The rosy glow spreads to the tap-end of the pink bath encased in black tiling. The left-hand tap has C for cold, no caldo of course natürlich and inside the pink bathtub lies a huge great SCREAM run door room bed bell push sob stuff-sheet-in-mouth sob cold sweat silence. Bell, push. Knock on door cover yourself entrez. Che desidera, signora?
— Bagno!
— Ma—
— Nel bagno. Una, una, une araignée.
— Signora?
— Insetto. Enorme.
— Ah. Un momento signora.
He vanishes between the built-in cupboard painted pink and the pink black-tiled bathroom where the water caldo-freddo runs for a momento! No, no, no-con-acqua si, tutto va bene signora, solamente un piccolo ragno ah, signora che bella!
The blue peignoir snatched from the chair in the rush to the noise of caldo-freddo has one sleeve inside out. Ma che pallida, signora. Non fa niente, buono, buono, mangia le mosche. Solamente un piccolo with insolent eyes and a great tenderness only to see and touch a little in the narrow passage between the built-in cupboard painted pink and the rosy glow of the situation so characteristic in this our masculine-dominated myth unmarked save by subtraction from the feminine with its ambivalence in the double-negation no e no.
Structures of power, even when they appear to depend on physical force, in fact depend on the assistance and cooperation of innumerable individuals for the administration of physical force. Mesdames messieurs, nous avons entendu déjà several of our many specialists in the theory of government, in civilian defence, in the strategy of non-violence, discussing this theme, and trying to establish — in principle at least — to what extent anyone, or any idea, can persuade those who oppose a power-structure based on physical force to refuse their assistance and co-operation. In other words can non-violence force the conqueror down into the earphones in French and out into the mouthpiece in simultaneous German. I have pleasure in calling upon Monsieur le professeur Bernard Mottin, directeur de l’Institut d’Etudes Civiles et président du Congrès, notre admirable hôte dans cette belle et ancienne ville de Strasbourg.
The brief applause of the delegates in the big hall cracks the eardrums through the earphones which have to be stretched outwards from the ears for a moment while the professeur climbs to the dais-table until the murmuring voices picked up by the microphone resolves itself into Mesdames messieurs and pause. Nous avons entendu ce matin une belle fiction. Le professeur Strauss — don’t j’admire profondément les études — has elevated our hopes with ideas which, however idealistic and indeed true in theory, bear little relation to grim reality. The fruits of conquest, he told us, depend on affirmative action by large numbers of people, hundreds and even thousands. Yet force, he told us, cannot obtain this affirmative action directly. And the professor exemplified with a vivid comparison from the animal kingdom: you can drag a horse to water, but only the horse can make his muscles work. And if he won’t drink, soon you will have no horse. We can imagine, the professor said — and indeed we have to — a militarily defenceless people completely confounding a conqueror or even a would-be conqueror — dissuading him in advance — by sitting quietly, not eating, not working, threatening to deprive him of any subjects simply by dying. 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 application, and totally at odds with any real situation in the world past or present. We have no evidence whatsoever that live human beings, let alone horses, can so embody this principle in any behaviour sufficiently organized as to disarm a tyrant of his bureaucrats and soldiers, even less to dissuade him in advance. Human beings need to eat, to work, and to this end will either knuckle under or, more often, persuade themselves that le mensonge vital die Lebenslüge contains sufficient double-negation to reintegrate him into totality compared with so many fragile truths and lost mysteries that surround us in this our masculine-dominated civilization turned upside down into the earphones and out into the mouthpiece with a gulliverisation typical of the giant myths euphemised into a sack, a basket, a container cavern womb belly vase vehicle ship temple sepulchre or holy grail, witness le complexe de Jonas with which the lost vitality of the word goes down into the mouthpiece and out through its exits and entrances in simultaneous German to the legendary sound of music or circular dance, creating an invisible magic wall of defence undone by Achilles when he dragged Hector’s body round it anticlockwise. Non si ricorda esattamente for a fire destroyed Troy VI in 900 B.C. B.C.? Oh yes. The cloud has cleared into a fond old man well sixty-two and plus flowery love-letters full of Provençal quotations about fin amor lonhtano and all that.
E allora the languages fraternise in Geneva where malnutrition occurs in Europe on a far larger scale than anyone has realised owing to the widespread devitalising of foods due to mass-processing, chemical fertilisers, sprays and additives as well as ignorance of diet with 48 % having an average intake of nutrients well below the minimum level, itself varying from 30 mg. of vitamins daily recommended by the British Medical Association in England to 70 mg. recommended by the American Medical Association and 200 mg. by the Russian. The doctor on the dais protests at carbohydrates refined sugar white flour and fluoridation of water forbidden in Scandinavia and all civilised lands of which the World Health Association should take note while others in Paris home at last speak of the spiral as a sort of stylised maze, the maze itself having originated in the underground passages of the cave-dwellers which always led to a sanctus sanctorum, in a chthonic religion of course, going down, whereas the spiral tower of the Sumerian ziggurat belonged to a lunar culture. The ziggurat idea lies behind that of the seven-terraced city of Ekbatana and the Tower of Babel. Mesdames messieurs, you must surely know already — and if you do not I recommend you to see — Breughel’s painting of the Tower of Babel in which the letter from Venice reads Enfin! O gentildonna, douce dame aux yeux de vair! Votre merveilleuse lettre m’a rendu fou de joie. Which folie de joie goes into rhapsodies at length quite disproportionate to the brief polite note of thanks for compliments the speaker n’a pas conscience de mériter and totally at odds with any real situation in the prodigious accents of the renovating present. We have no evidence that human beings, let alone horses, can so embody the divine principle descending into any behaviour sufficiently organised to disarm a gentildonna of her furry eyes, vital double-negation simulation and other frustrations to the true end of marriage so typical in this our masculine-dominated myth turned upside down, in, out, around with a dumb show unanswered at one level and at another higher lower responded to perhaps with yearning for romance or lust atingle in the loins unless despair in knowledge of the man, exasperation cold indifference to the language of the long-lost code lying beneath layers and layers of changing sensibilities which nevertheless winds its way up surreptitiously through the centuries to undo the magic wall of defence around no more than the distant brain way up with an idle thought or two such as well, why not play a little at a mere correspondence of love six love, la gentildonna leads by five games to three in the second set.