A voice calls out continuous flight and gate numbers and the murmur of the talking delegates as they wait in rows of desks like a giant class fills the great congress hall. The chairman knocks his hammer on the dais table. The congress members dutifully don their listening-caps and the murmur still continuing now comes through the earphones in the glass booth, picked up by the microphones the engineer has just switched on. Siegfried sits to attention, wearing his earphones like a helmet as communication begins.
— Meine Damen und Herren. Kindly fasten your seat-belts and observe the non-smoking sign. The animal has filled up again, its body between the enormous wings stretching its one hundred and eighty seats or so like ribs towards the distant brain way up. The large African woman on the right in a long printed dress straps herself with lethargic difficulty as she talks to the man beyond her in a language not understood. Votre poitrine peut se développer et se raffermir facilement. In some countries the women would segregate to the left of the aisle the men less numerous to the right. But all in all the chromosomes sit quietly mixed as the enormous wing spreads back on the port side, catching the last red segment of the sun before it disappears behind the blackened hill.
The shadow of the green pelmet cuts between the light reflected from the pale blue slatted blind, dividing the reflection into two giant staves of five lines each, empty of notes above the cubic-looking cupboard in the pale blue cubic room. The double bed feels huge, empty of music in the silent pale blue room. The bathroom door faces the entrance to the room so that the bathroom has an outside window next to the picture-window of the room with its blue slatted blind between its double panes and the green pelmet above, the two green bars of the undrawn curtains hanging vertical on either side. More often the bathroom flanks the entrance in a small passage, facing the built-in cupboard and has a token window on the hotel corridor or no window at all, merely a ventilation shaft. Sometimes it even flanks the bed.
Inside the white circle the red diagonal crosses the black right-angle so that the bus cream-lined and stretching long and tense like a vibrant animal should drive straight on with a clanking into gear and a great roar after the traffic lights between the yellow tram and the white façades with their bright letters red green blue Supermarché BRASSERIE UNIVERSELLE Epicerie Léon Delhaize Réductions SOLDES slashed obliquely on glass hiding the mannequins. But no, the bus turns right by the small sign in white letters on faded blue Détournement/Omleiding with a broad white bar in a red disc ahead by a drill vibrating on the cobbles an electric power van and a group of men in a small cloud of dust.
The cloud has cleared. Way down below the window-seat through the rectangular window with rounded corners the sea looks solid earth or clay you could cut through with a blunt knife pick up in handfuls mould perhaps into a moon marine mother of death birth menstruation or fear of something else not ordered. Horoskop: Sie haben Appetit auf Neues. Passen Sie zur Zeit so gut es geht dem Partner an.
In fact the bathroom door in pinewood flanks the pine cupboard to the right and stands ajar, letting in too much light from a high glazed window on to the wall pink-tiled all the way up and the curved edge of the black bidet. According to the legislation into effect you may not bring the antiquity out of the country. Please declare if you have plants or parts of plants with you but the blue bus at the frontier post honks for the congress members and interpreters who chose to leave Sofia by way of Istanbul. Please declare if you have plants or parts of plants because 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 one idea that actually means something in the light of that love. On this day or that the concrete corridor encased in glass slopes up straight from the tarmac where the yellow bus has stopped, and on into the airport hall of clean glass galleries coffee-bars teak stairways with wide frightening space between the steps and queues of plastic luggage moving unowned unmastered up the conveyor-belt over the edge and straight along toward the small swing metal gates where men half-hidden in booths consult secret lists with a quick lift of the eye on to this or that face. He stands alone between his thick black briefcase and his pigskin hold-all.
The menu goes all the way to Mogadishu but has no personal significance after scaloppine di vitello. Between Rome and Khartoum they will eat insalata di cetrioli, pollo arrosto con patate e spinaci, his greying head outlined in the small rectangular window with rounded corners on the blue temperature of minus forty-five degrees. Inside they have pressurised the comfort so that the hum of voices echoes loud in the marble hall as the Lord Mayor speaks into a microphone, bidding everyone welcome in inaudible near-perfect English to this ancient city, the acoustics of the marble-hall carrying the words into the painted ceiling and they wind unheard around the marble columns. The members of the Congress burble on move about in close national groups with left hands holding wine-glasses and right hands holding little plates of smørrebrød or vice versa in the crowded hall. He turns his back to the assembly, his greying head outlined against the enormous window that overlooks the fjord, talking to three middle-aged ladies and one young or maybe telling stories the one about the round billiard-table unless emitting ideas that actually mean something or even just listening staring at the fjord holding his glass his smørrebrød, a cigarette lighter perhaps to flame the young one with who puts her plate down on the low long sill and draws his fire and shapes her words with gestures which weave no doubt a circle round him thrice below her black and flashing eyes, her floating hair. Though smooth in fact and neatly piled in shell-formations high pale pink, tinted but effective with a fatal contrast of black around her eyes that flash significance excluding the present introduction of Mr. Bryan McThingummy and the speech of the lady in the flowered silk suit at the microphone up in the gallery who has tried for some minutes to address the reception as the members of the Congress burble on in a conducted tour for those who wish to shshshsh!
Mr. Basil McThingummy and the members of the Congress burble on over their wine their smørrebrød their smoke and move about in close national groups for those who wish to visit this renowned Town Hall, which as you know surrounds him with a group of women one young wearing a yellow dress and rose-gold hair smoothly piled up in coils and black around her eyes under straight black eyebrows, who shapes her words with gestures that weave circles round him and twine up into the painted ceiling and the microphonic words that shshshsh!
The light has quite unrounded the corners of the cupboard, made of teak, with plain oak bars for handles. The light pours insulated silence through the brown and orange patterned curtains on the left, despite the yellow Venetian blinds inside the double window behind the cotton curtains. No clock stands on the bedside table the grumpy voice of the hall porter on the telephone saying ten past three madam. Ten past three! How long the night, llarga la nit, on account of the Northern Lights in midsummer. Unless how strange I never carry a watch either don’t believe in them one finds clocks everywhere even if they all disagree according to locality speed height theme of congress and like you I always manage punctuality at work. You see we have much in common. No body occupies the empty bed. No one comes in offering anything not ordered.