Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  You are reading From Ritual to Romance, by Jessie L. Weston. But others have read it before you. Practically everyone has read it.

  At the pool, you read Saint-Exupéry. But wait, there is a yellow nylon cord crossing the pool, yellow nylon supported by red-and-blue plastic floats, it divides the children’s part from the deeper part, you are in the pool investigating, flexing the nylon cord, pulling on it, yes, it is firmly attached to the side of the pool, to both sides of the pool. And in the kitchen you regard the salad chef, a handsome young Frenchman, he stares at you, at your tanned breasts, at your long dark (wet) hair, can one, would it be possible, at this hour, a cup of coffee, or perhaps tea . . .

  Soon you will be thirty.

  And the giant piece of yellow road-mending equipment enters the pool, silently, you are in the cab, manipulating the gears, levers, shove this one forward and the machine swims. Swims toward the man in the Day-Glo orange vest who is waving his Day-Glo orange flags in the air, this way, this way, here!

  He’s a saint, you said. Did you ever try to live with a saint?

  You telephone to tell me you love me before going out to do something I don’t want you to do.

  If you are not asking for fireworks you are asking for Miles Davis bound hand and foot, or Iceland. You make no small plans.

  See, there is a blue BOAC flight bag, open, on the floor, inside it is a folded newspaper, a towel, and something wrapped in silver foil. You bend over the flight bag (whose is it? you don’t know) and begin to unwrap the object wrapped in silver foil. Half a loaf of bread. Satisfied, you wrap it up again.

  You return from California too late to vote. One minute too late. I went across the street to the school with you. They had locked the doors. I remember your banging on the doors. No one came to open them. Tears. What difference does one minute make? you screamed, in the direction of the doors.

  Your husband, you say, is a saint.

  And did no one ever tell you that the staircase you climbed in your dream, carrying the long brown velvet skirt, in your dream is a very old staircase?

  I remind myself to tell you that you are abnormally intelligent. You kick me in the backs of the legs again, while I sleep.

  Parades, balloons, fêtes, horse races.

  You feel your time is limited. Tomorrow, you think, there will be three deep creases in your forehead. You offer to quit your job, if that would please me. I say that you cannot quit your job, because you are abnormally intelligent. Your job needs you.

  The salad chef moves in your direction, but you are lying on your back on the tennis court, parallel with and under the net, turning your head this way and that, applauding the players, one a tall man with a rump as big as his belly, which is huge, the other a fourteen-year-old girl, intent, lean stringy hair, sorry, good shot, nice one, your sunglasses stuck in your hair. You rush toward the mountain which is furnished with trees, ski lifts, power lines, deck chairs, wedding invitations, you invade the mountain as if it were a book, leaping into the middle, checking the ending, ignoring the beginning. And look there, a locked door! You try the handle, first lightly, then viciously.

  You once left your open umbrella outside the A & P, tied to the store with a string. When you came out of the store with your packages, you were surprised to find it gone.

  The three buildings across the street from my apartment — one red, one yellow, one brown — are like a Hopper in the slanting late-afternoon light. See? Like a Hopper.

  Is that a rash on my chest? Between the breasts? Those little white marks? Look, those people at the next table, all have ordered escargots, seven dozen in garlic butter arriving all at once, eighty-four dead snails on a single surface, in garlic butter. And last night, when it was so hot, I opened the doors to the balcony, I couldn’t sleep, I lay awake, I thought I heard something, I imagined someone climbing over the balcony, I got up to see but there was no one.

  You are as beautiful as twelve Hoppers.

  You are as brave as Vincent Van Gogh.

  I make the fireworks for you:

  * ! * !] * !! * [! * ! * and * % % * +&+&+ * % % *.

  If he is a saint, why did you marry him? It makes no sense. Outside in the street, some men with a cherry picker are placing new high-intensity bulbs in all the street lights, so that our criminals will be scalded, transfigured with light.

  Yesterday you asked me for the Princeton University Press.

  The Princeton University Press is not a toy, I said.

  It’s not?

  And then: Can we go to a movie in which there are fireworks?

  But there are fireworks in all movies, that is what movies are for — what they do for us.

  You should not have left the baby on the lawn. In a hailstorm. When we brought him inside, he was covered with dime-size blue bruises.

  The Agreement

  Where is my daughter?

  Why is she there? What crucial error did I make? Was there more than one?

  Why have I assigned myself a task that is beyond my abilities?

  Having assigned myself a task that is beyond my abilities, why do I then pursue it with all of the enthusiasm of one who believes himself capable of completing the task?

  Having assigned myself a task that is beyond my abilities, why do I then do that which is most certain to preclude my completing the task? To ensure failure? To excuse failure? Ordinary fear of failure?

  When I characterize the task as beyond my abilities, do I secretly believe that it is within my powers?

  Was there only one crucial error, or was there a still more serious error earlier, one that I did not recognize as such at the time?

  Was there a series of errors?

  Are they in any sense forgivable? If so, who is empowered to forgive me?

  If I fail in the task that is beyond my abilities, will my lover laugh?

  Will the mailman laugh? The butcher?

  When will the mailman bring me a letter from my daughter?

  Why do I think my daughter might be dead or injured when I know that she is almost certainly well and happy? If I fail in the task that is beyond my abilities, will my daughter’s mother laugh?

  But what if the bell rings and I go down the stairs and answer the door and find there an old woman with white hair wearing a bright-red dress, and when I open the door she immediately begins spitting blood, a darker red down the front of her bright-red dress?

  If I fail in the task that is beyond my abilities, will my doctor laugh?

  Why do I conceal from my doctor what it is necessary for him to know?

  Is my lover’s lover a man or a woman?

  Will my father and mother laugh? Are they already laughing, secretly, behind their hands?

  If I succeeded in the task that is beyond my abilities, will I win the approval of society? If I win the approval of society, does this mean that the (probable) series of errors already mentioned will be forgiven, or, if not forgiven, viewed in a more sympathetic light? Will my daughter then be returned to me?

  Will I deceive myself about the task that is beyond my abilities, telling myself that I have successfully completed it when I have not?

  Will others aid in the deception?

  Will others unveil the deception?

  But what if the bell rings and I go down the stairs and answer the door and find there an old man with white hair wearing a bright-red dress, and when I open the door he immediately begins spitting blood, a darker red down the front of his bright-red dress?

  Why did I assign myself the task that is beyond my abilities?

  Did I invent my lover’s lover or is he or she real? Ought I to care?

  But what if the bell rings and I go down the stairs again and instead of the white-haired woman or man in the bright-red dress my lover’s lover is standing there? And what if I bring my lover’s lover into the house and sit him or her down in the brown leather club chair and provide him or her with a drink and begin to explain that the task I have undertaken is hopelessly, hopele
ssly beyond my abilities? And what if my lover’s lover listens with the utmost consideration, nodding and smiling and patting my wrist at intervals as one does with a nervous client, if one is a lawyer or doctor, and then abruptly offers me a new strategy: Why not do this? And what if, thinking over the new strategy proposed by my lover’s lover, I recognize that yes, this is the solution which has evaded me for these many months? And what if, recognizing that my lover’s lover has found the solution which has evaded me for these many months, I suddenly begin spitting blood, dark red against the blue of my blue work shirt? What then?

  For is it not the case that even with the solution in hand, the task will remain beyond my abilities?

  And where is my daughter? What is my daughter thinking at this moment? Is my daughter, at this moment, being knocked off her bicycle by a truck with the words HACHARD & CIE painted on its sides? Or is she, rather, in a photographer’s studio, sitting for a portrait I have requested? Or has she already done so, and will, today, the bell ring and the mailman bring a large stiff brown envelope stamped PHOTO DO NOT BEND?

  HACHARD & CIE?

  PHOTO DO NOT BEND?

  If I am outraged and there is no basis in law or equity for my outrage nor redress in law or equity for my outrage, am I to decide that my outrage is wholly inappropriate? If I observe myself carefully, using the techniques of introspection most favored by society, and decide, after such observation, that my outrage is not wholly inappropriate but perhaps partially inappropriate, what can I do with my (partially appropriate) outrage? What is there to do with it but deliver it to my lover or my lover’s lover or to the task that is beyond my abilities, or to embrace instead the proposition that, after all, things are not so bad? Which is not true?

  If I embrace the proposition that, after all, things are not so bad, which is not true, then have I not also embraced a hundred other propositions, kin to the first in that they are also not true? That the Lord is my shepherd, for example?

  But what if I decide not to be outraged but to be, instead, calm and sensible? Calm and sensible and adult? And mature? What if I decide to send my daughter stamps for her stamp collection and funny postcards and birthday and Christmas packages and to visit her at the times stated in the agreement? And what if I assign myself simpler, easier tasks, tasks which are well within my powers? And what if I decide that my lover has no other lover (disregarding the matchbooks, the explanations that do not explain, the discrepancies of time and place), and what if I inform my doctor fully and precisely about my case, supplying all relevant details (especially the shameful)? And what if I am able to redefine my errors as positive adjustments to a state of affairs requiring positive adjustments? And what if the operator does not break into my telephone conversation, any conversation, and say, “I’m sorry, this is the operator, I have an emergency message for 679-9819”?

  Will others aid in the deception?

  Will others unveil the deception?

  “TWELFTH: Except for the obligations, promises and agreements herein set forth and to be performed by the husband and wife respectively, and for rights, obligations and causes of action arising out of or under this agreement, all of which are expressly reserved, the husband and wife each hereby, for himself or herself and for his or her legal representatives, forever releases and discharges the other, and the heirs and legal representatives of the other, from any and all debts, sums of money, accounts, contracts, claims, cause or causes of action, suits, dues, reckonings, bills, specialties, covenants, controversies, agreements, promises, variances, trespasses, damages, judgments, extents, executions, and demands, whatsoever, in law or in equity, which he or she had, or has or hereafter can, shall or may have, by reason of any matter, from the beginning of the world to the execution of this agreement.”

  The painters are here. They are painting the apartment. One gallon of paint to eight gallons of benzine. From the beginning of the world to the execution of this agreement. Where is my daughter? I am asking for a carrot to put in the stone soup. The villagers are hostile.

  Basil From Her Garden

  A: In the dream, my father was playing the piano, a Beethoven something, in a large concert hall that was filled with people. I was in the audience and I was reading a book. I suddenly realized that this was the wrong thing to do when my father was performing, so I sat up and paid attention. He was playing very well, I thought. Suddenly the conductor stopped the performance and began to sing a passage for my father, a passage that my father had evidently botched. My father listened attentively, smiling at the conductor.

  Q: Does your father play? In actuality?

  A: Not a note.

  Q: Did the conductor resemble anyone you know?

  A: He looked a bit like Althea. The same cheekbones and the same chin.

  Q: Who is Althea?

  A: Someone I know.

  Q: What do you do, after work, in the evenings or on weekends?

  A: Just ordinary things.

  Q: No special interests?

  A: I’m very interested in bow-hunting. These new bows they have now, what they call a compound bow. Also, I’m a member of the Galapagos Society, we work for the environment, it’s really a very effective —

  Q: And what else?

  A: Well, adultery. I would say that’s how I spend most of my free time. In adultery.

  Q: You mean regular adultery.

  A: Yes. Sleeping with people to whom one is not legally bound.

  Q: These are women.

  A: Invariably.

  Q: And so that’s what you do, in the evenings or on weekends.

  A: I had this kind of strange experience. Today is Saturday, right? I called up this haircutter that I go to, her name is Ruth, and asked for an appointment. I needed a haircut. So she says she has openings at ten, ten-thirty, eleven, eleven-thirty, twelve, twelve-thirty — On a Saturday. Do you think the world knows something I don’t know?

  Q: It’s possible.

  A: What if she stabs me in the ear with the scissors?

  Q: Unlikely, I would think.

  A: Well, she’s a good soul. She’s had several husbands. They’ve all been master sergeants, in the Army. She seems to gravitate toward N.C.O. Clubs. Have you noticed all these little black bugs flying around here? I don’t know where they come from.

  Q: They’re very small, they’re like gnats.

  A: They come in clouds, then they go away.

  A: I sometimes think of myself as a person who, you know what I mean, could have done something else, it doesn’t matter what particularly. Just something else. I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for the C.I.A., a recruiting ad, maybe a quarter of a page, and I suddenly thought, It might be interesting to do that. Even though I’ve always been opposed to the C.I.A., when they were trying to bring Cuba down, the stuff with Lumumba in Africa, the stuff in Central America. . . . Then here is this ad, perfectly straightforward, “where your career is America’s strength” or something like that, “aptitude for learning a foreign language is a plus” or something like that. I’ve always been good at languages, and I’m sitting there thinking about how my résumé might look to them, starting completely over in something completely new, changing the very sort of person I am, and there was an attraction, a definite attraction. Of course the maximum age was thirty-five. I guess they want them more malleable.

  Q: So, in the evenings or on weekends —

  A: Not every night or every weekend. I mean, this depends on the circumstances. Sometimes my wife and I go to dinner with people, or watch television —

  Q: But in the main —

  A: It’s not that often. It’s once in a while.

  Q: Adultery is a sin.

  A: It is classified as a sin, yes. Absolutely.

  Q: The Seventh Commandment says —

  A: I know what it says. I was raised on the Seventh Commandment. But.

  Q: But what?

  A: The Seventh Commandment is wrong.

  Q: It’s wrong?

  A:
Some outfits call it the Sixth and others the Seventh. It’s wrong.

  Q: The whole Commandment?

  A: I don’t know how it happened, whether it’s a mistranslation from the Aramaic or whatever, it may not even have been Aramaic, I don’t know, I certainly do not pretend to scholarship in this area, but my sense of the matter is the Seventh Commandment is an error.

  Q: Well if that was true it would change quite a lot of things, wouldn’t it?

  A: Take the pressure off, a bit.

  Q: Have you told your wife?

  A: Yes, Grete knows.

  Q: How’d she take it?

  A: Well, she liked the Seventh Commandment. You could reason that it was in her interest to support the Seventh Commandment for the preservation of the family unit and this sort of thing but to reason that way is, I would say, to take an extremely narrow view of Grete, of what she thinks. She’s not predictable. She once told me that she didn’t want me, she wanted a suite of husbands, ten or twenty —

  Q: What did you say?

  A: I said, Go to it.

  Q: Well, how does it make you feel? Adultery?

  A: There’s a certain amount of guilt attached. I feel guilty. But I feel guilty even without adultery. I exist in a morass of guilt. There’s maybe a little additional wallop of guilt but I already feel so guilty that I hardly notice it.

  Q: Where does all this guilt come from? The extra-adulterous guilt?

  A: I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on. . . . And these guys on these other planets, these lifeforms, maybe they look like boll weevils or something, on a much larger scale of course, were they told that they couldn’t go to bed with other attractive six-foot boll weevils arrayed in silver and gold and with little squirts of Opium behind the ears? Doesn’t make sense. But of course our human understanding is imperfect.