...of a babel

...They glide slowly by, one after the other, on his right, vaguely unreal, incredible, like the repetition, with minor variations, of the face of one and the same person reproduced in several copies, some black and some white, each with a slightly different expression, absent, so to speak, both from his material envelope and from his natural habitat, transported into some other distant world, uttering inaudible words, listening for inaudible responses recorded and transmitted not by a flesh-and-blood conversational partner but by the ear and mouth of ebonite that he is holding against his own ear and his own mouth, each of them carrying on an interminable, passionate, voluble discourse of his own benefit alone, in a silent and incoherent cacophony, the delegates around the long free baize-covered table all speaking and waving their arms at the same time, the little chairman attempting from time to time to raise his hand to plead for silence, leaning over the microphone placed in front of him, beginning a sentence, then giving up, turning his head to take as his witnesses several people standing behind him, each of whom leans over in turn to look over his shoulder as he mechanically continues to hold his arm up in the air, several arms around the table likewise being raised, like those of pupils in a classroom, the hubbub now having reached its climax, having gone flat, so to speak, cancelling itself out, destroying itself, a sort of quiet sound now (like the lapping of water stirred by the wind in a boat basin where the little waves strike the stone sides of the wharves and bounce back off, bumping into the ones following immediately behind them as they retreat, so that as they mingle and swirl about it it is impossible to make out any predominant orientation or prevailing direction of motion, the water being covered with sharp little pointed crests which appear to rise and fall without ever changing place, the overall surface thus undergoing no visible modification), as though disorder and incoherence constituted the inevitable, natural, stagnant state of affairs, the observers and the journalists sitting in rows like the rings of an onion along the bay windows and the imitation Greek columns also talking, leaning forward so as to hear or see better, certain of them rising to their feet, joining the groups of delegates standing about...

[Conducting Bodies, Simon, C.]