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.