— Un cottage? Que voulez-vous dire, un cottage?
— Hé bien, mon père, une toute petite maison, à la campagne. A box a refuge a still small centre within the village within the wooded countryside within the alien land, where Mr. Jones the builder who converts the bathroom says bee-day? Oh you mean a biddy. Yes I can get a biddy for you but you aven’t got much room ave you? Ah si! Un cottage. The pale fat priest-interpreter looks over his half-spectacles made for reading the sheafs of notes before him. Un piccolo chalet. Va bene così? Un piccolo chalet?
— Va bene.
Un piccolo chalet in Wiltshire where stones talk walk make love until they come to a standstill. Welcome back Liebes to the freedom of the air and the precision of the mouthpiece in your nineteenth year and plus as he picks up the broken bits, working with eyes and hands as well as with his ears and voice. He lipreads the speaker and in the next split second utters the same syllables of half-love and bantering allusion that need no simultaneous interpreting by the code of zones flown over descended into half-visited on swift conducted tours with groups from Agricultural Aid Commissions, Conferences of Irrigation Engineers and even Congresses of Semiologists for example in palaces castles university buildings town halls, together sometimes or with say Signor Ingegnere Giovanni-Battista di Qualcosa or Comrade Pan Bogumil Somethingski, according to the requirements of language topic time available since the return to the precision of the mouthpiece at nineteen or twenty-nine even.
In fondo a sinistra the men in the café sit transfixed by the flickering 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 arch-priests of actualitá that zooms flashcuts explodes to OMO! Da oggi con Perboral! Lava ancora più bianco! Gut-gut, Più bianco than what? We live in an age of transition, perpetually between white and whiter than white. Very tiring. Zoom. Applicate il numero di codice. The matchbox on the table shows a small postman in green with a large orange postbag on a blue background. The postman holds a letter with 00147 Roma written on it. Two orange arrows say il numero di codice and point to 00147 Roma. The orange bag twice as large as the postman says Applicate il numero di codice as Siegfried lights up with do you know the number of your zone and which represents reality the old towns like museums visited on conducted tours or the modern hotels we stay in all alike?
Sometimes however the bathroom door faces the built-in cupboard in the entrance passage to the room so that the bathroom has no window, only a ventilation shaft. Sometimes it faces the door of the room, occupying more generously a space in width not length with its own window on the street the sea the mountain the roof on which a wizened woman washes in eight cataracts affording a glimpse of something real surely below the sex-mime of a blear-aged man with tongue and mouthpiece or a car revving up in Danish. Sometimes the blear-aged man tries the locked door in drunken stupor with his key that doesn’t fit and slinks away at the Was suchen Sie in fury and the change in the expected person. Sometimes the number on the key remains several weeks running in the four hundreds or three then suddenly drops to 5, 2, 4, 12, so that the smattering of the mouthpiece can proudly ask the the receptionist for beş, iki, dört unless dwanaście, depending on the size the time the place and whether canyons or rocks create great holes of air into which the heart sinks. Sometimes a chambermaid serves Frühstück or Micul Dejun in camere. Or a smooth floor-steward in white unless a waking call with collazione down below in a black plastic bar. Sometimes the bathroom flanks the cupboard facing the bed or beds themselves together or separate or longwise foot to foot along the left wall or even the right. Few hotels have single rooms these days it doesn’t pay and single rooms seldom have a shower or bath or private loo, only a biddy and a wash-stand on one leg blue green white pink yellow or fixed to the wall with a thick metal tube lewdly protruding underneath but curving up again not always visibly however so that the empty bed lies empty and tightly made unless the puffed up eiderdown buttoned up in sheeting looks virgin-bellied untumbled or the bright orange blanket folds back within the sheet in two parallel white runways from which memories take off and disappear into the blue the cloud the fog.
Ausgang. Exit. Push. Tirez. Drücken. Déclarez s’il vous plaît si vous avez des plantes ou parties de plantes avec vous, loyalty for example or a simple enthusiasm for warming slippers on a late return from the club the office the journeys the philandering with the precision of the mouthpiece at conventions, conferences, commissions, congresses. Or else inside the whale, who knows, in the foetus position with diagrams of a fish thrown upside down for three days, three lives of maybe hell. Between loving and not loving the body floats.
On one side of the broad yellow arrow diagonal from corner to corner of the square card the razor-blade, printed in green, has a white narrow bar representing the slit, crossed at one end with a short vertical bar then a small diamond shape and another short bar, a space, a circle in the centre then a space, a bar a diamond and a bar. On the other side of the broad yellow arrow two pink lips slightly separated echo the white slit in the green razor blade. The yellow arrow points downwards across the cardboard square pinned up in diamond shape to cover the squares of paper and bears the lettering Pentru ştergerea lamei de ras şi a rujului. Pour le demaquiage spelt wrong et pour les lames de rasoir. For remove the make-up and for something in Russian then German last. Sometimes German comes first then English then French in endless permutations with the language of the country always at the head however such as Toaleta Femei unless TOAΛETHA with care not to enter Bărbaţi when the door bears no skirted figurine or high-heeled shoe in the imprecision of a mere smattering acquired with the descent into new matter. Or just enough to say muchas gracias dowidzenia dove? In fondo a sinistra.
So that Siegfried picks up the broken bits working with his hands voice mouth eyes ears and more than his five senses into the vessel of conception CV 52 lipreading and in the next split second uttering the same syllables of half-love bantering allusion to the medal of St. Christopher between the breasts and other circumstances that need no simultaneous interpreting by the code of zones flown over descended into half visited on swift conducted tours together sometimes or separately and alone according to the requirements of conventions conferences congresses in castles palaces public buildings university halls where no communication of course ever occurs. Ever? You exaggerate. Something gets across.
— Criss-cross.
— Crease-crasse? God, verr god. The short gentleman with straight black hair in a black suit labelled Laos says god, verr god indeed. The Gairmans they applause their speakers. The English they applause their speakers. The French they say alone the French make intellectual contribution. Only Laos delegation praise all.
— And the Japanese. Don’t forget the Japanese.
— They praise, yes mademoiselle, also.
— Presumably everyone comes for that. They certainly can’t come for information since it all gets published anyway and they could simply read it.