I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, which is now stored in West Virginia, awaiting some other time of unhappiness, sometime, perhaps, when we are angry with one another.
This Newspaper Here
AGAIN TODAY the little girl come along come along dancing doggedly with her knitting needle steel-blue knitting needle. She knows I can’t get up out of this chair theoretically and sticks me, here and there, just to make me yell, nice little girl from down the block somewhere. Once I corrected her sharply saying “don’t for God’s sake what pleasure is there hearing me scream like this?” She was wearing a blue Death of Beethoven printed dress and white shoes which mama had whited for her that day before noon so white were they (shoes). I judged her to be eleven. The knitting needle in the long thrust and hold position she said “torment is the answer old pappy man it’s torment that is the game’s name that I’m learning about under laboratory conditions. Torment is the proper study of children of my age class and median income and you don’t matter in any case you’re through dirty old man can’t even get out of rotten old chair.” Summed me up she did in those words which I would much rather not have heard so prettily put as they were nevertheless. I hate it here in this chair in this house warm and green with Social Security. Do you know how little it is? The little girl jabbed again hitting the thin thigh that time and said “we know exactly how little it is and even that is money down the drain why don’t you die damn you dirty old man what are you contributing?” Then I explained about this newspaper here sprinkled with rare lies and photographs incorrectly captioned accumulated along a lifetime of disappointments and some fun. I boasted saying “one knows just where nerves cluster under the skin, how to pinch them so citizens jump as in dreams when opened suddenly a door and there see two flagrantly . . .” But I realize then her dreams are drawn in ways which differ so that we cannot read them together. I threw then jam jar (black currant) catching her nicely on kneecap and she ran howling but if they come to object I have jab marks in extenuation. Nice little girl from down the block somewhere.
The reason I like to read this newspaper here the one in my hand, is because I like what it says. It is my favorite. I would be pleased really quite if you could read it. But you can’t. But some can. It comes in the mail. I give it to a fellow some time back, put it in his hand and said “take a look.” He took a look took a look but he couldn’t see anything strawdinary along this newspaper here, couldn’t see it. And he says “so what?” Of course I once was in this business myself making newspapers in the depression. We had fun then. This fellow I give it to to take a look some time back he that said “so what” is well educated reads good travels far drinks deep gin mostly talks to dolphins click click click click. A professor of ethnology at the University of California at Davis. Not in fine a dullard in any sense but he couldn’t see anything strawdinary along this newspaper here. I said look there page 2 the amusing story of the plain girl fair where the plain girls come to vend their wares but he said “on my page 2 this newspaper here talk about the EEC.” Then I took it from his hand and showed him with my finger pointing the plain girl fair story. Then he commences to read aloud from under my finger there some singsong about the EEC. So I infer that he is one who can’t. So I let the matter drop.
I went to 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
(!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? /
o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o
? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? /
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!)
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 growths 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 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 warm 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 plateglass window incident in my mind. Sweet to know your face uncut and unabridged. Who ha who ha dirty old man.
Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning
K. at His Desk
He is neither abrupt with nor excessively kind to associates. Or he is both abrupt and kind.
The telephone is, for him, a whip, a lash, but also a conduit for soothing words, a sink into which he can hurl gallons of syrup if it comes to that.
He reads quickly, scratching brief comments (“Yes,” “No”) in corners of the paper. He slouches in the leather chair, looking about him with a slightly irritated air for new visitors, new difficulties. He spends his time sending and receiving messengers.
“I spend my time sending and receiving messengers,” he says. “Some of these messages are important. Others are not.”
Described by Secretaries
A: “Quite frankly I think he forgets a lot of things. But the things he forgets are those which are inessential. I even think he might forget deliberately, to leave his mind free. He has the ability to get rid of unimportant details. And he does.”
B: “Once when I was sick, I hadn’t heard from him, and I thought he had forgotten me. You know usually your boss will send flowers or something like that. I was in the hospital, and I was mighty blue. I was in a room with another girl, and her boss hadn’t sent her anything either. Then suddenly the door opened and there he was with the biggest bunch of yellow tulips I’d ever seen in my life. And the other girl’s boss was with him, and he had tulips too. They were standing there with all those tulips, smiling.”
Behind the Bar
At a crowded party, he wanders behind the bar to make himself a Scotch and water. His hand is on the bottle of Scotch, his glass is waiting. The bartender, a small man in a beige uniform with gilt buttons, politely asks K. to return to the other side, the guests’ side, of the bar. “You let one behind here, they all be behind here,” the bartender says.
K. Reading the Newspaper
His reactions are impossible to catalogue. Often he will find a note that amuses him endlessly, some anecdote involving, say, a fireman who has propelled his apparatus at record-breaking speed to the wrong address. These small stories are clipped, carried about in a pocket, to be produced at appropriate moments for the pleasure of friends. Other manifestations please him less. An account of an earthquake in Chile, with its thousands of dead and homeless, may depress him for weeks. He memorizes the terrible statistics, quoting them everywhere and saying, with a grave look: “We must do something.” Important actions often follow, sometimes within a matter of hours. (On the other hand, these two kinds of responses may be, on a given day, inexplicably reversed.)
The more trivial aspects of the daily itemization are skipped. While reading, he maintains a rapid drumming of his fingertips on the desktop. He receives twelve newspapers, but of these, only four are regarded as serious.
Attitude Toward His Work
“Sometimes I can’t seem to do anything. The work is there, piled up, it seems to me an insurmountable obstacle, really out of reach. I sit and look at it, wondering where to begin, how to take hold of it. Perhaps I pick up a piece of paper, try to read it but my mind is elsewhere, I am thinking of something else, I can’t seem to get the gist of it, it seems meaningless, devoid of interest, not having to do with human affairs, drained of life. Then, in an hour, or even a moment, everything changes suddenly: I realize I only have to do it, hurl myself into the midst of it, proceed mechanically, the first thing and then the second thing, that it is simply a matter of moving from one step to the next, plowing through it. I become interested, I become excited, I work very fast, things fall into place, I am exhilarated, amazed that these things could ever have seemed dead to me.”
Sleeping on the Stones of Unknown Towns (Rimbaud)
K. is walking, with that familiar slight dip of the shoulders, through the streets of a small city in France or Germany. The shop signs are in a language which alters when inspected closely, MÖBEL becoming MEUBLES for example, and the citizens mutter to themselves with dark virtuosity a mixture of languages. K. is very interested, looks closely at everything, at the shops, the goods displayed, the clothing of the people, the tempo of street life, the citizens themselves, wondering about them. What are their water needs?
“In the West, wisdom is mostly gained at lunch. At lunch, people tell you things.”
The nervous eyes of the waiters.
The tall bald cook, white apron, white T-shirt, grinning through an opening in the wall.
“Why is that cook looking at me?”
Urban Transportation
“The transportation problems of our cities and their rapidly expanding suburbs are the most urgent and neglected transportation problems confronting the country. In these heavily populated and industrialized areas, people are dependent on a system of transportation that is at once complex and inadequate. Obsolete facilities and growing demands have created seemingly insoluble difficulties and present methods of dealing with these difficulties offer little prospect of relief.”
K. Penetrated with Sadness
He hears something playing on someone else’s radio, in another part of the building.
The music is wretchedly sad; now he can (barely) hear it, now it fades into the wall.
He turns on his own radio. There it is, on his own radio, the same music. The sound fills the room.
Karsh of Ottawa
“We sent a man to Karsh of Ottawa and told him that we admired his work very much. Especially, I don’t know, the Churchill thing and, you know, the Hemingway thing, and all that. And we told him we wanted to set up a sitting for K. sometime in June, if that would be convenient for him, and he said yes, that was okay, June was okay, and where did we want to have it shot, there or in New York or where. Well, that was a problem because we didn’t know exactly what K.’s schedule would be for June, it was up in the air, so we tentatively said New York around the fifteenth. And he said, that was okay, he could do that. And he wanted to know how much time he could have, and we said, well, how much time do you need? And he said he didn’t know, it varied from sitter to sitter. He said some people were very restless and that made it difficult to get just the right shot. He said there was one shot in each sitting that was, you know, the key shot, the right one. He said he’d have to see, when the time came.”
Dress
He is neatly dressed in a manner that does not call attention to itself. The suits are soberly cut and in dark colors. He must at all times present an aspect of freshness difficult to sustain because of frequent movements from place to place under conditions which are not always the most favorable. Thus he changes clothes frequently, especially shirts. In the course of a day he chan
ges his shirt many times. There are always extra shirts about, in boxes.
“Which of you has the shirts?”
A Friend Comments: K.’s Aloneness
“The thing you have to realize about K. is that essentially he’s absolutely alone in the world. There’s this terrible loneliness which prevents people from getting too close to him. Maybe it comes from something in his childhood, I don’t know. But he’s very hard to get to know, and a lot of people who think they know him rather well don’t really know him at all. He says something or does something that surprises you, and you realize that all along you really didn’t know him at all.
“He has surprising facets. I remember once we were out in a small boat. K. of course was the captain. Some rough weather came up and we began to head back in. I began worrying about picking up a landing and I said to him that I didn’t think the anchor would hold, with the wind and all. He just looked at me. Then he said: ‘Of course it will hold. That’s what it’s for.’”
K. on Crowds
“There are exhausted crowds and vivacious crowds.
“Sometimes, standing there, I can sense whether a particular crowd is one thing or the other. Sometimes the mood of the crowd is disguised, sometimes you only find out after a quarter of an hour what sort of crowd a particular crowd is.
“And you can’t speak to them in the same way. The variations have to be taken into account. You have to say something to them that is meaningful to them in that mood.”
Donald Barthelme Page 17