Donald Barthelme

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by Donald Barthelme


  Dear Francesca, tell me, is this a successful party, in your view? Is this the best we can do? I know that you have always wanted to meet Kong; now that you have met him and he has said whatever he has said to you (I saw you smiling), can we go home? I mean you to your home, me to my home, all these others to their own homes, cells, cages? I am feeling a little ragged. What made us think that we would escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholism, being disappointed, having children? Say “No,” refuse me once and for all, let me try something else. Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what “right” was. Is it really important to know that this movie is fine, and that one terrible, and to talk intelligently about the difference? Wonderful elegance! No good at all!

  Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916

  PAUL KLEE said:

  “Now I have been transferred to the Air Corps. A kindly sergeant effected the transfer. He thought I would have a better future here, more chances for promotion. First I was assigned to aircraft repair, together with several other workers. We presented ourselves as not just painters but artist painters. This caused some shaking of heads. We varnished wooden fuselages, correcting old numbers and adding new ones with the help of templates. Then I was pulled off the painting detail and assigned to transport. I escort aircraft that are being sent to various bases in Germany and also (I understand) in occupied territory. It is not a bad life. I spend my nights racketing across Bavaria (or some such) and my days in switching yards. There is always bread and wurst and beer in the station restaurants. When I reach a notable town I try to see the notable paintings there, if time allows. There are always unexpected delays, reroutings, backtrackings. Then the return to the base. I see Lily fairly often. We meet in hotel rooms and that is exciting. I have never yet lost an aircraft or failed to deliver one to its proper destination. The war seems interminable. Walden has sold six of my drawings.”

  The Secret Police said:

  “We have secrets. We have many secrets. We desire all secrets. We do not have your secrets and that is what we are after, your secrets. Our first secret is where we are. No one knows. Our second secret is how many of us there are. No one knows. Omnipresence is our goal. We do not even need real omnipresence. The theory of omnipresence is enough. With omnipresence, hand-in-hand as it were, goes omniscience. And with omniscience and omnipresence, hand-in-hand-in-hand as it were, goes omnipotence. We are a three-sided waltz. However our mood is melancholy. There is a secret sigh that we sigh, secretly. We yearn to be known, acknowledged, admired even. What is the good of omnipotence if nobody knows? However that is a secret, that sorrow. Now we are everywhere. One place we are is here watching Engineer-Private Klee, who is escorting three valuable aircraft, B.F.W. 3054/16–17–18, with spare parts, by rail from Milbertshofen to Cambrai. Do you wish to know what Engineer-Private Klee is doing at this very moment, in the baggage car? He is reading a book of Chinese short stories. He has removed his boots. His feet rest twenty-six centimeters from the baggage-car stove.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “These Chinese short stories are slight and lovely. I have no way of knowing if the translation is adequate or otherwise. Lily will meet me in our rented room on Sunday, if I return in time. Our destination is Fighter Squadron Five. I have not had anything to eat since morning. The fine chunk of bacon given me along with my expense money when we left the base has been eaten. This morning a Red Cross lady with a squint gave me some very good coffee, however. Now we are entering Hohenbudberg.”

  The Secret Police said:

  “Engineer-Private Klee has taken himself into the station restaurant. He is enjoying a hearty lunch. We shall join him there.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “Now I emerge from the station restaurant and walk along the line of cars to the flatcar on which my aircraft (I think of them as my aircraft) are carried. To my surprise and dismay, I notice that one of them is missing. There had been three, tied down on the flatcar and covered with canvas. Now I see with my trained painter’s eye that instead of three canvas-covered shapes on the flatcar there are only two. Where the third aircraft had been there is only a puddle of canvas and loose rope. I look around quickly to see if anyone else has marked the disappearance of the third aircraft.”

  The Secret Police said:

  “We had marked it. Our trained policemen’s eyes had marked the fact that where three aircraft had been before, tied down on the flatcar and covered with canvas, now there were only two. Unfortunately we had been in the station restaurant, lunching, at the moment of removal, therefore we could not attest as to where it had gone or who had removed it. There is something we do not know. This is irritating in the extreme. We closely observe Engineer-Private Klee to determine what action he will take in the emergency. We observe that he is withdrawing from his tunic a notebook and pencil. We observe that he begins, very properly in our opinion, to note down in his notebook all the particulars of the affair.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “The shape of the collapsed canvas, under which the aircraft had rested, together with the loose ropes—the canvas forming hills and valleys, seductive folds, the ropes the very essence of looseness, lapsing—it is irresistible. I sketch for ten or fifteen minutes, wondering the while if I might not be in trouble, because of the missing aircraft. When I arrive at Fighter Squadron Five with less than the number of aircraft listed on the manifest, might not some officious person become angry? Shout at me? I have finished sketching. Now I will ask various trainmen and station personnel if they have seen anyone carrying away the aircraft. If they answer in the negative, I will become extremely frustrated. I will begin to kick the flatcar.”

  The Secret Police said:

  “Frustrated, he begins to kick the flatcar.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “I am looking up in the sky, to see if my aircraft is there. There are in the sky aircraft of several types, but none of the type I am searching for.”

  The Secret Police said:

  “Engineer-Private Klee is searching the sky—an eminently sound procedure, in our opinion. We, the Secret Police, also sweep the Hohenbudberg sky, with our eyes. But find nothing. We are debating with ourselves as to whether we ought to enter the station restaurant and begin drafting our preliminary report, for forwarding to higher headquarters. The knotty point, in terms of the preliminary report, is that we do not have the answer to the question ‘Where is the aircraft?’ The damage potential to the theory of omniscience, as well as potential to our careers, dictates that this point be omitted from the preliminary report. But if this point is omitted, might not some officious person at the Central Bureau for Secrecy note the omission? Become angry? Shout at us? Omissiveness is not rewarded at the Central Bureau. We decide to observe further the actions of Engineer-Private Klee, for the time being.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “I who have never lost an aircraft have lost an aircraft. The aircraft is signed out to me. The cost of the aircraft, if it is not found, will be deducted from my pay, meager enough already. Even if Walden sells a hundred, a thousand drawings, I will not have enough money to pay for this cursed aircraft. Can I, in the time the train remains in the Hohenbudberg yards, construct a new aircraft or even the simulacrum of an aircraft, with no materials to work with or indeed any special knowledge of aircraft construction? The situation is ludicrous. I will therefore apply Reason. Reason dictates the solution. I will diddle the manifest. With my painter’s skill which is after all not so different from a forger’s, I will change the manifest to reflect conveyance of two aircraft, B.F.W. 3054/16 and 17, to Fighter Squadron Five. The extra canvas and ropes I will conceal in an empty boxcar—this one, which according to its stickers is headed for Essigny-le-Petit. Now I will walk around town and see if I can find a chocolate shop. I crave chocolate.”

  The Secret Police said:

 
“Now we observe Engineer-Private Klee concealing the canvas and ropes which covered the former aircraft into an empty boxcar bound for Essigny-le-Petit. We have previously observed him diddling the manifest with his painter’s skill which resembles not a little that of the forger. We applaud these actions of Engineer-Private Klee. The contradiction confronting us in the matter of the preliminary report is thus resolved in highly satisfactory fashion. We are proud of Engineer-Private Klee and of the resolute and manly fashion in which he has dealt with the crisis. We predict he will go far. We would like to embrace him as a comrade and brother but unfortunately we are not embraceable. We are secret, we exist in the shadows, the pleasure of the comradely/brotherly embrace is one of the pleasures we are denied, in our dismal service.”

  Paul Klee said:

  “We arrive at Cambrai. The planes are unloaded, six men for each plane. The work goes quickly. No one questions my altered manifest. The weather is clearing. After lunch I will leave to begin the return journey. My release slip and travel orders are ready, but the lieutenant must come and sign them. I wait contentedly in the warm orderly room. The drawing I did of the collapsed canvas and ropes is really very good. I eat a piece of chocolate. I am sorry about the lost aircraft but not overmuch. The war is temporary. But drawings and chocolate go on forever.”

  A Film

  THINGS HAVE never been better, except that the child, one of the stars of our film, has just been stolen by vandals, and this will slow down the progress of the film somewhat, if not bring it to a halt. But might not this incident, which is not without its own human drama, be made part of the story line? Julie places a hand on the child’s head, in the vandal camp. “The fever has broken.” The vandals give the child a wood doll to play with, until night comes. And suddenly I blunder into a landing party from our ships—forty lieutenants all in white, all holding their swords in front of their chins, in salute. The officer in charge slams his blade into its scabbard several times, in a gesture either decisive or indecisive. Yes, he will help us catch the vandals. No, he has no particular plan. Just general principles, he says. The Art of War itself.

  The idea of the film is that it not be like other films.

  I heard a noise outside. I looked out of the window. An old woman was bent over my garbage can, borrowing some of my garbage. They do that all over the city, old men and old women. They borrow your garbage and they never bring it back.

  Thinking about the “Flying to America” sequence. This will be the film’s climax. But am I capable of mounting such a spectacle? Fortunately I have Ezra to help.

  “And is it not the case,” said Ezra, when we first met, “that I have been associated with the production of nineteen major motion pictures of such savage originality, scalding vérité, and honey-warm sexual indecency that the very theaters chained their doors rather than permit exhibition of these major motion pictures on their ammonia-scented gum-daubed premises? And is it not the case,” said Ezra, “that I myself with my two sinewy hands and strong-wrought God-gift brain have participated in the changing of seven high-class literary works of the first water and four of the second water and two of the third water into major muscatel? And is it not the living truth,” said Ezra, “that I was the very man, I myself and none other without exception, who clung to the underside of the camera of the great Dreyer, clung with my two sinewy hands and noble thighs and cunning-muscled knees both dexter and sinister, during the cinematization of the master’s Gertrud, clung there to slow the movement of said camera to that exquisite slowness which distinguishes this masterpiece from all other masterpieces of its water? And is it not chapter and verse,” said Ezra, “that I was the comrade of all the comrades of the Dziga-Vertov group who was first in no-saying, firmest in no-saying, most final in no-saying, to all honey-sweet commercial seductions of whatever water and capitalist blandishments of whatever water and ideological incorrectitudes of whatever water whatsoever? And is it not as true as Saul become Paul,” said Ezra, “that you require a man, a firm-limbed long-winded good true man, and that I am the man standing before you in his very blood and bones?”

  “You are hired, Ezra,” I said.

  Whose child is it? We forgot to ask, when we sent out the casting call. Perhaps it belongs to itself. It has an air of self-possession quite remarkable in one so homely, and I notice that its paychecks are made out to it, rather than a nominee. Fortunately we have Julie to watch over it. The motor hotel in Tel Aviv is our temporary, not long-range, goal. New arrangements will probably not do the trick but we are making them anyhow: the ransom has been counted into pretty colored sacks, the film placed in round tin cans, the destroyed beams blocking the path are pushed aside . . .

  Thinking of sequences for the film.

  A frenzy of desire?

  Sensible lovers taking precautions?

  Swimming with horses?

  Today we filmed fear, a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, real or imagined. In fear you know what you’re afraid of, whereas in anxiety you do not. Correlation of children’s fears with those of their parents is .667 according to Hagman. We filmed the startle pattern—shrinking, blinking, all that. Ezra refused to do “inhibition of the higher nervous centers.” I don’t blame him. However he was very good in demonstrating the sham rage reaction and also in “panting.” Then we shot some stuff in which a primitive person (my bare arm standing in for the primitive person) kills an enemy by pointing a magic bone at him. “O.K., who’s got the magic bone?” The magic bone was brought. I pointed the magic bone and the actor playing the enemy fell to the ground. I had carefully explained to the actor that the magic bone would not really kill him, probably.

  Next, the thrill of fear along the buttocks. We used Julie’s buttocks for this sequence. “Hope is the very sign of lack-of-happiness,” said Julie, face down on the divan. “Fame is a palliative for doubt,” I said. “Wealth-formation is a source of fear for both winners and losers,” Ezra said. “Civilization aims at making all good things accessible even to cowards,” said the actor who had played the enemy, quoting Nietzsche. Julie’s buttocks thrilled.

  We wrapped, then. I took the magic bone home with me. I don’t believe in it, exactly, but you never know.

  Have I ever been more alert, more confident? Following the dropped handkerchiefs to the vandal camp—there, a blue and green one, hanging on a shrub! The tall vandal chief wipes his hands on his sweatshirt. Vandals, he says, have been grossly misperceived. Their old practices, which earned them widespread condemnation, were a response to specific historical situations, and not a character trait, like being good or bad. Our negative has been scratched with a pointed instrument, all 150,000 feet of it. But the vandals say they were on the other side of town that night, planting trees. It is difficult to believe them. But gazing at the neat rows of saplings, carefully emplaced and surrounded by a vetchlike ground cover . . . A beautiful job! One does not know what to think.

  We have got Frot Newling for the film; he will play the important role of George. Frot wanted many Gs in the beginning, but now that he understands the nature of the project he is working for scale, so that he can grow, as an actor and as a person. He is growing visibly, shot by shot. Soon he will be the biggest actor in the business. The other actors crowd about him, peering into his ankles . . . Should this film be made? That is one of the difficult questions one has to forget, when one is laughing in the face of unclear situations, or bad weather. What a beautiful girl Julie is! Her lustrous sexuality has the vandals agog. They follow her around trying to touch the tip of her glove, or the flounce of her gown. She shows her breasts to anyone who asks. “Amazing grace!” the vandals say.

  Today we filmed the moon rocks. We set up in the Moon Rock Room, at the Smithsonian. There they were. The moon rocks. The moon rocks were the greatest thing we had ever seen in our entire lives! The moon rocks were red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white. They scintillated, sparkled, glinted, gli
ttered, twinkled, and gleamed. They produced booms, thunderclaps, explosions, clashes, splashes, and roars. They sat on a pillow of the purest Velcro, and people who touched the pillow were able to throw away their crutches and jump in the air. Four cases of gout and eleven instances of hyperbolic paraboloidism were cured before our eyes. The air rained crutches. The moon rocks drew you toward them with a fatal irresistibility, but at the same time held you at a seemly distance with a decent reserve. Peering into the moon rocks, you could see the future and the past in color, and you could change them in any way you wished. The moon rocks gave off a slight hum, which cleaned your teeth, and a brilliant glow, which absolved you from sin. The moon rocks whistled Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius, while reciting The Confessions of St. Augustine, by I. F. Stone. The moon rocks were as good as a meaningful and emotionally rewarding seduction that you had not expected. The moon rocks were as good as listening to what the members of the Supreme Court say to each other, in the Supreme Court Locker Room. They were as good as a war. The moon rocks were better than a presentation copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language signed by Geoffrey Chaucer himself. They were better than a movie in which the President refuses to tell the people what to do to save themselves from the terrible thing that is about to happen, although he knows what ought to be done and has written a secret memorandum about it. The moon rocks were better than a good cup of coffee from an urn decorated with the change of Philomel, by the barbarous king. The moon rocks were better than a ¡huelga! led by Mongo Santamaria, with additional dialogue by St. John of the Cross and special effects by Melmoth the Wanderer. The moon rocks surpassed our expectations. The dynamite out-of-sight very heavy and together moon rocks turned us on, to the highest degree. There was blood on our eyes, when we had finished filming them.

 

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