?

— Nothing.

— You shake your head. I know, you don’t mean to hurt, and you can’t help my ridiculous sensibilities. I fully realise the element of the ridiculous in my, my—Help. Oh help him for Chrissake Great Scott und so weiter your, love?

— Oui, mon amour. His eyes well yes burn I don’t like the word love in fact I wish you would not talk English a foreign tongue to us both. But since you wish it let us return to the poem, perhaps you know it La figlia che piange.

— La figlia—? How strange. Where did—but did he, write in Italian?

— Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—lean on a garden urn—Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—

— What, inside a hotel after ten oclock at night?

— There you go again.

— Sorry.

— Hein?

— Sorry.

— Sorry. Yes. How inadequate English sounds at times like this. Like what? Well you know, the one about the elephant or the titbit or Dieu vous blesse as a discarded personality that once hurt solemn earnestness takes over to hurt his unless merely the language that finds itself delicious has fled in a long lost terror of someone offering something not ordered. Moi j’aurais dit pardonnez-moi.

The fingers empty of any fine baguette join to form a squat diamond space, the thumbs pressed towards the body the rest touching away from it like a cathedral roof the eyes closed the ankles crossed to keep the résistivité électrique within so that you feel relaxed and no one can get at you by means of Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—Fling them to the ground and turn—With a fugitive resentment in your eyes—But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

— You know it by heart.

— Oui. Je sais tout par coeur. Tout ce que j’aime, je le sais par coeur.

In advance. He knows it in advance, by airmail air attack that sends its parachutists floating down over the rectangles of agriculture brush-stroke size the curving lines the forest blobs the metallic lakes that make up an abstract study in seduction we can imagine—and indeed we have to—a defenceless people completely confounding a would-be conqueror by sitting quietly, not eating, not drinking, not smoking, not working at it, threatening to deprive him of his subjects simply by not existing. He can let them die, he can even kill them, but he cannot exploit them.

Now ladies and gentlemen this undeniable principle remains a principle, optimistic in its ultimate ends, cruel in its applicate el numero di codice, permettez-moi as he strikes and misses strikes again and flames the middle-aged one with vous fumez trop. Here we came in. Quelle idiotie und so weiter but Bertrand.

— Ah! Vous m’appelez Bertrand. Je n’ai jamais aimé ce nom, mais dans votre bouche, quel délice. Oh mon amour, vous ne voulez pas me tutoyer?

— Oui, si vous voulez.

— Hein?

— Ça viendra peut-être.

— Peut-être!

— Ecoutez, Bertrand, patientez. Comprenez que—

— Oui oui j’ai compris.

— No you haven’t. And all that idiocy as you call it, rightly, with the rules and regulations. Why didn’t you just book a room here then you could have rung direct? Où restez-vous ce soir?

— Ah. Je ne sais pas. Je n’y avais pas pensé. Ou plutôt—

— Plutot vous aviez pensé—

— Oui.

— Well if you thought that much in advance you might have thought it out properly. You don’t suppose the hotel cares two hoots which room you spend the night in as long as you don’t visit late at night in a room booked for one and stay there free of charge. What did you expect, that we should sneak up like a guilty couple and you sneak out again past the night watchman at crack of dawn?

— I, I didn’t think. Pardonnez-moi.

— Hmm.

— Oh, vous avez l’air si fâchée. Vous, fâchée contre moi. Mon dieu, qu’allons-nous faire?

— Calorifère, as my mother used to say. She liked terrible puns.

— Hein?

— Ma mère, elle aimait les calembours. Elle disait: Qu’alors y faire?

— Je t’aime. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.

Grand comme le ciel. Moi aussi. Mais tu as dis plus. Oh le ciel a ses hauteurs tu sais. Et papa? Ah ça ton père j’sais pas où il a fichu le camp. And suddenly he returns in a language of burning eyes and dumb show with a tip of tongue moving slowly round his lips in and out and around, la langue et le langage which finds itself delicious spiralling round the
seven-terraced
tower anticlockwise undoing the magic wall which crumbles to the horror of all concerned turning l’altra cosa più tardi into now why not the long veined bony hands moving nervously up and down each knee on the white linen suit or curved around the breast and along the belly up and down the thighs qui s’ouvrent to the brush-stroke fingers into vos profondeurs où je vous prends j’entre en vous vous criez de plaisir tumultueuse amante oh ma déesse et vous m’aimez jusqu’ à l’explosion en vous du glaïeul blanc in the depth the cavern the vessel of conception with the confusional sliding from active to passive which we find in all intense situations true or false when the language of a long-lost code of adoration breeds plants or parts of plants that stand quite still in a suspension of desire and disbelief saying well, you’d better go and book yourself a room. See you later. 414. Au revoir, monsieur, enchantée de vous avoir revu, alors, à demain.

— A demain madame. Bonsoir, bonne nuit.

Bonne nuit, hélas non. Le glaïeul a fichu le camp in a language that finds itself delicious par avion but force-lands on a clay-like sea you could cut with a knife pick up in
handfuls
to mould perhaps a worn-out middle-aged goddess aghast at the death of love desire and limbs that find each other revolting in an abstract study of seduction watched with exhaustion horror delusione to the despair and shaking dry male sobs irritating merely until it comes to a standstill. Et pourtant je t’aime, je t’aime, tu ne peux pas savoir comme je t’aime. Pardonne-moi. Je t’aime trop, voilà. Et tous ces mois d’attente, de rêves fous, followed by explanations promises that ça viendra tu verras plus extractions of promises patience gentleness and self-blame to save the other’s pride a form of love perhaps aghast at the catastrophe it has provoked. Tu viendras à Venise avant ton départ? A Venise? Je voudrais tant que tu voies ma maison, que tu connaisses tout de moi, mon jardin, mes livres, ma femme même. Ta femme?

— Mais oui. J’ai toujours eu une femme. Enfin, toujours, depuis longtemps quoi. Trop longtemps. J’ai même trois filles, mariées.

— Ah?

— Tu ne le savais pas?

— Non. Mais du reste, ça n’a pas d’importance.

— Tu as raison, oh ma sagesse, l’amour ne se soucie pas de telles choses. Et puis tu sais, si tu voulais bien, moi je ne rêve que de ça, de vivre avec toi, je la quitterai, ça tient à un fil, ça ne dépend que de toi ma douce amour, oh comme tu me comprends, si douce, ma gentildonna und so weiter weiter gehen in the sheer impertinence and vanity of the mouthpiece or the freedom of the imagination totally at odds with any real situation in this man-dominated myth within a cubic room the white suit neatly folded still on the chair gleaming in the half-light the bathroom straight ahead running
caldo-freddo
as the body lies a desiccated alleinstehende Frau fingering a medal symbole d’intimité dans le voyage in quiet suspension of anger between total indifference and a mild desire to pick up the broken bits with a great tenderness above the footsteps walking in Italian Gothic Lombard down the first capital of the Western Empire after 00147 Roma.

The dark shape of the cupboard unrounds in the slatted noise coming through the shutters on the left. The bathroom door faces the bed in which the body floats in a numb pain of exhaustion untraced between sleeping and not sleeping out of what dream shaken up with nein danke no thank you in a long lost terror of someone offering something not ordered. Soon some bright buxom chambermaid will come in with a breakfast-tray unless perhaps she can’t or has a master-key to open the shutters and say buenos días Morgen or gün aydin oh no, buongiorno hell Ravenna. And all that. No one comes in offering anything.

The light has quite unrounded the corners of the cupboard made of teak or rosewood built up to the ceiling and therefore without corners. The bottle on the bedside table says Acqua Minerale San Pellegrino and all the rest about battericamente pura which means that the light looks much brighter than bright and the traffic noise sounds much noisier than noisy for whatever hour hello? Pronto? Che ora avete per favore? Comment! Non capisco, parla francese? Dix heures et demi madame. Dix heures et demi! Et le réveil par téléphone, demandé pour huit heures? Ah? Si. Scusi signora, er nos excuses, la réception a eu beaucoup de slam. Train missed thank god no worse congress over damn allo? Oui madame? A quelle heure part le prochain train pour Venise? Un moment madame. Oui bien dépêchez-vous. Oh damn and blast quelle idiotie quelle idiotie why go. Ah? Bon merci. Et un déjeuner tout de suite and the tooter the sweeter. Er …? oui madame.

Quelle idiotie why go on a mere courtesy promise to show no resentment humiliation revenge non-fraternisation no sex but he will think just that quelle idiotie after two nights of bumping down the steps of air undercarriage down
crash-landing
on the clay-like flesh aghast at the death of more than the five senses to the shaking dry male sobs until they come to a sickening standstill as he tells of his wife’s sexual adventures in great detail of un membre énorme told on their conjugal bed which gives him il confesse great shudders of sensual pleasure raconte-moi les tiennes, ton mari, il te prenait comment et depuis, tu en as eu d’autres? Rends-moi jaloux, rends-moi jaloux, je t’en supplie, raconte-moi and failing even there falls back even he like ton mari on a crude story out of Rabelais the language of his fin amor lonhtano collapsing like a hallowed structure C for cold, no caldo quick, hurry avanti, ah grazie tanto. Sulla tavola grazie.

And yet languages flew straight across and words met loins. But this undeniable principle remains a principle, optimistic in its wild vanity, cruel in its application and totally at odds with any real situation in the past or renovating present. We have no evidence that live human beings, let alone bitches, can so embody this divine principle of words descending into matter in any behaviour sufficiently organised not to disarm a would-be conqueror of his desire or emasculate him in advance. Most people need to eat, to love and to this end will either knuckle under or more often, persuade themselves that the vital lie contains sufficient simulation of desire to reintegrate him into totality compared with so many beautiful façades that plunge into the water as the vaporetto chugs along the Grand Canal, crossing it diagonally from one stop to another past the Casa d’Oro tu te rappelles, ma troisième carte? Ma première carte de Venise. Ah dieu, comme j’ai hésité, si longuement hésité. Je n’aurais pas dû. Mais quel doux plaisir de t’avoir ici, de te montrer cette belle ville d’amour et d’art splendide où j’ai décidé de vivre, où je voudrais vivre avec toi und so weiter weiter gehen in the wild vanity of the mouthpiece and the freedom of the imagination so totally at odds with any real situation in the unrenovating present. Unless perhaps, who knows, what difference does it make? In, out, down, up, exits and entrances, Eintritt, Sortie, Salita, Ausgang, Entrée, Fumatul oprit. No Smoking beyond this Point Kindly fasten your safety-belts. Please do not leave the aircraft until it comes to an absolute standstill. Push Tirez Ziehen Pchnąć only to rest a little stop, just stop transmitting other people’s ideas on which nobody ever acts into the earphones and out into the mouthpiece in simultaneous German-ugh to stop, so tired, so old if well-preserved but not much younger than him after all why feel so outraged in this belle ville d’amour et d’art splendide vivre avec vous avec toi, to bask in adoration in French however crude collapsing and never out in simultaneous anything at all, only to touch a little until perhaps with gentleness and affection as a natural process in the marriage of tradition and progress in French en français je t’aime je t’aime je t’aime. Tu ne peux pas savoir ce que j’ai pu imaginer quand ton train—oh non, j’ai pensé toutes les folies, à ta fureur peut-être, ah ça faisait mal, tu ne me pardonnais pas, tu me haïssais, tu me
méprisais
, et je ne te verrais plus, ah mon amour tu ne peux pas t’imaginer.