The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

by Brooke-Rose, Christine

  Oh don’t Booth me I do dip that’s the trouble but too deep I know it better than he does himself.

  It will escape. You have no right to reify him into the voiceless object of an intellect that delimits him. A human being lives to the end on his lack of definition, he always has the last word.

  Read Bakhtine! Of course he’ll have the last word which will be a cowardly silence. But Armel this is a conversation not a book, even if I talk like a book. How can I use the second person about him to you?

  Of course, I am your second person singular why persecutest thou/me. But aren’t you composing a motet for a prepared Oedipiano with a falsetto sound? And what about the previous chapter?

  I know, it’s a flop. As this one, and the next, redundant but necessary for qualcosa to continue. Narration is life and I am Scheherezade.

  Incapable of a thousand and one nights. Or ten a day for a hundred days.

  It will all get changed and transmuted,

  How then does it get into the text?

  cancelled even, for it does not exist, except in my own boundless need and fear that will alter the signifiers into a delirious discourse through swift-footed Hermes with terrible letters no doubt that we can skip as he will, for no recipient desires a message of enduring pain redundant and therefore without information content because not from the Emperor of China, all the less so if he has caused it so that I shall not transmit it many times and the unmany times I do I shall regret because I do not hope to turn again where the lack of imagination had itself to be imagined, unless I transmit it to you, but of course that’s useless since the recipient is the meaning of the message, even if he has an earful of sirensong or wax or crabs and can’t take any aspect of the truth gone wild.

  Teach us to care, and not to care, teach us to sit still.

  I do, or rather I did, a simple man’s simple love I can return simply for a while. But he won’t let me, he’s knocking at the other place both his and mine without even realizing it, so that what begins in banality has to go through the whole signifying chain from idyll to catastrophe until it can be returned to banality, beneath contempt, amusing maybe and harmless, a poison and a pharmakon that immunises. And he is the temporary pharmakos or scrapegloat, but only for a time.

  And you say you love him? You treat him as an object and despise him thoroughly.

  Of course. Both. There are degrees of love and scorn. As man with woman are you for the double standard?

  But all this has nothing to do with him.

  He’s aiming at someone else through me too though he doesn’t know it. This terrible love he calls it, and refuses to give it up.

  But Lara that’s no reason

  Well it’s just possible, you know, that I’m trying to prove with him, that your appalling accusations weren’t true, that I can love without, well, dismembering, though I’m taking the dreadful risk of proving that they are.

  It’s you I’m thinking of, not him. You’ll lacerate yourself. He won’t, he’ll never even admit he was using you.

  Oh I’ll come through. I always do you know. And so will he, certainly, you’re right of course, he’ll shrug it off with a swim and a fornication, or he’ll erect another huge romantic structure and never know what hit him.

  How do you know he won’t? You’re playing dangerous games, both of you, incestuous games, but you should be wiser Lara, you know yourself too well, and the great lack, the hole you speak of so often, which even I couldn’t fill, never to be filled by anyone, least of all by an infantile phallus-man who calls his wife Maddy.

  You beast.

  I’m sorry. But I’m frightened for you.

  Or jealous? Or outraged or what the heck. I’m frightened too Armel. His body is near but his discourse is far. He might be speaking out of some decadent Byzantine romance, the language of my twentieth year except that I never spoke it. It was fine as an idyll, in fact I turned a banal pick-up into an idyll because I couldn’t enjoy it otherwise, and that was all I wanted. But he’s more forceful than I thought, and has given it the twist of possession for ever, which normally I can’t stand but I’m so tired Armel, I want to give up, give in. And yet though he insists the age difference is nothing he can’t meet me even half way into his own future, naturally, so I have to do all the meeting, backwards, and not just the years of actual difference but way back, he’s a mere child for all he’s thirty. And of course that’s rejuvenating on the level of the idyll but on the other it’s like taking twenty steps back, into the void, where I never was. But his body is in me and I absorb his discourse through pores as if translated, magnified from far away. It’s about love. He himself doesn’t of course, recognise the other in me at all. His unknowing is my undoing for I need to be known, as my knowing will be his for he. doesn’t want my true or even untrue knowledge of himself no man does.

  Hush. Every man does. But not so verbalised. Never let yourself be fully known, remember?

  Oh it’s only to you Armel, a scrapped chapter.

  Thank you.

  With him I dialogue on his endless problems, or we sing like crazy in the car he does Leporello to perfection oddly enough, you’re right. For if I dialogue on other things I dialogue alone.

  Well, see it through if you must. But don’t let him see you see through him.

  Thank you Armel, for letting me talk. I do love you, you know. I’ll be back.

  I hope so. My street though small is not so hard to find.

  That’s a nice pentametre.

  Well, let me know if, if you do want a divorce.

  Could you, if you can bear it, do one thing for me, now I mean?

  What is it?

  I’d like you to meet him. Oh not as you. He knows I’m seeing you of course, god, the fuss he made, but he’s coming here tomorrow at eleven, we’re leaving the next day. Could you call, as a friend, casually, at about quarter past, under another name, Oscar for instance and we’ll have a drink together. And then you could ring me, or meet me outside. When are you leaving?

  In three days. I don’t like it. In fact I think it stinks. But all right, Oscar it is.

  Armel you’re marvellous. Is the poison really out?

  In me yes, I think so. But is it in you?

  Oh probably not, I’m rotten through and through you know, my name is Toren.

  It isn’t it’s Santores. And I told you before, don’t run yourself down, people will always take you at your word, if only on that.

  Yes but I have to run myself down to him, show him the worse he wants so insistantly to take with the better.

  If that’s a perverse test of the knight by the lady he’ll fail it. I was hoping to spend these three days with you. Indeed I had hoped for the summer but you went off.

  I know. I’m sorry. Do you mind very much?

  I think I mind more this morbid threesome you’re asking of me. Why do you want it?

  I don’t know. For strength to stop maybe, confirmation of a kind. You know how it is, the information-content of a particular unit is defined as a function of its probability, hence redundancy, necessary however.

  That should make you redundant too, if you’re as predictable as he is and as you say you are.

  Like u after q.

  U for mism

  M for sis

  O for the wings of a dove. I see you still have your guitar.

  Yes but it’s cracked. It gives a funny sound, sort of muted.

  Well, I must go. I had a jacket somewhere. What are you working on now?

  Work! Oh how distant it seems. Oddly enough, The Marble Faun.

  Structural analysis of?

  I’m not a Structuralist I never have been. Though some of the concepts are useful. It’s more of a Transformational approach really.

  Transformation of what into what?

  I don’t know yet. The intuition of the native speaker into the intuition of the naive speaker perhaps.

  You joking?

  At the level of the signifier of course what else did yo
u think?

  Anything at all with you Larissa, language is your strength and your strength is your weakness. See you to-morrow.

  There has occurred however the telescoping of the flute-player into a stereotyped foreshortened faun piping right to left on the rectangle of days with weeks and even years in an implicit depth, days that do not see themselves or the four lies reflected in the retrovizor, looking at nothing on or in the brow that Scheherezade thinks too low beneath the mat of khaki crinkly hair perhaps Etruscan or hiding behind a discourse from which the subjects vanish piecemeal, the one giving no references and the other too many thus having a mouth removed and other organs when all that is signifiable in her is struck with latency as soon as raised to the function of signifier which initiates this raising by its original disappearance, the show within the show.

  For the idyll reopens out into the other idyll of Armel who is not like that at all and Veronica true icon iconoclasted before the introduction of the pistol, raising antinomies by reaction that overtakes the subjective idea, rendering it objective, here on the ocean edge, and irresistible, Aphrodite emerging from memory and beckoning, naked, sprayed with flowery foam.

  For you are not qualcosa as narrated either by yourself or some other who talks like a book and wants to be read like an algebraic grammar of narrative, the punishment in final position never falling on the euphoric term, only on the dyspeptic, the moving finger piercing through the pregnant plenitude from idyll to castratrophy thus bringing about the end of the discourse. Nor have you acted out the dialogue spun by the silent narrator who is yourself perhaps making yourself articulate and wise, quick on the uptake gentle cruelonlytobekind with brief mean brushstrokes for objectivity and her semelic a wild moon detached and gazing at the earth, tide-driven and helpless so that you can save her and if that is what you want that is how it will be for you always get your way in the end by transforming the passive silence of undecidability into the undeicidable. Whoever invented it is the absent narrator or you in love with the unreliable narrator who is in love with the implied author who is in love with himself and therefore absent in the nature of things through doors opening on doors, mirrors on mirrors in an eternal game of vinciperdi with the presence and absence of signifiers that characterises the practice of language. A head in a pool on a platter in a textured cloth, the head detached to re-present the word, a disembodied voice.

  Larissa?

  Armel! I mean–hi.

  Hi. You’re not alone I gather?

  No.

  Ecoute. Je suis desolé mais je ne peux pas te voir.

  Pourquoi?

  Je ne veux pas discuter, c’est ton affaire.

  Mais tu étais d’accord.

  Oui, excuse-moi. Je te dirai une chose seulement. Il est mignon comme tout et même, je crois, sincère. Mais pas mariable.

  Je sais.

  Oh quelqu’un l’épousera sans doute, une étudiante. Il n’est même pas sortable.

  It’s all right he’s gone out on the terrace he’s very tactful, anyway I’m sure he speaks French so this farce is pointless. But Armel does it matter?

  My dear, even alone with him excluding the world as lovers think they can you’ll still have to take him out, out of himself into you. Il n’est pas à ta hauteur.

  Oh my hauteur I’ve told you, I’m sick and tired of my hauteur. I want to be humble, to abase myself.

  Then you will. But you won’t find humility only humiliation, you’ll revolt and you’ll suffer. It’s sick. And he’s totally unconscious.

  And what about you and someone else not at your hauteur?

  Lara I don’t want a discussion.

  That’s different isn’t it, you’re a man. Armel are you there? I’m sorry. It’s awful don’t you see what thou lovest well remains but if the lovest is removed only the narratio is left.

  Are you playing anagrams again?

  I can’t help it Armel it’s written in the name. Please can’t I see you before you go?

  No I’m sorry, I’ve already said more than I meant. I can’t cope with this. In fact I was ill all night, vomiting.

  Oh. Forgive me. You see I’m no good to you. Why did you come?

  I don’t know. I did then.

  Armel don’t go away.

  I must.

  Take me with you.

  Not now Larissa. I’m sorry, I was hoping to but

  Because of this? Punishing me again?

  It’s a question of timing. Like letters, they never coincide. But please, look after yourself, and see a doctor before you go.

  Oh I’m all right, it’s you who should see a doctor.

  They’ve long given me up as you know, I heal myself.

  Yes.

  Well goodbye. Have a nice time.

  You too. Bye, Armel. I love you.

  I know. Bye.

  But is it really possible to superimpose so many systems one upon the other, the social the economic the personal the traffic lights the institution of learning where the old learn from the young and the young learn nothing until one day suddenly they too are old? The exile motif on a suburban tale of Porlock upon a Gothic novel woven with the International Theme upon an eighteenth century fantasy itself the obverse of the Tristan myth known to Lancelot and Guinevere read by Paolo and Francesca then wagnerised and materlinked into Mélisande through layers and layers of books and looks that open like doors onto other doors as he comes in from the terrace high up above the traffic saying was that your husband? Yes. What did he want?

  Oh just to say goodbye.

  It was a hell of a long goodbye.

  We have a very close relationship.

  He wants you back. I know it. Of course he does you’re so wonderful that’s why we both want you. What’s the matter, you seem sad.

  No. I’m just thinking. You remember how Dostoievski makes Dievushkin read Gogol’s Nose, no Gogol’s Coat, and revolt at the author’s concept of the little man, at the way he delimits him without his consent, arresting him in his own definition whereas every man knows he is not the definitions of others but for ever undefined, never coinciding with himself? Just as the trial of Dmitri Karamazov is a farce of other judgments and in the end he judges himself. And that made me think of books within books, stories within stories, each character a new tale-bearer. How far can we box in?

  I don’t understand. What has all that to do with us, or with your husband. Has he upset you?

  No.

  You’re depressed again and you’re going to discourage me. Don’t you think I’m depressed too, after this meeting I was terrified of, and I was right, you’re different.

  Stavro one can’t turn from one personality to another at the flick of a switch. One is temporarily invaded, but it will pass.

  And here among all these books, it’s like a professor’s study, designed to intimidate the students.

  Well it is a professor’s study Professor La Bocca’s he’s a symbolic logician oh yes you met him. Anyway I am a teacher and so are you.

  But all these notes, this pile of mail and records and tapes, you seem so self-sufficient, you don’t need me at all.

  I do Stavro, I need your terrible love as you call it, but I don’t think I can have it, Stavro non avrò.

  Oh please don’t start again.

  I’m not coming with you, I’m staying here. I have work to do.

  You can’t be serious. But it’s all booked, you promised.

  Then unbook me. I’m sorry.

  I know, I can’t offer you much, only problems, and I haven’t even got a job. But I’ll get one, at least for next year, and I’m applying everywhere, Rhodesia even, and you could get one easily, wouldn’t you like to come to Rhodesia with me it’s a beautiful climate like here, we’d live this paradise for ever.

  Rhodesia! It’s a fascist country.

  No more than America if you mean the colour thing and you live in America.

  Don’t be silly Stavro. There’s plenty wrong there but at least we pay lip-service to
equality and a good deal more than people who read only Black Literature are aware. I couldn’t live with, and therefore condone, official Apartheid, it’s another kind of cutting off.

  But you wouldn’t be cut off you’d be with me.

  Stavro stop fantasising, what about your children you must be near them they need you. You must stop rushing off, always putting the desire of the moment first.

  It’s not a desire of the moment I love you. And we’d take them with us. But you’re right, as usual, she won’t let them go. Oh what would I do without you. Of course I must stay in Europe. How about Strasburg I’ve applied there will you come to Strasburg with me?

  I can’t, Stavro.

  What did he do to you?

  Nothing. I’m just very tired, very very tired.

  I know my love, it’s my fault, forgive me. We shall have abstinence tonight and you shall rest. I once saw a poster in Wales which said Abstinence is good for you. Oh Larina I want what you want.

  Do you?

  It’s only a moment of discouragement. But you must understand I can’t take nothing but discouragement from you and remain unaffected. You mustn’t try and see how much I can take.

  (I’ll pursue you and pursue you if that’s what you want) No, I’m sorry, You can’t take much can you?

  I suppose not. But you’re not very tough either and why should you be, except because both he and I like you that way. It isn’t true after all that women are stronger. They love to cuddle their babies but aren’t they just consoling themselves? Father is more important, he can speak and teach. Mother feeds you and teaches you to love but it’s Father who teaches you how to survive. Oh I wish I could do something about my mistakes, I see them so clearly now. Oh my love, I seem to be doing again what I’ve done so often, having problems I can’t cope with and rushing to a mummy or a nanny or a home or refuge. I hate seeing that I’m doing this to you. I feel lonely and abandoned, but my behaviour makes you lonely too. Please forgive your awful errant Childe Stavro.

  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry you’re so absurd yet touching.

  It’s good to see you smile again. My Larina, I know, as you know, that it’s peace and beauty when we’re together, and I’m convinced that if we could live together for a year all our problems would disappear and we’d never leave each other.