Christine Brooke-Rose: Life, End of

O.P. also means Old People. Over-sensitive People. Otiose, Obdurate, Obsolete People. Outrageous, obtuse, obstreprous, ostracised. All of which bring one Person into line: Oxhead Person, Oxymoronic Person. A mirror.

The day after the lapsed week, Rebekah rings. Thank you thank you for your hospitality. But I was very sad to see you so diminished.

Well, that’s life, first it increases then it diminishes.

Your cheerfulness is a delight. How are you?

Fine. How was your return trip?

Avignon was very moving. Yes, even the broken bridge. We slept it all off.

Good. I’ve been trying to ring you every day to find out. So glad it all went well.

Yes, well, every day I’ve been at the University, and Dan at the office.

Goodness, is the University still open at the end of July?

Exams. Meetings.

Yes. Of course. But I hope you can rest soon. It was very moving to see you both, thank you for coming.

Etc. etc. Let it go. Ill Locution. T.F. also means either believing their truth behind the apparent lie or forgiving the lie. Therefore the truth no longer matters. Still learning. Another looking-glass. Looking the other way.

The fiery feet can’t feel the carpet edge that could cause a fall nor the entrance to the slipper, which can fold under the heel and twist the ankle. That’s probably why it’s called a slipper. A carpet slipper.

That seems to summarise the new state of things: insensitivity brings acute pain, to the insensitive.

The tray problem is solved. By the acquisition of a trolley table. Strange how slowly such evident ideas come. But also how difficult the acquisition after the idea. The one danger is the wiggly twiddly wheels that violently alter the direction of those heavy trolleys in airports and supermakets. Must be tried before purchase. Trying, however, is one of the many impossibilities now, going round the shops, even if driven. Trying, touching, fingering. Valérie brings back a white garden table, saying she can use it if it won’t do, small and light plastic with wheels six inches wide. It seems just right, until she moves it further into the room to reveal that the wide wheels are only in front. The back has just ordinary plastic square legs, which means pushing the trolley with a slight lift at the back. The whole point of a trolley is lost.

How can anyone invent such a thing? Any glasses or tray put down on it would flounder.

Funny, I never noticed.

Presumably the scraping of the legs on the supermarket floor gets lost in the hubbub.

No, I must have lifted the back without realising.

Ah, yes it looks very light. Lifting is so easy one doesn’t notice. So it’s only dangerous for someone with balance problems. I’m glad you like it, anyway.

It’s just what I wanted, so at least I won’t have to go back. Besides, it was the last one. And so cheap! They must have wanted to get rid of it.

Another time she goes to the chemist, the one with a paramedical room — for wheelchairs and such — upstairs so that the handicapped can’t go up and see. The only wheeled table is for meals over hospital beds. Also wiggly to move but much too high anyway. Queries by phone, to kitchen-makers, furniture shops, other supermarkets. Nothing. Even the furniture shop for an old-fashioned wooden wheeled table says the item has vanished from current demand. Nobody serves tea that way any more. Perhaps nobody serves tea.

At last one is found by Valérie in a mail-order catalogue, that last resort for buying clothes now that real shopping is a thing of the past. And sent for. Small wheels but they don’t twiddle-wiggle. Easy to push and to fold.

It’s like an idea for a novel. Seems so simple, takes so long.

Strange, the pillars of fire are ten times more nuisance than the other five ailments that could haemo-rage at any second and kill or worse, not kill but vegify. The legs cry out in protest and half give way at every step. And yet can hardly feel the floor, even when bare on the cold tiles, nor the obstacles until knocked in sudden screeching error.

How can insensitivity to the outside be compensated by such a fiery furnace inside? As when the feet go to sleep despite swarming ants. The feet are like the brain. The doctor as usual does not explain, nor the physio, beyond localising it once again in the nerve fibres.

Inevitably, the theologically correct: does that insensitivity to the outside have a significance other than itself?

The question suddenly accentuates the memory of the contrast between the joy at the outside view upstairs when writing, and the contents of the many books inside the large room.

A message from the centre of the earth the world the universe suggests inner punishment as the answer. For being lost in books a whole lifetime instead of jogging skiing swimming tennissing sailing skating hockeying lacrossing footballing basket-balling cricketing climbing rollering skate-boarding fun-boarding surfing cycling scootering long-jumping high-jumping marathoning aerobickering. And never regretting it.

Putting it off, off. Living on a razor’s edge, enjoying what, well, yes, the brain and its indulgences its contacts with the earth the planet the world the universe but refusing the oncoming time, the future wheelchair, and home-helps for every function extramental. Or the Old People’s Home. For much the same treason. Le mouroir as the French call it, seemingly unaware of its closeness to le miroir . In the constant company of the dying, when it’s the young that keep the old deeply serene, for they are the last contact with the world, even if they don’t know it, the knuckle or nail needed to exist at all, according to the value of the letter O, occult, opaline, overbold, original, ordinary, odd. The eye-shaped light-reflector in the parasitic pineal gland. When the pain or the dependance, or both, totally cancel the several remaining joys. Reading. Listening. Writing. Talking.

But there, just sitting at a desk for more than an hour rends the chest apart. This pain has developed from a merely end-of-walk pain with breathlessness, which the doctor calls indigestion for three years, to a pre-walk and now immediate post-armchair-rising pain. How is your digestion, the doctor asks each time. I have no digestion problems, is the pseudo-courteous reply, in a long-lasting code between them. Meaning I know you’re either lying or in error but never mind. Until proved right, when after three hospitalisations the cardiologist says that now they have put in the pace-maker he can at last deal with the anginal pains. A peace-maker, from the United Notions of small dictators. In vain. The terrorists get worse. So maybe that’ll be the quick cause of death rather than kidney insufficiency or embolisms. Then the mouroir problem is solved.

All this as opposed to waiting one minute too long, when the blood floods through the brain and merely devastates it effacing all memory of pills, where they are or that they are. Thus re-entering the category of young soldiers and accident victims who die suddenly and for nothing.

Picking up the cordless phone from its charger on a low table near the wall to place it by the armchair, or anything at all from the coffee table, makes unbending impossible without support from other low furniture getting higher, or the banister, so that the walking is like that of a chimpanzee, though less graceful. In the end the only painless position is on the bed. But the end is not yet. The bed by day is as yet only for rest, and for the observation of the stone ghosts.

The wall curving round the stone stairs on the left conceals the morning sun, which climbs slowly out of it, towards the south, altering the shadowy heads. Beethoven has vanished, or no, he becomes Haydn in a wig, fondling his Farewell Symphony. Next to him a bonneted down-eyed servant. The Grenadier has changed into a Cavalier with a pointed beard. Further up is Cyrano, with his peninsular nose.