Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  “Yes.”

  “And you know that in a model of the typical clerical or administrative function, we would initial it and send it forward?”

  “Typically, we would.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “We don’t.”

  “We contain it.”

  “I don’t see . . .”

  “When I first came, Harry Garamond, he was in charge then, took me aside and told me that although what we did here might seem foolish to me at first, that I would eventually get the idea. I’d understand, he said. And he was right. But it took some time.”

  “And the idea was . . .” De Vinne leaned forward eagerly.

  “That we were to be a bottleneck. That everything was to stop here. Although there might be pressures from outside.”

  “But . . .”

  “Both pro and con.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “I regret it.”

  “Get to the point. What is this stuff?” De Vinne kicked a pile of paper; it flowed over the adjoining floorspace in a snowy wave.

  “The substance of human lives.”

  “This . . . waste?”

  “Of hundreds of lives. Of real men in real rooms.”

  “But what has it to do with us?”

  “Our task is to know it for what it is.”

  “You’re very helpful.”

  “It’s a terrible responsibility.”

  “So . . .”

  “In a sense, we hold together the meaningless lives of hundreds and hundreds of people.”

  “How?”

  “You’re aware that there’s nothing on the paper?”

  “Yes.”

  Baskerville masked a smile. “Not everybody is.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Think of the sense of being needed and necessary, of achievement and authority, of promotion and advancement.”

  “It’s not clear.”

  “Examine your conscience.”

  “Must I?”

  “If you want to know.”

  “Good God.”

  “This is the truth of all offices. Of all organizations.”

  “What would they do . . . if they knew?”

  “There would be corpses hanging from lampposts, I suppose. Or other places. The stockmarket would explode in a marvel of fission. Blood would run in the gutters. The price of eggs would go up. I don’t know.”

  “But why has our own organization turned on us?”

  “Because it knows we’re thinking. It’s painful for everybody. Revolution is not a polite word.”

  “And if we let it go?”

  “It’s best not to think about it.”

  “We’re finks, then.”

  “Only in a sense.”

  “Isn’t there anything to be said for us?”

  “We do our job.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “You weren’t prepared.”

  De Vinne sat down. For a long moment he thought heavily, then brightened.

  “But what about General Dynamics?”

  “I hardly see why they should be an exception.”

  “What about ‘Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry’?”

  “Do parades make you weak inside?”

  “I’m already weak inside.”

  “Let Miss Angel Craw out of the closet.”

  De Vinne took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Miss Angel Craw stumbled out of the closet, coughing. She began mopping again. Baskerville and De Vinne sat down at their desks once more.

  A little rough on the kid, William Elderly Baskerville thought. And it isn’t even true. Still, it might be true. He gazed affectionately at his favorite inkblot, in which he could sometimes see William Howard Taft. He had had a horror of veracity ever since, as a little boy, he had been punished for owning up manfully to a shattered aquarium in his father’s study. Truth is punishment, he thought.

  De Vinne was still mulling the problem. “We’ve been here all our lives,” he began, but Baskerville motioned for him to stop.

  “I hear something.”

  They concentrated, their hands clenched before them on the desktops. There was a faint sighing sound in the corridors outside, as of giant snakes inching toward them “The hoses,” De Vinne hissed. “They’re bringing up the hoses.” He sprang to the closet and armed himself with the crossbow. “Get ready to open the door.”

  William Elderly Baskerville gripped the doorknob; De Vinne cranked the crossbow; Miss Angel Craw cowered in the rear. “Now!” said De Vinne. Baskerville jerked open the door and his partner let fly. There was a short, high scream down the corridor. The slithering noises stopped. Baskerville slammed the door and leaned against it. “Good work!” he said congratulatorily. “Make every shot count. We shall sell dearly.”

  But there were no more noises. They waited for a quarter of an hour, while Miss Angel Craw fixed tea on a hotplate, but nothing disturbed the holy quiet. At length De Vinne looked up hopefully. “What about Container Corporation of America?”

  “You want me to tell you that everything’s going to be all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything’s going to be . . . interminable.”

  “What about the Army?”

  “It’s winning.”

  “What about the President?”

  “Dick Tracy will be reelected.”

  “What about psychoanalysis?”

  “I love it.”

  “WHAT ABOUT LOVE?”

  “WHAT ABOUT IT?”

  Miss Angel Craw looked distressed. The tea wasn’t very good, but all helped themselves to seconds. Baskerville gazed into his wastebasket. It was an interesting moral question. De Vinne had gone at once to the heart of it, but he, William Elderly Baskerville, had difficulty feeling that the problem was real. His analyst had said, once, that one had to remember in order to forget. It was the kind of riddle that confused him; Dr. Rococo had been a kindly man with a weak chin. Irreducible, irrefragable, irrefrangible, irrefutable. Incontrovertible. He was tired of games. Miss Angel Craw was smearing pink lipstick on already brilliant lips.

  There was a ker-umphf! in the middle distance, as of a howitzer firing, then a peculiar high whine, as of an artillery shell in transit. “Hit it!” De Vinne screamed. “They’ve got us bracketed!” Baskerville cowered under his desk. The shell came through the roof in a shower of plaster and fragments of concrete, exploding harmlessly with a bright blue flash. At the same time a high discordant voice came booming into the room, mechanically amplified. “Good afternoon, Americans,” it said, with the intonation of an Oriental villain of some recent war. “How foolish of you it is to hold out in there,” the voice whined sourly. “Our forces are preparing even now to destroy you. This is your last chance, Americans.”

  “My God,” exclaimed De Vinne, who had previous military experience, “it’s a loudspeaker and leaflet unit.” They scrambled around on the floor amid scraps of poorly printed broadsides. “Listen to this,” Baskerville said. He read: “Documentary Evidence Revives Hope for Younger Vitality and New Smoothness in Any Woman’s Skin. From Mrs. J. B.D. — Case=546-1 (Age, 41): ‘After using ULTIMATE for three weeks, my skin has taken on a new glow, a radiant look for the first time in years.’” The two men looked at each other. Baskerville read another: “Our blend of Dacron and cotton is utterly different from ordinary wash and wear shirts. Single-needle stitching, extra-long tails. Go to the stores that keep up the great tradition. Or you can write to . . .”

  “Unspeakable.” De Vinne wiped his sweating palms. The loudspeaker was now playing “Pennsylvania 65000.” Miss Angel Craw sat on the floor, fascinatedly reading the ads from the leaflet shell. “I don’t like the way things are going,” he said.

  “No more do I,” replied Baskerville.

  “Where did we go wrong?”

  “Perhaps in our choice of regimentals . . .”

  “It may have something to do with religion . . .”
/>
  “Perhaps we should have joined a union . . .”

  “If only I’d not cheated that waiter . . .”

  “They say there’s a danger of socialism . . .”

  “But I only had seventy-five cents.”

  “Although most of us are non-political . . .”

  “How was I to know he was the Man in Charge?”

  “Who?”

  “The waiter.”

  “You were in the Army. What will they do next?”

  “Probably try to flank us. Although I was only a mail clerk.”

  “We’re skirting the problem.”

  “I say attack.”

  “You mean the paper?”

  “Shouldn’t we?”

  “You have a feeling for it?”

  “About it.”

  “That we should . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “You and I . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Manipulate in some way . . .”

  “The paper, yes.”

  “You feel, in sum . . .”

  “LET’S GET ON WITH IT.” De Vinne suddenly realized that he was shouting, and turned his face to the wall.

  “You’re overwrought.”

  “Perhaps. A bit.”

  “I’ll call Personnel.”

  “The telephones don’t work.”

  “They never have. But I thought I’d make the gesture. Have you ever used your sick leave?”

  “Repeatedly. To excess.”

  “Then you can’t be sick.”

  “I’m willing to try.”

  “You want to dispose of the paper.”

  “Of our work. Our operation.”

  “I agree in principle . . .”

  “You do?”

  “And I would suggest we begin at once,” Baskerville finished grandly.

  “How do we go about it?”

  “We INITIAL it . . .”

  “And then?”

  “Forward it through channels to . . .”

  “To?”

  “Just forward it.”

  “Through channels. It’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s the best so far.”

  “The letter drop would do.”

  “The letter drop would be excellent.”

  “They’d have to be folded.”

  “Miss Angel Craw would help.”

  “But if we put them in the letter drop . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “They’d go everywhere.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Give me a moment.”

  De Vinne was a good sort, Baskerville decided. Queer, but a good heart. These strange enthusiasms, they must be put down to youth. Wasted on the young. De Vinne was pacing furiously now. Baskerville noted the fevered brow, the distressed fluttering of the hands; an odd affection coursed through him. We’re all in this together, he thought with satisfaction. Hang together or all hang separately. All for one and . . . all for one. Nothing to lose but our chains. Mysteriously, the air conditioners coughed into action. Tear gas?

  “There’s the wastebaskets,” De Vinne said. “We could start fires in the wastebaskets.”

  “You refer, of course, to the moral issue.”

  “Well. We can hardly ignore it.”

  “The slaughter. The rapine.”

  “You can’t make an omelette.”

  “I know. Without breaking eggs.”

  “And there are those people outside.”

  “They’ve been strangely quiet.”

  “They’re waiting for us to decide.”

  “We could examine our consciences again.”

  “Oh, ignoble!”

  “Chauvinist!”

  “Charlatan!”

  “Weakling!”

  “Fascist!”

  “Pig!”

  “This is unseemly.”

  “It postpones a decision.”

  “When it gets about . . .”

  “We’ll be heroes of the revolution.”

  “Our pictures will hang in the schoolrooms.”

  “Egotist!” Baskerville spat. “Cult of personality!”

  “And you?” De Vinne advanced threateningly.

  A man in a policeman’s uniform, carrying a stuffed club, burst into the room. De Vinne, shooting from the hip, transfixed him with a crossbow bolt. “Well done!” cried Miss Angel Craw, who had climbed to the top of a filing cabinet. It was the first time she had spoken. The policeman sagged to the floor, where he lay in a pool of ink. “Quickly!” Baskerville cried. Their eyes met in silent agreement. Feverishly they began to initial the strange documents.

  The Bed

  Problem: A new bed for an old wife.

  Not that she’s old in point of fact. Old? No. She’s young, beautiful, quick, kind. Intelligent, gay, thoughtful, distinguished. Nine lines in Who’s Who, a professorship at Brown, a hacienda outside Oaxaca. But now she’s back in town, and needs a bed. I promised.

  What’s old is our affair. It degenerated into marriage and declined from there. And Sam and Margaret came along, and God knows who. She needs a bed. I promised. Why? I’ll be damned if I can tell. We were tight once, it’s true. We thought about each other and left the others out. That passes, as I’m sure you’ve heard, but something’s always left, a bit of business left undone, lawyer’s texts, children, pewter, friends, joint tax returns for some as yet unaudited year — a trace of frisky residue.

  There’s a bed in the basement, maybe I could award her it. Been there since ’67, when we acquired the “new” bed. Has it rotted? Probably. Can’t plant her in a mulch pile. Old wife sleeping in rotted bed. Ha-ha. Necroded ticking injuring the sense of smell. Ha-ha. Sluglike yellowish things-with-no-name emerging from the mattress. Ha-ha. Malicious bastard, am I not? But malice too is a mode of feeling. Bent, to be sure, but feeling still.

  Nip down to the basement, inspect the bed. It’s stacked against a wall somewhere. Can’t find the light. Bang leg on tricycle, bang again on busted rocking chair, again on cast-iron walrus left over from someone’s failed off-off-Broadway bow. Who covered the floor with blown fuses? I’ve got a neck to break.

  The light at last, and, under a couple of hundred square feet of tattered wallboard, the bed.

  Someone’s been nailing nails into the bed.

  Someone’s been stabbing the bed with ice picks.

  Someone’s been sloshing the bed with acid.

  Someone’s been tearing at the bed’s entrails.

  Somebody put out a contract on the bed.

  The bed’s dead.

  I remember my dream of Tuesday night. I was in a gigantic bed, a bed big as a football field. I was bicycling on the surface. Pursued by fires and clowns. Behind me on the right, raging fires, and on the left, vicious clowns in packs. I pedaled as hard as I could. Is there no end to this bedevilment? Is there no off-ramp to this bed? At the same time I was reading The New York Times Guide to Dining Out in New York, third edition. Xavier’s, I noticed, now had three stars. Honoria and I thought we’d invented the place, the waiters knew us well, smiled, gave us good tables, asked how we’d been. Fine, we said, and Charlie, how are you? Charlie was fine too. A blend of gin and fineness over everything, tables, chairs, the future and the past, the bollito misto. The fires and clowns were joined by avalanches and sword-swallowers, all getting close. The bicycle’s chain blew. I woke up.

  Just a friendly little anxiety dream. A bit of bedlam to help one through the night.

  Where did we buy the “new” bed? In which I have my nightly Late, Late Shows? At Bloomingdale’s? We bounced together, Honoria and I, among a sea of bare natty Beautyrests. Did we remove our shoes? I think not, just dangled them over the edge. Did we show the salesman what we could do, if we really put our minds to it? How we could get entangled, legs and arms and heads and such, in the most peculiar knots, and then puzzle our way out again? I don’t think so. He would have had a stroke, popped off then and there. We bought the bed. There was a warrant
y on it, not us.

  Tonight, she telephoned.

  “Did you get it?”

  “Did I get what?”

  “The bed.”

  “Oh, the bed.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Ah — not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I’ve been busy. Doing things.”

  “But what about the bed?”

  “I told you I’d take care of it.”

  “Yes, but when? It’s been a week.”

  “I went to Toronto.”

  “I know. For two days. How is it that you can do everything in the world but take care of one tiny detail like getting a bed for my new apartment?”

  “Some people can get their own beds for their new apartments.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point, is it? You promised.”

  “That was in the first flush of good feeling and warmth. When you said you were coming back to town. I wanted to be helpful.”

  “Now you don’t have any good feeling and warmth?”

  “I’m full of good feeling and warmth. Brimming. How’s Sam?”

  “He’s getting tired of sleeping on the couch. It’s not big enough for both of us.”

  “My heart cries out for him. Tell him so.”

  “All I can say is, you bedder get a move on, buddy.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me. I’m doing the very bedst I can.”

  She’s seeing Sam now, that’s a little strange. She didn’t seem to dig him, early on.

  Sam. What’s he look like? Like a villain, like a villain. Hair like an oil spill; mustache, a twist of carbon paper; high white lineless forehead; black tights and doublet; dagger clasped in treacherous right hand; sneaks when he’s not slithering . . .

  No. That’s incompletely true. What’s he look like? Just like the rest of us. Jeans, turtleneck, beard, smile with one (1) chipped tooth, good with children, backward in his taxes, a degree in education, he’s a B. Ed. How then a villain? Because he attempted to seduce Honoria, and failed. We were failing too, I needed him. I did the best I could, poured him large drinks and left the two of them alone for hours, days — I had, I must admit, another fish to fry, a dainty little slippery little eel from Reykjavik, one of Icelandic’s finest. We were failing, Honoria and I, we’d wake up and not even kiss. So Sam seemed plausible, a way out, a transitional figure as it were. It didn’t work. Honoria wouldn’t have him. Told me he was “too nice.” And he came with the very best references too. Charlotte doted, Francine couldn’t get enough, Mary Jo chased him through Penn Station with the great whirling loop of her lariat, causing talk — but Honoria said no. This is a marriage, she said, you’re not getting out without due misery. She was right. All that’s behind us now. I wish she hadn’t thrown the turntable on the floor, a $400 B & O — but all that’s behind us now. And Sam’s been reconsidered.