Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts

by David Shields

  The Refrigerator. The refrigerator in the kitchen stands as an island of cold in a sea of warmth within its various skins of enamel, insulation, and plastic which serve to separate the two areas, the warm from the cool and freezing, the outside from the inside. Yet objects cannot be kept indefinitely in a refrigerator, generally reserved for the storing of fresh or relatively fresh food, because despite the cold within they will still spoil or lose their flavor or undergo unpleasant changes in shape, texture, or color. Thus the importance of arranging the food on the shelves and in the bins of the refrigerator in such a way that the older food is closest to the door and so will be taken out and prepared, eaten, served, or drunk before the newer or fresher food, which should be pushed to the back. In this way too, old food will not get shoved into the far corners of shelves or bins and become lost there until suddenly a stench begins leaking out of the box or until it is discovered when the refrigerator is defrosted, all shriveled up. This exercise should be performed every two weeks on the average in winter and every ten days in the summer and should be combined with a general cleaning out of the interior of the refrigerator, to include the washing of the trays and bins with hot soapy water and the enamel inside the box scrubbed with a solution of bicarbonate of soda and water. Throw out the old ice, refill the trays with fresh water—this is also advised, for old ice has a distinctive taste to the sensitive palate, having picked up the odors of various strong foods in the refrigerator despite their being wrapped up in several layers of foil or plastic—onions, cabbage, turnips, some cheeses, to mention a few—for there is virtually nothing that can stop a strong odor that is determined to move from place to place.

  The refrigerator of the kitchen and thus of the house can be seen to represent the refrigerator of the Marriage, and by that I mean the repository of all such things as the Husband and the Wife wish to preserve against the effects of heat and time. You may wish to see it as a kind of memory or memory bank or joint account from which both of us may withdraw—or into which deposit—sustenance at any time. Indeed the vaultlike quality of the strong door with its gleaming nickel-plated latches and hinges can hardly suggest anything else, that this is the place where you and I keep what is dearest and of greatest value to the Marriage, that is, the joint memories. You must take care therefore not to deposit the sort of ill-wrapped food with strong odors that would infect the taste of the blander foods, and remember to clean out the interior at regular intervals in order to discourage the growth of fungi and molds. And as you open and close the door of the refrigerator and the light inside the box goes on and off, so too do you open and close the vault of our collective memory, that is, you remember and forget, remember and forget. But it should not be left open for long periods of time, except when defrosting, so that its contents will not be unduly warmed up and thus spoil.

  Nor should you crowd the refrigerator up with leftovers, needless to say, or foods that no one in the household will eat, or with foods that do not in fact need to be refrigerated at all—for the main function of the refrigerator is to halt the growth and spread of microbes and bacteria of the sort that can make the eaters of the house sick or ill and in some cases even kill them, as in ptomaine and botulism. But in most foods there is no danger of this at all and they can simply be shelved in the cabinets or in the pantry, thus keeping the refrigerator from becoming too overcrowded, not only in the kitchen but in the Marriage as well.

  But we must not forget that food is grown from the earth in order to be eaten, and so what is put in the refrigerator is put there because it is intended to be taken out at some future date and be eaten up either cooked or raw. Cooking will take place either on the four burners of the stove or in its oven or both, which elements may be said to represent the inner life of the Wife, just as the garden may be said to represent the inner life of the Husband, that is, in those cases in which gardens are kept. Eating is what takes place at meals. One associates meals with placemats, silverware, dishes, and china, and the food that is served and eaten with these implements on a table by persons sitting in chairs and who now and then speak to each other between mouthfuls of food and drafts of water or wine. There are as many styles of eating as there are eaters, no doubt, but one of the most serviceable is to close the mouth once the food is inside it, whereupon you are to begin masticating or chewing in a relaxed manner, without haste. This throws the salivary glands into action. And once the food is ground into a pulp: swallow. If the food is well ground, the swallow will be smooth and effortless and you will hardly know what happened. Then you pause to have a sip of water or wine or whatever, after which it is wise to clear the throat discreetly so as to make room for the next swallow, that is, to clear away any loose ends. Of course this process of opening the mouth and taking in food and masticating it and swallowing it, to which may be added digestion and elimination, will be affected by the type of food to be processed, whether tough and fibrous, crisp and brittle, soft and slippery, spicy or bland, and so on, all of which will also affect your speed. But that one should not eat with the mouth open and not speak with the mouth full are well-known principles universally accepted, and I need add nothing to them except to say that beneath them lie even yet greater truths. For the food that is cooked and served at meals can be seen to represent the food of the Marriage, by which I mean the language of the Marriage, and so it is no wonder that the greater part of the eating and the talking takes place at the same time, at meals, with the Husband speaking across the table while his mouth is empty and the Wife listening while hers is full, then speaking when hers is empty and the Husband’s full—in short, the manner in which I have often recommended that we converse at our three meals taken together, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  For if food at the table represents the language of the Marriage with the various courses representing the parts of speech, with prepositions and articles and conjunctions built around the main course of verbs and nouns, many of which have just come from the refrigerator of the Marriage, and the whole meal composing a sentence or a statement that begins with an aperitif (the capital letter) and ends with a period (cup of coffee), then it should be clear how important it is to prepare and utter your words well and to know when to open your mouth and when to close it—when to speak and when not to speak. You should no more blurt out an ill-formed sentence, for example, than you should throw together a dinner in five minutes out of leftovers and stale food to serve up to an honored guest: good sentences, like good meals, require that their ingredients be kept well stored and be prepared with great care and consideration, with delicate sauces and dressings, but not overly seasoned, and be served on attractive plates whose rims are wiped clean of dribbled gravy, but with confidence and without apology. But is your guest a vegetarian? Is he on a diet today, not taking sugar or salt? Do tomatoes give him hives? Bananas nausea? Does ice cream make his hands and feet swell up? Better to know these things in advance than to find you have poisoned your guest who out of politeness has eaten everything you have served up and who now grows more and more silent as his sufferings increase, to a point finally where he is unable to say anything at all.

  Windows. But whereas the doors represent breaches in the fabric of the Marriage, that is, the house, the windows are altogether another matter, representing the eyes, for they are bastions of strength despite their apparent fragility. The windows should be kept clean at all times, first of all for the simple pleasure of being able to look through them and, conversely, for the displeasure to be found in staring at films of smoke or rain-splashed dust, the droppings of insects on the interior surfaces of the glass and those of birds on the exterior surfaces, for it may be said that a house with clean windows is a Marriage with clean eyes, that is, eyes that see clearly. Curtains, shades, and blinds are to be drawn or lowered at night, however, so that the outside world in its prowlings around will not be able to see inside the Marriage and what goes on or (in some cases) what does not go on, and they are to be drawn open or raised promptly at the first
light of dawn so that there is no doubt that the house is alert and awake as early as it is convenient to be so. Likewise lights are to be turned off inside the house promptly at eleven, since late nights—as in the Marriage’s flashing eyes—suggest discord or argumentation between the Husband and the Wife, and should this prove necessary, should the Husband and Wife choose to quarrel after eleven at night, they are advised to draw the curtains and lower the blinds and turn off the lights and to quarrel in a low voice, a whisper if at all possible. The curtains, shades, or blinds represent the eyelids of the Marriage, it should be pointed out.

  The windows are one of the more complex structures of the house and consist of glass (as was mentioned), mullions of metal or of wood milled and lap-jointed, putty, and in some cases hinges and latches for windows that open and close, and paint or stain inside and out. They may also be weather-stripped in the case of windows designed to open and close, or merely caulked in those windows that will remain fixed for all time. Windows may also be covered at various seasons by screens, awnings, storm windows, all for various reasons—suggesting the sunglasses, hat brims, etc., of the Marriage. But windows are in all characterized by a quality which is of supreme advantage to those, the Husband and the Wife, who jointly inhabit the house, and that is that one obtains a better view looking out of the windows from inside than looking in through them from outside, an effect which is enhanced by the quadri-focal bi-stereoscopic vision innate to the Marriage itself, as summed up in the saying: two can see better than one. Thus not only can one see better from within looking outward, not only that—there is also the matter of simply being inside while the objects or persons outside are outside, for inside one can communicate in low tones without fear of being overheard, while outside one is not only bi-stereoscopically visible but subject to certain unexpected resonating configurations in the shrubbery, fences, and walls that can serve to project one’s softest words right into the house, and in this effect lies the supreme strength of the Marriage over others, who know now how much they are being watched, how much overheard.

  The Children. As you know, my dear, I have taken it upon myself to limit the number of our Children to two, one Son and one Daughter, the greater part of whose care I entrust to your apparently sound maternal instincts. There is thus little I can offer by way of advice or recommendation except to say that I do not wish to meet them more than once or twice a day and preferably toward the end of the day and preferably at that part of the end of the day when they are being put to bed, which is also near the hour I have at last managed to dismiss most of the greater concerns of the day and thus am able to summon up the strength to once again introduce myself as their Father. They are, at this time in their lives when they are particularly subject to beneficial influences—I am pleased to note—learning. It would help of course if you would refer to me regularly throughout the day by pointing to me through the windows as I work out in the yard or as I get in the car and drive away, or as I pass by close to the house on the way to get a tool from the garage or return one I have finished with. In such manner they will become accustomed to viewing me at various angles and distances, and in various postures, or moving now slowly, now rapidly, by foot or by car. You may now and then—but perhaps no more than once a day—wish to carry them out in your arms so that they may have a close view of me in direct sunlight—or, as one of them seems to be walking after a fashion, send him for a brief ramble down to the garden walls and let him (or her) peer through the cracks in the gate, staring and blinking, before you call him (or her) back. And when they are old enough to speak in complete sentences and thus to understand them when spoken to them, you might consider reading them aloud, once a day or so, selections from some of my published horticultural pamphlets, particularly Garlic Questions Finally Answered and How to Garden Without Bending Over. These things must not be hurried, however. There is plenty of time for the Children to get to know me, and I see no reason why they should be rushed into the matter when all of life is yet ahead of them.

  Although we will have no more Children—we already have 0.3 too many as it is, statistically speaking—it may nonetheless be said that every day lived within the house, thus within the Marriage, is one of utmost pregnancy. For as you go about your way within the house cleaning and dusting, washing clothes and dishes, and I go about my way outside making repairs and tending the yard and garden, we bear within ourselves, the Husband and the Wife, images or effigies of each other, the Husband of the Wife, the Wife of the Husband, and carry these images about with us while we work. And as the pregnant mother-to-be will have no clear idea of what her future child will look like, or how it will behave, imagine what she will, until it is actually born into the world, so too will neither you nor I have any clear idea of what the other (with whom we have been pregnant all day) will look like or how the other will behave until that moment when we meet again at the end of the day, in that daily birth or rebirth which is the encounter of the Husband and the Wife in the house and in the Marriage. And in this state of unending pregnancy so too must you take care not to eat things that will upset your stomach while at the same time keeping up your breathing exercises, resting when necessary, so that when the moment comes you will be in good physical condition, relaxed and fearless, and able to face the ordeal with the conviction that all will come out well. For to neglect these things in the daily pregnancy of the Marriage is to open oneself to the possibility of not only great pain but the premature or the miscarried as well, in which the image nurtured in pregnancy is too small or is ill formed in comparison with the strapping reality, suddenly strong and overpowering and demanding beyond all preconception.

  4

  One Thousand Words on Why

  You Should Not Talk

  During a Fire Drill

  Mark Halliday

  FIRST OF ALL, I should point out that the topic of why you should not talk during a fire drill is such a large and complex topic that I cannot do full justice to it in only one thousand words. In only one thousand words I will only be able to scratch the surface of this very interesting topic which has so many important and sensitive aspects. There certainly is a great deal to be said about why a person should not talk during a fire drill, even when everybody knows it is just a drill and even if there is not a teacher talking to us at the time.

  One outstanding reason for not talking during a fire drill is because the fire drill is a practice session for when there might be a real fire in which case all the students would certainly need to be very quiet so they could hear the instructions from teachers such as Mrs. DeMella who would be shouting out some important messages. She might be shouting about how we should stand in alphabetical order on the ballfield with the ninth grade closest to the flagpole. If you are talking when Mrs. DeMella shouts about this then you might not hear the instructions and possibly, with the black smoke billowing out the windows of the burning school, if this was a real fire and not just another drill, you might then become confused and forget where to stand, even though the whole school has practiced this entire thing about a thousand times, because at such a time your brain could become overheated and you might run in circles like an insane dog. For this reason you would fail to stand in exactly the place where Mrs. DeMella wanted you to stand, in which case the teachers might count the students and come to the mistaken conclusion that you were absent and that you were roasting in the flames, running around trapped in the burning gym like a human torch, and as a result Mrs. DeMella might go insane with grief about her lost student, thinking that she should have shouted even louder about where everybody should walk and stand, all because you were selfish and kept on talking to your neighbor.

  In a sense, the above explanation reveals very much of the essence of why a person should not ever talk during a fire drill, but of course there are further aspects of this interesting topic which can be explained and which will be explained. The concept of not talking during a fire drill is closely related to the concept of silence and to the
concept of the value of silence or what we call quiet. In a quiet situation there is a great opportunity for people to hear what someone else may have to say, such as your teacher. In a sense this is the same idea as was studied in the preceding paragraph but there is definitely more to be said about silence or quiet or what we may call the absence of sound. Silence is a situation which gives us the chance to rest our ears, and our minds, which are so busy during most of the day listening to words, words, words, and other noises, like the squeak of chalk on a blackboard (which is actually a green board) or Mr. Perkins clearing his throat which seems to involve a remarkable amount of phlegm or mucus or what have you. After a few hours of hearing so many sounds, some of which are remarkably unpleasant, not to mention the voices of our teachers helping us to understand the Constitution and the methods for determining whether two triangles are congruent (side-angle-side, angle-side-angle, and side-side-side) (but not angle-angle-angle), there is a need for silence, or quiet, and it is a very human need. Thus if a student is talking during a fire drill, that student is ruining a golden opportunity to experience silence, because after all a fire drill is a time when silence is golden, and mandatory, except of course for a teacher like Mrs. DeMella who has the job of shouting instructions to everybody very loudly just in case someone may have forgotten the fire drill procedure from the last fire drill which took place one month ago.