Away from the road a path leads into the deep cleft between the florid Monsignor and the recording priest on his left who writes all the proceedings down in longhand most unsimultaneously beneath the dark brown painting of some saint or other while the pale fat priest-interpreter to the right of the Monsignor further lengthens the proceedings by translating every utterance from Italian in fact half-understood into French and from French back into Italian thus creating a time to think of some answer truthful according to the requirements of a faith half-held in that climate language sub specie aeternitatis the Vicariato di Roma. We do not have a German interpreter to hand signora scusi, il Monsignor has got engaged in another court. But you say you speak French. Va bene così? Va bene. Well, one way or the other. But what difference does it make? Une différence non-marquée dérivant du marqué par une absence qui signifie eine Abwesenheit die etwas bedeutet, etwas anderes als bestellt. Do you agree? Did you want to test by means of engagement? Was suchen Sie, die Toilette? Nein den Aufzug. Ascenseur. Ach so, immer geradeaus dann links past the TOAΛETHA to the ACAHCbOP or else a change in the expected person 
for parter presumably towards the banquet-hall БAHKETHA ƷAΛA where the president and his sub-presidents from this zone and that toast each other in progress mutual understanding hands across the frontiers on full stomachs underneath words in white on red 30 mup u gpyжбa.
They praise, yes mademoiselle, also.
Soon some sluttish chambermaid will enter with a breakfast-tray or else a dark and sullen boy nodding vigorously for no, unless bending his neck quickly towards the left shoulder then towards the right and back towards the left for yes as if to say the last straw or what-the-hell. Mineralwasser? What-the-hell. Bending his head vigorously from left to right and bringing MYHEPAΛHA BOΔA. Oh that. I can’t think why you bother. Well, on one level one hardly listens to the autentico dramma dell’ agnosticismo with all ingredients historical philosophical and social determining the involution of this our civilisation in la Francia la Germania e soprattutto la dolce Inghilterra, its emerald meadows scattered with houses castles lampoons rhododendrons pettinated lanes in which fires burn with sweet evening conversations surrounded by the Saddle of Koznitsa to the west and the undulating heights of the Sredna Gora mountains to the south along the Valley of the Roses. The very name symbolises pretty girls picking the blossoms among concrete faces looking to the right or wrong according to the viewpoint where to stop. The sun pours its light down on the blessed earth unless some desolate moon-goddess aghast at her son’s death and the catastrophe she has provoked saying but where have all the flowers gone? Ah mademoiselle, they have not blossomed yet, the season has not yet come.
The plane has landed on the edge of a black promontory, its long nose-tip jutting out over the darkening gulf beyond which one horizontal line of light forms a T with a vertical line of light and a great clanging noise that stripes the blackness. Stimaţi pasageri. Welcome aboard this vessel of conception floating upon a pinpoint and kindly sit quietly ensconced in your armchairs, the women to the left of the aisle the men less numerous to the right, strapped to their seats that stretch interminably towards the distant brain way up in the long nose-tip beyond the tabernacle curtain and behind no doubt the secret door so heavy that the whole vehicle may topple over the edge into the dark invisible gulf beyond which one white line of light forms a right angle with another from the corridor of the hotel, behind the door of the black room in which the body lies inside the narrow bed, strapped by the swaddling sheet and blanket at a speed of total immobility in the night of Brussels Belgrade Barcelona Bonn, what difference does it make? A difference unmarked deriving from the marked by an absence which signifies eine Abwesenheit die etwas bedeutet, etwas anderes als bestellt, a change in the expected person aghast at the death of love or maybe merely of language and fingering a medal between breasts in blackness. In the tram-ridden night of Sofia.
The decorative metal locks on each door of the cupboard shine in the shaft of bright light coming through from the left where the wooden shutters meet. They have Napoleonic hats and look like Civil Guards, the one on the right door carrying the vertical latch that hangs down in relief like a rifle at rest. Next to the cupboard the smaller doors of the dressing-table repeat the motif darkly and unreflecting. On the two drawers of the dressing-table, above the smaller doors, the Civil Guards lie down. Beyond the wooden shutters and way down below the layered floors of stunned consciousnesses and waking dreams the cars hoot faintly and rev up in Spanish unless Catalan streaked with a tinkling tram narrowly through the shaft of light where the wooden shutters meet. The dark shape of the cupboard unrounds in the filtered noise. On the bedside-table stands the bottle of mineral water, its label still illegible. The visitor’s attention turns immediately to higher things such as the dot of bright light thrown by the round hole in the shutter further up the cupboard imitating the sun above the Civil Guards. A voice calls out continuous flight-numbers and the murmur of the talking delegates as they wait in rows like a giant class fills the great Catalan evening in the bulging theatre with tumultuous applause for the boy-star with his guitar who pours La Nit, llarga la Nit and El poble que no vol morir full of Catalan passion down into the microphone and out in simultaneous passion. Di-guem no! Di-guem no! the bulging theatre demands in the tumultuous applause but the boy stretches out the palm of his left hand his right hand holding the guitar in a no-puc gesture half-indicating the police that lines the theatre and repeats instead La Nit, llarga la Nit with Catalan passion down into the microphone and out in simultaneous passion. 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. The eyes close, the thumb and fingers join as communication begins.
The visitor’s attention turns immediately to higher things such as Kalbsschnitzel natur mit Reis, gemischter Salat, Käsekuchen, Kompott, Kaffee over the modern capital that recedes as the plane rises swiftly above the mountains to an outside temperature of minus what, thirty-four, forty-three? Between the zest of youth and the enlightenment of old age comes an immense period called The Middle Ages. You look not quite yourself mein Liebes.
The hands lie quite still on the blue table-cloth over the domes the palaces in darker blue rows, the two thumbs pressing towards the body the fingers touching away from it forming a roof with a squat diamond space between. Yes I notice you always sit like that, even in an armchair, your ankles crossed your hands joined on your lap.
— Well it closes the circuit you see, so that you’re self-contained, relaxed, and no-one can get at you.
— But who do you suppose wants to get at you mein Liebes?
You must excuse these questions Fräulein but in view of your French upbringing we must make sure of your undivided loyalty let us see now until the age of Herr Oberstleutnant at that age one has no loyalties. Ja-ja ich verstehe. So you, born and bred a Catholic, decided in advance, Madame, to divorce if it did not work, thus nullifying the contract in the eyes of God? Plus ou moins. My child you must use words more precisely. Did you or did you not? Oui mon père. Please declare if you have any love loyalty lust intellect belief of any kind or even simple enthusiasm for which you must pay duty to the Customs and Excise.