Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  Even if on second thought I perhaps did not put Magritte on that list after all.

  Which is to say that even though I happen to be thinking about Magritte now as somebody I might have thought about writing to then, he may have actually not been somebody I would have happened to think about writing to then.

  In all instances lately when I have spoken about my studio, by the way, I have also been speaking about my loft.

  Having worked where I lived, if I have not made that clear.

  Well, or vice versa.

  Although in the meantime I have only at this instant been struck by something quite curious.

  In fact it is extraordinarily curious.

  Not sixty seconds ago I walked into the kitchen for a drink of water, from my pitcher.

  While I was walking back I heard part of one of the Bachianas Brasileiras, by Villa-Lobos, in my head.

  I mean the one that everybody was generally familiar with, with the soprano voice.

  Still, the Bachianas Brasileiras by Villa-Lobos being something else I am next to positive I have never mentioned before, either.

  Even though what I realized simultaneously is that I have heard that identical piece of music now and again whether I have mentioned it or not.

  In fact I have heard it as many times as I have thought about Magritte, practically.

  Except that every single time I have heard it what I have always said to myself I was hearing was The Alto Rhapsody,

  And which obviously now implies that every single time I have mentioned The Alto Rhapsody what I ought to have mentioned was one of the Bachianas Brasileiras.

  And moreover that every single time I have mentioned Kathleen Ferrier singing the Brahms what I ought to have mentioned was Bidú Sayão singing the Villa-Lobos.

  Even if it may have been Kirsten Flagstad singing.

  And in a manner of speaking I was not really hearing any one of the three to begin with.

  Hm.

  Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.

  What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

  I would find it very agreeable to be able to feel that this has solved anything I have just been talking about.

  Whatever I have precisely just been talking about.

  In fact I would even happily settle to have not completely lost track of where I was.

  I have not at all lost track of where I was.

  Where I am is at the point where somebody next borrowed another sheet of paper and actually started to dictate the letter for me.

  In fact it may have been William Gaddis himself who did this.

  Or one of the pharmacists.

  Although what was also suggested around this time was that I should include postcards along with the letters, addressed to myself, so as to give the people who received the letters less excuse for not answering.

  Well, your ordinary letter of this type being easily left unanswered, of course.

  Whereas surely one would feel more guilty about doing so when the letter had included a postcard addressed to the sender.

  Even if what this in turn brought up was the question of proper postage, United States stamps being obviously of little use in any of the other countries the postcards were supposed to be mailed back from.

  I believe it was Susan Sontag who thought to point this out, actually.

  Or another of the pharmacists.

  Still, I did follow the suggestion about the postcards.

  Just allowing the stamps to appear to have been forgotten about, as it were.

  And which in the end turned out to have been just as well, or certainly at least in terms of having saved the expense.

  What with only one of the people to whom I had sent the letters ever taking the trouble to return the postcard in either case.

  This having been Martin Heidegger.

  And who in fact spoke quite impressive English after all.

  Even making use of the subjunctive, as it happened.

  Although when I say spoke, I should really be saying wrote, of course.

  What I should wish to suggest as a name for your dog is the splendid classical name of Argos from the Odyssey by Homer, having been what was written in English on the postcard from Martin Heidegger.

  For some period I was fairly annoyed with Martin Heidegger.

  Well.

  Even if I did finally come to realize that doubtless philosophers had more important items on their minds than names for other people's pets.

  Ach, here I sit with such important items as Dasein on my mind, surely being what Martin Heidegger must have said to himself, and there is that person in America requesting a name for her foolish animal.

  So that in the final analysis it was actually quite kind of Martin Heidegger to have taken the time to write at all, in spite of having made a mistake when he did so.

  And even though it had taken almost seven months before the postcard came back, additionally.

  But which may have also very well been the reason for Martin Heidegger's mistake, now that one stops to think about it.

  Which is to say that very possibly Martin Heidegger was busily writing one of his books through all of that time.

  Very possibly the book he was so busily writing was one of the very books in the carton in the basement of this house, in fact, and which only goes to show how astonishingly small the world can be.

  But in either case not until Martin Heidegger had finished writing his book would he have found my letter again.

  Or rather what he more likely would have found was only the postcard, having doubtless discarded the letter as soon as he had read it.

  Certainly having had no doubts at all that he would remember what he was supposed to write on the card.

  Well, and being a famous philosopher having had even fewer doubts that he would remember the difference between a cat and a dog, surely.

  Unless on second thought there is a subtle possibility here that Martin Heidegger did not make a mistake after all?

  Granting that this has only this tardily come into my head. But still, why couldn't Martin Heidegger have perhaps known that whole story about Rembrandt and his own cat?

  And why couldn't Susan Sontag have indicated while she was dictating my letter that I was a painter myself?

  Surely in writing to total strangers one would have shown the courtesy to identify one's self in either event.

  So that what would have really gone through Martin Heidegger's mind, then, would have been something like, ach, so what I will tell this painter person in this SoHo place to name her animal is what Rembrandt named his.

  And which would thus call for a rather different explanation as to why Martin Heidegger still happened to write dog instead of cat, obviously.

  The rather different explanation being obviously that Martin Heidegger's English was hardly so impressive as one had thought.

  Still, what I am finally almost sorry about is that I never did write to Martin Heidegger a second time, to thank him.

  Well, and I certainly would have found it agreeable to tell the man how fond I am of his sentence, too, about inconsequential perplexities now and again becoming the fundamental mood of existence.

  Unless as I have said it may have been Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote that sentence.

  Or Søren Kierkegaard.

  And even if I had long since given the cat itself another name altogether, of course.

  Hm.

  Except that after all of this talk I suddenly cannot seem to remember what name I did give it.

  Doubtless this is only because I have been speaking about so many other cats, however.

  Not even counting Rembrandt's, for instance, there is the cat that Medea gave to Helen, and there is the cat I saw in the Colosseum, and there is the cat which scratches at the outside of my window, here.

  Well, and then there are all of those
cats which would have been leery about going to the garbage disposal area because of so many seagulls doing their scavenging, and there is the cat which Taddeo Gaddi once did a painting of and was speaking about as being russet until Giotto informed him it was burnt sienna.

  Which Theophanes the Greek had informed Giotto before that.

  I believe that cats may have been mentioned in connection with such people as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Anna Karenina in some way or other, as well.

  Then again I may be in error about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, not knowing whether anybody who lived in a convent was permitted to have a cat.

  I am assuming that Sister Joan Inez of the Cross lived in a convent.

  But which is to say that St. Teresa would not have had a cat in Toledo either, then.

  Well, and I now realize I am in error about Ludwig Wittgenstein, too, since any cat of Wittgenstein's would have been just as leery about his own pet seagull as were all of those other cats about the seagulls at the garbage disposal area.

  Or at least during Wittgenstein's period at Galway Bay, this would have been.

  Galway Bay.

  Andrea senza errori.

  Which is not to say that Wittgenstein might not have had a cat years earlier while he was mowing the lawns at a monastery, on the other hand.

  Unless monasteries had the same rule as convents.

  So that St. John of the Cross would have been still somebody else who could not have had one.

  Jan Steen owned a brewery in which there might have been a cat, however.

  Heaven only knows why writing about a monastery should have reminded me of that, although I am pleased to have thought of it nonetheless, having believed for the longest time that I knew nothing at all about Jan Steen.

  Although what I am also now remembering is that Fra Filippo Lippi once eloped with a nun, if that is in any way connected with anything?

  Well, possibly what it is connected with is that if the nun had not been permitted to have a cat before, she might have gotten one then.

  Anna Karenina's cat was run over by a train, if I remember.

  I am still somewhat upset about that question of having repeatedly believed I was hearing the Four Last Songs by Strauss when what I was really hearing was the Bachianas Brasileiras number five, incidentally.

  Even if I have forgotten whether there was a cat near Robert and Clara Schumann's piano in Song of Love, likewise.

  Although what I do only this instant realize is that there happen to be books in this very house by Jacques Levi-Strauss and Jacques Barthes, actually.

  Except now what troubles me is why so many people would have been excited about instructions as to how to behave at table or a guide to the Eiffel Tower.

  Unless perhaps it is the guide to the birds of Southern Connecticut and Long Island Sound that I am mixing up, here.

  In any instances lately when I have spoken about my pitcher, by the way, I should have more truthfully spoken about a jar.

  Pitcher merely having more of the sound of something one would carry to a spring, being all.

  Even if for the life of me I have no idea what I have been saying that has now made me think about Marina Tsvetayeva again, either.

  Especially since that is one of the saddest stories I know.

  What happened having been that the Russians let such a wonderful poet practically starve to death, all alone and in exile.

  After having killed her family.

  So that she finally hanged herself.

  And so that I might have actually driven right past her grave on my way across Russia, too, without ever having known where it was.

  Even if nobody ever really knew, for that matter.

  God, the things men used to do.

  Not that they could ever again find the pauper's grave that Mozart had been buried in either, after the rain had stopped the next morning.

  That being a different sort of story altogether, perhaps, but still also sad.

  Have I ever said, just to deliberately change the subject, that it was at a garbage disposal area that Van Gogh actually painted his famous canvas called The Broken Bottles?

  Which is at the Rijksmuseum, I think.

  Van Gogh having had that gift for making his pigments sometimes seem to glow, too, by the way.

  Except that in Van Gogh's case what one generally catches one's self doing is starting to glance across one's shoulder, as if to figure out where all the sunlight is coming from.

  There would appear to be no record as to which particular paintings Van Gogh painted while wearing the old socks that Alfred North Whitehead later used to put on when he went for walks in the woods near Cambridge, on the other hand.

  Although another thing I have perhaps never mentioned is that Ludwig Wittgenstein actually used to carry sugar in his pockets, when he went for walks near Cambridge himself.

  The reason he carried the sugar being to give it to horses he might see in fields while he was walking.

  On my honor, Wittgenstein used to do that.

  For some reason this story is another that reminds me of something, even if I have no idea what, at the moment.

  Doubtless I will think of my cat's name in a day or two also, however.

  And in the meantime what I have just decided to do is to change the name of the cat which scratches at the outside of my window.

  What I am now calling that cat is Magritte.

  Well, Magritte having more of a connection with a cat that is not really a cat than Van Gogh does, being all.

  Even if the very painting by Van Gogh I have just mentioned is a painting of a fire which is not really a fire but is only a reflection of a fire, actually.

  And which perhaps I have never even seen except in a reproduction either, since on second thought I do not remember it at the Uffizi after all.

  Wittgenstein was never married, by the way. Well, or never had a mistress either, having been a homosexual.

  Although in the meantime when I just said in the meantime I truly did mean in the meantime.

  It now being almost an entire week since I additionally said I would doubtless think of my cat's name in a day or two.

  And this in turn being by far the longest period I have allowed to go by without sitting at the typewriter.

  My shoulder and my ankle no longer hurting as badly as they did, however.

  Which is not to say that the pains in my shoulder or my ankle had anything to do with my not sitting at the typewriter.

  Or that the pains no longer being as bad as they were has anything to do with my being back.

  For some reason all I felt like doing was lying in the sun, for a time.

  Which is also to say that it has stopped raining, obviously.

  Well, one hardly having been able to lie in the sun if it hadn't.

  Obviously.

  In fact I have been having some rosy-fingered dawns again after all, too.

  Even if how I happened to feel through most of the week was depressed, to tell the truth.

  I believe I have said that I felt depressed at least once before, actually, while writing these pages.

  Although perhaps what I more exactly said I felt once before was a certain undefined anxiety.

  Which in that instance would have only been because of my period coming on, however.

  Or because of hormones.

  And so which would have not really been anxiety at all, but only an illusion.

  Even if one would certainly be hard put to explain the difference between an illusion of anxiety and anxiety itself.

  And in either case how I still felt this time was depressed.

  Even if I had no idea why.

  And moreover even if feeling depressed and having no idea why can generally leave one feeling even more depressed than that.

  I was fairly certain that none of it had anything to do with not being able to remember the name of my cat.

  Well, and too, once the rain had stopped but t
he woods were still wet everything was extraordinarily beautiful, and all of the wet leaves glistened and glistened.

  So that it scarcely could have had anything to do with the rain, either.

  Which I had been finding agreeable to ignore by walking in it in any event.

  Finally on Tuesday I understood why I was feeling depressed.

  Which was the same day on which I noticed that my rowboat would have to be bailed out, incidentally, should I wish to make use of my rowboat.

  Although when I say this was Tuesday I am saying so only in a manner of speaking, naturally.

  Having had no idea what day of the week it has ever been through any of these years, of course, and which is surely another thing I must have mentioned.

  Still, certain days feeling like Tuesday, for all that.

  And even if I could also not remember having ever bailed out my other rowboat at all, although certainly I must have done so, now and again.

  Unless it had never once rained while I still had my other rowboat.

  Or I had never had another rowboat.

  Certainly I once had another rowboat.

  Just as I once had another cat, in fact, besides the cat I once wrote letters to all of those famous people about, and which was why I was feeling depressed.

  This having been a cat before that cat, and which I had completely forgotten about when I was doing that list of so many other cats, last week.

  In fact I suspect there is something ironical in my having been able to remember Helen of Sparta's cat, or even Carel Fabritius's burnt sienna cat, and not remembering this particular cat.

  Especially since this particular cat was not really mine but was Lucien's.

  And even though I had a husband at the same time, named Adam, whom I do not remember very frequently, either.

  What happened with this cat having been that Adam and I suggested to Lucien that he should be the one to give it its name.

  And which Lucien then commenced to look upon as an extraordinary responsibility.

  Well, being only four, doubtless he had never had a responsibility before whether extraordinary or not.