Donald Barthelme
Page 29
In the streets were people concealing their calm behind a façade of vague dread.
“The conventional symbol (such as the nightingale, often associated with melancholy), even though it is recognized only through agreement, is not a sign (like the traffic light) because, again, it presumably arouses deep feelings and is regarded as possessing properties beyond what the eye alone sees.” (A Dictionary of Literary Terms)
A number of nightingales with traffic lights tied to their legs flew past me.
A knight in pale pink armor appeared above me.
He sank, his armor making tiny shrieking sounds against the glass.
He gave me a sideways glance as he passed me.
He uttered the word “Muerte” as he passed me.
I unstuck the righthand plumber’s friend.
My acquaintances were debating the question, which of them would get my apartment?
I reviewed the conventional means of attaining the castle.
The conventional means of attaining the castle are as follows: “The eagle dug its sharp claws into the tender flesh of the youth, but he bore the pain without a sound, and seized the bird’s two feet with his hands. The creature in terror lifted him high up into the air and began to circle the castle. The youth held on bravely. He saw the glittering palace, which by the pale rays of the moon looked like a dim lamp; and he saw the windows and balconies of the castle tower. Drawing a small knife from his belt, he cut off both the eagle’s feet. The bird rose up in the air with a yelp, and the youth dropped lightly onto a broad balcony. At the same moment a door opened, and he saw a courtyard filled with flowers and trees, and there, the beautiful enchanted princess.” (The Yellow Fairy Book)
I was afraid.
I had forgotten the Bandaids.
When the eagle dug its sharp claws into my tender flesh—
Should I go back for the Bandaids?
But if I went back for the Bandaids I would have to endure the contempt of my acquaintances.
I resolved to proceed without the Bandaids.
“In some centuries, his [man’s] imagination has made life an intense practice of all the lovelier energies.” (John Masefield)
The eagle dug its sharp claws into my tender flesh.
But I bore the pain without a sound, and seized the bird’s two feet with my hands.
The plumber’s friends remained in place, standing at right angles to the side of the mountain.
The creature in terror lifted me high in the air and began to circle the castle.
I held on bravely.
I saw the glittering palace, which by the pale rays of the moon looked like a dim lamp; and I saw the windows and balconies of the castle tower.
Drawing a small knife from my belt, I cut off both the eagle’s feet.
The bird rose up in the air with a yelp, and I dropped lightly onto a broad balcony.
At the same moment a door opened, and I saw a courtyard filled with flowers and trees, and there, the beautiful enchanted symbol.
I approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed into only a beautiful princess.
I threw the beautiful princess headfirst down the mountain to my acquaintances.
Who could be relied upon to deal with her.
Nor are eagles plausible, not at all, not for a moment.
The Explanation
Q: Do you believe that this machine could be helpful in changing the government?
A: Changing the government . . .
Q: Making it more responsive to the needs of the people?
A: I don’t know what it is. What does it do?
Q: Well, look at it.
A: It offers no clues.
Q: It has a certain . . . reticence.
A: I don’t know what it does.
Q: A lack of confidence in the machine?
Q: Is the novel dead?
A: Oh yes. Very much so.
Q: What replaces it?
A: I should think that it is replaced by what existed before it was invented.
Q: The same thing?
A: The same sort of thing.
Q: Is the bicycle dead?
Q: You don’t trust the machine?
A: Why should I trust it?
Q: (States his own lack of interest in machines)
Q: What a beautiful sweater.
A: Thank you. I don’t want to worry about machines.
Q: What do you worry about?
A: I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change when I noticed, across the street among the people there waiting for the light to change, an extraordinarily handsome girl who was looking at me. Our eyes met, I looked away, then I looked again, she was looking away, the light changed. I moved into the street as did she. First I looked at her again to see if she was still looking at me, she wasn’t but I was aware that she was aware of me. I decided to smile. I smiled but in a curious way—the smile was supposed to convey that I was interested in her but also that I was aware that the situation was funny. But I bungled it. I smirked. I dislike even the word “smirk.” There was, you know, the moment when we passed each other. I had resolved to look at her directly in that moment. I tried but she was looking a bit to the left of me, she was looking fourteen inches to the left of my eyes.
Q: This is the sort of thing that—
A: I want to go back and do it again.
Q: Now that you’ve studied it for a bit, can you explain how it works?
A: Of course. (Explanation)
Q: Is she still removing her blouse?
A: Yes, still.
Q: Do you want to have your picture taken with me?
A: I don’t like to have my picture taken.
Q: Do you believe that, at some point in the future, one will be able to achieve sexual satisfaction, “complete” sexual satisfaction, for instance by taking a pill?
A: I doubt that it’s impossible.
Q: You don’t like the idea.
A: No. I think that under those conditions, we would know less than we do now.
Q: Know less about each other.
A: Of course.
Q: It has beauties.
A: The machine.
Q: Yes. We construct these machines not because we confidently expect them to do what they are designed to do—change the government in this instance—but because we intuit a machine, out there, glowing like a shopping center. . . .
A: You have to contend with a history of success.
Q: Which has gotten us nowhere.
A: (Extends consolation)
Q: What did you do then?
A: I walked on a tree. For twenty steps.
Q: What sort of tree?
A: A dead tree. I can’t tell one from another. It may have been an oak. I was reading a book.
Q: What was the book?
A: I don’t know, I can’t tell one from another. They’re not like films. With films you can remember, at a minimum, who the actors were. . . .
Q: What was she doing?
A: Removing her blouse. Eating an apple.
Q: The tree must have been quite large.
A: The tree must have been quite large.
Q: Where was this?
A: Near the sea. I had rope-soled shoes.
Q: I have a number of error messages I’d like to introduce here and I’d like you to study them carefully . . . they’re numbered. I’ll go over them with you: undefined variable . . . improper sequence of operators . . . improper use of hierarchy . . . missing operator . . . mixed mode, that one’s particularly grave . . . argument of a function is fixed-point . . . improper character in constant . . . improper fixed-point constant . . . improper floating-point constant . . . invalid characte
r transmitted in sub-program statement, that’s a bitch . . . no END statement.
A: I like them very much.
Q: There are hundreds of others, hundreds and hundreds.
A: You seem emotionless.
Q: That’s not true.
A: To what do your emotions . . . adhere, if I can put it that way?
Q: Do you see what she is doing?
A: Removing her blouse.
Q: How does she look?
A: . . . Self-absorbed.
Q: Are you bored with the question-and-answer form?
A: I am bored with it but I realize that it permits many valuable omissions: what kind of day it is, what I’m wearing, what I’m thinking. That’s a very considerable advantage, I would say.
Q: I believe in it.
Q: She sang and we listened to her.
A: I was speaking to a tourist.
Q: Their chair is here.
A: I knocked at the door; it was shut.
Q: The soldiers marched toward the castle.
A: I had a watch.
Q: He has struck me.
A: I have struck him.
Q: Their chair is here.
A: We shall not cross the river.
Q: The boats are filled with water.
A: His father will strike him.
Q: Filling his pockets with fruit.
Q: The face . . . the machine has a face. This panel here . . .
A: That one?
Q: Just as the human face developed . . . from fish . . . it’s traceable, from, say, the . . . The first mouth was that of a jellyfish. I can’t remember the name, the Latin name. . . . But a mouth, there’s more to it than just a mouth, a mouth alone is not a face. It went on up through the sharks . . .
A: Up through the sharks . . .
Q: . . . to the snakes. . . .
A: Yes.
Q: The face has three main functions, detection of desirable energy sources, direction of the locomotor machinery toward its goal, and capture. . . .
A: Yes.
Q: Capture and preliminary preparation of food. Is this too . . .
A: Not a bit.
Q: The face, a face, also serves as a lure in mate acquisition. The broad, forwardly directed nose—
A: I don’t see that on the panel.
Q: Look at it.
A: I don’t—
Q: There is an analogy, believe it or not. The . . . We use industrial designers to do the front panels, the controls. Designers, artists. To make the machines attractive to potential buyers. Pure cosmetics. They told us that knife switches were masculine. Men felt . . . So we used a lot of knife switches. . . .
A: I know that a great deal has been written about all this but when I come across such articles, in the magazines or in a newspaper, I don’t read them. I’m not interested.
Q: What are your interests?
A: I’m a director of the Schumann Festival.
Q: What is she doing now?
A: Taking off her jeans.
Q: Has she removed her blouse?
A: No, she’s still wearing her blouse.
Q: A yellow blouse?
A: Blue.
Q: Well, what is she doing now?
A: Removing her jeans.
Q: What is she wearing underneath?
A: Pants. Panties.
Q: But she’s still wearing her blouse?
A: Yes.
Q: Has she removed her panties?
A: Yes.
Q: Still wearing the blouse?
A: Yes. She’s walking along a log.
Q: In her blouse. Is she reading a book?
A: No. She has sunglasses.
Q: She’s wearing sunglasses?
A: Holding them in her hand.
Q: How does she look?
A: Quite beautiful.
Q: What is the content of Maoism?
A: The content of Maoism is purity.
Q: Is purity quantifiable?
A: Purity has never been quantifiable.
Q: What is the incidence of purity worldwide?
A: Purity occurs in .004 per cent of all cases.
Q: What is purity in the pure state often consonant with?
A: Purity in the pure state is often consonant with madness.
Q: This is not to denigrate madness.
A: This is not to denigrate madness. Madness in the pure state offers an alternative to the reign of right reason.
Q: What is the content of right reason?
A: The content of right reason is rhetoric.
Q: And the content of rhetoric?
A: The content of rhetoric is purity.
Q: Is purity quantifiable?
A: Purity is not quantifiable. It is inflatable.
Q: How is our rhetoric preserved against attacks by other rhetorics?
A: Our rhetoric is preserved by our elected representatives. In the fat of their heads.
Q: There’s no point in arguing that the machine is wholly successful, but it has its qualities. I don’t like to use anthropomorphic language in talking about these machines, but there is one quality . . .
A: What is it?
Q: It’s brave.
A: Machines are braver than art.
Q: Since the death of the bicycle.
Q: There are ten rules for operating the machine. The first rule is turn it on.
A: Turn it on.
Q: The second rule is convert the terms. The third rule is rotate the inputs. The fourth rule is you have made a serious mistake.
A: What do I do?
Q: You send the appropriate error message.
A: I will never remember these rules.
Q: I’ll repeat them a hundred times.
A: I was happier before.
Q: You imagined it.
A: The issues are not real.
Q: The issues are not real in the sense that they are touchable. The issues raised here are equivalents. Reasons and conclusions exist although they exist elsewhere, not here. Reasons and conclusions are in the air and simple to observe even for those who do not have the leisure to consult or learn to read the publications of the specialized disciplines.
A: The situation bristles with difficulties.
Q: The situation bristles with difficulties but in the end young people and workers will live on the same plane as old people and government officials, for the mutual good of all categories. The phenomenon of masses, in following the law of high numbers, makes possible exceptional and rare events, which—
A: I called her then and told her that I had dreamed about her, that she was naked in the dream, that we were making love. She didn’t wish to be dreamed about, she said—not now, not later, not ever, when would I stop. I suggested that it was something over which I had no control. She said that it had all been a long time ago and that she was married to William now, as I knew, and that she didn’t want . . . irruptions of this kind. Think of William, she said.
Q: He has struck me.
A: I have struck him.
Q: We have seen them.
A: I was looking at the window.
Q: Their chair is here.
A: She sang and we listened to her.
Q: Soldiers marching toward the castle.
A: I spoke to a tourist.
Q: I knocked at the door.
A: We shall not cross the river.
Q: The river has filled the boats with water.
A: I think that I have seen her with my uncle.
Q: Getting into their motorcar, I heard them.
A: He will strike her if he has lost it.
A (concluding): There’s no doubt in my mind that the ballplayers today are the greatest ever. Th
ey’re brilliant athletes, extremely well coordinated, tremendous in every department. The ballplayers today are so magnificent that scoring is a relatively simple thing for them.
Q: Thank you for confiding in me.
Q: . . . show you a picture of my daughter.
A: Very nice.
Q: I can give you a few references for further reading.
A: (Nose begins to bleed)
Q: What is she doing now?
A: There is a bruise on her thigh. The right.
Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel
A: I use the girl on the train a lot. I’m on a train, a European train with compartments. A young girl enters and sits opposite me. She is blond, wearing a short-sleeved sweater, a short skirt. The sweater has white and blue stripes, the skirt is dark blue. The girl has a book, Introduction to French or something like that. We are in France but she is not French. She has a book and a pencil. She’s extremely self-conscious. She opens the book and begins miming close attention, you know, making marks with the pencil at various points. Meanwhile I am carefully looking out of the window, regarding the terrain. I’m trying to avoid looking at her legs. The skirt has raised itself a bit, you see, there is a lot of leg to look at. I’m also trying to avoid looking at her breasts. They appear to be free under the white-and-blue sweater. There is a small gold pin pinned to the sweater on the left side. It has lettering on it. I can’t make out what it says. The girl shifts in her seat, moves from side to side, adjusting her position. She’s very very self-aware. All her movements are just a shade overdone. The book is in her lap. Her legs are fairly wide apart, very tanned, the color of—