The Dead Father

by Donald Barthelme

  What was the worm’s name? Thomas asked.

  I forget, said the Dead Father. Then, just as we were chalking our cues, the worm and I, Evil himself appeared, he-of-the-greater-magic, terrible in aspect, I don’t want to talk about it, let me say only that I realized instantly that I was on the wrong side of the Styx. However I was not lacking in wit, even in this extremity. Uncoiling my penis, then in the dejected state, I made a long cast across the river, sixty-five meters I would say, where it snagged most conveniently in the cleft of a rock on the farther shore. Thereupon I hauled myself hand-over-hand ’midst excruciating pain as you can imagine through the raging torrent to the other bank. And with a hurrah! over my shoulder, to show my enemies that I was yet alive and kicking, I was off like a flash into the trees.

  Infuckingcredible, said Julie.

  Unfuckingbelievable, said Emma.

  Rudolf Rassendyll himself could not have managed the affair better, said Thomas.

  Yes, the Dead Father said, and on that bank of the river there stands to this day a Savings & Loan Association. A thing I fathered.

  Forfuckingmidable, said Julie. I suddenly feel all mops and brooms.

  Refuckingdoubtable, said Emma. I suddenly feel a saint of the saucepan.

  Six and three quarters percent compounded momentarily, said the Dead Father, I guarantee it.

  A bumaree, said Julie, they have this way of making you feel tiny and small.

  They are good at it, said Emma.

  We are only tidderly-push to the likes of them.

  See themselves as a rope to the eye of a needle, said Emma.

  It’s a grin in a glass case, said Julie.

  That was when I was young and full of that zest which has leaked out of me and which we are journeying to recover for me by means of the great revitalizing properties of that long fleecy golden thing of which the bards sing and the skalds sing and the Meistersingers sing, said the Dead Father.

  It is obvious that but for a twist of fate we and not they would be calling the tune, said Julie.

  It is obvious that but for a twist of fate the mode of the music would be different, said Emma. Much different.

  6

  Evening. The campfire. Cats crying in the distance. Julie washing her shirt. Emma ordering her reticule.

  Tell me a story, said the Dead Father.

  Certainly, said Thomas. One day in a wild place far from the city four men in dark suits with shirts and ties and attaché cases containing Uzi submachine guns seized me, saying that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that they were not going to hurt me. Then they hurt me, first with can openers then with corkscrews. Then, splashing iodine on my several wounds, they sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom—

  Oh! said the Dead Father. A dramatic narrative.

  Very much so, said Thomas. They sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom up the side of a small mountain, down the other side of the same mountain, across a small river, to an even wilder place still farther from the city. There, they proceeded to lunch. We lunched together with not a word spoken. Then, after policing the area down to the last chicken bone, we mounted once again and fled in single file through the damp mists of the afternoon over hills and dales and through hiatuses of various kinds, events perhaps I can’t remember, to a yet wilder place rank with the odor of fish and the odor of dead grasses still farther from the city. Here we watered the horses, against their will, they did not like the water. I helped make a fire gathering dry branches that had fallen from the trees but when I had finished helping make the fire I was told that no fire was wanted. Nevertheless one of the men opened his attaché case, withdrew his submachine gun and unfolding the folding stock fired a short burst into the dry branches setting them aflame. The horses reared and cried out in fear and the horseholder cursed the machine gunner and cursed me who had helped build a fire where no fire was wanted. Then, mounting once again and leaving the fire to do what it would among the creaking brownstained trees, we galloped down the center of a long valley through fields of winter wheat, leaping stones and fences to a house. Reining in there, we sat on our horses before the door of the house, horse breath visible in the chill of the evening, there was a light within. They escorted me into the house and by the dim illumination of a single candle hurt me again, with dinner forks. I asked for how many days or weeks or months was I to be thus transported and hurt and they said, until I accommodated. I asked them what that meant, accommodated, but they were silent.

  We left the house and mounted again. Then, after galloping for some hours through the black of the night we came to a car wash. The car wash was made of steel and concrete block, we clattered through the entrance and past a mechanism wherein giant sponges were buffing late-model cars blue and gray and silver and behind that mechanism to a large room or ring with sand on the floor. I was taken from my horse by two men who bound my hands behind my back and thrust into my mouth a piece of paper on which was written something I could not see but which I knew had to do with me, was about me. Then I was pushed into the ring where wandered a dozen others similarly bound gripping between their teeth similar pieces of paper with things written on them, we walked or lurched around the ring avoiding bumping into each other but narrowly, when I came close to someone he or she made aggressive snarling gestures, I understood that we were to make aggressive snarling gestures, I made aggressive snarling gestures whenever one of them came near me meanwhile trying to read what was written on that person’s piece of paper gripped between his or her teeth. But to no avail, I could not read what was written on any piece of paper although I did get a notion of the handwriting which was the same on every piece of paper, a fine thin cursive. This dree to-ing and fro-ing persisted throughout the night and through the next day and I became preoccupied with the thought, where was lunch? Having had lunch on the first day I expected it on the second and third and fourth but this was optimism, there was no lunch, only snarling aggressive gestures and attempts unsuccessful invariably to read what was written on the pieces of paper gripped in the mouths of my prancing colleagues. Then all-of-a-heap I was out of the ring and standing before a door, the door opened and I saw there two men on either side of a hospital bed atop which was a wood coffin containing a corpse dead I assumed, the corpse’s hands were erect in the air clutching and I noticed that the fingers on each hand were missing, the corpse clutched with no fingers, the door closed and there was a sound as of a lift, the door opened again and the two men were gone and the corpse was gone. I stepped through the door into the lift and the door closed behind me. I was taken to the top floor.

  I was taken to the top floor, Thomas said, there I found behind a desk a man in a mask. The mask was as tall as the man and had been hewn from a tree, it was African in character and had been worked upon with chisels most skillfully or perhaps with hoe blades most skillfully, it resembled a human face in that five holes presented themselves, there were no ears. The man in the mask said that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that he was not going to hurt me. Then he hurt me, with documents. Then he asked my companions if I was maturing. He’s growing older, the taller of the two replied, and everyone present nodded, this was certainly true, the man in the mask expressed satisfaction. Then, wrapping me in a djellabah of thirty shades of brown they removed me to a Land-Rover which immediately rovered out onto a broad arid plain for a distance of several hundred miles, stopping at intervals to take on petrol and water in battered jerry cans wrung from unwilling unbuttoned overweight out-of-uniform supply sergeants at depots along the route. Where was lunch? I wondered remembering the first day, the chicken, the cucumbers, the potato salad. On the other side of the desert we came to a swamp, great sucky grasses tufted into a green scum, we abandoned the Land-Rover for a pirogue, and with one of my companions paddling in the bow and the other poling in the stern and me in the middle set off across the dank whining surface, giant cypresses gnarling and snarlin
g all about us and two-inch-high tree monkeys hanging by one arm like evil fruits therefrom. During a pause in the poling and paddling with the nose of the pirogue snugged into a greasy hummock they filled their pipes with damp tobacco drawn from their attaché cases, the which I was not offered any of, and damaged me again, with harsh words. But they seemed to be tiring, I was hurt less than before, they told me I was wrong etc. but added that I was becoming, by virtue of their kind attentions and the waning of the present century and the edifications of surface travel, less wrong than before. We were going to see the Great Father Serpent, they said, the Great Father Serpent would if I answered the riddle correctly grant me a boon but it was one boon to a customer and I would never answer the riddle correctly so my hopes, they said, should not be got up. I rehearsed in my mind all the riddles that I knew, trying to patch the right answer to the right riddle, while I was disordering my senses in this way we pushed off again into the filthy water, in the distance I could hear a roaring.

  I’m fatigued, said the Dead Father.

  Be of good courage, said Thomas, it ends soon.

  The roaring they told me was the voice of the Great Father Serpent calling for the foreskins of the uninitiated but I was safe, my foreskin had been surrendered long ago, to a surgeon in a hospital. As we drew near through the tangling vines I perceived the outlines of a serpent of huge bigness which held in its mouth a sheet of tin on which something was written, the roars rattled the tin and I was unable to make out the message. My keepers hauled the pirogue onto the piece of ground on which the monster was resting and approached him most deferentially as who would not, shouting into his ear that I had come to be tested by the riddle and win for myself a boon and that if he were willing they would proceed to robe him for the riddling. The Great Father Serpent nodded most graciously and opening his mouth let fall the sheet of tin which on its reverse had been polished to the brightness of a mirror. My escorts set up the mirror side in such a way that the creature could regard himself with love as the fussing-over proceeded, I wondering the while if it would be possible to creep underneath and read the writing there. First they wrapped the Great Father Serpent in fine smallclothes of softwhispering blush-colored changeable taffeta taken from a mahogany wardrobe of prodigious size located behind him, tussling for half an hour to cover his whole great length.

  I like him, said the Dead Father, in that we are both long, very long.

  Reserve judgment, said Thomas, we are not quite to the end.

  Then they put on him, said Thomas, a kind of scarlet skirt stuffed with bombast and pleated and slashed so as to show a rich inner lining of a lighter scarlet, the two scarlets together making a brave show at his slightest movement or undulation. The Great Father Serpent looked neither to the right nor to the left but stark ahead at his primrose image in the tin. Then they covered the upper or more headward length of him with a light jacket of white silk embroidered with a thread nutmeg in color and a thread goose-turd in color, these intertwined, and trimmed with fine whipped lace. Then they put on him a sort of doublet of silver brocade slashed with scarlet and slashed again with gold, sleeves for his no-arms hanging there picked out with seed pearls, the doublet having four and one half dozen buttons, the buttons being one dozen of ivory, one dozen of silk, one dozen of silk and hair, one dozen mixed gold and silver wire, and six diamonds set in gold. Next they put on him a great cloak made of unshorn velvet pear-colored inside and outside embroidered at the top and down the back with bugles and pearls countless in number and holding two dozens of buttons, altogether they were near two hours a-buttoning, while they buttoned I inched closer to the underside of the tin which was taller than myself and leaning against a tree, I inched and inched, sometimes half-inched, so that to the eye my movements were imperceptible. Then they belted around his midpoint a girdle of russet gold with pearls and spangles supporting his hanger, to which was buckled the scabbard (buff-colored leather worked in silver wire gimp and colored silk) which held the shining, split tongue two meters long. As they placed upon the oblong head the French hat with its massy goldsmith’s work and long black feather, I slipped beneath the tin and out again, I could not believe what I saw written there. The Great Father Serpent nodded once at his own image, whisked the tongue from its scabbard, and pronounced himself ready to riddle.

  Here is the riddle said the Great Father Serpent with a great flourishing of his two-tipped tongue, and it is a son-of-a-bitch I will tell you that, the most arcane item in the arcana, you will never guess it in a hundred thousand human years some of which I point out have already been used up by you in useless living and breathing but have a go, have a go, do: What do you really feel? Like murderinging, I answered, because that is what I had read on the underside of the tin, the wording murderinging inscribed in a fine thin cursive. Why bless my soul, said the Great Father Serpent, he’s got it, and the two ruffians blinked at me in stunned wonder and I myself wondered, and marveled, but what I was wondering and marveling at was the closeness with which what I had answered accorded with my feelings, my lost feelings that I had never found before. I suppose, the Father Serpent said, that the boon you wish granted is the ability to carry out this foulness? Of course, I said, what else? Granted then, he said, but may I remind you that having the power is often enough. You don’t have to actually do it. For the soul’s ease. I thanked the Great Father Serpent; he bowed most cordially; my companions returned me to the city. I was abroad in the city with murderinging in mind—the dream of a stutterer.

  That is a tall tale, said the Dead Father. I don’t believe it ever happened.

  No tale ever happened in the way we tell it, said Thomas, but the moral is always correct.

  What is the moral?

  Murderinging, Thomas said.

  Murderinging is not correct, said the Dead Father. The sacred and noble Father should not be murdereded. Never. Absolutely not.

  I mentioned no names, said Thomas.

  He was staring at the Dead Father’s belt buckle.

  Very handsome buckle you have there, he said, I never noticed before.

  The belt buckle was silver. Six inches square. A ruby or two.

  The Dead Father regarded his belt buckle.

  Gift of the citizens, many Father’s Days ago. One of several hundred sumptuous offerings, on that Father’s Day.

  May I try it on? Thomas asked.

  You want to try on my belt?

  Yes I’d like to try it on if you don’t mind.

  You may certainly try it on if you wish.

  The Dead Father unbuckled the belt and handed it to Thomas.

  Thomas buckled on the Dead Father’s belt.

  I like it, he said. Yes, it looks well on me. The buckle. You may have the belt back, if you like.

  My belt buckle! said the Dead Father.

  I’m sure you don’t mind, said Thomas. Doubtless you have others just as sumptuous.

  He handed the buckleless belt back to the Dead Father.

  I don’t mind?

  Do you mind?

  Yes, Julie asked interestedly, do you mind?

  I was always rather fond of that one.

  Surely you have others just as fine.

  Yes I have a great many belt buckles.

  I am delighted to hear it.

  Not here. Not with me, the Dead Father said.

  You can have my old belt buckle, Thomas said. It will do.

  Yes, Julie said, it will do.

  Quite a good buckle, my old buckle, Thomas said.

  Thank you, said the Dead Father, accepting the old buckle.

  Not as fine as your former belt buckle, of course.

  It isn’t, the Dead Father said. I can see that.

  That’s why I wanted yours, Thomas explained.

  I understand that, said the Dead Father. You wanted the better buckle.

  And now I have it, said Thomas.

  He patted himself on the belt buckle.

  Looks quite good I think.

  It does, s
aid Julie.

  Yes, Emma agreed.

  Gives you a bit more dash, said Julie. More dash than you had before.

  Thank you, Thomas said. And to the Dead Father: And thank you.

  My pleasure, said the Dead Father. Good to be able to do something for you younger men, once in a while. Good to be able to give. Giving is, in a sense—

  No, said Thomas, let us be clear. You didn’t give. I took. There is a difference. I took it away from you. Just get it straight. The matter’s trivial, but I want no misunderstanding. I took it. Away from you.

  Oh, said the Dead Father.

  He thought for a moment.

  Will there be consolation?

  Yes, said Thomas. You may make a speech.

  No, Julie said. No speech.

  A speech to the men? asked the Dead Father. To my assembled loyal, faithful—

  No, said Julie.

  Yes, said Thomas. Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow?

  Maybe tomorrow, said Thomas.

  My speech!

  To bed, said Thomas. All to bed now. Pleasant dreams.