Christine Brooke-Rose: Life, End of

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And soon it’s not just the starting voice unheard and ignored but real interruptions, not occasional but regular, of both low voices. Heard this time, from conscious effort. All evening, rivalling or accompanying the cicadas in the pines. Until, uncontrollably,

Becky, please, stop interrupting me.

Silence. Quickly filled in, and not just by the cicadas. But with What was I saying? Black hole.

And this is the real shock. Not linguistic, political, religious, social, but personal again.

Half the night, insomniaqued by the heat.

For of course, we interrupt and are interrupted all the time, every day, every life. Even by ourselves. God, if he exists, must sigh at man’s incapacity to utter a simple prayer without a stray thought or, more usually, urgent demands intercepting the believed-in stream of divine love. Students interrupt teachers, and as for those idealised multi-register conversations they couldn’t fork off without interruptions. Interruptions express warmth enthusiasm excitement involvement. Provided it’s even. Are about people. Not Other but True. Over-regulated debates from school debating societies to parliaments thrive on boos and cheers.

Nevertheless there is a delicate balance to observe. Interruptions in imitation debates on radio and television produce not just animation but unhearing of two superimposed voices, which rapidly make the programme unlistenable unwatchable switchoffable, the way the aggressive interviewer who constantly overspeaks his guest as rapidly becomes unwatchable switchoffable. Animation and warmth can mean unhearing. Is that logical? Just as the long past of the Basques is not the same as the long past of that narrow strip of land, back to Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Palestinians, the Hebrews, the Romans, the Christians, the Jews, the Arabs, the Turks, the British, the Palestinians, the Israelis.

Almost as bad as Europe.

Half the hot night into tired but lonely admission of wrong, followed the next morning by sincere apologies for the rebuke. No counter-apology for what led to it.

Yet that is one of the real differences between O.P. and T.F., the swift and mutual recognition of wrong. Generously accepted here, naturally, with interruptions defended as warmth and all the rest, already thought of in her favour. The more disabled taking the blame as usual for gaudeamus’ sake. And the rapid explanation too, in two parts, one the excuse handed over, the lowness of the voice, therefore unheard: the shame is not for the regal reprimand or not wholly, any more than the constant interruptions show true participation. The delicate line has been crossed.

What flaws the entire trivial occurrence is the throe thrown in: the memory loss of merely the previous moment.

Not just after a writhing walk to the bedroom for what is being fetched, not just the place of a word in a giant puzzle, or forgetting the name of a once idolised star, not reading rich books and forgetting them the following week or day, thus at last putting pleasure before use. But for the words uttered one second before.

Words. Words make the brain work. The brain makes words work. It is the brain it is the brain endures. Could it be Alzheimer’s as a seventh ailment uncommunicated?

The imagination, tortuous and madder-laned, of le malade not imaginaire, but imaginatif. In fact, these are common occurrences, in everyone, even the quiz candidate buzzing then losing the answer. Everyone says ‘What was I saying?’ There’s rarely an answer.

The second dinner is more careful all round, the more disabled sitting between them rather than facing them, and the electric flow fully recovered. They leave the next day, at eleven, to see Avignon before catching the night-plane from Marseille back to Jerusalem, and sleeping it all off the next day.

But why, Rebekah? In the worst heat of day. Wouldn’t it be wiser to snack and sieste here and leave for the airport when it’s cooler?

I want to see Avignon.

You won’t be able to park, it’s the Festival. Or allowed into the palace courtyard, turned into a theatre. And there are huge demos just now, by interim theatre people.

Well, from outside. And I want to see the Pont d’Avignon.

It’s broken.

General laughter. Of course that’s why they want to see it. A well bridge is banal. It’s just the opposite with people. Kwai! Kwhy?

Is the Pont d’Avignon worth ten hours of walking in this heat? L’on n’y danse même plus.

Then suddenly, it all drops into place. Or misplace?

For forty-eight hours Dan has been trying to ring a friend on a mobile lent by his daughter. In vain. Something wrong with the phone of course, though judging by his awkward search for knobs in the posh rented car it’s just remotely possible he doesn’t know he has to switch on the line first. Cellularly incorrect behaviour. Probably it’s not that, however, and this explanation is so obvious he is spared the counsel to avoid hurting his feelings. Said this morning:

Is it a friend? I’m not vain enough to think you’ve come all this way just for me. Rebekah once combined me with a conference.

Of course not, we chose to come just for you.

Forcefully, from Rebekah.

But, as also learnt in a different context this morning, the friend is surely a misunderstanding for their daughter Abigail, on a course north of Paris, chosen to avoid leaving her alone in dangerous Jerusalem. Perfectly natural. And Avignon is the first entrance to the motorway. Annoyed? No, paranoid.

Huge hugs.

And indeed the next day passes, letting them sleep it off in Jerusalem but ringing in the evening to find out about the journey. The machine as usual answers first in Hebrew then in English. Well, no doubt the plane is a night plane. Every day a call, at nine p.m. their time, at lunch-time, at eleven p.m. the next day, at seven-thirty a.m., to give every possibility. For a week since their flight. Clearly a weekly ticket. Huge relief that they did not come all this way just for one disabled person.

But why the elaborate lie? White lies shouldn’t need to be so laboured.

Why not? Elaborate form has little to do with content these days.

To spare the difficult cripple? Yet not to spare her two nights ago. Have they too become O.P.s? She, the author of Ill Locutions ?

No. That cannot be. The whole visit so warmly afffectionate, even over an apology. Apart from one throe of shock, the memory loss. And now another throe, the lie.

No, their version is clearly true. The other is imagined by le malade imaginatif. And if it is the other that’s true it’s out of sincere, pitying kindness. And from living so long in terror-time in Jerusalem, where suffering is not just a trivial lie but thousands, millions of lies. Or the heat. They are still T.F., like all the others, from Germany, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Finland, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York. Too true to describe. And is it not regrettable to become her O.P.?