Well, yes.
But we couldn’t stop the bleeding, in the cab to the American Hospital the driver kept looking over his shoulder to make sure that we weren’t bleeding on his seat covers, handfuls of bloody paper towels in my right and left hands . . .
On another evening, as we were on our way to dinner, I kicked the kid with carefully calibrated force as we were crossing the Pont Mirabeau, she had been pissy all day, driving us crazy, her character improved instantly, wonderfully, this is a tactic that can be used exactly once.
In Mexico City we lay with the gorgeous daughter of the American ambassador by a clear, cold mountain stream. Well, that was the plan, it didn’t work out that way. We were around sixteen and had run away from home, in the great tradition, hitched various long rides with various sinister folk, and there we were in the great city with about two t-shirts to our names. My friend Herman found us jobs in a jukebox factory. Our assignment was to file the slots in American jukeboxes so that they would accept the big, thick Mexican coins. All day long. No gloves.
After about a week of this we were walking one day on the street on which the Hotel Reforma is to be found and there were my father and grandfather, smiling. “The boys have run away,” my father had told my grandfather, and my grandfather had said, “Hot damn, let’s go get ’em.” I have rarely seen two grown men enjoying themselves so much.
Ninety-two this afternoon, the stock market up in heavy trading.
In Berlin everyone stared, and I could not blame them. You were spectacular, your long skirts, your long dark hair. I was upset by the staring, people gazing at happiness and wondering whether to credit it or not, wondering whether it was to be trusted and for how long, and what it meant to them, whether they were in some way hurt by it, in some way diminished by it, in some way criticized by it, good God get it out of my sight—
I correctly identified a Matisse as a Matisse even though it was an uncharacteristic Matisse, you thought I was knowledgeable whereas I was only lucky, we stared at the Schwitters show for one hour and twenty minutes, and then lunched. Vitello tonnato, as I recall.
When Herman was divorced in Boston . . . Carol got the good barbeque pit. I put it in the Blazer for her. In the back of the Blazer were cartons of books, tableware, sheets and towels, plants, and oddly, two dozen white carnations fresh in their box. I pointed to the flowers. “Herman,” she said, “he never gives up.”
In Barcelona the lights went out. At dinner. Candles were produced and the shiny langoustines placed before us. Why do I love Barcelona above most other cities? Because Barcelona and I share a passion for walking? I was happy there? You were with me? We were celebrating my hundredth marriage? I’ll stand on that. Show me a man who has not married a hundred times and I’ll show you a wretch who does not deserve the world.
Lunching with the Holy Ghost I praised the world, and the Holy Ghost was pleased. “We have that little problem in Barcelona,” He said, “the lights go out in the middle of dinner.” “I’ve noticed,” I said. “We’re working on it,” He said, “what a wonderful city, one of our best.” “A great town,” I agreed. In an ecstasy of admiration for what is we ate our simple soup.
Tomorrow, fair and warmer, warmer and fair, most fair. . . .
FROM
FORTY STORIES
Chablis
MY WIFE wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma momma momma.” I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.
The kind of dog the baby wants, my wife says, is a Cairn terrier. This kind of dog, my wife says, is a Presbyterian like herself and the baby. Last year the baby was a Baptist—that is, she went to the Mother’s Day Out program at the First Baptist twice a week. This year she is a Presbyterian because the Presbyterians have more swings and slides and things. I think that’s pretty shameless and I have said so. My wife is a legitimate lifelong Presbyterian and says that makes it O.K.; way back when she was a child she used to go to the First Presbyterian in Evansville, Illinois. I didn’t go to church because I was a black sheep. There were five children in my family and the males rotated the position of black sheep among us, the oldest one being the black sheep for a while while he was in his DWI period or whatever and then getting grayer as he maybe got a job or was in the service and then finally becoming a white sheep when he got married and had a grandchild. My sister was never a black sheep because she was a girl.
Our baby is a pretty fine baby. I told my wife for many years that she couldn’t have a baby because it was too expensive. But they wear you down. They are just wonderful at wearing you down, even if it takes years, as it did in this case. Now I hang around the baby and hug her every chance I get. Her name is Joanna. She wears Oshkosh overalls and says “no,” “bottle,” “out,” and “Momma.” She looks most lovable when she’s wet, when she’s just had a bath and her blond hair is all wet and she’s wrapped in a beige towel. Sometimes when she’s watching television she forgets that you’re there. You can just look at her. When she’s watching television, she looks dumb. I like her better when she’s wet.
This dog thing is getting to be a big issue. I said to my wife, “Well you’ve got the baby, do we have to have the damned dog too?” The dog will probably bite somebody, or get lost. I can see myself walking all over our subdivision asking people, “Have you seen this brown dog?” “What’s its name?” they’ll say to me, and I’ll stare at them coldly and say, “Michael.” That’s what she wants to call it, Michael. That’s a silly name for a dog and I’ll have to go looking for this possibly rabid animal and say to people, “Have you seen this brown dog? Michael?” It’s enough to make you think about divorce.
What’s that baby going to do with that dog that it can’t do with me? Romp? I can romp. I took her to the playground at the school. It was Sunday and there was nobody there, and we romped. I ran, and she tottered after me at a good pace. I held her as she slid down the slide. She groped her way through a length of big pipe they have there set in concrete. She picked up a feather and looked at it for a long time. I was worried that it might be a diseased feather but she didn’t put it in her mouth. Then we ran some more over the parched bare softball field and through the arcade that connects the temporary wooden classrooms, which are losing their yellow paint, to the main building. Joanna will go to this school some day, if I stay in the same job.
I looked at some dogs at Pets-A-Plenty, which has birds, rodents, reptiles, and dogs, all in top condition. They showed me the Cairn terriers. “Do they have their prayer books?” I asked. This woman clerk didn’t know what I was talking about. The Cairn terriers ran about two ninety-five per, with their papers. I started to ask if they had any illegitimate children at lower prices but I could see that it would be useless and the woman already didn’t like me, I could tell.
What is wrong with me? Why am I not a more natural person, like my wife wants me to be? I sit up, in the early morning, at my desk on the second floor of our house. The desk faces the street. At five-thirty in the morning, the runners are already out, individually or in pairs, running toward rude red health. I’m sipping a glass of Gallo Chablis with an ice cube in it, smoking, worrying. I worry that the baby may jam a kitchen knife into an electrical outlet while she’s wet. I’ve put those little plastic plugs into all the electrical outlets but she’s learned how to pop them out. I’ve checked the Crayolas. They’ve made the Crayolas safe to eat—I called the head office in Pennsylvania. She can eat a whole box of Cra
yolas and nothing will happen to her. If I don’t get the new tires for the car I can buy the dog.
I remember the time, thirty years ago, when I put Herman’s mother’s Buick into a cornfield, on the Beaumont highway. There was another car in my lane, and I didn’t hit it, and it didn’t hit me. I remember veering to the right and down into the ditch and up through the fence and coming to rest in the cornfield and then getting out to wake Herman and the two of us going to see what the happy drunks in the other car had come to, in the ditch on the other side of the road. That was when I was a black sheep, years and years ago. That was skillfully done, I think. I get up, congratulate myself in memory, and go in to look at the baby.
On the Deck
THERE IS a lion on the deck of the boat. The lion looks tired, fatigued. Waves the color of graphite. A grid placed before the lion, quartering him, each quarter subdivided into sixteen squares, total of sixty-four squares through which lion parts may be seen. The lion a dirty yellow-brown against the gray waves.
Next to but not touching the lion, members of a Christian motorcycle gang (the gang is called Banditos for Jesus and has nineteen members but only three are on the deck of the boat) wearing their colors which differ from the colors of other gangs in that the badges, insignia, and so on have Christian messages, “Jesus is LORD” and the like. The bikers are thick-shouldered, gold earrings, chains, beards, red bandannas, a sweetness expressed in the tilt of their bodies toward the little girl wearing shiny steel leg braces who stands among them and smiles—they have chosen her as their “old lady” and are collecting money for her education.
To the right of the Christian bikers and a bit closer to the coils of razor wire forward of the lion is a parked Camry (in profile) covered with a tarp and tied down with bright new rope, blocks under the wheels, the lower half of its price sticker visible on the window not completely covered by canvas. The motor is running, exhaust from the twin tailpipes touching the thirty-five burlap-wrapped bales stacked at the back of the car. There is someone inside the car, behind the wheel. This person is named Mitch. The exhaust from the car irritates the lion, whose head rolls from side to side, yellow teeth bared.
In front of the tied-down red Camry, a man with a nosebleed holding a steel basin under his chin. The basin is full of brown blood, brown-stained blooms of gauze. He holds the basin with one hand and clutches his nose with the other. His blue-and-red-striped shirt is bloody. “Hello,” he says, “hello, hello!” Gray institutional pants and brown shoes. There’s a tree, an eight-foot western fir, in a heavy terra-cotta pot between his legs. He appears to be trying to avoid bleeding on the tree. “They don’t have anything I want,” he says. A basketball wedged between the upper branches on the left side. Immediately to the left and forward of the fir tree, a yellow fifty-five-gallon drum labeled in black letters PRISMATEX, a hose coiled on top of it; bending over the PRISMATEX, her back turned, a young woman with black hair in a thin thin yellow dress. Concentrate on the hams.
The tilting of the deck increases; spray. The captain, a red-faced man in a blue blazer, sits in an armchair before the young woman, a can of beer in his right hand. He says: “I would have done better work if I’d had some kind of encouragement. I’ve met a lot of people in my life. I let my feelings carry me along.” At the captain’s knee is the captain’s dog, a black-and-white Scottie. The dog is afraid of the lion, keeps looking back over his shoulder at the lion. The captain kisses the hem of the young woman’s yellow dress. There’s a rolled Oriental rug bound with twine in front of the Scottie, and in front of that a child’s high chair with a peacock sitting in it, next to that a Harley leaning on its kickstand (HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS in script on the gas tank). The owner of the boat, sister of the woman in the yellow dress, is squatting by the Harley cooking hot dogs on a hibachi, a plastic bag of buns by her right foot. A boyfriend lies next to her, playing with the bottom edge of her yellow shorts. “Sometimes she’s prim,” he says. “Don’t know when you wake up in the morning what you’re going to get. I’m really not interested just now. At some point you get into it pretty far, then it becomes frightening.”
“A smooth flight isn’t totally dependent on the pilot,” says the next man. There’s a bucket of raw liver between his knees, liver for the lion, he’s up to his elbows in liver. Next, a shuffleboard court and two men shoving the brightly colored disks this way and that with old battered M-1 rifles. “I put two forty-pound sacks of cat food in the bed and covered them neatly with a blanket but she still didn’t get the message.” Further along, a marble bust of Hadrian on a bamboo plant stand, Hadrian’s marble curls curling to meet Hadrian’s marble beard, next to that someone delivering the mail, a little canvas pushcart containing mail pushed in front of her, blue uniform, two shades of blue, red hair. “Everyone likes mail, except those who are afraid of it.” Everyone gets mail. The captain gets mail, the Christian bikers get mail, Liverman gets mail, the woman in the scandal-dress gets mail. Many copies of Smithsonian. A man sitting in a red wicker chair.
Winter on deck. All of the above covered with snow. Christmas music.
Then, spring. A weak sun, then a stronger sun.
You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were light, I thought, and I thought how good it was of you to do this. We’d never touched before.
Opening
THE ACTORS feel that the music played before the curtain rises will put the audience in the wrong mood. The playwright suggests that the (purposefully lugubrious) music be played at twice-speed. This peps it up somewhat while retaining its essentially dark and gloomy character. The actors listen carefully, and are pleased.
The director, in white overalls and a blue work shirt, whispers to the actors. The director is tender with the actors, like a good father, calms them, solicits their opinions, gives them aspirin. The playwright regards the actors with the greatest respect. How sweetly they speak! They have discovered meanings in his lines far beyond anything he had imagined possible.
ARDIS: But it’s always that way, always.
PAUL: Not necessarily, dear friend. Not necessarily.
The rug on the set was done by a famous weaver, indeed is a modern classic, and costs four thousand dollars. It has been lent to the production (for program credit) as has the chrome-and-leather sofa. No one steps on the rug (or sits on the sofa) oftener than necessary.
The playwright studies the empty set for many hours. Should the (huge, magnificent) plant be moved a few inches to the left? The actors are already joking about being upstaged by the plant. The actors are gentle, amusing people, but also very tough, and physically strong. Many of their jokes involve scraps of dialogue from the script, which become catchphrases of general utility: “Not necessarily, dear friend. Not necessarily.”
In the rehearsal room the costume designer spreads out his sketches over a long table. The actors crowd around to see how they will look in the first act, in the second act. The designs sparkle, there is no other word for it. Also, the costume designer is within the budget, whereas the set designer was eighteen thousand over and the set had to be redesigned, painfully.
An actor whispers to the playwright. “A playwright,” he says, “is a man who has decided that the purpose of human life is to describe human life. Don’t you find that odd?” The playwright, who has never thought about his vocation in quite this way, does find it odd. He worries about it all day.
The playwright loves the theatre when it is empty. When it has people in it he does not love it so much; the audience is a danger to his play (although it’s only sometimes he feels this). In the empty theatre, as in a greenhouse, his play grows, thrives. Rehearsals, although tedious in the extreme and often disheartening—an actor can lose today something he had yesterday—are an intelligent process charged with hope.
The actors tell stories about other shows they’
ve been in, mostly concerning moments of disaster onstage. “When I did Charity in London—” In the men’s dressing room, one of the actors tells a long story about a female colleague whose hair caught fire during a production of Saint Joan. “I poured Tab on it,” he says. Photographs are taken for the newspapers. The playwright goes alone for lunch to a Chinese restaurant which has a bar. He is the only one in the group who drinks at lunchtime. The temperate, good-natured actors vote in all elections and vehemently support a nuclear freeze.
PAUL: You’ve got to . . . transcend . . . the circumstances. Know what I mean?
REGINA: Easier said than done, boyo.
The playwright makes a shocking discovery. One of his best exchanges—
ARDIS: The moon is beautiful now.
PAUL: You should have seen it before the war.
—freighted with the sadness of unrecapturable time, is also to be found, almost word for word, in Oscar Wilde’s Impressions of America. How did this happen? Has he written these lines, or has he remembered them? He honestly cannot say. In a fit of rectitude, he cuts the lines.
The producer slips into a seat in the back of the house and watches a scene. Then he says, “I love this material. I love it.” The playwright asks that the costume worn by one of the actresses in the second act be changed. It makes her look too little-girlish, he feels. The costume designer disagrees but does not press the point. Now my actress looks more beautiful, the playwright thinks.
The opening is at hand. The actors bring the playwright small, thoughtful gifts: a crock of imported mustard, a finely printed edition of Ovid’s Art of Love. The playwright gives the actors, men and women, little cloth sacks containing gold-wrapped chocolates.
Donald Barthelme Page 86