Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  I went to see the plain girl fair out Route 22 figuring I could get one if I just put on a kind face. This newspaper here had advertising the aspidistra store not far away by car where I went then and bought one to carry along. At the plain girl fair they were standing in sudden-death décolletage and brown arms everywhere. As you passed along into the tent after paying your dollar fifty carrying your aspidistra a blinding flash of some hundred contact lenses came. And a quality of dental work to shame the VA Hospital it was so fine. One fell in love temporarily with all this hard work and money spent just to please to improve. I was sad my dolphin friend was not there to see. I took one by the hand and said “come with me I will buy you a lobster.” My real face behind my kind face smiling. And the other girls on their pedestals waved and said “goodbye Marie.” And they also said “have a nice lobster,” and Marie waved back and said “bonne chance!” We motored to the lobster place over to Barwick, then danced by the light of the moon for a bit. And then to my hay where I tickled the naked soles of feet with a piece of it and admired her gestures of marvellous gaucherie. In my mind.

  Of course I once was in this business myself making newspapers in the depression. So I know some little some about it, both the back room and the front room. If you got in the makeups’ way they’d yell “dime waitin’ on a nickel.” But this here and now newspaper I say a thing of great formal beauty. Sometimes on dull days the compositors play which makes paragraphs like

  refreshing as rocks in this newspaper here. And then you come along a page solid bright aching orange sometimes and parts printed in alien languages and invisible inks. This newspaper here fly away fly away through the mails to names from the telephone book. Have you seen my library of telephone books I keep in the kitchen with names from Greater Memphis Utica Key West Toledo Santa Barbara St. Paul Juneau Missoula Tacoma and every which where. It goes third class because I print HOTELS-MOTELS NEED TRAINED MEN AND WOMEN AMAZING FREE OFFER on the wrapper. As a disguise.

  Then a learned man come to call saying “this with the newspaper is not kosher you know that.” He had several degrees in Police Engineering and the like and his tiny gun dwelt in his armpit like the growling described by Defoe in Journal of the Plague Year. I judged him to be with some one of the governments. Not overfond of him in my house but I said in a friendly way “can I see it.” He took out the tiny black gun and held it in his hand, then slapped me up against the head with it in a friendly way. He coughed and looked at the bottle of worrywine sitting on the table on the newspaper saying “and we can hear the presses in the basement with sensitive secret recording devices.” And finally he said sighing “we know it’s you why don’t you simply take a few months off, try Florida or Banff which is said to swing at this season of the year and we’ll pay everything.” I told him smiling I didn’t get the reference. He was almost crying it seemed to me saying “you know it excites the people stirs them up exacerbates hopes we thought laid to rest generations ago.” He nodded to agree with himself laying soft hands around the windpipe of the gramophone automatically feeling for counter-bugs down its throat saying “we don’t understand what it is you’re after. If you don’t like our war you don’t have to come to it, too old anyway you used-up old poop.” Then he slapped me up alongside the head couple more times with his exquisite politesse kicking my toothpick scale model of Heinrich von Kleist in blue velvet to splinters on the way out.

  Can you imagine some fellow waking at dawn in Toledo looking at his red alarm clock and then thinking with wonder of a picture drawn in this newspaper here by my friend Golo. When we were in Paris Golo was a famous one because he drew with his thumbs in black paint which was not then done yet much on brown paper and it made people stop. Now Golo has altered his name because he is wanted. Still he sends me drawings on secular subjects from here and there, when they irritate me I put them in. It is true that I dislike their war and have pointed out that the very postage stamps shimmer with dangerous ideological radiation. They hated that. I run coupons to clip offering Magnificent Butterfly Wing Portraits Send Photo, Transistorized Personal Sun Tanner, How to Develop a He-Man Voice, Darling Pet Monkey Show It Affection and Enjoy Its Company, British Shoes for Gentlemen, Live Seahorses $1 Each, Why Be Bald, Electric Roses Never Fade or Wither, Hotels-Motels Need Trained Men and Women. And I keep the money.

  But what else can I do? Making this newspaper here I hold a prerequisite to eluding death which is looking for me don’t you know. Girl with knitting needle simply sent to soften me up, a probing action as it were. My newspaper warms at the edges fade in fade out a tissue of hints whispers glimpses uncertainties, zoom in zoom out. I considered in an editorial the idea that the world is an error on the part of God, one of the earliest and finest heresies, they hated that. Ringle from the telephone “what do you mean the world is a roar on the part of god,” which pleased me. I said “madam is your name Marie if so I will dangle your health in verymerrywine this very eve blast me if I will not.” She said into the telephone “dirty old man.” Who ha who ha. I sit here rock around the clock interviewing Fabian on his plate glass window incident in my mind. Sweet to know your face uncut and unabridged. Who ha who ha dirty old man.

  Tales of the Swedish Army

  Suddenly, turning a corner, I ran into a unit of the Swedish Army. Their vehicles were parked in orderly rows and filled the street, mostly six-by-sixes and jeeps, an occasional APC, all painted a sand color quite different from the American Army’s dark green. To the left of the vehicles, on a big school playground, they had set up two-man tents of the same sand color, and the soldiers, blond red-faced men, lounged about among the tents, making not much noise. It was strange to see them there, I assumed they were on their way to some sort of joint maneuvers with our own troops. But it was strange to see them there.

  I began talking to a lieutenant, a young, pleasant man; he showed me a portable chess clock he’d made himself, which was for some reason covered in matchstick bamboo painted purple. I told him I was building an addition to the rear of my house, as a matter of fact I had with me a carpenter’s level I’d just bought, and I showed him that. He said he had some free time, and asked if I needed help. I suggested that probably his unit would be moving out fairly soon, but he waved a hand to indicate their departure was not imminent. He seemed genuinely interested in assisting me, so I accepted.

  His name was Bengt and he was from Uppsala, I’d been there so we talked about Uppsala, then about Stockholm and Bornholm and Malmö. I asked him if he knew the work of the Swedish poet Bodil Malmsten; he didn’t. My house (not really mine, my sister’s, but I lived there and paid rent) wasn’t far away, we stood in the garden looking up at the rear windows on the parlor floor, I was putting new ones in. So I climbed the ladder and he began handing me up one of the rather heavy prefab window frames, and my hammer slid from the top of the ladder and fell and smashed into his chess clock, which he’d carefully placed on the ground, against the wall.

  I apologized profusely, and Bengt told me not to worry, it didn’t matter, but he kept shaking the chess clock and turning it over in his hands, trying to bring it to life. I rushed down the ladder and apologized again, and looked at it myself, both dials were shattered and part of the purple matchstick casing had come off. He said again not to worry, he could fix it, and that we should get on with the job.

  After a while Bengt was up on the ladder tacking the new frames to the two-by-fours with sixteen-penny nails. He was very skillful and the work was going quickly; I was standing in the garden steadying the ladder as he was sometimes required to lean out rather far. He slipped and tried to recover, and bashed his face against the wall, and broke his nose.

  He stood in the garden holding his nose with both hands, the hands as if clasped in prayer over his nose. I apologized profusely. I ran into the house and got some ice cubes and paper towels and told him I’d take him to the hospital right away but he shook his head and said no, they had doctors of their own. I wanted to do something for him
so I took him in and sat him down and cooked him some of my fried chicken, which is rather well-known although the secret isn’t much of a secret, just lots of lemon-pepper marinade and then squeezing fresh lemon juice over it just before serving. I could see he was really very discouraged about his nose and I had to keep giving him fresh paper towels but he complimented me very highly on the chicken and gave me a Swedish recipe for chicken stuffed with parsley and butter and stewed, which I wrote down.

  Then Bengt told me various things about the Swedish Army. He said that it was a tough army and a sober one, but small; that everybody in the army pretty well knew everybody else, and that they kept their Saab jets in deep caves that had been dug in the mountains, so that if there was a war, nothing could happen to them. He said that the part I’d seen was just his company, there were two more plus a heavy-weapons company bivouacking at various spots in the city, making up a full battalion. He said the soldiers were mostly Lutherans, with a few Presbyterians and Evangelicals, and that drugs were not a problem but that people sometimes overslept, driving the sergeants crazy. He said that the Swedish Army was thought to have the best weapons in the world, and that they kept them very clean. He said that he probably didn’t have to name their principal potential enemy, because I knew it already, and that the army-wide favorite musical group was Abba, which could sometimes be seen on American television late at night.

  By now the table was full of bloody towels and some blood had gotten on his camouflage suit, which was in three shades of green and brown. Abruptly, with a manly gesture, Bengt informed me that he had fallen in love with my sister. I said that was very curious, in that he had never met her. “That is no difficulty,” he said, “I can see by looking around this house what kind of a woman she must be. Very tall, is she not? And red hair, is that not true?” He went on describing my sister, whose name is Catherine, with a disturbing accuracy and increasing enthusiasm, correctly identifying her as a teacher, and furthermore, a teacher of painting. “These are hers,” he said, “they must be,” and rose to inspect some oils in Kulicke frames on the walls. “I knew it. From these, dear friend, a great deal can be known of the temperament of the painter, his or her essential spirit. I will divorce my wife immediately,” he said, “and marry Catherine as soon as it is legally possible.” “You’re already married!” I said, and he hung his head and admitted yes, that it was so. But in Sweden, he said, many people were married to each other who, for one reason or another, no longer loved each other . . . I said that happened in our own country too, many cases personally known to me, and that if he wished to marry Catherine I would not stand in his way, but would, on the contrary, do everything in my power to further the project. At this moment the bell rang; I answered it and Catherine entered with her new husband, Richard.

  I took Bengt back to his unit in a cab, one hand clutching his nose, the other his heart, the remains of his chess clock in his lap. We got there just in time, a review was in progress, the King of Sweden was present, a handsome young man in dress uniform with a silver sword, surrounded by aides similarly clad. A crowd had gathered and Bengt’s company paraded by, looking vastly trim and efficient in their polished boots and red berets, and a very pretty little girl came out of the crowd and shyly handed the King a small bouquet of flowers. He bent graciously to accept them, beautiful small yellow roses, and a Rocky Mountain spotted-fever tick leaped from a rose and bit him on the cheek. I was horrified, and the King slapped his cheek and swore that the Swedish Army would never come to visit us again.

  And Then

  The he part of the story that came next was suddenly missing, I couldn’t think of it, so I went into the next room and drank a glass of water (my “and then” still hanging in the frangible air) as if this were the most natural thing in the world to do at that point, thinking that I would “make up” something, while in the other room, to put in place of that part of the anecdote that had fallen out of my mind, to keep the light glittering in his cautious eyes. And in truth I was getting a little angry with him now, not fiercely angry but slight désabusé, because he had been standing very close to me, closer than I really like people to stand, the rims of his shoes touching the rims of my shoes, our belt buckles not four inches distant, a completely unwarranted impingement upon my personal space. And so I went, as I say, into the next room and drank a glass of water, trying to remember who he was and why I was talking to him, not that he wasn’t friendly, if by “friendly” you mean standing aggressively close to people with an attentive air and smiling teeth, that’s not what I mean by “friendly,” and it was right then that I decided to lie to him, although what I had been telling him previously was true, to the best of my knowledge and belief. But, faced now with this “gap” in the story, I decided to offer him a good-quality lie in place of the part I couldn’t remember, a better strategy, I felt, than simply stopping, leaving him with a maimed, not-whole anecdote, violating his basic trust, simple faith, or personhood even, for all I knew. But the lie had to be a good one, because if your lie is badly done it makes everyone feel wretched, liar and lied-to alike plunged into the deepest lackadaisy, and everyone just feels like going into the other room and drinking a glass of water, or whatever is available there, whereas if you can lie really well then get dynamite results, 35 percent report increased intellectual understanding, awareness, insight, 40 percent report more tolerance, acceptance of others, liking for self, 29 percent report they receive more personal and more confidential information from people and that others become more warm and supportive toward them — all in consequence of a finely orchestrated, carefully developed untruth. And while I was thinking about this, counting my options, I noticed that he was a policeman, had in fact a dark-blue uniform, black shoes, a badge, and a gun, a policeman’s hat, and I noticed also that my testicles were aching, as they sometimes do if you sit too long in an uncomfortable or strained position, but I had been standing, and then I understood, in a flash, that what he wanted from me was not to hear the “next” part of my story, or anecdote, but that I give my harpsichord to his wife as a present.

  Now, my harpsichord has been out of tune for five years, some of the keys don’t function, and there are drink rings on top of it where people have set their drinks down carelessly, at parties and the like, still it is mine and I didn’t particularly want to give it to his wife, I believe her name is Cynthia, and although I may have drunkenly promised to give it to her in a fit of generosity or inadvertence, or undue respect for the possible pleasures of distant others, still it was and is my harpsichord and what was his wife giving me? I hadn’t in mind sexual favors or anything of that kind, I had in mind real property of equivalent value. So I went into the other room and drank a glass of water, or rather vodka, thinking to stall him with the missing “part” of the trivial anecdote I had been telling him, to keep his mind off what he wanted, the harpsichord, but the problem was, what kind of lie would he like? I could tell him about “the time I went to Hyde Park for a drink with the President,” but he could look at me and know I was too young to have done that, and then the failed lie would exist between us like a bathtub filled with ruinous impotent nonsense, he would simply seize the harpsichord and make off with it (did I say that he was a sergeant? with three light-blue chevrons sewn to the darker blue of his right and left sleeves?). Who knows the kinds of lies that sergeants like, something that would confirm their already existing life-attitudes, I supposed, and I tried to check back mentally and remember what these last might be, drawing upon my (very slight) knowledge of the sociology of authority, something in the area of child abuse perhaps, if I could fit a child-abuse part to the structure already extant, which I was beginning to forget, something to do with walking at night, if I could spot-weld a child-abuse extension to what was already there, my partial anecdote, that might do the trick.

  So I went into the next room and had a glass of something, I think I said, “Excuse me,” but maybe I didn’t, and it had to be fabrication that would grammaticall
y follow the words “and then” without too much of a seam showing, of course I could always, upon reentering the first room, where the sergeant stood, begin the sentence anew, with some horrific instance of child abuse, of which I have several in the old memory bank, and we could agree that it was terrible, terrible, what people did, and he would forget about the harpsichord, and we could part with mutual regard, generated by the fact (indisputable) that neither of us were child abusers, however much we might have liked to be, having children of our own. Or, to get away from the distasteful subject of hurting children, I might tack, to the flawed corpus of the original anecdote, something about walking at night in the city, a declaration of my own lack of leftness — there’s not a radical bone in my body, all I want is ease and bliss, not a thing in this world do I desire other than ease and bliss, I think he might empathize with that (did I mention that he had the flap on his holster unbuttoned and his left hand resting on the butt of his weapon, and the rim of his black shoes touching the rim of my brown boots?). That might ring a bell.

  Or I could, as if struck by a sudden thought, ask him if he was a “real” policeman. He would probably answer truthfully. He would probably say either, “Yes, I am a real policeman,” or, “No, I am not a real policeman.” A third possibility: “What do you mean by ‘real,’ in this instance?” Because even among policemen who are “real,” that is, bona fide, duly appointed officers of the law, there are degrees of realness and vivacity, they say of one another, “Fred’s a real policeman,” or announce a finding contrary to this finding, I don’t know this of my own knowledge but am extrapolating from my knowledge (very slight) of the cant of other professions. But if I asked him this question, as a dodge or subterfuge to cover up the fact of the missing “part” of the original, extremely uninteresting, anecdote, there would be an excellent chance that he would take umbrage, and that his colleagues (did I neglect to say that there are two of his colleagues, in uniform, holding on to the handles of their bicycles, standing behind him, stalwartly, in the other room, and that he himself, the sergeant, is holding on to the handle of his bicycle, stalwartly, with the hand that is not resting on the butt of his .38, teak-handled I believe, from the brief glance that I snuck at it, when I was in the other room?) would take umbrage also. Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that — one need merely look out of the window, for example. But what we are trying to do is get away from despair and over to ease and bliss, and that can never be attained with three policemen, with bicycles, standing alertly in your other room. They can, as we know, make our lives miserable than they are already if we arouse their ire, which must be kept slumbering, by telling them stories, for example, such as the story of the four bears, known to us all from childhood (although not everyone knows about the fourth bear) and it is clear that they can’t lay their bicycles down and sit, which would be the normal thing, no, they must stand there at more-or-less parade rest, some department ruling that I don’t know about, but of course it irritates them, it even irritates me, and I am not standing there holding up a bicycle, I am in the other room having a glass of beef broth with a twist of lemon, perhaps you don’t believe me about the policemen but there they are, pictures lie but words don’t, unless one is lying on purpose, with an end in view, such as to get three policemen with bicycles out of your other room while retaining your harpsichord (probably the departmental regulations state that the bicycles must never be laid down in a civilian space, such as my other room, probably the sergeant brought his colleagues to help him haul away the harpsichord, which has three legs, and although the sight of three policemen on bicycles, each holding aloft one leg of a harpsichord, rolling smoothly through the garment district, might seem ludicrous to you, who knows how it seems to them? entirely right and proper, no doubt) which he, the sergeant, considers I promised to his wife as a wedding present, and it is true that I was at the wedding, but only to raise my voice and object when the minister came to that part of the ceremony where he routinely asks for objections, “Yes!” I shouted, “she’s my mother! And although she is a widow, and legally free, she belongs to me in dreams!” but I was quickly hushed up by a quartet of plainclothesmen, and the ceremony proceeded. But what is the good of a mother if she is another man’s wife, as they mostly are, and not around in the morning to fix your buckwheat cakes or Rice Krispies, as the case may be, and in the evening to argue with you about your vegetables, and in the middle of the day to iron your shirts and clean up your rooms, and at all times to provide intimations of ease and bliss (however misleading and ill-founded), but instead insists on hauling your harpsichord away (did I note that Mother, too, is in the other room, with the three policemen, she is standing with the top half of her bent over the instrument, her arms around it, at its widest point — the keyboard end)? So, standing with the glass in my hand, the glass of herb tea with sour cream in it, I wondered what kind of useful prosthesis I could attach to the original anecdote I was telling all these people in my other room — those who seem so satisfied with their tableau, the three peelers posing with their bicycles, my mother hugging the harpsichord with a mother’s strangle — what kind of “and then” I could contrive which might satisfy all the particulars of the case, which might redeliver to me my mother, retain to me my harpsichord, and rid me of these others, in their uniforms.