Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  But it does remain a fact that the two brothers had married the two sisters.

  And which would now appear to indicate that poor Electra and Orestes would not have gotten to visit their aunt that often after all.

  Now see here, Helen. Winter solstice or not, certainly it is pushing things a bit far to expect me to allow that woman to set foot into this palace.

  Oh, but Menelaus, darling.

  Don't oh darling me. Not about this, you won't.

  Even if none of this would have precluded Penelope's own visit in any way whatsoever, on the other hand.

  So that what one is now naturally forced to suspect is that very likely it was the latter who gave Helen the cat, rather than Cassandra who did.

  Well, and doubtless it would have been exactly like Penelope to think of an animal in any event, what with being so accustomed to a dog at home.

  Although in fact she had a cat, too. Even if what I had almost been about to forget next is that there is actually a painting showing this, by somebody named Pintoricchio.

  I am fairly certain I have mentioned the painting by Pintoricchio showing Penelope's cat.

  I am even fairly certain I have mentioned that the cat in the painting is russet.

  Even if as I have long since indicated russet is not a name one gives to a color.

  I believe it may have been Rembrandt who first established this rule, actually, although in more recent years it was Willem de Kooning who most strongly insisted upon it.

  Then again I may have also spoken about a cat of my own as having been russet in spite of this, now that I think back.

  That would have only been carelessness, however.

  And at any rate none of these cats is by any means to be confused with Rembrandt's own cat, which I bring up only because one might understandably think of Rembrandt's cat as having been russet as well, if for no other reason than russet being a color one automatically associates with Rembrandt.

  Rembrandt's cat was actually gray. And had only one eye.

  Which may very well be an explanation for why it always strolled right past those gold coins on the floor of his studio without so much as a glance, as a matter of fact, even though I had never stopped to think about that before.

  Which is to say that doubtless it had generally passed the coins on the wrong side and so had not noticed them at all.

  A good number of people also happened to disapprove of that same cat's name, by the way, which was Argus.

  There was an explanation for this, too, of course.

  The explanation being that the original Argus had been a dog.

  In fact the original Argus was the very dog I have just been talking about, and which is therefore even something of a small coincidence, when one comes down to it.

  After all, how often does one happen to be talking about the dog who recognizes Odysseus when he finally returns to Ithaca after having been gone for so many years but then dies?

  Or which Penelope becomes so accustomed to that it reminds her to bring other animals as gifts, whenever she visits anybody?

  Still, people did voice disapproval over Rembrandt having named his cat the way he did.

  Now how could anybody be so foolish as to name a cat after a dog? This basically having been the manner in which such disapproval was voiced.

  And which brings up Carel Fabritius once again, also, if only insofar as there would appear to be no record as to whether Carel Fabritius was one of the people involved in this or not.

  One guesses that in having still been a pupil at the time he would have very likely kept his opinion to himself, however.

  Although doubtless many local merchants would have handled the situation in much this same manner, as well.

  Well, tradesmen generally being less apt than most people to express disapproval in any event, so as not to lose patronage.

  Have you heard? Rembrandt has gotten a cat that he has named after a dog. Most probably this is approximately the manner in which the local pharmacist would have put it, say, insofar as such a simple statement does not necessarily have to be interpreted as showing disapproval at all, really.

  Most probably the pharmacist would have put it in just this manner to Spinoza, in fact, on the next occasion when Spinoza had a prescription to be filled.

  Or needed cigarettes.

  Then again it is equally possible that Spinoza may have heard about the name from Rembrandt himself.

  Well, as when waiting on line in the same shop, for instance, which the two of them were frequently known to do. Certainly as no more than casual acquaintances they would have found this a perfectly harmless subject with which to pass the time.

  So. And have you thought up a name for your new cat yet, Rembrandt?

  As a matter of fact I am naming him Argus, Spinoza.

  Ah, so you are naming your cat after the dog in the Odyssey, are you?

  One assumes that Spinoza would have answered in something like this fashion, all of this again being merely polite. Assuredly he would have looked at the matter in a different light later on, however.

  Now how could anybody be so foolish as to name a cat after a dog? Assuredly it would have been more in this sort of a light that he looked at it then.

  But in the meantime what is also highly probable here is that Rembrandt himself would not have been aware of one bit of this.

  Well, certainly a man facing bankruptcy would have had little time to waste in thinking about a cat in either case.

  So that doubtless as soon as the animal had been named he would have again been preoccupied with other matters entirely.

  Such as finishing The Night Watch, for instance.

  Interestingly, by the way, I had never understood what it was supposed to be about The Night Watch at all, when I had only seen reproductions of it.

  When I finally walked into the Tate Gallery in London and saw the canvas itself it sent shivers up and down my spine, however.

  As if there were a glow from inside of the pigments themselves, practically.

  So that I was even more careful with it than with any other painting I had ever removed to make use of the frame from, I suspect.

  And especially when I was nailing it back into place.

  Even though my fire had almost gone out before I was finished, too, as I remember.

  To this day I have never quite been able to solve how Rembrandt managed to bring that off, either.

  Well, which is why he was Rembrandt, presumably.

  Have I ever said that my pickup truck has English license plates and a right-hand drive, incidentally?

  Heaven only knows what it was doing parked at one of the marinas here. But I have been driving it locally ever since.

  Although there is one more thing I had wished to point out about that question of Rembrandt's cat before I leave it, actually.

  Which is the way in which so many more people happened to be familiar with the writings of Homer in those days than would have been the case later on.

  Here we have Carel Fabritius and the pharmacist and Spinoza, all immediately recognizing the name of the dog. Well, and not to mention Rembrandt himself, who chose it.

  But for that matter doubtless Jan Vermeer would have recognized it just as quickly, once he in turn became a pupil of Carel Fabritius and Carel Fabritius was explaining about russet and bedspreads.

  Well, and as would Leeuwenhoek and Galileo, doubtless, having been in Delft, too.

  Conversely if I had named my own russet cat Argus I am next to positive that not one solitary person I knew would have made the connection with Odysseus's dog at all.

  As a matter of fact the only individual I can recall personally who ever did make this connection was Martin Heidegger.

  I have perhaps said that badly.

  In saying that I can personally recall Martin Heidegger having made this connection very likely what I have implied is that I once spoke with Martin Heidegger.

  Martin Heidegger is not somebody I once spoke
with.

  As a matter of fact another implication in that same sentence would presumably be that I might have understood such a conversation if it had occurred.

  Which I would not have, obviously, not speaking one word of German.

  Not that it is of course impossible that Martin Heidegger spoke English on his own part, although I did not ask him that, either.

  Ah, me.

  Possibly I had better start over.

  I am starting over.

  What happened was that I once wrote Martin Heidegger a letter.

  It was in answer to my letter that Martin Heidegger indicated his familiarity with the Odyssey.

  Even though my own letter had had nothing to do with that topic.

  Although in fact what I now believe is that I wish to start this whole thing still one more time.

  I am starting this whole thing still one more time.

  What really happened, once, was that I wrote letters to a considerable number of famous people.

  So that to tell the truth Martin Heidegger was not even the most famous person I wrote to.

  Certainly Winston Churchill would have been considered more famous than Martin Heidegger.

  In fact I am positive that Picasso would have also been considered more famous than Martin Heidegger.

  And that the same thing could have assuredly been said about the Queen of England.

  Well, and what with fame generally being a matter of one's orientation anyway, surely in the eyes of people who admired music Igor Stravinsky and Maria Callas would have been said to have been more famous themselves.

  As no doubt in the eyes of people who admired movies this would have held true for Katharine Hepburn or Marlon Brando or Peter O'Toole.

  Or as for people who admired baseball it might even have appeared to be the case with Stan Usual.

  But be all that as it may I wrote letters to every single one of these people.

  And as a matter of fact I wrote letters to more peopie than this.

  Some of the other people I suspect I may also have written to were Bertrand Russell, and Dmitri Shostakovich, and Ralph Hodgson, and Anna Akhmatova, and Maurice Utrillo, and Irene Papas.

  Moreover I suspect I may have even written to Gilbert Murray and to T. E. Shaw.

  Although when I say I suspect in regard to these latter cases it is because with a good number of them I can no longer be certain.

  The chief reason I can no longer be certain being simply that I wrote all of these letters a good many years ago.

  But too, another reason is that a certain number of the people I have mentioned may in fact have already been dead by the time I wrote the letters.

  And in which case I would have scarcely written to them, naturally.

  Well, this having been the very situation with such people as Jackson Pollock, and Gertrude Stein, and Dylan Thomas, to whom I naturally did not write, either.

  So that all I actually mean is that after so long I have forgotten a lot of these other people's dates.

  Which is to say that even though I happen to be thinking about them now as having been people I might have thought about writing to then, they may have obviously not been people I would have been thinking about writing to then after all.

  This is not really that complicated, although it may seem to be.

  And to tell the truth I had no special messages for anybody individually in any case.

  Every single one of the letters having been identical.

  In fact they were all Xerox copies of one letter.

  All of them stating that I had just gotten a cat.

  Well, naturally the letters stated more than that.

  One would hardly sit down and Xerox a letter to Picasso, or to the Queen of England, simply to state that one had just gotten a cat.

  It being that I was having an extraordinary amount of difficulty in naming the cat, and did they have any suggestions, that was what else the letter said.

  All of this having been contrived in a spirit of fun, of course.

  Even if it remains a fact that the letters were quite truthful.

  Except perhaps for the fact that the cat was not really a cat but only still a kitten.

  After one has had a cat for a certain time one tends to refer to it as a cat even when speaking of the period in which it had not yet become a cat, however.

  Even if that is doubtless neither here nor there.

  The point remaining that there was the poor thing still poking about my studio with nothing for anybody to call it by.

  Until it had almost stopped being a kitten and begun to become a cat for real, in fact.

  Almost cat, being what I had even begun to think of it as.

  Although doubtless I had better get some help with this difficulty, being what I was also finally forced to think.

  What would Joan Baez name an almost cat? Or Germaine Greer? Doubtless I even began to have thoughts along those lines, as well.

  Well, unquestionably I began to have thoughts along those lines as well, or it would have otherwise scarcely occurred to me to write those letters.

  Even if I have perhaps forgotten to mention that Joan Baez and Germaine Greer were two more of the people I wrote them to.

  And even if it was not actually my idea to write those letters in any way at all.

  Actually, what happened was that there happened to be certain people at my studio, one evening, and one of these people happened to ask me what my almost cat's name happened to be.

  Well, visiting at somebody's studio and having an almost cat climb into one's lap one is quite naturally apt to ask a question of that sort.

  In fact whose lap the almost cat had climbed into was Marco Antonio Montes de Oca's lap.

  Even if I no longer have any idea whatsoever what Marco Antonio Montes de Oca may have been doing at my studio. Unless perhaps it may have been William Gaddis who brought him.

  Although doubtless I have also failed to mention that William Gaddis ever visited at my studio himself.

  William Gaddis now and again visited at my studio himself.

  And on certain of those occasions brought along other writers.

  One would tend to do that sort of thing, basically.

  Well, by which I mean that if William Gaddis had been a pharmacist doubtless the other people he brought along would have been other pharmacists.

  Assuming he brought along anybody to begin with, I am obviously also saying.

  So that this time he had perhaps brought along Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, who in either case did ask me what my almost cat's name was.

  And so that what happened right after that was that all sorts of interesting suggestions were offered in regard to a name.

  Writing to famous people for suggestions being one of those very suggestions, as it turned out.

  And which immediately appeared to ring a little bell for everybody in the room.

  So that in no time at all I had a sheet of paper filled with more names of famous people than you could count.

  All of this as I say having been contrived in a spirit of fun.

  Even if it saddened me.

  Well, for never having heard of half of the people who were mentioned, to tell the truth.

  Although not that this was by any means an entirely new experience in my life either, when one comes down to that.

  In fact it had sometimes seemed to happen every other time I turned around.

  So that as quickly as one had gotten accustomed to a name like Jacques Levi-Strauss, say, there was everybody talking about Jacques Barthes.

  And three days after that about Jacques somebody else.

  And in the meantime all one had honestly ever been trying to do was catch up to Susan Sontag.

  And of course it was around this same time that one discovered that people who wrote ordinary art reviews in the daily newspapers had stopped calling themselves art reviewers and become art critics, as well.

  Which naturally led one to wonder just what on
e was supposed to call E. H. Gombrich or Meyer Schapiro, then.

  Well, or Erwin Panofsky or Millard Meiss or Heinrich Wolfilin or Rudolf Arnheim or Harold Rosenberg or Arnold Hauser or Andre Malraux or Rene Huyghe or William Gaunt or Walter Friedlaender or Max J. Friedlander or Elie Faure or Emile Male or Kenneth Clark or Wylie Sypher or Clement Greenberg or Herbert Read.

  Or for that matter Wilhelm Worringer or Roger Fry or Bernard Berenson or Clive Bell or Walter Pater or Jacob Burckhardt or Eugene Fromentin or Baudelaire or the Goncourts or Winckelmann or Schlegel or Lessing or Cennini or Aretino or Alberti or Vasari or John Ruskin, even.

  Although doubtless I am showing off again.

  Just for the minute I felt like I needed it this time, however.

  And be that as it may everybody did insist that I write to all of those other people who were named.

  Even if I did leave out certain of the additional artists who were brought up, finally.

  Well, such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Louise Nevelson and Helen Frankenthaler.

  Simply feeling silly about sending such a letter to people I had been in group shows with, was all.

  Although obviously I was not the one who put Campy Stengel in, either.

  Oh, good lord.

  Magritte.

  Whom I did remember to tack onto the list myself, in fact.

  Well, but Magritte now turning out to be exactly like Artemisia Gentileschi, I suddenly realize.

  Which is to say that it seems practically impossible that I could have written this many pages without ever having mentioned Magritte before, similarly.

  Certainly I have thought about Magritte now and again whether I have mentioned him or not, on the other hand, which was truthfully perhaps not the case with Artemisia.

  In fact I have thought about Magritte practically as often as I have asked myself certain kinds of questions.

  And which do not happen to be questions I have asked myself only rarely, either.

  Well, such as what floor is that toilet on, say, that is on the second floor of the house that does not have a second floor?

  Or, where was my own house when all I was seeing was the smoke from my potbellied stove but was thinking, there is my house?

  Certainly both of those questions are questions that could make one think about Magritte.

  And as a matter of fact I now even remember that when I finally found the road to the house in the woods behind this house after not having been able to find the road to the house in the woods behind this house, just about the first thing I said to myself was, well, here I am at the intersection of Fallen Tree Avenue and Magritte Road.