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《Overnight to Many Different Cities》
Back Cover:
"Kaleidoscopically mesmerizing... Powerfully illuminating" -- Village Voice
From New York to Tokyo to hagen to the Radiant City of Le Corbusier, this sophisticated and surreal collec99lib?
gi, w with trol and illusion, Barthelme breaks all rules. Manipulating language with irony, humor, and imagination, he captures the essence of our disorienting times.
"Dizzying and enjoyable" -- Publishers Weekly
"Entig. . . flecked with charm, surprise, and challenge" -- Kirkus Reviews
They called for more structure. . .
They called for more structure, then, so we brought in some big hairy four-by-fours from the back shed and hem into place with railroad spikes. This new city, they said, was going to be just jim-dandy, would make architects stutter, would make Chambers of erce burst into flame. We would have our own witch doctors, and strange gods aplenty, and site-specifis, and humuhumunukunuk?９９ｌｉｂ?uapuaa in the public fish bowls. We workers listened with our mouths agape. We had never heard anything like it. But we trusted our instincts and our paychecks, so we pressed on, bringing in color-coated steel from the back shed and anodized aluminum from the shed behind that. Oh radiant city! we said to ourselves, hoant you to be built! Workplace democracy racticed on the job, and the clerk-of-the-works (who had? knoi L?nn in Finland) wore a little cap with a little feather, very jaunty. There was never any question of hanging back (although we noticed that our ID cards were of a color different from their ID cards); the exercise of our skills, and the promise of the city, were enough. By the light of the moon we ted our chisels and told stories of other buildis we had been involved in: Babel, digarh, Brasilia, Taliesin.
At dawn each day, a-mile run, to dition ourselves for the imp９９ｌiｂ.lausible exploits ahead.
The enormous pumping station, clad in red Lego, at the point where the new river will be activated. . .
Areas of the city, they told us, had been desigo rot, fall into desuetude, return, in time, to open space. Perhaps, they said, fawns would one day romp there, on the crumbling brick. We were slightly skeptical about this part of the plan, but it was, after all, a plan, the ferocious iy of the detailing impressed us all, and standing by the pens taining the faould father the fawns who might so>me day romp on the crumbling brick, one could not help but noties chest bursting with anticipatory pride.
High in the air, w on a setback faced with alternating bands of gray and rose stone capped with grids lass, we moistened our brows with the tails of our shirts, which had been dipped into a pleasing brine, lit new cigars, and saw the new city spread out beh us, in the shape of the word FASTIGIUM. Not the name of the city, they told us, simply a set of letters selected for the elegance of the script. The little girl dead behind the rosebushes came back to life, and the passionate stru tinued.
Visitors
Its three oclo the m.
Bishops daughter is ill, stomach pains. Shes sleeping on the couch.
Bishop too is ill, chills and sweating, a flu. He t sleep. In bed, he listens to the occasional groans from two rooms away. Katie is fifteen and spends the summer with him every year.
Outside oreet, someone kicks on a motorcycle and revs it unfivingly. His bedroom is badly placed.
Hes given her Pepto-Bismol, if she wakes agairy Tylenol. He s himself in the sheet, pulls his t-shirt away from his damp chest.
Theres a radio playing somewhere in the building, big-band music, he feels rather than hears it. The steady, friendly air-ditioner hustling in the room.
Earlier hed takeo a doctor, who found nothing. "Youve got a bellyache," the doctor said, "stick with fluids and call me if it doesnt go away." Katie is beautiful, tall with dark hair.
Iernoon theyd gone, groaning, to a horror movie about wolves taking over the city. At vivid moments she jumped against him, pressing her breasts into his back. He moved away.
When they walk together oreet she takes his arm, holding on tightly (because, he figures, she spends so much of her time away, away). Very often people give them peculiar looks.
Hes been pig up old ladies whove been falling down in front of him, these last few days. Oting in the middle of an interse waving her arms while dangerous Checkers curved arouhe old ladies invariably display a superb fighting spirit. "Thank you, young man!"
Hes forty-nine. Writing a history of 19th tury Ameri painting, about which he knows a thing or two.
Not enough.
A groafelt but muted, from the other room. Shes awake.
He gets up and goes in to look at her. The red-and-white cotton robe shes wearing is, tucked up under her knees. "I just threw up again," she says.
"Did it help?"
"A little."
He once asked her what something (a box? a chair?) was made of and she told him it was made out of tree.
"Do you want to try a glass of milk?"
"I dont want any milk," she says, turning to lie on her front. "Sit with me."
He sits on the edge of the coud rubs her back. "Think of something terrific," he says. "Lets get your mind off your stomach. Think about fishing. Think about the time you threw the hotel keys out of the window." Once, in Paris, she had done just that, from a sixth-floor window, and Bishop had had visions of some Fren walking down the Quai des Grands-Augustins with a set of heavy iron hotel keys buried in his brain. Hed found the keys in a potted plant outside the hotel door.
"Daddy," she says, not looking at him.
"Yes?"
"Why do you live like this? By yourself?"
"Who am I going to live with?"
"You could find somebody. Youre handsome for ye."
"Oh very good. Thats very . I thank you."
"You dont try."
This is and is not true.
"How much do you weigh?"
"Oy-five."
"You could lose some weight."
"Look, kid, gimme a break." He blots his forehead with his arm. "You want some cambric tea?"
"Youve given up."
"Not so," he says. "Katie, go to sleep now. Think of a great big pile of Gucc.i handbags."
She sighs and turns her head away.
Bishop goes into the kit and turns on the light. He wonders what a drink would do to him, or for him -- put him to sleep? He decides against it. He turns oiny kit TV and spends a few minutes watg some kind of Japanese monster movie. The poorly designed monster is pig up handfuls of people and, rather thoughtfully, eating them. Bishop thinks about Tokyo. He was on bed with a Japanese girl during a mild earthquake, and hes never fotten the feeling of the floor falling out from underh him, or the womans terror. He suddenly remembers her name, Michiko. "You no butterfly on me?" she had asked, when they met. He was astoo learn that "butterfly" meant, iois of the time, "abandon." She ?cooked their meals over a charcoal brazier and they slept in a niche in the wall closed off from the rest of her room by sliding paper doors. Bishop worked on the copy desk at Stars & Stripes. One day a wire photo came in showing the heads of the four (then) womens services posing froup portrait. Bishop slugged the caption LEADING LADIES. The elderly master sergeant who was serving as city editht the photo back to Bishops desk. "We t do this," he said. "Aint it a shame?"
He switches els as Dolly Parton singing, by ce, "House of the Rising Sun."
At some point during each summer shell say: "Why did you and my mother split up?"
"It was your fault," he answers. "Yours. You made too muoise, as a kid, I couldnt work." His ex-wife had oold Katie this as an explanation for the divorce, and hell repeat it until its untruth is marble, a mo.
His ex-wife is otherwise very sensible, and thrifty, too.
Why do I live this way? Best I do.
Walking dow Broadway on a Saturday afternoon. Barking art caged in the high white galleries, dont go inside or itll get you, leap into your lap and cover your face with kisses. Some goes to the other extreme, snarls and shows its brilliah. O art I wont hurt you if you dont hurt me. Citizens parading, plump-faced and bone-faced, lightly clad. A young black boy toting a Board of Education trombone case. A fellow with oddly-cut hair the color of marigolds and a roll of roofi over his shoulder.
Bishop in the crowd, thirty dollars in his pocket in case he has to buy a pal a drink.
Into a gallery because it must be dohe artists hung twenty EVERLAST heavy bags in rows of four, youre io have a bash. People are giving the bags every kind of trouble. Bishop, uo resist, bangs oh his fabled left, and hurts his hand.
Bloody artists.
Out oreet again, he is bumped into by a man, then another man, then a woman. And heres Harry in lemon pants with his Britisher friend, Mal.
"Harry, Mal."
"Professor," Harry says ironically (he is a professor, Bishop is not).
Harrys got not much hair and has lost weight since he split with Tom. Mal is the single most cheerful individual Bishop has ever met.
Harrys uy has just hired a new president whos thirty-two. Harry t get over it.
"Thirty-two! I mean I dont think the bot both oars ier."
Standing behind Mal is a beautiful young woman.
"This is Christie," Mal says. "Weve just given her lunch. Weve just eaten all the dim sum in the world."
Bishop is immediately seized by a desire to cook for Christie -- either his Eight-Bean Soup or his Crash Cassoulet.
Shes telling him something about her windows.
"I dont care but why under my windows?"
Shes wearing a purple shirt and is deeply tanned with black hair -- looks like an Indian, in fact, the one who sells Mazola on TV.
Harry is still talking about the new president. "I mean he did his dissertation on bathing trends."
"Well maybe he knows where the big bucks are."
Theres some leftover du the refrigerator he use for the cassoulet.
"Well," he says to Christie, "are you hungry?"
"Yes," she says, "I am."
"We just ate," Harry says. "You t be hungry. You t possibly be hungry."
"Hungry, hungry, hungry," she says, taking Bishops arm, which is, you believe it, stig out.
Putting slices of du bean water while Christie watches "The Adventures of Robin Hood," with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, o TV. At the same time Hank Williams Jr. is singing on the FM.
"I like a place where I take my shoes off," she says, as Errol Flynn throws a whole dead deer on the baable.
Bishop, chopping parsley, is taking quick gla her to see what she looks like with a glass of wine in her hand. Some people look good with white wine, some dont.
He makes a mental o buy some Mazola -- a case, maybe.
"Heres sixty seds on fenders," says the radio.
"Do you live with anybody?" Christie asks.
"My daughter is here sometimes. Summers and Christmas." A little tarragon into the bean?9９ｌｉｂ. water. "How about you?"
"Theres this guy."
But there had to be. Bishop chops steadfastly with his Three Sheep brand ese chopper, made in gray Fusan.
"Hes an artist."
As who is not? "What kind of an artist?"
"A painter. Hes ile. He needs rain."
He throws handfuls of sliced onions into the water, then a of tomato paste.
"How long does this take?" Christie asks. "Im not rushing you, Im just curious."
"Another hour.&quo?9９ｌｉｂ?t;
"Then Ill have a little vodka. Straight. Ice. If you dont mind."
Bishop loves women who drink.
Maybe she smokes!
"Actually I t stand artists," she says.
"Like who in particular?"
"Like that woman who puts chewing gum oomach --"
"She doesnt do that any more. And the chewing gum was not poorly placed."
"And that other one who cuts off parts of himself, whittles on himself, that fries my ass."
"Its supposed to."
"Yeah," she says, shaking the i her glass. "Im reag like a bozo."
She gets up and walks over to the ter and takes a Lark from his pack.
Very happily, Bishop begins to talk. He tells her that the night before he had smelled smoke, had gotten up and checked the apartment, knowing that a pier was on fire over by the river and suspeg it was that. He had turned oV to get the all-news el and while dialing had entered the opening credits of a Richard Widmark cop film called "Brocks Last Case" which he had then sat down and watched, his faithful Scotch at his side, until five oclo the m. Richard Widmark was one of his favorite actors in the whole world, he told her, because of the way in which Richard Widmark was able to vey, what was the word, resilience. You could knock Richard Widmark down, he said, you could even knock Richard Widmark dowedly, but you had better bear in mind while knog Richard Widmark down that Richard Widmark retty damn sure going to bounce back up and batter your k --
"Redford is the one I like," she says.
Bishop uand this. He nods seriously.
"The thing I like about Redford is," she says, and for ten minutes she tells him about Robert Redford.
He tastes the cassoulet with a long spoon. More salt.
It appears that she is also mighty fond of t Eastwood.
Bishop has the sehat the versation has strayed, like a bad cow, from the proper path.
"Old t Eastwood," he says, shaking his head admiringly. "Were ready."
He dishes up the cassoulet aches hot bread from the oven.
"Tastes like real cassoulet," she says.
"Thats the ox-tail soup mix." Why is he serving her cassoulet in summer? Its hot.
Hes opened a bottle of Robert Mondavi table red.
"Very good," she says. "I mean Im surprised. Really."
"Maybe could have had more tomato."
"No, really." She tears off a fistful of French bread. "Men are quite odd. I saw this guy at the farmers market on Union Square on Saturday? He was standing in front of a table full of greens and radishes and and this and that, behind a bunch of other people, and he was staring at this farmer-girl earing cut-offs and a tank top and every time she leaned over to grab a cabbage or whatnot he was getting a shot of her breasts, which were, to be fair, quite pretty -- I mean how much fun that be?"
"Moderate amount of fun. Some fun. Not much fun. What I say?"
"And that plug I live with."
"What about him?"
"He gave me a book once."
"What was it?"
"Book about how to fix home appliahe dishwasher was broken. Then he bought me a screwdriver. This really nice screwdriver."
"Well."
"I fixed the damned dishwasher. Took me two days."
"Would you like to go to bed now?"
"No," Christie says, "not yet."
Not yet! Very happily, Bishop pours more wine.
Now hes sweating, little chills at intervals. He gets a sheet from the bedroom and sits i with the sheet draped around him, guru-style. He hear Katie turnilessly on the couch.
He admires the way she anizes her life -- that is, the way she gets done what she wants done. A little wangling, a little nagging, a little lets-go-take-a-look and Bishop has spru??ng for a new pair of boots, handsome ankle-height black diablo hat shell wear with black ski pants. . .
Well, he doesnt give her many presents.
Could he bear a Scotch? He thinks not.
He remembers a dream in which he dreamed that his nose was as dark and red as a Bing cherry. As would be appropriate.
"Daddy?"
Still wearing the yellow sheet, he gets up and goes into the other room.
"I t sleep."
"Im sorry."
"Talk to me."
Bishop sits again on the edge of the couch. How large she is!
He gives her his Art History lecture.
"Then you get Mo- and Ma-hats a little tricky, Mo- was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma- was the one did Bareass On the Grass and shit, his colors were browns and greens. Then you get Bonnard, he did all the interiors and shit, amazing light, and then you get Van Guk, hes the oh the ear and shit, and Say-zanne, hes the oh the apples and shit, you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures, you get my man Mondriahe oh the regles and shit, his colors were red yellow and blue, you get Moholy-Nagy, he did all the plastic thingummies and shit, you get Mar-cel Du-champ, hes the devil in human form. . ."
Shes asleep.
Bishop goes bato the kit and makes himself a drink.
Its five-thirty. Faint light in the big windows.
Christies ile, and plans to stay.
Looking out of the windows in the early m he sometimes see the two old ladies who live in the apartment whose garden backs up to his building having breakfast by dlelight. He ever figure out whether they are terminally romantic or whether, rather, theyre trying to save electricity.
Financially, the paper is quite healthy
Financially, the paper is quite healthy. The papers timberlands, mining is, pulp and paper operations, book, magazine, cated-box, and greeting-card divisions, film, radio, television, and cable panies, and data-processing and satellite-unications groups are all flourishing, with over-all return on ied capital increasing at about eleven per t a year. pensation of the three highest-paid officers and directors last year was $399,500, $362,700, and $335,400 respectively, exclusive of profit-sharing and pensio.n-plan accruals.
But top ma is disced and saddened, and middle ma is drinking too much. Morale in the newsroom is fair, because of the ret raises, but the shining brows of the copy boys, traditional emblems of energy and hope, have begun to display odd, unattractive lines. At every level, even down into the depths of the pressroom, where the pressmen defiantly wear their square dirty folded-paper caps, people want ma to stop what it is doing before it is too late.
The new VDT maes have hurt the paper, no doubt about it. The people in the newsroom dont like the maes. (A few say they like the maes but these are the same peopbbr>?le who like the washrooms.) When the maes go down, as they do, not infrequently, the people in the newsroom laugh and cheer. The executive editor has installed one-way glass in his office door, and stands behind it looking out over the newsroom, fretting and groaning. Retly the paper ran the same stock tables every day for a week. No oiced, no one plained.
Middle ma has implored top ma to alter its course. Top ma has responded with postdated guarantees, on a sliding scale. The Guild is off in a er, whimpering. The pressmen are holding an unending series of birthday parties orating heroes of labor. Reporters file their stories as usual, but if they are certain kinds of stories they do not run. A small example: the paper did not run a Holiday Weekeh Toll story after Labor Day this year, the first time since 藏书网1926 no Holiday Weekeh Toll story appeared in the paper after Labor Day (and the total was, although not a record, a substantial one).
Some elements of the staff are not depressed. The papers very creative real-estate editor has been a fountain of ideas, and his ses, full of color pictures of desirable living arras, are choked with advertising and make the Sunday paper fat, fat, fat, fat. More food writers have been hired, and more clothes writers, and more furniture writers, and more plant writers. The bridge, whist, skat, cribbage, domino, and vi-un nists are very popular.
The Editors Caucus has once again applied to middle ma for relief, and has once again been promised it (but middle ma has Glenfiddi its breath, even at breakfast). Top mas polls say that sixty-five per t of the readers "want movies," and feasibility studies are being ducted. Top ma aowledges, over long lu good restaurants, that the readers are wrong to "want movies" but insists that morality ot be legislated. The newsroom has been insulated (with products from the paex division) so that the people in the newsroom o longer hear the sounds ireets.
The papers editorials have been subtracted to Texas Instruments, and the obituaries to Nabisco, so that the staff will have "more time to think." The fn desk is turning out language lessons ("Yo temo que Isabel no venga," "I am afraid that Isabel will not e"). There was an especially lively front page on Tuesday. The No. 1 story epperoni -- a useful and exhaustive guide. It ran right o the slimming-your-troublesome-thighs story, with pictures.
Top ma has vowed to stop what it is doing -- not now but soon, soon. A chamber orchestra has been formed among the people in the newsroom, and we play Haydn until the sun es up.
Affection
How do you want to cook this fish? How do you want to cook this fish? Harris asked.
What?
Claire heard: How do you want to cook this fish?
Breaded, she said.
Fine, Harris said.
What?
Fine!
We have not slept together for three hundred nights, she thought. We have not slept together for three hundred nights.
His rough, tender hands not ed around me.
Lawnmower. His rough, tender hands ed around the handles of the lawnmower. Not around me.
What?
Where did you hide the bread crumbs?
What?
The bread crumbs!
Behind the Cheerios!
Claire telephoned her mother. Her mothers sel was broccoli, mostly, but who else was she going to talk to?
What?
You have to be optimistic. Be be be. Optimistic.
What?
Optimistic, her mother said, they gh phases. As they get older. They have less toleranonotony.
Im monotony?
They gh phases. As they grow older. They like to think that their futures are ahead of them. This is ludicrous, of course --
Oh oh oh oh.
Ludicrous, of course, but I have never yet met one who didnt think that way until he got played out then they sink into a fortable lassitude take to wearing those horrible old-geezer hats. . .
What?
Hats with the green plastic bills, golf hats or whatever they are --
Harris, Claire said to her husband, youve stopped watering the plants.
What?
Youve stopped watering the plants my mother always said that wheopped watering the plants that was a sure sign of an impending marital breakup.
Your mother reads too much.
What?
Sarah decided that she and Harris should not sleep together any longer.
Harris said, What about hugging?
What?
Hugging.
Sarah said that she would have a ruling on hugging in a few days and that he should stand by for further information. She pulled the black lace mantilla down to veil her face as they left the empty church.
I have dohe right thing the right thing. I am right.
Claire came in wearing her brown coat and carrying a large broer bag. Look what I got! she said excitedly.
What? Harris said.
She reached into the bag and pulled out a smeary plastic tray with six frozen shell steaks on it. The steaks looked like they had died in the eentbbr>h tury.
Six dollars! Claire said. This guy came into the laundromat and said he was making deliveries to restaurants and some of the restaurants already had all the steaks they needed and now he had these left over and they were only six dollars. Six dollars.
You spent six dollars on these?
Other people bought some too.
Diseased, stolen steaks?
He was wearing a white coat, Claire said. He had a truck.
Ill bet he had a truck.
Harris went to see Madam Olympia, a reader and advisor. Her office was one room in a bad part of the city. Chi wings burned in a frying pan oove. She got up and turhem off, then got up and turhem on again. She was wearing a t-shirt that had "Buffalo, City of No Illusions" printed on it.
Tell me about yourself, she said.
My life is hell, Harris said. He sketched the circumstances.
I am bored to tears with this sort of thing, Madam Olympia said. To tears to tears.
Well, Harris said, me too.
Woman wakes up in the middle of the night, Madam Olympia said, she goes, what you thinkin about? You go, the float. She goes, is the float makin us money or not makin us money? You go, it depends on what happens Wednesday. She goes, thats nice. You go, what do you mean, you dont uand dick about the float, woman. She goes, well you dont have to be nasty. You go, Im not being nasty, you just dont uand. She goes, so why dont you tell me? Behind this, endas on both sides.
The float is a secret, Harris said. Many men dont even know about the float.
To tears to tears to tears.
Right, Harr?is said. How much do I owe you?
Fifty dollars.
The unity whispered: Are they still living? How many times a week? What is that symbol on your breast? Did they sent to sign it? Did they refuse to sign it? In the rain? Before the fire? Has there bee loss? Hoounds? What is their favorite color? Have they been audited? Was there a his side of the bed and a her side of the bed? Did she make it herself? we have a taste? Have they stolen money? Have they stolen stamps? he ride a horse? he ride a steer? What is his best time in the .calf scramble? Is there money? Was there money? What happeo the money? What will happen to the money? Did success e early or late? Did success e? A red wig? At the Junior League? A red dress with a red wig? Was she ever a Fauve? Is that a theoretical position or a real position? Would they do it again? Again and again? How many times? A thousand times?
Claire met Sweet Papa Cream Puff, a new person. He was the house pianist at Bells, a club frequented by dissolate women in the early afternoons.
He was a huge man and said that he was a living legend.
What?
Living legend, he said.
I didnt he "Sweet Papa Cream Puff Blues" by that name, he said. It was named by the people of Chicago.
Oh my oh my oh my, Claire said.
This musta been bout eey-owenty-two, he said.
Those was wonderful days.
There was oher man, at that time, who had part of my fame.
Fellow named Red Top, hes dead now.
He was very good, scared me a little bit.
I studied him.
I had two or three situations on the problem.
I worked very hard aed him in eey-three. June of that year.
Wow, Claire said.
Zum, Sweet Papa Cream Puff sang, zum zum zum zum zum.
Six perfect treble notes in the side pocket.
Sarah calls Harris from the i Detroit and floors him with the news of her "miscarriage." Saddened by the loss of the baby, hes heless elated to be free of his "obligation." But when Harris rushes to declare his love for Claire, hes crushed to learn that she is married to Sarah. Hoping against hope that Harris will stay with her, Sarah returns. Harris is hung over from drinking too much the night before when Sarah demands to know if he wants her. Uo decide at first, he yields to Sarahs feigned helplessness and tells her to stay. Later, they share a pleasant di the Riverboat, where Claire is a waiter. Harris is impressed to learn that Sarah refused to join in his mothers plan to dissuade him from being a poli. Claire is embrag Harris before his departure when Sarah ehe office. When Harris is caught shoplifting, Claires kid sister, terrified at having to face a court appearance, signs for his release. Missing Sarah terribly, Harris calls her from New Orleans; wheells him about being chairwoman of Claires new bank, he hangs up angrily. Although theyve separated, his feelings for Claire havent died entirely, and her growing involvement with his new partner, Sarah, is a bitter pill for him to swallow, as he sits alone drinking too much brandy in Sarahs study. Sarah blazes with anger when she finds Claire iels ba office making arras for Harriss testimonial dinner, as Sarah, her right leg in a cast, walks up the steps of the brownstone and punches Claires bell, rage clearly burning in her eyes.
Sarah visited Dr. Whorf, a good psychiatrist.
Cold as death, she said.
What?
Cold as death.
Good behavior is frequently painful, Dr. Whorf said. Shit you know that.
Sarah was surprised to find that what she had told Dr. Whorf was absolutely true. She was fully miserable.
Harris drunk again and yelling at Claire said that he was not drunk.
I feel worse than you feel, she said.
What?
Worse, she said, woooooooorrrssse.
You know what I saw this m? he asked. Eight oclo the m. I was out walking.
Guy es out of this house, wearing a suit, carrying an attaché case.
Hes going to work, right?
He gets about ten steps down the sidewalk and this woman es out. Out of the same house.
She says, "James?"
He turns around and walks back toward her.
Shes wearing a robe. Pink and e.
She says, "James, I. . . hate. . . you."
Maybe its everywhere, Claire said. A pandemic.
I dont think that, Harris said.
This is the filthiest phone booth Ive ever been in, Harris said to Sarah.
What?
The filthiest phone booth I have ever been in.
Hang up darling hang up and find another phone booth thank you for the jewels the pearls and the emeralds and the onyx but I havent ged my mind theyre quite quite beautiful just amazing but I havent ged my mind youre so kind but I have dohe right thing painful as it was and I havent ged my mind --
He remembered her standing over the toothpaste with her face two inches from the toothpaste because she could without her tacts in.
Freud said, Claire said, that in the adult, y always stitutes the dition fasm.
Sweet Papa looked away.
Oh me oh my.
Well you know the gents they dont know what they after they own selves, very often.
When do they find out?
At the eleventh hour let me play you a little thing I wrote in the early part of the tury I call it "Verkl?rte Nacht" that means "stormy weather" in German, I played there in Berlin oh about --
Claire placed her arms around Sweet Papa Cream Puff and hugged the stuffing out of him.
What?
What?
What?
What?
By a lucky stroke Harris made an amount of money in the market. He bought Claire a beautiful black opal. She leased.
He looked to the future.
Claire will tio be wonderful.
As will I, to the best of my ability.
The New York Times will be published every day and I will have to wash it off my hands when I have finished reading it, every day.
What? Claire said.
Smile.
What?
Smile.
I put a name in an envelope
I put a name in an envelope, and sealed the envelope; and put that envelope in another envelope with a spittlebug and some quantity of boric acid; and put that envelope in a still larger envelope which tained also a woman tearing her gloves to tatters; and put that envelope in the mail to Fichtelgebirge. At the Fichtelgebirge Post Office I asked if there was mail for me, with a mysterious smile the clerk said, "Yes," I hurried with the envelope to London, arriving with snout the envelope in the Victoria and Albert Museum, bowing to the curators in the Envelope Room, where the ap. dark, one is fair.
Large (eight by te) sheets of white paper on the floor, eight of them. The total area covered is about four hundred square feet; some of the sheets overlap. A string quartet is playing at one edge of this area, and irregular rows of formally dressed spectators sit in gilt chairs across the paper from the players. A large bucket of blue paint has been placed on the paper. Two young women, naked. Each has her hair rolled up in a bun; each has been splashed, breasts, belly, thighs, with blue paint. One, on her belly, is being dragged across the paper by the other, who is standing, gripping the first womans wrists. Their backs are not painted. Or not painted with. The artist is Yves Klein.
Nowhere -- the middle of it, its exact ter. Standing there, a telephone booth, green with tarnished aluminum, the word PHONE and the systems symbol (bell in ring) in medium blue. Ihe telephone booth, two young women, one dark, one fair, fag each other. Their naked breasts and thighs brush lightly (one holding the receiver to the others ear) as they place calls to their mothers in California. In profile to the se, at far right, Beo Cellini, wearing white overalls.
Two young men, ed as gifts. They have ed themselves carefully, tight pants, open-throated shirts, shoes with stacked heels, gold jewelry ht a wrists, codpieces stuffed with credit cards. They stand, under a Christmas tree big as an office building, and women rush toward them. Or they stand, under a Christmas tree big as an office building, and no women rush toward them. A voice singier songs, hallelujahs.
Gees de La Tour, wearing white overalls (Iron Boy brand) is attending a film. On the s two young women, naked, are playing Ping-Pong. One makes a swipe with her paddle at a ball the other has placed just over the and misses, bruising her right leg on the edge of the table. The other puts down her paddle and walks gracefully around the table to examihe hurt; she places her hands oher side of the raw, ugly mark. . . Gees de La Tour picks up his hat and walks from the theatre. In the lobby he purchases a bag of M & Ms which he opens with his teeth.
The world of work: Two young women, one dark, one fair, wearing web belts to which teens are attached, nothing more. They are sitting side-by-side on high stools (00 00) before a pair hting tables, inking-in pencil drawings. Or, in a lumberyard in Southern Illinois, they are unloading a railroad car taining 藏书网several huhousand board feet of Southern yellow pine. Or, in the posing room of a medium-sized Akron daily, they are passing long pieces of paper through a mae which deposits a thin coating of wax on the back side, and then positioning the type on a page. Or, they are driving identical Yellow cabs which are rag side-by-side up Park Aveh frightened passengers, each driver trying to beat the other to a hole iraffic. Or, they are seated at adjat desks in the beige-carpeted area set aside for officers in a bank, refusing loans. Or, they are standi over, hands on knees, peering into the site of an archeological dig in the Cameroons. Or, they are teag, in adjat classrooms, Naked Physics -- in the classroom on the left, Naked Physics I, and in the classroom on the right, Naked Physics II. Or, they are kneeling, sitting on their heels, before a pair of shoes藏书网hiands.
Two young women, wearing web belts to which teens are attached, nothing more, marg down Broadway again. They are followed by aed crowd, bands, etc.
Two women, one dark and one fair, wearing parkas, blue wool watch caps on their heads, iing a row of naked satyrs, hairy-legged, split-footed, tailed and tufted, who hang from hooks in a meat lock.er where the temperature is a stant 18 degrees. The womeig the satyrs uhe tail, where they are most vulnerable, with their long white (nimble) fiipped with long curved scarlet nails. The satyrs squirm and dander this treatment, hanging from hooks, while other womeed in red plush armchairs, in the meat locker, applaud, or scold, or knit. H he thermostat, Vladimir Tallin, in an asbestos tuxedo.
Two women, one dark and one fair, wearing parkas, blue wool watch caps on their heads, iing a row of naked young men, hairy-legged, many-toed, pale and shivering, who hang on hooks in a meat locker where the temperature is a stant 18 degrees. The womeig the men uhe tail, where they are most vulnerable, with their long white (nimble) fiipped with long curved scarlet nails. The young men squirm and dander this treatment, hanging from hooks, while giant eggs, seated in red plush chairs, boil.
Conversations With Goethe
November 13, 1823
I was walking home from the theatre with Goethe this evening when we saw a small boy in a plum-colored waistcoat. Youth, Goethe said, is the silky apple butter on the good brown bread of possibility.
December 9, 1823
Goethe had sent me an invitation to dinner. As I entered his sitting room I found him warming his hands before a cheerful fire. We discussed the meal to e at some length, for the planning of it had been an occasion of earhought to him and he was in quite good spirits about the anticipated results, whicluded sweetbreads prepared in the French manner with celery root and paprika. Food, said Goethe, is the topmost taper on the golden delabrum of existence.
January 11, 1824
Dinner aloh Goethe. Goethe said, "I will now fide to you some of my ideas about musiething I have been sidering for many years. You will have hat although certain members of the animal kingdom make a kind of music -- one speaks of the song of birds, does o? -- no animal known to us takes part in what may be termed an anized musical performance. Man alone does that. I have wondered about crickets -- whether their evening caight be .９9ｌib?sidered in this light, as a species of performance, albeit one of little significe to our ears. I have asked Humboldt about it, and Humboldt replied that he thought not, that it is merely a sort of ti the part of crickets. The great point here, the point that I may choose to enlarge upon in some future work, is not that the members of the animal kingdom do not unite wholeheartedly in this musical way but that mao the eternal fort and glory of his soul."
Music, Goethe said, is the frozen tapio the ice chest of History.
March 22, 1824
Goethe had been desirous of making the acquaintance of a young Englishman, a Lieutenant Whitby, then in Weimar on business. I ducted this gentleman to Goethes house, where Goethe greeted us most cordially and offered us wine and biscuits. English, he said, was a wholly splendid language, which had given him the deepest pleasure over many藏书网
years. He had mastered it early, he told us, in order to be able to savor the felicities and tragic depths of Shakespeare, with whom no author in the world, before or since, could rightfully be pared. We were in a most pleasant mood and tio talk about the aplishments of the young Englishmans trymen until quite late. The English, Goethe said in parting, are the shining brown varnish on the sad chiffonier of civilization. Lieutenant Whitby blushed most noticeably.
April 7, 1824
Wheered Goethes house at noon, a ed parcel was standing in the foyer. "And what do you imagihis may be?" asked Goethe with a smile. I could not for the life of me fathom what the parcel might tain, for it was most oddly shaped. Goethe explaihat it was a sculpture, a gift from his friend van den Broot, ..he Dutch artist. He uned the package with the utmost care, and I was seized with admiratiohe noble figure within was revealed: a representation, in bronze, of a young woman dressed as Diana, her bow bent and an arrow oring. We marveled together at the perfe of form and fineness of detail, most of all at the indefinable aura of spirituality which radiated from the work. "Truly astonishing!" Goethe exclaimed, and I hasteo agree. Art, Goethe said, is the four per t i on the municipal bond of life. He was very pleased with this remark aed it several times.
June 18, 1824
Goethe had been having great difficulties with a particular actress at the theatre, a person who ceived that her own notion of how her role was to be played was superior to Goethes. "It is not enough," he said, sighing, "that I have mimed every gesture for the poor creature, that nothing has bee unexplored in this character I myself have created, willed into being. She persists in what she terms her interpretation, which is ruining the play." He went on to discuss the sorrows of managing a theatre, even the fi, and the exhaustiail that must be atteo, every jot and tittle, if the performances are to be fit for a discriminating public. Actors, he said, are the Scotch weevils in the salt pork of ho effort. I loved him more than ever, and we parted with an affeate handshake.
September 1, 1824
Today Goethe inveighed against certain critics who had, he said, pletely misuood Lessing. He spoke movingly about how such obtuseness had partially embittered Lessings last years, and speculated that . was because Lessing was both critid dramatist that the attacks had been of more than usual ferocity. Critics, Goethe said, are the cracked mirror in the grand ballroom of the creative spirit. No, I said, they were, rather, the extra baggage on the great cabriolet of ceptual progress. "Eckermann," said Goethe, "shut up."
Well we all had our Willie。。。
Well we all had our Willie & Wade records cept this one guy who was called Spare Some ge? cause thats all he ever said and you dont have no Willie & Wade records if the best you do is Spare Some ge?
So we all took our Willie & Wade records down to the Willie & ark and played all the great and sad Willie & Wade songs on portable players for the beasts of the city, the jumpy black squirrels and burnt-looking dogs and filthy, sick pigeons.
And I thought probably one day Willie or Wade would show up in person at the Willie & ark to check things out, see who was there and what record this person laying and what record that person laying.
And probably Willie (or Wade) would just ease around cheg things out, saying "Howdy" to this one and that one, and hed see the crazy black guy in Army clothes who stands in the Willie & ark and every ten minutes, screams like a chi, and Willie (or Wade) would just say to that guy, "How ya doin good buddy?" and smile, cause strahings dont bother Willie, or Wade, o.
And I thought Id probably go up to Willie then, if it was Willie, and tell him bout my friend that died, a>nd how I felt about it at the time, and how I feel about it now. And Willie would say, "I know."
And I would maybe ask him d..id he remember Galveston, and did he ever when he was a kid play in the old crete forts along the sea wall with the giant on ihat the gover didnt want any more, and hed say, "Sure I did." And Id say, "You ever work the Blue Jay in San Antone?" and hed say, "Sure I have."
And Id say, "Willie, dont them microphones scare you, the ones with the little fuzzy sweaters on them?" And hed say to me, "They scare me bad, potner, but I do on."
And then he (one or the other, Willie or Wade) would say, "Take care, good buddy," and leave the Willie & ark in his black limousine９９lｉb. that the driver of had been waiting patiently in all this time, and I would never see him again, but tio treasure, all my life, his great tributions.
Henrietta and Alexandra
Alexandra was reading Heas manuscript.
"This," she said, pointing with her finger, "is inane."
Hea got up and looked over Alexandras shoulder at the sentence.
"Yes," she said. "I prefer the inane, sometimes. The ane is often inutile to the artist."
There was a moment of plation.
"I have been offered a thousand florins for it," Hea said. "The Dutch rights."
"How much is that in our money?"
"Two hundred sixty-six dollars."
"Bless Babel," Alexandra said, and took her friend in her arms.
Hea said: "Once I was a young girl, very much like any other young girl, ied in the same things, I was exemplary. I was told what I was, that is to say a young girl, and I knew what I was because I had been told and because there were other young girls all around me who had been told the same things and khe same things, and looking at them and hearing again in my head the things I had been told I knew what a young girl was. We had all been told the same things. I had not been told, for example, that some wine iss and some not and I had not been told. . . other things. Still I had been told a great many things all very useful but I had not been told that I was going to die in any way that would allow me to realize that I really was going to die and that it would be all over, then, and that this was all there .９9ｌib.was and that I had damned well better make the most of it. That I discovered for myself and covered with shame and shit as I was I made the most of it. I had not been told how to make the most of it but I figured it out. Then I moved through a period of depression, the depression engendered by the realization that I had placed myself beyond the pale, there I was, beyond the pale. Then I discovered that there were other people beyond the pale with me, that there were quite as many people on the wrong side of the pale as there were on the right side of the pale and that the people on the wrong side of the pale were as plex as the people on the right side of the pale, as unhappy, as subjee, as subject to death. So what the fuck? I said to myself in the colorful language I had learned on the wrong side of the pale. By this time I was no longer a young girl. I was mature."
Alexandra had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart.
THEORIES OF THE SACRED HEART
LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SACRED HEART
FLIG CLAIMS OF THE GREAT CATHEDRALS
THE SACRED HEART IN PORARY IOGRAPHY
APPEARANCE OF SPURIOUS SACRED HEARTS AND HOW THEY MAY BE DISTINGUISHED FROM THE TRUE ONE
LOCATION OF THE TRUE SACRED HEART REVEALED
HOW THE ABBE ST. GERMAIN PRESERVED THE TRUE SACRED HEART FROM THE HANDS OF THE BARBARIANS
WHY THE SACRED HEART IS FREQUENTLY REPRESENTED SURMOUNTED BY A OF THORNS
MEANING OF THE TINT TONGUE OF FLAME
ORDERS AND CEREMONIES IN THE VEION OF THE SACRED HEART
ROLE OF THE SACRED HEART SOCIETY IN THE VEION OF THE SACRED HEART
Alexandra was also a member of the Knights of St. Dympna, patroness of the insane.
Alexandra and Hea were walking 藏书网dowreet in their long gowns. A man looked at them and laughed. Alexandra and Hea rushed at him and scratched his eyes out.
As a designer of artificial ruins, Alexandra was well-known. She designed ruins in the manners of Langley, Effner, Robert Adam and arni, as well as her own manner. She was w on a ruin for a park in Tempe, Arizona, sisting of a ruined wall nicely disied at the top and one end, two classical ns upright and one fallen, vines, and a number of broken urns. The urns were difficult because it was necessary to produce them from intact urns and the workmen at the site were ofteant to do violeo the urns. Sometimes she preteo lose her temper. "Hurl the bloody urn, Umberto!"
Alexandra looked at herself in the mirror. She admired her breasts, her belly, and her legs, which were, she felt, her best feature.
"Now I will go into the other room and astonish Hea, who is also beautiful."
Hea stood up and, with a heaving motion, threw the manuscript of her novel into the fire. The manuscript of the novel she had been w on ceaselessly, night and day, for the last ten years.
"Alexandra! Arent you going to rush to the fire and pull the manuscript of my novel out of it?"
"No."
Hea rushed to the fire and pulled the manuscript out of it. Only the first and last pages were fully burned, and luckily, she remembered what was written there.
Hea decided that Alexandra did not love her enough. And how could nuances of despair be expressed if you couldnt throw your novel into the fire safely?
Alexandra was sending a petition to Rome. She wanted her old marriage, a dim marriage ten years old to a man named Black Dog, annulled. Alexandra read the rules about sendiions to Rome to Hea.
"All applications to be sent to Rome should be written on good paper, and a double sheet, 8? inches x 10? inches, should be employed. The writing of petitions should be doh ink of a good quality, that will remain legible for a long time. Petitions are generally posed iin language, but the use of the Frend Italian languages is also permissible.
"The fual rule to be observed is that all petitions must be addressed to the Pope, who, directly or ily, grants the requested favors. Hehe regulation form of address in all petitions reads Beatissime Pater. Following this the petition opens with the ary deferential phrase ad pedes Sanctitatis Vestrae humillime provolutus. The cluding formula is indicated by its opening words: Et Deus. . . expressing the prayer of blessing which the grateful petitioner addresses in advao God for the expected favor.
"After introdu, body and clusion of the petition have been duly drawn, the sheet is evenly folded length-wise, and on its back, to the right of the fold line, are ihe date of the presentation and the petitioners name.
"The presentation of petitions is generally made through a, whose name is inscribed in the right-hand er on the back of the petition. This signature is necessary because the agent will call for the grant, and the gregations deliver rescripts to no o the agent whose name is thus recorded. The agents, furthermore, pay the fee and taxes for the requested rescripts of favive any necessary explanations and ents that may be required, and are at all times in touch with the authorities in order to correy mistakes or defects iitions. Between the hours of nine and one oclock the agents gather in the offices of the Curial administration to hand in new petitions and to inquire about the fate of those not yet decided. Many of them also go to the anterooms of secretaries in order to discuss important matters personally with the leading officials.
"For lay persons it is as a rule useless to foretitions through the mails to the Roman gregations, because as a matter of principle they will not be sidered. Equally useless, of course, would be the enclosing of postage stamps with such petitions. Applications by telegraph are not permitted because of their publicity. Nor are decisions ever given by telegraph."
Alexandra stopped reading.
"Jesus Christ!" Hea said.
"This wine is piss," Alexandra said.
"You drink it then."
"Ill have anlass."
"You wanted me to buy California wine," Hea said.
"But theres no reason to buy absolute vinegar is there? I mean couldnt you have asked the man at the store?"
"They dont always tell the truth."
"I remember that time in Chicago," Alexandra said. "That was a good bottle. And afterwards. . ."
"How much did we pay for that bottle?" Hea asked, incuriously.
"Twelve dollars. Or ten dollars. Ten or twelve."
"The hotel," Hea said. "Snapdragons on the night table."
"You were. . . exquisite."
"I was mature," Hea said.
"If you were mature then, what are you now?"
"More mature," Hea said. "Maturation is a process that is ongoing."
"When are you old?" Alexandra asked.
"Not while love is here," Hea said.
Hea said: "Now I am mature. In maturity I found a rich world beyond the pale and found it possible to live in that world with a degree of enthusiasm. My mother says I am deluded but I have stopped talking to my mother. My father is dead and thus has no opinion. Alexandra tio heap up indulgences by exclaiming Jesus, Mary and Joseph! which is worth an indulgence of fifty days each time it is exclaimed. Some of the choicer ejaculations are worth seven years and seven quarantines and these she pursues with the i cupidity of the small ior. She keeps her totals in a little book. I love her. She has to date worked off eighteen thousand years in the flames of Purgatory. I tell her that the whole thing is a shuck but she refuses to sider my views on this point. Alexandra is immature in that she thinks she will live forever, live after she is dead at the right hand of God in His glory with His power and His angels and His whatnot and I ot persuade her otherwise. Joseph rad will live forever but Alexandra will not. I love her. Now we are going out."
Hea and Alexandra went walking. They were holding each others arms. Alexandra moved a hand sensuously with a circular motion around one of Heas breasts. Hea did the same thing to Alexandra. People were looking at them with strange expressions on their faces. They tinued walking, uhe shaped trees of the boulevard. They were swooning with pleasure, more or less. Someone called the police.
Speaking of the human body
Speaking of the human body, Klee said: One bone alone achieves nothing.
P this, people placed lamps on all of the street ers, and sofas o the lamps. People sat on the sofas and read Spinoza there, an iing glare cast on the pages by the dithering instant traffic lights. At other points, oreet, four-poster beds were planted, and loving couples slept or watched television together, the sets ected to the empty houses behind them by long black cables. Else９9ｌｉｂ.
ervid evocation of Umbriaal states, an important dark-brown bruising of Arches paper by a printer of modern life.
One man hung all of his shirts on the railing b a sidewalk, he had thirty-nine, and another was brushing hibbr>s teeth in his bathrobe, another was waxing his fine moustache, a woman was marking cards with a little prickly roller so that her husband, the gambler, would win forever. A man said, "Say, mon, fix me some of dem chitlins you fry so well," and another man said, "Howard, my son, I am now going to show you how to blow glass" -- he dipped his glass-blowing tube into a furnace of bubbling glass, there oreet, and blew a rathskeller of beer glasses, each goldenly full.
Ihe abandoned houses subway trains rushed in both dires and genuine nameless animals ate each other with ghastly fervor --
Monday. Many individuals are grasping hold of the sewer grates with both hands, a maion, in the words of S. Moholy-Nagy, of the tragic termination of the will to fly.
The Sea of Hesitation
"If Ja had pressed McClellan in White Oak S," Francesca said. "If Longstreet had proceeded vigorously on the first day at Seanassas. If we had had the 40,000 pairs of shoes we needed wheered Maryland. If Bloss had not found the envelope taining the two cigars and the copy of Lees Secret Order No. 191 at Frederick. If the pneumonia had not taken Ja. If Ewell had secured possession of Cemetery Heights on the first day of Gettysburg. If Picketts charge. . . If Earlys marto the Valley. . . If we had had suffit food for our troops at Petersburg. If our atta Fort Stedman had succeeded. If Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee had not indulged in a shad bake at Five Forks. If there had been stores and provisions as promised at Amelia Court House. If Ewell had not been captured at Saylors Creek together with sixteen artillery pieces and four hundred wagons. If Lee had uood Lin -- his mind, his larger iions. If there had been a degree of peten our civilian administration equal to that exhibited by the military. Then, perhaps, matters would have been brought to a happier clusion."
"Yes," I said.
Francesca is slightly obsessed. But one must let people talk about what they want to talk about. One must let people do what they want to do.
This m in the mail I received an abusive letter from a woman in Prague.
Dear Greasy Thomas:
You ot uand what a pig you are. You are a pig, you idiot. You think you uand things but there is nothing you uand, nothing, idiot pig-swine. You have not wisdom and you have no discretion and nothing be dohout wisdom and discretion. How did a pig-cretin like yourself ever wriggle into life? Why do you exist still, vulgar swine? If you dont think I am going to inform the gover of your inappropriate tinued existence, a stain on the trys face. . . You expect Federal Marshals in clouds very soon, cretin-hideous-swine, and I will laugh as they haul you away in their green vans, ugly toad. You know nothing about anything, garbage-face, and the idea that you would dare "think" for others (I know you are not capable of "feeling") is so wildly eous that I would laugh out loud if I were not sick of your importunate p, egregious fraud-pig. You are not even an ho pig which is at least of some use in the world, you are rather an o of pig-dip poisoning everything you touch. I do not like you at all.
Love,
Jinka
I read the letter twice. She is certainly angry. But one must let people do what they want to do.
I work for the City. In the Human Effort Administration. My work sists of processing applications. People apply for all sorts of things. I approve all applications and buck them upwards, where they are usually disapproved. Upstairs they do not agree with me, that people should be permitted to do what they want to do. Upstairs they have different ideas. But "different ideas" are weled, in my particular os.
Before I worked for the City I was ied in ging behavior. I thought behavior could be ged. I had a B.A. in psychology, was w on an M.A. I was into sensory deprivation. I did sensory deprivation studies for a while at McGill and later at Prion.
At McGill we inhabited the basement of Taub Hall, believed to be the first building in the world devoted exclusively to the study of hatred. But we were not studying hatred, we were doing black-box work and the hatred people kindly lent us their basement. I was in charge of the less intelligent subjects (the subjects were divided into less intelligent and more intelligent). I spent two years in the basement of Taub Hall and learned many iing things.
The temperature of the head does not decrease in sleep. The temperature of the rest of the body does.
There I sat for weeks on end monit subjects who had half Ping-Pong balls taped over their eyes and a white-noise geor at 40db singing in their ears. I volunteered as a subjed, gratified at being assigo the "more intelligent" group, spent many many hours in the black box with half Ping-Pong balls taped over my eyes and the white-noise geor emitting its obliterating whine/whisper. Although I had some intricate Type 4 halluations, nothing much else happeo me. Except. . . I began to wonder if behavior should be ged. That there was "behavior" at all seemed to me a small miracle.
I poing on to stress theory, wherein one iigates the ways in which the stressed individual reacts to stress, but decided suddenly to do something else instead. I decided to take a job with the Human Effort Administration and to try, insofar as possible, to let people do what they want to do.
I am aware that my work is, in many ways, meaningless.
A call from Honor, my ex-wife. Ive promised her a bed for her neartment.
"Did yo藏书网u get it?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Ive been busy. Doing things."
"But what about the bed?"
"I told you Id take care of it."
"Yes but when?"
"Some people get their own beds for their neartments."
"But thats not the point. You promised."
"That was in the first flush of good feeling and warmth. When you said you were ing back to town."
"Now you dont have any good feeling and warmth?"
"Full of it. Brimming. Hows Sam?"
"Hes getting tired of sleeping on the couch. Its not big enough for both of us."
"My heart cries out for him."
Shes seeing Sam now, thats a little strange. She dido take to him, early on.
Sam. Whats he like? Like a villain. Hair like an oil spill, mustache like a twist of carbon paper, high white lineless forehead, black tights and doublet, dagger clasped in treacherht hand, sneaks when hes not slithering. . .
No. Thats inpletely true. Sams just like the rest of us: jeans, turtleneck, beard, smile with one chipped tooth, good with children, backward in his taxes, a degree in education, a B.Ed. And he came with the very best refereoo, Charlotte doted, Frane could enough, Mary Jo chased him through Graral with the great whirling loop of her lariat, causing talk -- But Honor couldnt see him, in the beginning. Shes residered. I wish she hadnt throwurntable on the floor, a $600 B & O, but all thats behind us now.
I saw this m that the building at the end of the streets been sold. It stood empty for years, an architectural anomaly, three-storied, brick, but most of all, triangular. Two streets e together in a point there, and prospective buyers must have boggled at the angles. I judged that the owners decided to let morality go hang and sold to a mérois. Theyll need a triple bed, ized to fit those odd ers. I see them with protractor and Skilsaw, getting the thing just right. Then sweeping up the bedcrumbs.
She telephones again.
"It doesnt have to be the best bed in the world. Any old bed will do. Sams bitg all night long."
"For you, dear friend, Ill take every pain. Were cheg now in Indonesia, a rare albino beds been sighted there. . ."
"Tom, this isnt funny. I slept ihtub last night."
"Youre too long for the bathtub."
"Do you want Sam to do it?"
Do I want Sam to do it?
"No. Ill do it."
"Then do it."
We were tent for quite a while, she taught me what shed majored in, a lovely Romaongue, we visited the try and when Id ask in a pharmacie for a razor theyd give me rosewater. Im teasing her, and she me. She wants Sam. Thats good.
Francesca was reading to me.
"This is the note Lee wrote," she said. "Listen. No one is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I ot even aplish what I myself desire. How I fulfill the expectations of others? In addition I sensibly feel the growing failure of my bodily strength. I have not yet recovered from the attack I experiehe past spring. I am being more and more incapable of exertion, and am thus prevented from making the personal examinations and giving the personal supervision to the operations in the field which I feel to be necessary. I am so dull making use of the eyes of others I am frequently misled. Everything, therefore, points to the advao be derived from a new ander. A younger and abler man than myself readily be obtained. I know that he will have as gallant and brave an army as ever existed to sed his efforts, and it would be the happiest day of my life to see at its head a worthy. . . "
Francesca stopped reading.
"That was Robert E. Lee," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"The leader of all the armies of the federacy," she said.
"I know."
"I wanted him to win. So much."
"I uand."
"But he did not."
"I have read about it."
Francesca has federate-gray eyes which reflect, mostly, a lifelong plation of the nobility of Lees great horse, Traveller. I left Francesd walked in the park, where I am afraid to walk, after dark. One must let people do what they want to do, but what if they want to slap you upside the head with a Stillson wrend take the credit cards out of your pockets? A problem.
The poetting poorer. I saoor man and asked him if he had any money.
"Money?" he said. "Mohinks I died a long time ago."
We have moved from the Age of Ao the Age of Fear. This is of course progress, psychologically speaking. I intend no irony.
Another letter from Jinka.
Uhomas:
The notion that only man is vile must have been ied to describe you, vile friend. I ot tain the revulsion that whelms i the sight of your name, in the Prague telephone book, from your time in Prague. I have scratched it out of my copy, and scratched it out of all the copies I could get my hands on, in telephone booths everywhere. This symbolic removal of you from the telephone booths of our a city should not escape your notice, stinki. You have been erased and the anoi of the sick, formerly known as Extreme Un, also as the Last Rites, is what I have in mind for you, soon. Whatever you are doing, stop it, drear pig. The insult to sciousness afforded by your project, whatever it is, ot be suffered gladly, and I for one do not io so suffer. I have measures not yet in the books, and will take them. What I have in mind is not shallots and fresh rosemary, gutless wonder, and your tinued association with that ridiculously thin Robert E. Lee girl has not raised you in my esteem, not a bit. One if by land and two if by sea, and it will be sudden, I promise you. Be afraid.
Cordially,
Jinka
I put this letter with the others, clipped together with a paper clip. How good writing such letters must make her feel!
Wittgenstein was I think wrong when he said that about that which we do not know, we should not speak. He closed by fiat a great amusement park, there. Nothing gives me more pleasure than speaking about that which I do not know. I am not sure whether my ideas about various matters are correct or incorrect, but speak about them I must.
I decided to call my brother in San Francisco. He is a copy editor on the San Francisco icle (although he was trained as a biologist -- he is doing what he wants to do, more or less). Because we are both from the South our versatioo be ducted in jiveass dialect.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," he said.
"Whats happening? You got any girl copy boys on that neer yet?"
"Man," Paul said, "we got not only girl copy boys we got topless girl copy boys. We gonna hire us a reporter week. They promised us."
"Thats wonderful," I said. "How are you feeling?"
"Im depressed."
"Is it specific or nonspecific?"
"Well," Paul said, "I have to read the paper a lot. Im ready to drop the bomb. On us."
O must let people do what they want to do. Fortunately my brother has little to say about when and where the bomb will be dropped.
My other friend is Catherine. Catherine, like Francesca, is hung up on the past. She is persuaded that in an earlier existence she was Balzacs mistress (one of Balzacs mistresses).
"I endured Hrandness," she said, "because it urious. Spurious grandness I uand very well. What I could not uand was his hankering freatness."
"But he was great," I said.
"I was impatient with all those artists, sitting around, hankering freatness. Of course Honore was great. But he didnt know it, at the time, for sure. Or he did and he didnt. There were moments of doubt, depression."
"As is natural."
"The seeking after greatness," said Catherine, "is a siess, in my opinion. It is like greed, only greed has better results. Greed at least bring you a fine house on a grand avenue, and strawberries for breakfast, in a rich cream, and servants to beat, when they do not behave. I prefer greed. Honoré was greedy, in a reasonable way, but what he was mostly ied in was greatness. I was stuck with greatness."
"Yes," I said.
"You," Catherine said, "are her great nreedy."
"One must let people be --" I began.
"Yes," Catherine said, "that sounds good, on the surface, but thinking it through --" She finished her espresso, placed the little cup precisely otle saucer. "Take me out," she said. "Take me to a library."
We went to a library and spent a pleasant afternoon there.
Francesca was stroking the brown back of a large spayed cat -- the ohat doesnt like me.
"Lee was not without his faults," she said. "Not for a moment would I have you believe that he was faultless."
"What was his principal fault?"
"Losing," she said.
I went to the Art ema and saw a Swedish film about a man living alone on an island. Somebody was killing a great many sheep on the island and the hero, a hermit, was suspected. There were a great many shots of sheep with their throats cut, red blood on the white snow, glimpses. The hermit fixed a car for a woman whose car had broken down. They went to bed together. There were flashbacks having to do with the womans former husband, a man in a wheelchair. It was determihat somebody else, not the hermit, had been killing the sheep. The film ended with a car crash in which the woman was killed. Whiteout.
Should great film artists be allowed to do what they want to do?
Catherine is w oranslation of the plete works of Balzac. Honoré, she insists, has never been properly translated. She will devote her life to the task, she says. Actually I have looked at some pages of her Louis Lambert and they seem to me signifitly worse than the version I read in college. I think of Balza the great statue by Rodin, holding his erect (possibly overstated) co both hands under his cloak of bronze. An inspiration.
When I was in the black box, during my SD days, there was nothing I wao do. I didnt even want to get out. Or perhaps there was ohing I wao do: Sit in the box with the half Ping-Pong balls taped over my eyes and the white-noise geor standing in for the sirens of Ulysses (himself an early SD subject) a the Senior Iigator (Dr. Colcross, the oh the bad leg) to do what he wao do.
Is this will-lessness, finally? Abulia, as we call it irade? I dont think so.
I pursue Possibility. Thats something.
There is no moment that exceeds iy that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch." The initial smash of glan glahen, the drawing near. This takes a long time, it seems like months, although only minutes pass, in fact. Languor is the word that describes this part of the process. Your persona floats toward her persona, over the Sea of Hesitation. Many weeks pass before they meet, but the weeks are days, or seds. Still, everything is decided. You have slept together in the glance.
She takes your arm and you leave the and, walking very close together, so that your side brushes her side lightly. Desire is here a very strong factor, because you are weak with it, and the woman is too, if she has any se all (but of course she is a sensible woman, and brilliant and witty and hungry as well). So, on the sidewalk outside the and, you stand for a moment thinking about where to go, at eleven oclo the m, and here it is, in the sunlight, that you take the first good look at her, and she at you, to see if either one has any hideous blemish that has been overlooked, in the first rush of good feeling. There are none. None. No blemishes (except those spiritual blemishes that will be discovered later, after extended acquaintance, and whione of us are without, but which are now latent? dormant? in any case, not visible on the surface, at this time). Everything is fine. And so, with renewed fidence, you begin to walk, and to seek a place where you might sit down, and have a drink, and talk a bit, and fall into each others eyes, temporarily, and find some pretzels, and have what is called a versation, and tell each other what you think is true about the world, and speak of the strange places where each of you has been (Surinam, in her case, where she bought the belt she is wearing, Lima in your case, where you tracted telegraph fever), and make arras for your meeting (both of you drinking Scotd water, at eleven in the m, and you warm to her because of her willio leave her natural mid-m track, for you), and make, as I say, arras for your meeting, which must be this very night! or you both will die --
There is no particular point to any of this behavior. Or: This behavior is the only behavior which has point. Or: There is some point to this behavior but this behavior is not the only behavior which has point. Which is true? Truth is greatly overrated, volition where it exists must be protected, wanting itself be obliterated, some people have fotten how to want.
When he came to 。。。
When he came to look at the building, with a real-estate man hissing and oozing beside him, we lowered the blinds, muted or extinguished lights, threw neers and dirty clothes on the floor in piles, burned rubber bands in ashtrays, and played Buxtehude on the hi-fi -- shaking an chords whose vibrations made the plaster falling from the ceiling fall faster. The new owood in profile, refusing to shake hands or eveo us, a tall thin young man suited in hopsag with a large manila envelope under one arm. We poio the plaster, to crevasses in the walls, sagging ceilings, leaks. heless, he closed.
Soon he was slipping little rent bills into the mailboxes, slip slip slip slip slip. In sixteen years wed never had rent bills but now we have rent bills. Hes raised the rent, and lowered the heat. The new owner creeps into the house by night and takes the heat away with him. He wants us out, out. If we were gohe building would be detrolled. The rents would climb into the air like steam.
Bicycles out of the halls, says the new owner. Shopping carts out of the halls. My halls.
The new owands in profile ireet in front of our building. He looks up the street, then dowreet-- this wondrous street where our friends and neighbors live in Christian, Jewish, and, in some instances, Islamic peace. The new owner is writing the Apartments Unfurn. ads of the future, in his head.
The new owner fires the old super, simply because the old super is a slaphappy, widowed, shot-up, black, Korean War-sixty-five-per-t-disability-vet drunk. There is a shouting frontation in the basement. The new owhreatens the old super with the police. The old super is locked out. A new super is hired who does not put out the garbage, does not mop the halls, does not, apparently, exist. Roaches prettyfoot into the building because the new .
t;
"It was difficult," he said. He then walked out of the chartroom aed himself in one of the swivel chairs on posts in front of the bridge windows. I followed him.
"May I ask your rank?"
"Why not ask my name?"
"All right."
"I am the Admiral."
I looked again at his uniform which suggested no such thing.
"Objectively," he said, smiling slightly.
"My name is --" I began.
"I am not ied in your name," he said. "I am only ied in your behavior. As you see, I have at my disposal forty-seven brigs, of which the carriers is the most fortable. Not that I believe you will behave other than correctly. At the moment, I want you to do this: Go down to the galley and make a pot of coffee. Make sandwiches. You may make one for yourself. Then bring them here." He settled ba his seat and regarded the calm, even sea.
"All right," I said. "Yes."
"You will say: Yes, sir, " he corrected me.
"Yes, sir."
I wandered about the destroyer until I found the galley. I made the coffee and sandwiches aurned with them to the bridge.
The "Admiral" drank his coffee silently. Seabirds made passes at the mast where the radar equipment, I saw, was covered with the same plastic material that enclosed the gun installations.
"What is that stuff used for the mothballing?" I asked.
"Its a polyvinylchloride solution which also tains vinyl acetate," he said. "Its sprayed on and then hardens. If you were to cut it open youd find inside, around the equipment, four or five small cloth bags taining silicate of soda in crystals, to absorb moisture. A very system. It does just what its supposed to do, keeps the equipment good as new."
He had finished his sandwich. A bit of mustard had soiled the sleeve of his white coat, which had gold epaulets. I thought again that he most resembled not an admiral but a man from whom one would order drinks.
"What is your mission?" I asked, determined not to be outfaced by a man with mustard on his coat.
"To be at sea," he said.
"Only that?"
"Think a bit," he said. "Think first of shipyards. Think of hundreds of thousands of men in shipyards, on both coasts, building these ships. Think of the welders, the pipefitters, the electris, naval architects, people in the Bureau of the Budget. Think of the laungs, each with its bottle of champagne on a cord of plaited ribbons hurled at the bow by the wife of some high official. Think of the first sailors ing aboard, the sea trials, the captains for whom a particular ship was a first and. Each ship has a history, no ship is without its history. Think of the six-inch guns shaking a particular ship as they were fired, the jets leaving the deck of the carrier at tightly spaced intervals, the maneuvering of the cruisers during this or that e, the damage taken. Think of each ships log faithfully kept over the years, think of the Official Naval History whiow runs, I am told, to three hundred some-odd very large volumes.
"And then," he said, "think of each ship moving up the Hudson, or worse, being towed, to a depot in New Jersey where it is covered with this disgusting plastic substahink of the years each ship has spent moored o other ships of its class, painted, yes, at scheduled times, by a crew of painters whose task it is to paint these ships eternally, finished with one and on to the and back to the first again five years later. Wat watg the ships, year in and year out, no doubt knog off a little copper pipe here and there --"
"The ships were being stockpiled against a possible new national emergency," I said. "What oh is wrong with that?"
"I was a messman on the Saratoga," he said, "when I was sixteen. I lied about my age."
"But what are your iions?"
"I am taking these ships away from them," he said.
"You are stealing forty-seven ships from the gover of the Uates?"
"There are also the submarines," he said. "Six submarines of the Marlin class."
"But why?"
"Remember that I was, once, in accord with them. Passionately, if I may say so, in accord with them. I did whatever they wished, without thinking, hated their enemies, participated in their crusades, risked my life. Even though I only carried trays and wiped up tables. I heard the singing of the wounded and withe burial of the dead. I believed. Then, over time, I discovered that they were lying. sistently. With exemplary skill, in a hundred languages. I decided to take the ships. Perhaps theyll notice." He paused. "Now. Do you wish to apany me, assist me?"
"More than anything."
"Good." He moved the lever of the bridge telegraph to Full Ahead.
Now that。。
Now that I am older I am pleased to remember. Those violent nights. When having laid theorbo aside I came to your bed. You, having laid phonograph aside, lay there. Awaiting. I, having laid aside all cares and other business, approached. Softly so as not tht the sour sorious authorities. You, undulatilessly uhe dun coverlet. Uhe framed, signed and numbered silverprint. I, having laid aside all frets aurbations, approached.
Prior to this, the meal. Sometimes the meal was taken in, sometimes out. If in, I sliced the onions and tossed them into the pot, or you sliced the terelles and tossed them into the pot. The gray glazed pot with the black leopard-spot meander. What an infinity of leeks, lentils, turnips, green beaossed into the pot, over the years. Celery.
Sometimes the meal was taken out. There roperly with others in crowded rooms, green-flocked paper on the walls, the tables too close together. Det quiet servitors in blad-white approached and with many marks of resped good will, fed us. Tingle of choice, sometimes we elected the same dish, lamb ier sau one occasion. Three yellow daffs and a single red tulip iall slender vase to yht. My thumb in my martini nudging the olives from the white plastic sword.
Prior to the meal, the Happy Hour. You removed your shoes and sat, daintily, on your feet. I loosened my tie, if the days business had required one, and held out my hand. You smashed a glass into it, just in time. Fatigued from your labors at the scriptorium where you illuminated manuscripts having to do with the waxing/waning fortunes of Iional Snow. We snuggled, there on the couch, there is no other w>ord for it, as God is my witness. The bed awaiting.
I remember the photograph over your bed. How many ms has it greeted me banded with the first timorous light through the blind-slats. A genuine Weegee, car crash with prostrate forms, long female hair in a pool of blood shot through booted cop legs. In a rope-molding frame. Beside me, your form, not yet awake but bare of dull unnecessary clothing and excellently positioo be prowled over. After full light, tig permitted.
Fleet through the woods came I upon that time toward your bed. A little pouealie-mealie by my side, for our repast. You, going into the closet, plucked forth a cobwebbed bottle. Oable in front of the couch, an artichoke with its salty dip. Hurling myself through the shabby tattering door toward the couch, like an (arrow from the bow) (spear from the hand of Achilles), I thanked my stars for the wisdom of my teachers, Smoky and Billy, which had enabled me to find a pla the labor market, to depart in the m aurn at night, bearing in the one hand a pannier of periwinkles and iher, a disew-minted by the Hot Club of France.
Your head in my arms.
Wrack
-- Cold here in the garden.
-- You were plaining about the sun.
-- But when it goes behind a cloud --
-- Well, you t have everything.
-- The flowers are beautiful.
-- Indeed.
-- soling to have the flowers.
-- Half-way soled already.
-- And these Japanese rocks --
-- Artfully placed, most artfully.
-- You must admit, a great solation.
-- And Social Security.
-- A great solation.
-- And philosophy. Furthermore.
-- I read a book. Just the other day.
-- Sexuality, too.
-- They have books about it. I read one.
-- Well to the woods no more. I assume.
-- Where theres a will theres a way. Thats what my mother always said.
-- I wonder if its true.
-- I think not.
-- Well, youre driving me crazy.
-- Well youre driving me crazy too. Know what I mean?
-- Going to snap one of these days.
-- If you were a Japanese master you wouldnt snap. Those guys never snapped. Some of them were y.
-- Well, you t have everything.
-- Cold, here in the garden.
-- Ca caw.
-- You want to sing that song.
-- t remember how it goes.
-- Getting farther and farther away from life.
-- How do you feel about that?
-- Guilty but less guilty than I should.
-- you fiuhat for me?
-- Not yet I want to think about it.
-- Well, I have to muck out the stable and buff up the silver.
-- They trust you with the silver?
-- Of course. I have their trust.
-- You enjoy their trust.
-- Absolutely.
-- Well we still havent decided what color, to paint the trucks.
-- I said blue.
-- Surely not your last word on the subject.
-- I have some swatches. If youd care to take a gander.
-- Not now. This sun is blistering.
-- New skin. Yoing to plain?
-- Thank the Lord for all small favors.
-- The kid ever e to see you?
-- Did for a while. Then stopped.
-- How does that make you feel?
-- Oh, I dont blame him.
-- Well, you t have everything.
-- Thats true. Whats the time?
-- Looks to be about one.
-- Wheres your watch?
-- Hocked it.
-- Whatd you get?
-- Twelve-fifty.
-- God, arent these flowers beautiful!
-- Only three of them. But each remarkable, of its kind.
-- What are they?
-- Some kind of Japanese dealies I dont know.
-- Lazing in the garden. This is really most luxurious.
-- Listening to the radio. "Elmers Tune."
-- I dont like it when they let girls talk on the radio.
-- Never used to have them. Now theyre everywhere.
-- You t really say too much. These days.
-- Doesnt that make you nervous? Girls talking on the radio?
-- I liked H. V. Kaltenborn. Hes long gone.
-- Whatd you do yesterday?
-- Took a walk. In the wild trees.
-- They spend a lot of time w about where to park their cars. Glad I dont have one.
-- Haveen anything except some rice, this m. Cooked it with chi broth.
-- This place is cold, ing around it.
-- Fot to buy soap, fot to buy coffee --
-- All right. The hollowed-out book taining the single Swedish municipal bond in the amount of fifty thousand Swedish s is not yours. Weve established that. Lets go on.
-- It was never mine. Or it might have been mine, once. Perhaps it beloo my former wife. I said I wasnt sure. She was fond of hiding things in hollowed-out books.
-- We want not the shadow of a doubt. We want to be absolutely certain...
-- I appreciate it. She had gray eyes. Gray with a touch of violet.
-- Yes. Now, are these your doors?
-- Yes. I think so. Are they on spring hinges? Do they swing?
-- They swing iher dire. Spring hinges. Wood slats.
-- She did things with her eyebrows. Paihem gold. You had the gray eyes with a touch of violet, and the gold eyebrows. Yes, the doors must be mine. I seem to remember her bursting through them. In one of the several rages of a summers day.
-- When?
-- It must have been some time ago. Some years. I dont know what theyre doing here. It strikes me they were in another house. Not this house. I mean its kind of cloudy.
-- But theyre here.
-- She sometimes threw something through the doorway before bursting through the doorway herself. Acid, on one occasion.
-- But the doors are here. Theyre yours.
-- Yes. They seem to be. I mean, Im nuing with you. Oher hand, theyre not something I want to remember, particularly. They have sort of an unpleasant aura around them, for some reason. I would have avoided them, left to myself.
-- I dont want to distress you. Unnecessarily.
-- I know, I know, I know. Im not blaming you, but it just seems to me that you could have let it go. The doors. Im sure you didnt mean anything by it, but still --
-- I didnt mean anything by it. Well, lets leave the doors, then, and go on to the dish.
-- Plate.
-- Lets go on to the plate, then.
-- Plate, dish, I dont care, its something of an imposition, you must admit, to have to think about it. Normally I wouldnt think about it.
-- It has your name on the back. Engraved on the back.
-- Where? Show me.
-- Your name. Right there. And the date, 1962.
-- I dont want to look. Ill take your word for it. That was twenty years ago. My God. She read R. D. Laing. Aloud, at dinner. Every night. Interrupted only by the telephone. When she answered the telephone, her voice became animated. Charming and animated. Gaiety. Vivacity. Laughter. In trast to her reading of R. D. Laing. Which could only be described as punitive. O.K., so its mine. My plate.
-- Its a dish. A bonbon dish.
-- You mean to say that you think that I would own a bonbon dish? A sterling-silver or whatever it is bonbon dish? Youre mad.
-- The doors were yours. Why not the dish?
-- A bonbon dish?
-- Perhaps she craved bonbons?
-- No no no no no. Not so. Sourballs, perhaps.
-- Lets move on to the shoe, now. I dont have that much time.
-- The shoe is definitely not mine.
-- Not yours.
-- Its a womans shoe. Its too small for me. My foot, this foot here, would never in the world fit into that shoe.
-- I am not suggesting that the shoe is yours in the sehat you wear or would wear such a shoe. Its obviously a womans shoe.
-- The shoe is in no sehing of mine. Although found I admit among my things.
-- Its here. An old-fashioned shoe. Eleven buttons.
-- There was a vogue for that kind of shoe, some time back, among the young people. It might have beloo a young person. I sometimes saw young persons.
-- With what in mind?
-- I fohem, if they were fondleable.
-- Within the limits of the law, of course.
-- Certainly. "Young person" is aic term. You think Im藏书网 going to mess with jailbait?
-- Of course not. Never occurred to me. The shoe has something of the pathetic about it. A wronged quality. Do you think it possible that the shoe may be in some way a cri de coeur?
-- Not a ce.
-- You were wrong about the dish.
-- Ive never heard a cri de coeur.
-- Youve never heard a cri de coeur?
-- Perhaps once. When Shirley was with us?
-- Who was Shirley?
-- The maid. She was studying eschatology. Maiding parttime. She left us for a better post. Perfectly ordinary departure.
-- Did she perhaps wear shoes of this type?
-- No. Nor was she given to the cri de coeur. Except, perhaps, once. Death of her flying fish. A cry wrenched from her bosom. Rather like a winged phallus it was, she kept it in a washtub in the basement. One day it was discovered belly-up. She screamed. Then, insisted it be given the Last Rites, buried in a fish cemetery, holy water sprihis way and that --
-- You fatigue me. Now, about the hundred-pound sack of saccharin.
-- Mine. Indubitably mine. Im forbidden to use sugar. I have a dition.
-- Im delighted to hear it. Not that you have a dition but that the sack is, without doubt, yours.
-- Mine. Yes.
-- I t tell you how pleased I am. The inquiry moves. Progress is made. Results are obtained.
-- What are you writing there, in your notes?
-- That the sack is, beyond a doubt, yours.
-- I think its mine.
-- What do you mean, think? You stated. . . Is it yours or isnt it?
-- I think its mi seems to be.
-- Seems!
-- I just remembered, I put sugar in my coffee. At breakfast.
-- Are you sure it wasnt saccharin?
-- White powder of some kind. . .
-- There is a differen texture. . .
-- No, I remember, it was definitely sugar. Granulated. So the sack of saccharin is definitely not mine.
-- Nothing is yours.
-- Some things are mine, but the sack is not mihe shoe is not mihe bonbon dish is not mine, and the doors are not mine.
-- You admitted the doors.
-- Not wholeheartedly.
-- You said, I have it right here, written down, "Yes, they must be mine."
-- Sometimes we hugged. Lengthily. Heart to heart, the orying to pull the other into the upright other. . .
-- I have it right here藏书网. Written down. "Yes, they must be mine."
-- I withdraw that.
-- You t withdraw it. Ive written it down.
-- heless I withdraw it. Its inadmissible. It was coerced.
-- You feel coerced?
-- All that business about "dish" rather than "plate" --
-- That oint of fact, it was, in fact, a dish.
-- You have a hect tone. I dont like to be hectored. You came here with something in mind. You had made an a priori decision.
-- Thats a little ridiculous when you sider that I have, personally, nothing to gaiher way. Whichever way it goes.
-- Promotion, adva. . .
-- We dont operate that way. That has nothing to do with it. I dont want to discuss this any further. Lets go on to the dressing gown. Is the dressing gown yours?
-- Maybe.
-- Yes or no?
-- My business. Leave it at "maybe."
-- I am entitled to a good, solid, answer. Is the dressing gown yours?
-- Maybe.
-- Please.
-- Maybe maybe maybe maybe.
-- You exhaust me. In this text, the word "maybe" is uable.
-- A perfectly possible answer. People use it every day.
-- Uable. What happeo her?
-- She made a lot of money. Opened a Palais de Glace, or skating rink. Read R. D. Laing to the skaters over the PA system meanwhile supplementing her ine by lecturing over the try as a spokesperson for the unborn.
-- The gold eyebrows, still?
-- The gold eyebrows and the gray-with-violet eyes. On television, very often.
-- In the beginning, you dont know.
-- Thats true.
-- Just one more thing: The two mattresses surrounding the single slice of salami. Are they yours?
-- I get hungry. In the night.
-- The struggle is admirable. Useless, but admirable. Your struggle.
-- Cold, here in the garden.
-- Youre too old, thats all it is, think nothing of it. Dont give it a thought.
-- I havent agreed to that. Did I agree to that?
-- No, I must say you resisted. Admirably, resisted.
-- I did resist. Would you allow "valiantly"?
-- No no no no. e e e.
-- "Wholeheartedly"?
-- Yes, okay, what do I care?
-- Wholeheartedly, then.
-- Yes.
-- Wholeheartedly.
-- We still havent decided what color to paint the trucks.
-- Yes. How about blue?
On our street。。。
On our street, fourteen garbage s are now missing. The garbage s from Oeen and One een disappeared last night. This is not a serious matter, but oher hand we t sit up all night watg over arbage s. It is probably best described as an annoyance. Owelve, Owenty-two and Ohi?9９lib?y-one have bought new plastic garbage s at Barneys Hardware to replace those missing. We are thus down eleven garbage s, . Many people are using large dark plastic garbage bags. The new stru at the hospital at the end of the block has displaced a number of rats. Rats are not much bothered by plastic garbage bags. In fact, if I were ordered to imagine what might most profitably be ied by a ittee of rats, it would be the plastic garbage bag. The rats run up and down our street all night long.
If I were ordered to imagine who is stealing arbage s, I could not. I very much doubt that my wife is doing it. Some of the garbage s on our street are battered metal, others are heavy green plastic. Heavy green plastic or heavy black plastic predominates. Some of the garbage s have the numbers of the houses they belong to painted on their sides or lids, with white paint. Usually by someoh only the crudest sense of the art of lettering. One een, which has among its tenants a gifted ercial artist, is an exception. No one excessively famous lives on our street, to my knowledge, therefore the morbid attention that the garbage of the famous sometimes attracts would not be a factor. The Prect says that no other street within the prect has reported similar problems.
If my wife is stealing the garbage s, in the night, while I am drunk and asleep, what is she doing with them? They are not in the cellar, Ive looked (although I dont like going down to the cellar, even to replace a blown fuse, because of the rats). My wife has a yellow Pontiavertible. No one has these anymore but I imagine her lifting garbage s into the back seat of the yellow Pontiavertible, at two oclo the m, when I am dreaming of being on stage, dreaming of having to perform a drum certo with only one drumstick. . .
On our street, twenty-one garbage s are now missing. New infamies have been announced by Ohirty-ohrough One Forty-three -- seven in a row, and on the same side of the street. Also, depredations at One Sixteen and One Sixty-four. ut out dozens of s of D- but the rats ighem. Why should they go for the D- when they have the remnants of Ellen Busses Boeuf Rossini, for which she is known for six blocks in every dire? We eat well, on this street, theres no denying it. Except for the nursing students at One Fifty-eight, and why should they eat well, theyre students, are they not? My wife cooks soft-shell crabs, in season, breaded, dusted with tasty ne, deep-fried. Barneys Hardware has run out of garbage s and will not get another shipment until July. Any new garbage s will have to be purchased at Budget Hardware, far, far away on Sed Street.
Petulia, at Care ers, asks why my wife has been ag so peculiar lately. "Peculiar?" I say. "In what way do you mean?" Dr. Maugham, who lives at One Forty-four where he also has his office, has formed a ittee. Mr. Wilkens, from One een, Pally Wimber, from Owenty-nine, and my wife are on the ittee. The ittee meets at night, while I sleep, dreaming, my turn iting order has e up and I stand at the plate, batless. . .
There are sixty-two houses on our street, four-story brownstones for the most part. Fifty-twe s are now missing. Rats riding upon the backs of other rats gallop up and down our street, at night. The ittee is uo decide whether to call itself the ittee or the Rat ittee. The City has sent an ior who stood marveling, at midnight, at the activity on our street. He is filing a report. He urges that the remaining garbage s be filled with large stones. My wife has appointed me a subittee of the larger ittee with the task of finding large stones. Is there a peculiar look on her face as she makes the appoi? Dr. Maugham has bought a shotgun, a twelve-gauge over-and-under. Mr. Wilkins has bought a Chase bow and two dozen hunting arrows. I have bought a flute and an instru book.
If I were ordered to imagine who is stealing arbage s, the Louis Escher family might spring to mind, not as culprits but as proximate cause. The Louis Escher family has a large ine and a small apartment, iwenty-ohe Louis Escher family is given to acquiring things, and given the size of the Louis Escher apartment, must dispose of old things in order to aodate hings. Sometimes the old things disposed of by the Louis Escher family are scarcely two weeks old. Therefore, the garbage at Owenty-one is closely followed in the neighborhood, in the sehat the sales and bargains listed in the neers are closely followed. The ittee, which feels that the garbage of the Louis Escher family may be misrepresenting the neighborhood to the criminal unity, made a partial list of the items disposed of by the Louis Escher family during the week of August eighth: one mortar & pestle, majolica ware; one English cream maker (cream is made by mixing unsalted sweet butter and milk); o greehenware geranium leaf plates; one fruit ripener designed by stists at the Uy of California, plexiglass; one nylon umbrella tent with aluminum poles; one bination fountain pen and clock with LED readout; one mini hole-puncher-and-fetti-maker; one pistol-grip spring-loaded flyswatter; one cast-iron tortilla press; one ivory bah elephant-hair at; and much, much more. But while I do not doubt that the excesses of the Louis Escher family are misrepresenting the neighborhood to the criminal unity, I myself to support even a resolution of sure, sihe excesses of the Louis Escher family have given us much to talk about and not a few sets of greehenware geranium leaf plates over the years.
I reported to my wife that large stones were hard to e by iy. "Stones," she said. "Large stones." I purchased two hundred pounds of Sakrete at Barneys Hardware, to make stones with. One need only add water and stir, and you have made a stone as heavy and brutish as a stone made by God himself. I am temporarily busy, in the basement, shaping Sakrete to resemble this, that and the other, but mostly stones -- a good-looking stone is not the easiest of achievements. Ritchie Beck, the little boy from Oen who is always alone on the sidewalk during the day, smiling at strangers, helps me. I once bought him a copy of Meix Illustrated, which I myself read avidly as a boy. Harold, who owns Care ers and also owns a a, has offered to fly over our street at night and drop bombs made of lethal dry-ing fluid os. There is a el down the Hudson he take (so long as he stays under eleven hundred feet), a quick left turn, the bombing run, then a dash back up the Hudson. They will pull his ticket if hes caught, he says, but at that hour of the night. . . I show my wife the ones. "I dont like them," she says. "They dont look like real stones." She is n, they look, in fact, like badly-thrown pots, as if they had been done by a potter with no thumbs. The ittee, which has self the Special Provisional Unnecessary Rat Team (SPURT), has acquired armbands and white steel helmets and is discussing a secret grip by which its members will identify themselves to each other.
There are now ne s on our street -- ne s left to steal. A ittee of rats has joined with the Special Provisional ittee in order to deal with the situation, which, the rats have made known, is attrag unwele rat elements from other are..t>as of the city. Members of the two ittees exge secret grips. My wife drives groups of rats here and there in her yellow Pontiavertible, attending importaings. The crisis, she says, will be a long one. She has never been happier.
The Palace at Four A.M.
My fathers kingdom was and is, all authorities agree, large. To walk border to border east-west, the traveler must budget haeen days. Its name is Ho, the fu term for harmony. fuism was an i of the first ruler (a straaste in our part of the world), and when hed cleared his expanse of field and forest of his ewo turies ago, he indulged himself in an hommage to the great ese thinker, much to the merriment of some of our staider neighbors, whose domains were proper Luftlunds and Dolphinlunds. We have an ey based upon truffles, in which our forests are spectacularly rich, aricity, which we were exp when other tries still read by kerosene lamp. Our army is the best in the region, every man a el -- the subtle secret of my fathers rule, if the truth be known. In this land every priest is a bishop, every ambulance-chaser a robed justice, every peasant a corporation and every street-er shouter Kant himself. My fathers genius was to promote his subjects, male and female, across the board, ceaselessly; the people of Ho warm themselves forever in the sun of Achievement. I was the only man in the kingdom who thought himself a donkey.
-- from the Autobiography
I am writing to you, Hannahbella, from a distant try. I daresay you remember it well. The King encloses the opening pages of his autobiography. He is most curious as to what your respoo them will be. He has labored mightily over their position, w without food, without sleep, for many days and nights.
The King has not been, in these months, in the best of spirits. He has read your article and declares himself to be very much impressed by it. He begs you, prior to publication in this try, to do him the great favor of ging the phrase "two disied and impartial arbiters" on page thirty-oo "maligs uhe ideological sway of still more maligs." Otherwise, he is delighted. He asks me to tell you that your touch is as adroit as ever.
Early iobiography (as you see; we enter the word?s: "My mother the Queen made a mirror pie, a splendid thing the size of a poker table. . ." The King wishes to know if poker tables are in use in faraway lands, and whether the reader in such places would prehend the dimensions of the pie. He tinues: ". . . in which refles from the kit delier exploded when the crew rolled it from the oven. We were kneeling side-by-side, peering into the depths of a new-made mirror pie, when my mother said to me, or rather her celestial image said to my dark, heavy-haired one, Get out. I ot bear to look upon your donkey face again. "
The King wishes to know, Hannahbella, whether this passage seems to you tainted by self-pity, or is, rather, suitably dispassionate.
He walks up and down the small room o his bedchamber, singing your praises. The decree having to do with your banishment will be resded, he says, the moment you agree to ge the phrase "two disied and impartial arbiters" to "maligs," etc. This I urge you to do with all speed.
The King has not been at his best. Peace, he says, is an unnatural dition. The try is prosperous, yes, and he uands that the people value peace, that they prefer to spin out their destinies in placid, undisturbed fashion. But his destiny, he says, is to alter the map of the world. He is sidering several new wars, small ones, he says, small but iing, plex, dicey, even. He would very much like to sult with you about them. He asks you to ge, on page forty-four of your article, the phrase "egregious usurpations" to "symbols of benign transformation." Please initial the ge on the proofs, so that historians will not accuse us of bowdlerization.
Your attention is called to the passage in the pages I send which runs as follows: "I walked out of the castle at dusk, not even the joy of a new suo e, my shaving kit with its dozen razors (although I shaved a dozen times a day, the head was still a donkeys) banging against the Walther .22 in my rucksack. After a time I was suddenly quite tired. I lay down under a hedge by the side of the road. One of the bushes above me had a shred of black cloth tied to it, a sign, in our try, that the place was haunted (but my heads enough thten any ghost)." Do you remember that shred of black cloth, Hannahbella? "I ate a sliy mothers spinach pie and sidered my situation. My priness would win me an evening, perhaps a fht, at this or that nobles castle in the viity, but my experience of visiting had taught me that her royal blood nor y of aspect prevailed for long against a hosts natural preference for folk with heads much like his own. Should I en-zoo myself? Volunteer for a traveling circus? Attempt the stage? The question was most vexing.
"I had not wiped the last crumbs of the spinach pie from my whiskers when something lay down beside me, uhe hedge.
" Whats this? I said.
" Soft, said the new arrival, dont be afraid, I am a bogle, let me abide here for the night, your back is warm and thats a mercy.
" Whats a bogle? I asked, immediately fetched, for the creature was small, not at all frightening to look upon and clad in female flesh, something I do not hold in low esteem.
" A bogle, said the tiny one, with precision, is not a black dog.
"Well, I thought, now I know.
" A bogle, she tinued, is not a boggart.
" Delighted to hear it, I said.
" Dont you ever shave? she asked. And why have you that huge hideous head on you, that could be mistaken for the head of an ass, could I see better so as to thier?
" You may lie elsewhere, I said, if my face distenances you.
" I am fatigued, she said, go to sleep, well discuss it in thbbr>9９lib.e m, move a bit so that your back fits better with my front, it will be cold, later, and this place is cursed, so they say, and I hear that the Prince has been driven from the palace, God knows what thats all about but it promises no good for us plain folk, police, probably, running all over the fens with their identity checks and making you blow up their great balloons with your breath --
"She was fusing, I thought, several issues, but my God! she was warm and shapely. Yet I deemed her a strange piece of goods, and made the mistake of saying so.
" Sir, she answered, I would not venture upon whats strange and whats not strange, if I were you, a on to say that if I did not abstain from further impertinence she would it sewerpipe. She dropped off to sleep then, and I lay back upon the ground. Not a child, I could tell, rather a tiny woman. A bogle."
The King wishes you to know, Hannahbella, that he finds this passage singularly moving and that he ot read it without being forced to take snuff, violently. Similarly the :
"recisely, is a donkey? As you may imagine, I have researched the question. My Larousse was most delicate, as if the editors thought the matter blushful, but yielded two observations of i: that donkeys came inally from Africa, and that they, or we, are the result of much crossing. This urges that the parties to the birth must be ill-matched, and in the case of my royal parents, twas thunderously true. The din of their calamitous versations reached every quarter of the palace, at every season of the year. My mother named me Dun (var. of Dunkey, clearly) a into spasms of shrinking whenever, youthfully, Id offer a cheek for a kiss. My father, in trast, could sometimes bring himself to scratch my head between the long, weedlike ears, but only, I suspect, by means of a mental shift, as if he were addressing one of his hunting dogs, the which, ially, remained firmly ambivalent about me even after long acquaintance.
"I explained a part of this to Hannahbella, for that was the bogles name, suppressing chiefly the fact that I rince. She in turn gave the following at of herself. She was indeed a bogle, a semi-spirit generally thought to be of bad character. This was a libel, she said, as her own sterling qualities would quickly persuade me. She was, she said, of the utmost perfe in the female line, and there was not a woman within the borders of the kingdom so beautiful as herself, shed been told it a thousand times. It was true, she went on, that she was not of a standard size, could in fact be called small, if not minuscule, but those who objected to this were louts and fools and might usefully be stewed in lead, for the eai of the tryside. Iter of rank and prece, the mea bogle outweighed the greatest king, although the kings of this earth, she ceded, would never aowledge this but in their dotty solipsism ducted themselves as if bogles did not eve. And would I like to see her all unclothed so that I might glean some rude idea as to the true nature of the sublime?
"Well, I wouldnt have minded a bit. She was wonderfully crafted, that was evident, and held in addition the fasation surrounding any perfect miniature. But I said, No, thank you. Perhaps another day, its a bit chill this m.
" Just the breasts then, she said, theyre wondrous pretty, and before I could protest further shed whipped off her mannikins tiny shirt. I buttoned her up again meanwhile bestowing buckets of extravagant praise. Yes, she said in agreement, thats how I am all over, wonderful. "
The King ot reread this se, Hannahbella, without being reduced to tears. The world is a wilderness, he says, civilization a folly we eain in cert with others. He himself, at his age, is beyond surprise, yet yearns for it. He longs for the versations he formerly had with you, in the deepest hours of the night, he in his plain ermine robe, you simply dressed as always in a small scarlet cassock, most being, a modest supper of chi, fruit and wine on the sideboard, only the pair of you awake in the whole palace, at four oclo the m. The tax evasion case against you has been dropped. It was, he says, a hasty and ill-sidered uaking, even spiteful. He is sorry.
The King wonders whether the following paragraphs from his autobiography accord with your own recolles: "She then began, as we walked down the road together (an owl pretending to be absent standing on a tree limb to our left, a little stream snapping and growling tht), explaining to me that my fathers administration of the realm left much to be desired, from the bogle point of view, particularly his mad insisten filling the forests with heavy-footed truffle hounds. Standing, she came to just a hand above my waist; her hair was brown, with bits of gold in it; her quite womanly hips were encased in rust-colored trousers. Dun, she said, stabbing me in the calf with her sharp nails, do you know what that man has done? Nothing else but ruin, absolutely ruin, the whole of the Gatter Fen with a great r electric plant that makes a thing that who in the world could have a use for I dont know. I think theyre called volts. Two square miles of first-class fen paved over. We bogles are being squeezed to our knees. I had a sudden urge to kiss her, she looked so angry, but did nothing, my history in this regard being, as I have said, infelicitous.
" Dun, youre not listening! Hannahbella was naming the chief iing things about bogles, whicluded the fact that in the main they had nothing to do with humans, or nonsemispirits; that although she might seem small to me she was tall, for a bogle, queenly, in fact; that there e of blood seas superior to royal blood, and that it was bogle blood; that bogles had no magical powers whatsoever, despite what was said of them; that bogles were the very best lovers in the whole world, no matter what class of thing, animal, vegetable, or i, might be under discussion; that it was not true that bogles knocked bowls of mush from the tables of the deserving poor and caused farmers cows to bee pregnant with big fishes, out of pure mischief; that female bogles were the most satisfactory sexual partners of any kind of thing that could ever be imagined and were especially keen for large rown things with asss ears, for example; and that there was a something in the ９9lｉb.road ahead of us to which it might, perhaps, be prudent to pay heed.
"She was right. One hundred yards ahead of us, planted squarely athwart the road, was an army."
The King, Hannahbella, regrets having said of you, in the journal Vu, that you have two brains and . He had thought he was talking not-for-attribution, but as you know, all reporters are sdrels and not to be trusted. He asks you to hat Vu has suspended publication and to recall that it was never read by a serving maids and the most insignifit members of the minor clergy. He is prepared to give you a medal, if you return, any medal you like -- you will remember that our medals are the most geous going. On page seventy-five of your article, he requires you, most humbly, to ge "monstrous over-reag fueled by an insatiable if still childish ego" to any kinder stru of your choosing.
The Kings autobiography, in chapters already written but which I do not enclose, goes on to ret how you aogether, by means of a clever stratagem of your devising, vanquished the army barring your path on that day long, long ago; how the two of you jourogether for many weeks and found that your souls were, in essehe same soul; the shrewd means you employed to place him in painst the armed opposition of the Party of the Lily, on the death of his father; and the many subsequent campaigns which you eogether, mounted on a single horse, your armor banging against his armor. The Kings autobiography, Hannahbella, will run to many volumes, but he himself to write the end of the story without you.
The King feels that your falling-out, over the matter of the refugees from Brise, was the result of a miscalculation on his part. He could not have known, he says, that they had bogle blood (although he admits that the fact of their small stature should have told him something). Exging the refugees from Brise for the twenty-three Bishops of Ho captured during the affair was, he says in hindsight, a serious error; more bishops always be created. He makes the point that you did not tell him that the refugees from Brise had bogle blood but instead expected him to know it. Your e was, he thinks, a pretext. He at once fives you and begs your fiveness. The Chair of Military Philosophy at the uy is yours, if you want it. You loved him, he says, he is vinced of it, he still o.9９lib? believe it, he exists in a dition of doubt. You are both old; you are both forty. The palace at four A.M. is silent. e back, Hannahbella, and speak to him.
I am, at the moment。。。
I am, at the moment, seated. On a stump in the forest, listening. Ir?９９lｉb.eland and Scotland are remote, Wales is not near. I will rise, soon, to hold the ladder for you.
Tombs are scattered through the tall, white beanwoods. They are made of perfectly ordinary gray stone. deliers, at night, scatter light over the tombs, little houses in which I sleep with the already-beautiful, and they with me. The already-beautiful sauhrough the forest carrying plump red hams, already cooked. The already-beautiful do not, as a rule, run.
Holding the ladder I watch you glue additional deliers to appropriate limbs. You are tiring, you have worked very hard. Iced beanwater will refresh you, and these wallets made of ham. I have set broatues of alert, croug Indian boys around the periphery of the forest, for orion. For orion. Each alert, croug Indian boy is apanied by a large, bronze, wolf-like dog, finely polished.
I have been meaning to speak to you. I have many pages of notes, instrus, quarrels. Oy matters I will speak without notes, freely and passionately, as if inspired, at night, in a rage, slapping myself, great tremendous slaps to the brow which will fell me to the earth. The already-beautiful will stand and watch, in a circle, cradling, each, an animal in m arms -- green monkey, meadow mouse, tucotuco.
That one has her hips exposed, for study. I make careful notes. You snatch the notebook from my hands. The pockets of your smock swing heavily with the lights of deliers. Yht-by-light, bean-by-bean career.
I am, at this moment, prepared to dance.
The already-beautiful have, historically, dahe music made by my exercise mae is, we agree, danceable. The women parthemselves with large bronze hares, which have been cast iitudes of dancers. The beans you have glued together are as nothing to the difficulty of casting hares iitudes of dancers, at night, in the foundry, w the bellows, 99liｂ.the sweat, the glare. The heat. The glare.
Thieves have been io dinner, along with the deans of the chief cathedrals. The thieves will rest upon the bosoms of the deans, at night, after dinner, after coffee, among the beanwoods. The thieves will fess to the deans, and the deans to the thieves. Soft beions will ensue.
England is far away, and France is but a rumor. Pillolaced iombs, potholders, dustcloths. I am privileged, privileged, to be able to hold your ladder. Tirelessly you glue. The forest will soo on some maps, tribute to the quiess of the worlds cartographers. This life is better than any I have lived, previously. Beautiful hips bloom and part. Your sudden movement toward red kidney beans has proved, in the event, masterly. Everywhere we see the already-beautiful wearing stomachers, tiaras of red kidney beans, polis?o the fieress of elians. No ham hash does not tain two red kidney beans, polished to the fieress of elians.
Spain is distant, Pal ed in an imperable haze. These noble beans, glued by you, are mihousand-pound sacks are off-loaded at the quai, against our future needs. The deans are willing workers, the thieves, straw bosses of extraordinary tact. Your weather reports have been splendid: the fall of figs you predicted did in fact occur. I am, at the moment, feeling very jolly. Hey hey, I say. It is remarkable how well human affairs be managed, with care.
Overnight to Many Distant Cities
A group of ese in brown jackets preceded us through the halls of Versailles. They were middle-aged mey, obviously important, perhaps thirty of them. At the entrao ea a guard stopped us, held us batil the ese had finished iing it. A fleet of black gover Citro?ns had brought them, they were much at ease with Versailles and with each other, it was clear that they were being rewarded for many years of good behavior.
Asked her opinion of Versailles, my daughter said she thought it was overdecorated.
Well, yes.
Again in Paris, years earlier, without Anna, we had a hotel room opening on a courtyard, and late at night through an open window heard a woman expressing intense and rising pleasure. We blushed and fell upon each other.
Right now sunny skies in mid-Manhattan, the temperature is forty-two degrees.
In Sto we ate reieak and I told the Prime Minister. . . That the price of booze was too high. Twenty dollars for a bottle of J & B! He (Olof Palme) agreed, most politely, and said that they fihe army that way. The ference we were attending was held at a workers vacatioer somewhat outside the city. Shamelessly, I asked for a double bed, there were none, we pushed two single beds together. An Israeli journalist sat owo single beds drinking our >ostly whiskey and explaining the devilish policies of the Likud. Then it was time to go play with the Afris. A poet who had been for a time a Minister of Culture explained why he had burned a grand piano on the lawn in front of the Ministry. "The piano," he said, "is not the national instrument of Uganda."
A boat ride through the scattered islands. A aovelist asked me to carry a package of paper to New York for him.
Woman is silent for two days in San Franc９9ｌib?isco. And walked through the streets with her arms raised high toug the leaves of the trees.
"But youre married!"
"But thats not my fault!"
Tearing into cold crab at Sas we saw Chill Wills at aable, doing the same thing. We waved to him.
Ihe air was full of the noise of helicopters. The helicopter landed on a pad, General A jumped out and walked with a firm, manly stride to the spot where General藏书网 B waited -- generals visiting each other. They shook hands, the huard with its blue scarves and ed rifles popped to, the band played, pictures were taken. General A followed by
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with a good book, Rilke, as I remember, and resolved o find myself in a situation as dire as his.
In San Antonio we walked by the little river. And ended up in Helens Bar, where John found a pool player who was, like John, an ex-Marine. How these ex-Marines love each other! It is a flat sdal. The gress should do something about it. The IRS should do something about it. You and I talked to each other while John talked to his Parris Island friend, and that wasnt too bad, wasnt too bad. We discussed twenty-four novels of normative adultery. "t have no adultery without adults," I said, and you agreed that this was true. We thought about it, our hands on each others knees, uhe table.
In the car on the way back from San Antonio the ladies talked about the rump of a noted poet. "Too big," they said, "too big too big too big." " you imagine going to bed with him?" they said, and then all said "No no no no no," and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I offered to get out and run alongside the car, if that would allow them to verse more freely.
In hagen I went shopping with two Hungarians. I had thought they merely wao buy presents for their wives. They bought leather gloves, chess sets, frozen fish, baby food, lawnmowers, air ditioners, kayaks. . . We were six hours in the department store.
"This will teach you," they said, "o go shopping with Hungarians."
Again in Paris, the hotel was the Montalembert. . . Anna jumped on the bed and sliced her hand open on an open watercolor tin, blood everywhere, the cierge assuring us that "In the war, I saw much worse things."
Well, yes.
But we couldnt stop the bleeding, in the cab to the Ameri Hospital the driver kept looking over his shoulder to make sure that we werent bleeding on his seat covers, handfuls of bloody paper towels in my right a hands. . .
On another evening, as we were on our way to dinner, I kicked the kid with carefully calibrated force as we were crossing the Pont Mirabeau, she had been pissy all day, driving us crazy, her character improved instantly, wonderfully, this is a tactic that be used exactly once.
In Mexico City we lay with the geous daughter of the Ameri ambassador by a clear, ountain stream. Well, that was the plan, it didnt work out that way. We were around sixteen and had run away from home, in the great tradition, hitched various long rides with various sinister folk, and there we were in the great city with about two t-shirts to our names. My friend Herman found us jobs in a jukebox factory. Our assig was to file the slots in Ameri jukeboxes so that they would accept the big, thick Mexi s. All day long. No gloves.
After about a week of this we were walking one day oreet on which the Hotel Reforma is to be found and there were my father and grandfather, smiling. "The boys have run away," my father had told my grandfather, and my grandfather had said, "Hot dams go get em." I have rarely seen two grown men enjoying themselves so much.
wo this afternoon, the stock market up in heavy trading.
In Berlin everyoared, and I could not blame them. You were spectacular, your long skirts, your long dark hair. I set by the staring, people gazing at happiness and w whether to credit it or not, w whether it was to be trusted and for how long, and what it meant to them, whether they were in some way hurt by it, in some way diminished by it, in some way criticized by it, good God get it out of my sight --
I correctly identified a Matisse as a Matisse even though it was an uncharacteristic Matisse, you thought I was knowledgeable whereas I was only lucky, we stared at the Schwitters show for one hour and twenty minutes, and then lunched. Vitello tonnato, as I recall.
When Herman was divorced in Boston. . . ?Carol got the good barbeque pit. I put it in the Blazer for her. In the back of the Blazer were cartons of books, tableware, sheets and towels, plants, and oddly, two dozen white ations fresh in their box. I poio the flowers. "Herman," she said, "he never gives up."
In Bara the lights went out. At dinner. dles were produced and the shiny langoustines placed before us. Why do I love Bara above most other cities? Because Bara and I share a passion for walking? I was happy there? You were with me? We were celebrating my huh marriage? Ill stand on that. Show me a man who has not married a huimes and Ill show you a wretch who does not deserve the world.
Lung with the Holy Ghost I praised the world, and the Holy Ghost leased. "We have that little problem in Bara," He said, "the lights go out in the middle of dinner." "Ive noticed," I said. "Were w on it," He said, "what a wonderful city, one of our best." "A great town," I agreed. In aasy of admiration for what is we ate our simple soup.
Tomorrow, fair and warmer, warmer and fair, most fair. . .天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》