The speeches have begun hands across the frontiers on floating stomachs over the murmur of unlistening delegates who move about in close national groups and token-clap until the dancers come in, fierce little men in blue silk and red and silver, one beating a big drum one playing a clarinet a third clicking long sticks extended from his fingers. In the adjoining room the pretty girl in green silk puffed trousers with green and orange bands coming down from the shoulders cries under her orange hat and headscarf among other girls in crimson trousers or green. Mademoiselle! Pourquoi pleurez-vous? Les hommes. Pas danser. Nous invitées. Mais les hommes pas permission kadın, kadın, er, femmes danser en public.
— Attendez.
The male dancers bow to the tumultuous applause and exeunt as the clarinet player gets a tap on the shoulder. Kadın? He shrugs, nods vigorously with Yok for no and exit. Yok we have none. Yok kadın.
— Kadın! Kadın! Kadın!
— What’s got into you?
— It means women. The men won’t let the girls dance. Look they weep. Please shout with me, all of you. Monsieur! On ne veut pas laisser danser les jeunes filles. Ah ça! Mais quelles beautés! Criez avec moi kadın, ça veut dire femmes. Herr Doktor, Entschuldigung. Dankeschön. Ka-dın, ka-dın, ka-dın, ka-dın!
The men dance their way out. The speeches start again hands across the frontiers on floating stomachs over the talking delegates and a rebellious group shouting ka-dın, ka-dın, ka-dın until the dancers come in, pale pretty girls in green and crimson puffy trousers covered with striped bands, none smiling under their orange headscarves over their high hats as they go through their solemn motions unhappily not quite in unison one tearful still and pale.
— Well yes I do look pale. Until I put on my face like. But I must say I didn’t fancy them popish crows coming to interview me about you and your ex, dear, what could I say? I don’t poke my nose into other people’s affairs. Well, yes I know I agreed, and of course you confided in me in your loneliness poor love but still, and so slow! You should’ve seen them, writing it all down in longhand, just like the Scribes and Pharisees, or do I mean Sadducees? Well in the end I said to hell with that if you’ll excuse me I’ve had a secretarial training. Yes, I worked in an office before I got spliced didn’t you know, solicitors in the Strand. And I’ll just type out your questions I said and my answers as one of your witnesses — witnesses I ask you what would I witness? You’d think they’d taken me for a peeping Tom you should’ve heard some of the things they asked I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Not like our lawyers at all well of course you can hardly call them lawyers can you, just popish priests, black crows my mother used to call them though she also called the Church of Rome the scarlet woman and the golden calf. Or do I mean fatted calf? And I said if you have no objection sir, I said, oh yes I treated them polite for your sake love and they had none in fact they couldn’t have seemed more delighted and surprised like they’d never seen a typewriter before. Such antiquated ways! I can’t think what you see in that lot love. I mean why do you bother you don’t want to get married again or do you?
— Nnn-o.
— Well then. And even if you did it don’t mean anything any more all that sanctification lark you just go ahead and do it you got a proper divorce in the law of the land you don’t need them foreigners. Oh I beg your pardon love but I never think of you as foreign. Oh I know you speak with an accent, French, didn’t you say? Well that explains it, but then who doesn’t we all have accents come to think of it, your hubby I mean your ex worst of all a la-di-da accent anyone’d think he thought himself a cut above and he didn’t fit in down here not like you do dear. So you just go ahead and live in sin he settled the cottage on you didn’t he, oh no you told me, you bought it yourself for five hundred pounds. And you had a biddy put in by my Tom he liked that nobody has a biddy down here. Well then, all the more so. After all you earn your own wages and come here on your holidays, funny that coming to England for holidays when everyone goes abroad but then you do everything the other way round don’t you dear and I like you for that, I like original people. So you just bring your boy-friends here like you used to in the old days after the bust-up when you worked in London and came down weekends it quite livened up the village and what difference does it make?
Wejście/Wyjście.
Push. Tirez. Pchnąć. Ziehen.
The hands lie quite still on the pink table-cloth with darker pink towers cathedrals domes palaces in rows and WIEN repeated at intervals under each row and the plump prancing knight Carolus der VII between, the eight fingers touching away from the body to form a shape like a cathedral roof, the thumbs pressed together towards the body over the crumbs of toast and the postcard from Dubrovnik out of the discreet envelope forwarded from Paris Headquarters face down to show the phrase about la douce inoubliable dame aux yeux d’émeraude and signed with an illegible initial.
In whose mind in what place at what time has one remained la douce inoubliable dame aux yeux d’émeraude scattered with castles, lampoons, fiery lanes and sweet evening conversations? Somewhere along the Romantische Strasse between Wien and Valladolid amid the air-conditioning and other such circumstantial emptiness with emerald eyes gazing at the blue temperature of minus forty-five degrees height eleven thousand metres immobile speed nine hundred and twenty kilometres an hour handed over the back of the armchair in front by a fat hand over Prague where the new lord mayor has promised to take up the challenge in getting you to commit yourself to a single idea.
— Ideas? My dear good girl for twenty years I have conducted my higher education by transmitting other people’s ideas or rather platitudes from one microphone into another. And I can tell you that not one of them deserves a moment of attention. One does one’s job, in order to live well, have fun. We’ve had fun haven’t we?
We have played those games mein Lieber.
Unless he says one does one’s job, to the best of one’s ability, simply as an instrument.
Man does.
— Not that you followed him in all things Liebes. But why talk of him he’s gone let’s talk of us we must love one another or die.
But where have all the lovers gone?
Siegfried grown balder somewhere between Dakar and Helsinki with a paunch pahr dessue le marshy sits in the kitchen of il piccolo chalet in Wiltshire where stones talk walk and make love until they come to a standstill. So, you have grown tired of your small box your refuge your still centre within the village within the wooded countryside within the alien land. Tired of weekend commuting between London and the end of nowhere strapped to your seat with a chastity-belt? Do you remember the Air Hostess who said with a, charming English accent Prière d’éteindre vos ceintures and got so covered with confusion? Her voice I mean, got covered with confusion.
— Yes. Presumably air-hostesses, rather like interpreters, increase the statistical possibility of sudden death by flying so much. Do you think that counts as suicide? Without the actual trouble of committing it.
— Oh come off it Liebes counts for whom anyway?
— Oh Siegfried can’t you understand?
— I understand perfectly. You have got bitten again with the old Wanderlust not to mention the other and long for the freedom of the air in your twentieth year and plus. Plus what exactly? Not that it ‘matters I can work it out, besides, you don’t look a day older and I wish you could pretend the same for me for old time’s sake.
— Pretend?
— You will find your life-jacket under your seat.
— Dit zwemvest kan dienen voor een bewusteloos persoon.
— Good girl.