by Lydia Davis
3
I am filled that day with vile or evil feelings—ill will toward one I think I should love, ill will toward myself, and discouragement over the work I think I should be doing. I look out the window of my borrowed house, out the narrow window of the smallest room. Suddenly there it is, my own spirit: an old white dog with bowed legs and swaying head staring around the corner of the porch with one mad, cataract-filled eye.
4
In the brief power outage, I feel my own electricity has been cut off and I will not be able to think. I fear that the power outage may have erased not only the work I have done but also a part of my own memory.
5
Driving in the rain, I see a crumpled brown thing ahead in the middle of the road. I think it is an animal. I feel sadness for it and for all the animals I have been seeing in the road and by the edge of the road. When I come closer, I find that it is not an animal but a paper bag. Then there is a moment when my sadness from before is still there along with the paper bag, so that I appear to feel sadness for the paper bag.
6
I am cleaning the kitchen floor. I am afraid of making a certain phone call. Now it is nine o’clock and I am done cleaning the floor. If I hang up this dustpan, if I put away this bucket, then there will be nothing left between me and the phone call, just as in W.’s dream he was not afraid of his execution until they came to shave him, when there was nothing left between him and his execution.
I began hesitating at nine o’clock. I think it must be nearly nine-thirty. But when I look at the clock, I see that only five minutes have gone by: the length of time I feel passing is really only the immensity of my hesitation.
7
I am reading a sentence by a certain poet as I eat my carrot. Then, although I know I have read it, although I know my eyes have passed along it and I have heard the words in my ears, I am sure I haven’t really read it. I may mean understood it. But I may mean consumed it: I haven’t consumed it because I was already eating the carrot. The carrot was a line, too.
8
Late in the evening, I am confused by drink and by all the turns in the streets he has led me through, and now he has his arm around me and asks me if I know where I am, in the city. I do not know exactly. He takes me up a few flights of stairs and into a small apartment. It looks familiar to me. Any room can seem like a room remembered from a dream, as can any doorway into a second room, but I look at it longer and I know I have been here before. It was another month, another year, he was not here, someone else was here, I did not know him, and this was an apartment belonging to a stranger.
9
As I sit waiting at a restaurant table I see out of the corner of my eye again and again a little cat come up onto the white marble doorstep of the restaurant entryway and then, every time I look over, it is not a little cat I see but the shadow, cast by the streetlamp, of a branch of large midsummer leaves moving in the wind from the river.
10
I am expecting a phone call at ten o’clock. The phone rings at 9:40. I am upstairs. Because I was not expecting it, the ring is sharper and louder. I answer: it is not the person I was expecting, and so the voice is also sharper and louder.
Now it is ten o’clock. I go out onto the front porch. I think the phone may ring while I am out here. I come in, and the phone rings just after I come in. But again it is someone else, and later I will think it was not that person but the other, the one who was supposed to call.
11
There is his right leg over my right leg, my left leg over his right leg, his left arm under my back, my right arm around his head, his right arm across my chest, my left arm across his right arm, and my right hand stroking his right temple. Now it becomes difficult to tell what part of what body is actually mine and what part his.
I rub his head as it lies pressed against mine, and I hear the strands of his hair chafing against his skull as though it is my own hair chafing against my own skull, as though I now hear with his ears, and from inside his head.
12
I have decided to take a certain book with me when I go. I am tired and can’t think how I will carry it, though it is a small book. I am reading it before I go, and I read: The antique bracelet she gave me with dozens of flowers etched into the tarnished brass. Now I think that when I go out I will be able to wear the book around my wrist.
13
Looking out through the window of the coffee shop, I watch for a friend to appear. She is late. I am afraid she will not find this place. Now, if the many people passing in the street are quite unlike my friend, I feel she is still far away, or truly lost. But if a woman passes who is like her, I think she is close and will appear at any moment; and the more women pass who resemble her, or the more they resemble her, the closer I think she is, and the more likely to appear.
14
I was an unlikely person to invite to this party, and no one is talking to me. I believe the invitation was for someone else.
All day the clock answers my questions about the time very well, and so, wondering what the title of that book was, I look at the face of the clock for an answer.
I so nearly missed the bus, I still believe I am not on it now.
Because it is almost the end of the day, I think it is almost the end of the week.
That was such a peculiar thing to say to me, I do not believe it was said to me.
Because that expert gave me helpful information about his subject, which is horticulture, I think I can ask his advice about another subject, which is family relations.
I had such trouble finding this place, I believe I did not find it. I am talking to the person I came here to meet, but I believe he is still alone, waiting for me.
15
The ceiling is so high the light fades up under the peak of the roof. It takes a long time to walk through. Dust is everywhere, an even coating of blond dust; around every corner, a rolling table with a drawing board on it, a paper pinned to the board. Around the next corner, and the next, a painting on a wall, half finished, and before it, on the floor, cans of paint, brushes across the cans, and pails of soapy water colored red or blue. Not all the cans of paint are dusty. Not all parts of the floor are dusty.
At first it seems clear that this place is not part of a dream, but a place one moves through in waking life. But rounding the last corner into the remotest part, where the dust lies thickest over the boxes of charcoal sticks from Paris, and a yellowed sheet of muslin over the window is torn symmetrically in two spots, showing a white sky through two small panes of dusty glass, a part of this place that seems to have been forgotten or abandoned, or at least lain undisturbed longer than the rest, one is not sure that this place is not a place in a dream, though whether it lies entirely in that dream or not is hard to say, and if only partly, how it lies at once in that dream and in this waking—whether one stands in this waking and looks through a doorway into that more dusty part, into that dream, or whether one walks from this waking around a corner into the part more thickly covered with dust, into the more filtered light of the dream, the light that comes in through the yellowed sheet.
THE RACE OF THE PATIENT MOTORCYCLISTS
In this race, it is not the swiftest who wins, but the slowest. At first it would seem easy to be the slowest of the motorcyclists, but it is not easy, because it is not in the temperament of a motorcyclist to be slow or patient.
The machines line up at the start, each more impressively outfitted and costly than the next, with white leather seats and armrests, with mahogany inlays, with pairs of antlers on their prows. All these accessories make them so exciting that it is hard not to drive them very fast.
After the starting gun sounds, the racers fire their engines and move off with a great noise, yet gain only inches over the hot, dusty track, their great black boots waddling alongside to steady them. Novices open cans of beer and begin drinking, but seasoned riders know that if they drink they will become too impatient to continue the race. Instead, they liste
n to radios, watch small portable televisions, and read magazines and light books as they keep an even step going, neither fast enough to lose the race nor slow enough to come to a stop, for, according to the rules, the motorcycles must keep moving forward at all times.
On either side of the track are men called checkers, watching to see that no one violates this rule. Almost always, especially in the case of a very skillful driver, the motion of the machine can be perceived only by watching the lowering forward edges of the tires settle into the dust and the back edges lift out of it. The checkers sit in directors’ chairs, getting up every few minutes to move them along the track.
Though the finish line is only a hundred yards away, by the time the afternoon is half over, the great machines are still clustered together midway down the track. Now, one by one the novices grow impatient, gun their engines with a happy racket, and let their machines wrest them from the still dust of their companions with a whip-like motion that leaves their heads crooked back and their locks of magnificently greasy hair flying straight out behind. In a moment they have flown across the finish line and are out of the race, and in the grayer dust beyond, away from the spectators, and away from the dark, glinting, plodding group of more patient motorcyclists, they assume an air of superiority, though in fact, now that no one is looking at them anymore, they feel ashamed that they have not been able to last the race out.
The finish is always a photo finish. The winner is often a veteran, not only of races for the slow but also of races for the swift. It seems simple to him, now, to build a powerful motor, gauge the condition and lie of the track, size up his competitors, and harden himself to win a race for the swift. Far more difficult to train himself to patience, steel his nerves to the pace of the slug, the snail, so slow that by comparison the crab moves as a galloping horse and the butterfly a bolt of lightning. To inure himself to look about at the visible world with a wonderful potential for speed between his legs, and yet to advance so slowly that any change in position is almost imperceptible, and the world, too, is unchanging but for the light cast by the traveling sun, which itself seems, by the end of the slow day, to have been shot from a swift bow.
AFFINITY
We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would sooner or later have thought; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications, in which these stories first appeared: “Meat, My Husband” in TriQuarterly © 1993; “Jack in the Country” in Infolio (London) as “E.’s Mistake” © 1986, in Ottotole 1987; “Foucault and Pencil” in City Lights Review © 1987; “The Mice” in Conjunctions © 1995; “The Professor” in Harper’s © 1992; “The Cedar Trees” in Conjunctions © 1992; “The Cats in the Prison Recreation Hall” in Conjunctions © 1992; “Wife One in Country” in City Lights Review © 1987; “The Fish Tank” in Hodos © 1990; “The Center of the Story” in Grand Street © 1989; “Love” in Conjunctions © 1992; “Our Kindness” in New American Writing © 1992; “A Natural Disaster” in Conjunctions © 1992; “Odd Behavior” in Conjunctions © 1995; “St. Martin” in Grand Street © 1996; “Agreement” in Indiana Review © 1988; “In the Garment District” in New American Writing © 1992; “Disagreement” in Indiana Review © 1988; “The Actors” in Conjunctions © 1991; “What Was Interesting” in Parnassus © 1989; “In the Everglades” in SUN as “Tourist in the Everglades” © 1983; “The Family” in The World © 1996; “Trying to Learn” in Conjunctions © 1991; “To Reiterate” in Pequod © 1986; “Lord Royston’s Tour” in Conjunctions © 1990; “The Other” in Annandale © 1993; “A Friend of Mine” in Avec as “My Friend” © 1989; “This Condition” in Salt Hill Journal © 1997; “Go Away” in Conjunctions © 1989; “Pastor Elaine’s Newsletter” in Pequod as “Pastor Arlene’s Newsletter” © 1991; “A Second Chance” in New American Writing © 1992; “Fear” in Conjunctions © 1995; “Almost No Memory” in Conjunctions © 1988; “Mr. Knockly” in Living Hand © 1975; “How He Is Often Right” in Conjunctions © 1989; “The Rape of the Tanuk Women” in Conjunctions © 1992; “What I Feel” in Conjunctions © 1991; “Lost Things” in Conjunctions © 1995; “Glenn Gould” in Doubletake © 1997; “From Below, as a Neighbor” in Indiana Review © 1988; “The Great-grandmothers” in New American Writing © 1992; “The House Behind” in Antaeus © 1991; “The Outing” in Conjunctions © 1995; “A Position at the University” in The World © 1996; “Examples of Confusion” in Conjunctions as “Confusions” © 1988; “The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists” in Conjunctions © 1988; “Affinity” in The Quarterly © 1992. “The Thirteenth Woman,” “A Man in Our Town” (under the title “The Dog Man”), “Mr. Knockly,” and “Smoke” previously appeared in the collection The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, Living Hand Editions, 1976. “In the Everglades” previously appeared in the collection Story and Other Stories, The Figures, 1983. “Lord Royston’s Tour” was adapted from The Remains of Viscount Royston: A Memoir of His Life by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.
The author would also like to thank the following for support during the period in which these stories were written: the Fund for Poetry, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.
Also by Lydia Davis
The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories
Sketches for a Life of Wassilly
Story and Other Stories
Break It Down
The End of the Story
Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
ALMOST NO MEMORY. Copyright © 1997 by Lydia Davis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
eISBN 9781466869240
First eBook edition: March 2014