Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  Now, my harpsichord has been out of tune for five years, some of the keys don’t function, and there are drink rings on top of it where people have set their drinks down carelessly, at parties and the like, still it is mine and I didn’t particularly want to give it to his wife, I believe her name is Cynthia, and although I may have drunkenly promised to give it to her in a fit of generosity or inadvertence, or undue respect for the possible pleasures of distant others, still it was and is my harpsichord and what was his wife giving me? I hadn’t in mind sexual favors or anything of that kind, I had in mind real property of equivalent value. So I went into the other room and drank a glass of water, or rather vodka, thinking to stall him with the missing “part” of the trivial anecdote I had been telling him, to keep his mind off what he wanted, the harpsichord, but the problem was, what kind of lie would he like? I could tell him about “the time I went to Hyde Park for a drink with the President,” but he could look at me and know I was too young to have done that, and then the failed lie would exist between us like a bathtub filled with ruinous impotent nonsense, he would simply seize the harpsichord and make off with it (did I say that he was a sergeant? with three light-blue chevrons sewn to the darker blue of his right and left sleeves?). Who knows the kinds of lies that sergeants like, something that would confirm their already existing life-attitudes, I supposed, and I tried to check back mentally and remember what these last might be, drawing upon my (very slight) knowledge of the sociology of authority, something in the area of child abuse perhaps, if I could fit a child-abuse part to the structure already extant, which I was beginning to forget, something to do with walking at night, if I could spot-weld a child-abuse extension to what was already there, my partial anecdote, that might do the trick.

  So I went into the next room and had a glass of something, I think I said, “Excuse me,” but maybe I didn’t, and it had to be a fabrication that would grammatically follow the words “and then” without too much of a seam showing, of course I could always, upon reentering the first room, where the sergeant stood, begin the sentence anew, with some horrific instance of child abuse, of which I have several in the old memory bank, and we could agree that it was terrible, terrible, what people did, and he would forget about the harpsichord, and we could part with mutual regard, generated by the fact (indisputable) that neither of us were child abusers, however much we might have liked to be, having children of our own. Or, to get away from the distasteful subject of hurting children, I might tack, to the flawed corpus of the original anecdote, something about walking at night in the city, a declaration of my own lack of leftness—there’s not a radical bone in my body, all I want is ease and bliss, not a thing in this world do I desire other than ease and bliss, I think he might empathize with that (did I mention that he had the flap on his holster unbuttoned and his left hand resting on the butt of his weapon, and the rim of his black shoes touching the rim of my brown boots?). That might ring a bell.

  Or I could, as if struck by a sudden thought, ask him if he was a “real” policeman. He would probably answer truthfully. He would probably say either, “Yes, I am a real policeman,” or, “No, I am not a real policeman.” A third possibility: “What do you mean by ‘real,’ in this instance?” Because even among policemen who are “real,” that is, bona fide, duly appointed officers of the law, there are degrees of realness and vivacity, they say of one another, “Fred’s a real policeman,” or announce a finding contrary to this finding, I don’t know this of my own knowledge but am extrapolating from my knowledge (very slight) of the cant of other professions. But if I asked him this question, as a dodge or subterfuge to cover up the fact of the missing “part” of the original, extremely uninteresting, anecdote, there would be an excellent chance that he would take umbrage, and that his colleagues (did I neglect to say that there are two of his colleagues, in uniform, holding on to the handles of their bicycles, standing behind him, stalwartly, in the other room, and that he himself, the sergeant, is holding on to the handle of his bicycle, stalwartly, with the hand that is not resting on the butt of his .38, teak-handled I believe, from the brief glance that I snuck at it, when I was in the other room?) would take umbrage also. Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that—one need merely look out of the window, for example. But what we are trying to do is to get away from despair and over to ease and bliss, and that can never be attained with three policemen, with bicycles, standing alertly in your other room. They can, as we know, make our lives more miserable than they are already if we arouse their ire, which must be kept slumbering, by telling them stories, for example, such as the story of the four bears, known to us all from childhood (although not everyone knows about the fourth bear) and it is clear that they can’t lay their bicycles down and sit, which would be the normal thing, no, they must stand there at more-or-less parade rest, some departmental ruling that I don’t know about, but of course it irritates them, it even irritates me, and I am not standing there holding up a bicycle, I am in the other room having a glass of beef broth with a twist of lemon, perhaps you don’t believe me about the policemen but there they are, pictures lie but words don’t, unless one is lying on purpose, with an end in view, such as to get three policemen with bicycles out of your other room while retaining your harpsichord (probably the departmental regulations state that the bicycles must never be laid down in a civilian space, such as my other room, probably the sergeant brought his colleagues to help him haul away the harpsichord, which has three legs, and although the sight of three policemen on bicycles, each holding aloft one leg of a harpsichord, rolling smoothly through the garment district, might seem ludicrous to you, who knows how it seems to them? entirely right and proper, no doubt) which he, the sergeant, considers I promised to his wife as a wedding present, and it is true that I was at the wedding, but only to raise my voice and object when the minister came to that part of the ceremony where he routinely asks for objections, “Yes!” I shouted, “she’s my mother! And although she is a widow, and legally free, she belongs to me in dreams!” but I was quickly hushed up by a quartet of plainclothesmen, and the ceremony proceeded. But what is the good of a mother if she is another man’s wife, as they mostly are, and not around in the morning to fix your buckwheat cakes or Rice Krispies, as the case may be, and in the evening to argue with you about your vegetables, and in the middle of the day to iron your shirts and clean up your rooms, and at all times to provide intimations of ease and bliss (however misleading and ill-founded), but instead insists on hauling your harpsichord away (did I note that Mother, too, is in the other room, with the three policemen, she is standing with the top half of her bent over the instrument, her arms around it, at its widest point—the keyboard end)? So, standing with the glass in my hand, the glass of herb tea with sour cream in it, I wondered what kind of useful prosthesis I could attach to the original anecdote I was telling all these people in my other room—those who seem so satisfied with their tableau, the three peelers posing with their bicycles, my mother hugging the harpsichord with a mother’s strangle—what kind of “and then” I could contrive which might satisfy all the particulars of the case, which might redeliver to me my mother, retain to me my harpsichord, and rid me of these others, in their uniforms.

  I could tell them the story of the (indeterminate number of) bears, twisting it a bit to fit my deeper designs, so that the fourth bear enters (from left) and says, “I don’t care who’s been sleeping in my bed just so long as it is not a sergeant of police,” and the fifth bear comes in (from right) and says, “Harpsichords wither and warp when their soundboards are exposed to the stress of bicycle transport,” and the sixth bear strides right down to the footlights, center stage (from a hole in the back of the theater, or a hole in the back of the anecdote), and says, “Dearly beloved upholders, enforcers, rush, rush away and enter the six-year bicycle race that is even now awaiting the starter’s gun at the corner of Elsewhere and Not-Here,” and th
e seventh bear descends from the flies on a nylon rope and cries, “Mother! Come home!” and the eighth bear—

  But bears are not the answer. Bears are for children. Why am I thinking about bears when I should be thinking about some horribly beautiful “way out” of this tense scene, which has reduced me to a rag, just contemplating it here in the other room with this glass of chicken livers flambé in my hand—

  Wait.

  I will reenter the first room, cheerfully, confidently, even gaily, and throw chicken livers flambé all over the predicament, the flaming chicken livers clinging like incindergel to Mother, policemen, bicycles, harpsichord, and my file of the National Review from its founding to the present time. That will “open up” the situation successfully. I will resolve these terrible contradictions with flaming chicken parts and then sing the song of how I contrived the ruin of my anaconda.

  Porcupines at the University

  “AND NOW the purple dust of twilight time/ steals across the meadows of my heart,” the Dean said.

  His pretty wife, Paula, extended her long graceful hands full of Negronis.

  A scout burst into the room, through the door. “Porcupines!” he shouted.

  “Porcupines what?” the Dean asked.

  “Thousands and thousands of them. Three miles down the road and comin’ fast!”

  “Maybe they won’t enroll,” the Dean said. “Maybe they’re just passing through.”

  “You can’t be sure,” his wife said.

  “How do they look?” he asked the scout, who was pulling porcupine quills out of his ankles.

  “Well, you know. Like porcupines.”

  “Are you going to bust them?” Paula asked.

  “I’m tired of busting people,” the Dean said.

  “They’re not people,” Paula pointed out.

  “De bustibus non est disputandum,” the scout said.

  “I suppose I’ll have to do something,” the Dean said.

  •

  Meanwhile the porcupine wrangler was wrangling the porcupines across the dusty and overbuilt West.

  Dust clouds. Yips. The lowing of porcupines.

  “Git along theah li’l porcupines.”

  And when I reach the great porcupine canneries of the East, I will be rich, the wrangler reflected. I will sit on the front porch of the Muehlebach Hotel in New York City and smoke me a big seegar. Then, the fancy women.

  “All right you porcupines step up to that yellow line.”

  There was no yellow line. This was just an expression the wrangler used to keep the porcupines moving. He had heard it in the army. The damn-fool porcupines didn’t know the difference.

  The wrangler ambled along reading the ads in a copy of Song Hits magazine. PLAY HARMONICA IN 5 MINS. and so forth.

  The porcupines scuffled along making their little hops. There were four-five thousand in the herd. Nobody had counted exactly.

  An assistant wrangler rode in from the outskirts of the herd. He too had a copy of Song Hits magazine, in his hip pocket. He looked at the head wrangler’s arm, which had a lot of little holes in it.

  “Hey Griswold.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you get all them little holes in your arm?”

  “You ever try to slap a brand on a porky-pine?”

  Probably the fancy women will be covered with low-cut dresses and cheap perfume, the wrangler thought. Probably there will be hundreds of them, hundreds and hundreds. All after my medicine bundle containing my gold and my lucky drill bit. But if they try to rush me I will pull out my guitar. And sing them a song of prairie virility.

  •

  “Porcupines at the university,” the Dean’s wife said. “Well, why not?”

  “We don’t have facilities for four or five thousand porcupines,” the Dean said. “I can’t get a dial tone.”

  “They could take Alternate Life Styles,” Paula said.

  “We’ve already got too many people in Alternate Life Styles,” the Dean said, putting down the telephone. “The hell with it. I’ll bust them myself. Single-handed. Ly.”

  “You’ll get hurt.”

  “Nonsense, they’re only porcupines. I’d better wear my old clothes.”

  “Bag of dirty shirts in the closet,” Paula said.

  The Dean went into the closet.

  Bags and bags of dirty shirts.

  “Why doesn’t she ever take these shirts to the laundry?”

  •

  Griswold, the wrangler, wrote a new song in the saddle.

  Fancy woman fancy woman

  How come you don’t do right

  I oughta rap you in the mouth for the way you acted

  In the porte cochère of the Trinity River Consolidated General High last Friday

  Nite.

  I will sit back and watch it climbing the charts, he said to himself. As recorded by Merle Travis. First, it will be a Bell Ringer. Then, the Top Forty. Finally a Golden Oldie.

  “All right you porcupines. Git along.”

  The herd was moving down a twelve-lane trail of silky­smooth concrete. Signs along the trail said things like NEXT EXIT 5 MI. and RADAR IN USE.

  “Griswold, some of them motorists behind us is gettin’ awful pissed.”

  “I’m runnin’ this-here porky-pine drive,” Griswold said, “and I say we better gettum off the road.”

  The herd was turned onto a broad field of green grass. Green grass with white lime lines on it at ten-yard intervals.

  The Sonny and Cher show, the wrangler thought. Well, Sonny, how I come to write this song, I was on a porky-pine drive. The last of the great porky-pine drives you might say. We had four-five thousand head we’d fatted up along the Tuscalora and we was headin’ for New York City.

  •

  The Dean loaded a gleaming Gatling gun capable of delivering 360 rounds a minute. The Gatling gun sat in a mule-drawn wagon and was covered with an old piece of canvas. Formerly it had sat on a concrete slab in front of the ROTC Building.

  First, the Dean said to himself, all they see is this funky old wagon pulled by this busted-up old mule. Then, I whip off the canvas. There stands the gleaming Gatling gun capable of delivering 360 rounds a minute. My hand resting lightly, confidently on the crank. They shall not pass, I say. Ils ne passeront pas. Then, the porcupine hide begins to fly.

  I wonder if these rounds are still good?

  •

  The gigantic Gatling gun loomed over the herd like an immense piece of bad news.

  “Hey Griswold.”

  “What?”

  “He’s got a gun.”

  “I see it,” Griswold said. “You think I’m blind?”

  “What we gonna do?”

  “How about vamoose-ing?”

  “But the herd . . .”

  “Them li’l porcupines can take care of their own selves,” Griswold said. “Goddamn it, I guess we better parley.” He got up off the grass, where he had been stretched full-length, and walked toward the wagon.

  “What say potner?”

  “Look,” the Dean said. “You can’t enroll those porcupines. It’s out of the question.”

  “That so?”

  “It’s out of the question,” the Dean repeated. “We’ve had a lot of trouble around here. The cops won’t even speak to me. We can’t take any more trouble.” The Dean glanced at the herd. “That’s a mighty handsome herd you have there.”

  “Kind of you,” Griswold said. “That’s a mighty handsome mule you got.”

  They both gazed at the Dean’s terrible-looking mule.

  Griswold wiped his neck with a red bandanna. “You don’t want no porky-pines over to your place, is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, we don’t go where we ain’t wanted,” the wrangler said
. “No call to throw down on us with that . . . machine there.”