The Teachings of Don B.

by Donald Barthelme

  (HOGO winds down.)

  JANE (to audience): He knows when I tremble. That is what he likes best. (To HOGO) What is to become of us, Hogo? Of you and me?

  HOGO: Nothing is to become of us, Jane. Our becoming is done. We are what we are. Now it is just a question of rocking along with things as they are until we are dead.

  JANE: You don’t paint a very bright picture, Hogo.

  HOGO: It’s not my picture, Jane. I didn’t think up this picture that we are confronted with. The original brushwork was not mine. I absolutely separate myself from this picture. I operate within the frame, it is true, but the picture—

  JANE: You are forty, Hogo.

  HOGO: A not unpleasant age to be.

  JANE: You don’t mind, then. That you are not young.

  HOGO: It has its buggy aspects, as what does not?

  JANE: You don’t mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death?

  HOGO: No, Jane.

  (JANE exits, crossing BILL, who is limping, KEVIN speaks from the platform.)

  KEVIN: Bill, our leader, has developed a shamble. The consequence, some say, of a lost mind. But this is not true. In the midst of so much that is true, it is refreshing to shamble across something that is not true. He does not want to be touched. But he is entitled to a quirk. He has earned it by his vigorous leadership in that great enterprise, his life. And in that other great enterprise, our love for Snow White.

  BILL: This thing is damaging to all of us. We were all bom in national parks. Clem has his memories of Yosemite, inspiring gorges. Kevin remembers the Great Smokies. Henry has his Acadian songs and dances, Dan his bums from Hot Springs. Hubert has climbed the giant Sequoias, and Edward has climbed stately Rainier. And I, I know the Everglades, which everybody knows. These common experiences have yoked us together forever under the red, white, and blue. (Pause) Love has died here, apparently. And it is our task to infuse it once more with the hot orange breath of life. With that in mind I have asked Hogo de Bergerac to come over and advise us on what should be done. He knows the deaths of the heart, Hogo does. And he knows the terror of aloneness, and the rot of propinquity, and the absence of grace. That equips him to talk to us about this problem. That and his vileness.

  HOGO: Well, chaps, first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here, although I’ve seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about. Now excuse me if I’m treading on your toes in this matter. God knows I love a female gesture as much as any man. The only thing worth a rap in the whole world, in my opinion, is the beauty of women, and maybe certain foods, and possibly music of all kinds, especially parade music, which can reduce you to tears, in the right light, by speaking to you from the heart about your land, and what a fine land it is, and that it is your land really, and my land, this land of ours—that particular insight can chill you, rendered by a marching unit. But I wander. The main thing I want to say is that the world is full of cunts, that they grow like clams in all quarters of the earth, cunts as multitudinous as cherrystones and littlenecks burrowing into the mud in all the bays of the world. The point is that the loss of any particular one is not to be taken seriously. She stays with you as long as she can put up with your shit and you stay with her as long as you can put up with her shit. That’s the way it is. (Pause) Of course they change. They age. Ruin of the physical envelope is our great theme here, and if we keep changing girls every four or five years, it is because of this ruin, which I will never agree to, to my dying day. And that is why I keep looking out of the window, and why we all keep looking out of the window, to see what is passing, what has been cast up on the beach of our existence. Because something is always being cast up on that beach, as new classes of girls mature. My main point is that you should bear in mind multiplicity, and forget about uniqueness. The earth is broad, and flat, and deep, and high. And remember what Freud said.

  EDWARD: The value the mind sets on erotic needs instantly sinks as soon as satisfaction becomes readily available.

  ALL (in chorus): THE VALUE THE MIND SETS ON EROTIC NEEDS INSTANTLY SINKS AS SOON AS SATISFACTION BECOMES READILY AVAILABLE.

  (HOGO exits.)

  (SNOW WHITE) appears on the platform. She appears to be looking out of second-story window.)

  SNOW WHITE: My suffering is authentic enough but it has a kind of low-grade concrete-block quality. The seven of them only add up to the equivalent of about two real men, as we know them from the films of our childhood, when there were giants on the earth. It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on this ball of half-truths, the earth. I am tired of being just a horsewife! Which prince? Which prince will come?

  (Light goes down on the platform)

  HENRY: I understand all this about Bill. Nevertheless, I think somebody ought to build a fire under him. He needs a good kick in the back according to my way of thinking.

  HUBERT: We are little children compared to him, in terms of possibility, yet all he seems to want to do is sit around the game room, and shuffle the bezique cards, and throw darts and that sort of thing, when he could be out realizing his potential.

  EDWARD: We are little balls of dust under his feet, potentially, and he merely sits there making ships inside bottles, and doing scrimshaw, and all that, when he could be out maximizing his possibilities.

  CLEM: Boy I would like to build a fire under that boy. I’ll be damned if I know what to do about this situation, which is vexing me in a hundred ways.

  DAN: It’s just such a damned shame and crime I can’t stand it, the more I think about it. I just want to go out and rage against fate, that one so obviously chosen to be the darling of the life principle should be so indolent, impious, and wrong. I am just about at the end of my tether, boys, and I’ll say that to his face, too!

  (Lights up on SNOW WHITE, on platform)

  SNOW WHITE: Paul? Is there a Paul, or have I only projected him in the shape of my longing, boredom, ennui, and pain? Have I been trained in the finest graces and arts all my life for nothing but this? Is my richly appointed body to go down the drain, at twenty-two, in this, in this . . . (Pause) Of course, there is a Paul! There is a Paul somewhere, but not here. Not under my window. Not yet. (To Bill) What is it?

  BILL: I wish I knew. It’s something.

  SNOW WHITE: I don’t doubt it. I mean, I think it’s real, whatever it is.

  BILL: It’s real but I can’t put my finger on it. (Pause) I think it’s fear.

  SNOW WHITE (taken aback): Oh! (Pause) What kind? (Pause) Specific or nonspecific?

  BILL: Early morning. And then again at four.

  SNOW WHITE: I’ve noticed that your coffee cup rattles a good bit, at breakfast.

  BILL: And my teacup, at teatime.

  SNOW WHITE: But what is it that is rattling you?

  BILL: Things.

  SNOW WHITE: It’s not. . . me?

  BILL: Not you.

  SNOW WHITE: You’re sure?

  BILL: I’m sure.

  SNOW WHITE: You’ve exhausted me . . . as a possibility?

  BILL: No, Snow White. You are still. . . You are the game and the object o£ the game and the prize for winning the game and the referee. (Pause) And the other team. (Pause) Busy, busy, dummy.

  SNOW WHITE: All I wanted was one immense hero with soft, flexible hands. . .

  BILL: Entirely reasonable.

  SNOW WHITE: All I wanted was to lose my head . . . (thinking) really, to be mad, to be driven mad. To have . . . me . . . unravel. To dissolve. Melt.

  BILL: Yes, I can see that.

  SNOW WHITE: And to be able to do that for you.

  BILL: Yes, yes, I see how it works. (Pause) Or did, once. (Pause) Or did it ever?

  SNOW WHITE (thinking): It sort of worked. It almost worked. It worked for a while. In a way.

  BILL: Dismal words.

  SNOW WHITE: Quite, quite dismal. I am tired of b
eing just a horse-wife!

  KEVIN: THE HORSEWIFE IN HISTORY!

  HENRY: FAMOUS HORSEWIVES!

  HUBERT: THE HORSEWIFE: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT!

  DAN: THE HORSEWIFE: A CRITICAL STUDY!

  EDWARD: THE FIRST MOP, 4000 B.C.!

  BILL: VIEW OF ST. AUGUSTINE!

  KEVIN: EMERSON ON THE AMERICAN HORSEWIFE!

  HENRY: OXFORD COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN HORSEWIFE.!

  HUBERT: INTRODUCTION OF BON AMI, 1892!

  DAN: HORSEWIVES GET THE VOTE!

  EDWARD: ACCEPT ROLE, PSYCHOLOGIST URGES!

  BILL: THE PLASTIC BAG!

  CLEM: THE GARLIC PRESS!

  BILL: Most life is unextraordinary.

  SNOW WHITE: Yes. Most life is unextraordinary looked at with a woman’s desperate eye, too, it might interest you to know.

  BILL: Snow White, why do you remain with us? Here? In this house?

  SNOW WHITE: It must be attributed, I suppose, to a failure of the imagination. I have not been able to imagine anything better. (Pause) But my imagination is stirring. Be warned. (Pause; SNOW WHITE fingers her long black hair, BILL exits.) I could fly a kite with this hair, it is so long. The wind would carry the kite up into the blue, and there would be the red of the kite against the blue of the blue, together with my hair black as ebony, floating there. That seems desirable. This motif—the long hair streaming from the high window—is a very ancient one, I believe, found in many cultures, in various forms. (Pause) Now I recapitulate it—for the astonishment of the vulgar and the refreshment of my venereal life!

  (SNOW WHITE begins to unwind her hair.)

  (Blackout)

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  (Seven brilliant red-and-yellow shower curtains spread across the stage.)

  HENRY (to the other MEN, who are standing in front of the shower curtains, inspecting them, feeling them, etc.): She still sits there in the window, dangling down her long black hair black as ebony. The crowds have thinned somewhat. The new shower curtain has not swayed her noticeably. We’ve asked an expert in to make sure it’s the right sort of shower curtain. We have returned the red towels to Bloomingdale’s. (All look at DAN, who vomits) The grade of pork ears we are using in the Baby Ding, Sam Dew cannot meet the U.S. government standards, or indeed, any standards. Our man in Hong Kong says that the next shipment will be superior. Sales nationwide are brisk, brisk, brisk. The weather tomorrow, fair and warmer.

  DAN (elegiac): Standing in the splendid bathroom, we regard the new shower curtain.

  KEVIN: It has two colors, a red and a yellow. The red the red of red cabbage, the yellow the yellow of yellow beans.

  HUBERT: It has two figures—a kind of schematic peahen, a kind of schematic vase.

  EDWARD: We know that it is adequate. We know that it is “nice.” We even know that it is “splendid,” more or less. That is the idea, that it be “splendid.”

  PAUL (entering): This is the best-looking shower curtain in town!

  HENRY: Paul says that it is the best-looking shower curtain in town. That is a chiller. That gives us a problem. How can we determine if it is true, what he says? That ours is the best-looking shower curtain in town?

  DAN: Our city, the arena of the proposition, is not large but on the other hand not small; in excess of a hundred thousand souls swelter here awaiting the Last Day and God’s mercy. A census of shower curtains is possible—

  CLEM (to audience): But to conduct it, we would have to neglect the vats, and that is something we have sworn never to do, neglect the vats. And to conduct it, we would be forced to leave the buildings unwashed, and that is something else we have sworn never to do, leave the buildings unwashed.

  DAN: And granting we manage to gain access to the rotten bathrooms of all hundred thousand souls who swelter here, by what standards are the hundred thousand shower curtains hanging there, on little silver rings, to be assessed?

  EDWARD: That’s not the point. The point is, does she like it?

  DAN: If it’s the best-looking shower curtain in town, she must.

  ALL (a babble): She must, she must.

  HUBERT: If it gets out—that we have the best-looking shower curtain in town—won’t other people come and take it away from us?

  DAN: Before it has had time to work its magic on Snow White?

  EDWARD: There is a solution: destruction of Paul, who made the original remark.

  (ALL gather menacingly around PAUL.)

  PAUL: I have decided to become a monk.

  (PAUL exits left)

  (Blackout)

  (Lights up on SNOW WHITE, who is sitting on a stepladder or whatever behind the shower curtains, with her hair falling in front of one of them.)

  SNOW WHITE (angry): Oh, if I could just get my hands on the man who dubbed those electrical connections male and female! He thought he was so worldly! And if I could just get my hands on the man who called that piece of pipe a nipple! He thought he was so urbane. (Pause) No one has come to climb up. That says it all. This time is the wrong time for me. There is something wrong with all those people standing there, gaping and gawking. And with all those who did not come and at least try to climb up. To fill the role. And with the very world itself, for not being able to supply a prince. For not being civilized enough to supply the correct ending to the story.

  (Blackout)

  (When the lights come up, the shower curtains are gone, and DAN stands in front of SNOW WHITE’S stepladder, ignoring her.)

  DAN: Bill has dropped the money. A bundle totaling a great deal of money. I can tell you that. He was on his way to the vault with the money bundled into his armpit, wrapped in a red towel. Henry had wrapped it in a red towel. Hubert had bundled it into Bill’s armpit. I had opened the door. Kevin had pointed Bill toward the vault. Clem had given Bill a kick in the back, to get him started.

  HUBERT: But somewhere between the house and the vault the money rushed out of Bill’s armpit in a direction known only to it. We all rushed out into the air, to recover the money. But it was nowhere. The loss of money is not serious. We have more money. But the loss of equanimity is serious. We prize equanimity, and a good deal of equanimity leaked away, today.

  SNOW WHITE drinking a glass of orange juice): From now on I deny myself to them. These delights. No more do I trip girlishly to their beds in the night, or after lunch, or in the misty mid-morning. And no more will I chop their onions, boil their fet-tucini, or marinate their flank steak. No more will I trudge about the house pursuing stain. No more will I fold their lingerie in neat bundles and stuff it away in the highboy. I don’t know what such a policy will win me. I am not even sure I wish to implement it. It seems small and meanspirited. I have conflicting ideas. But the main theme that runs through my brain is that what is, is insufficient.

  DAN (holding a bottle of wine): I have killed this whole bottle of Chablis by myself. And that other bottle of Chablis too—that one under the bed. And that other bottle of Chablis too—the one with the brown candle stuck in the mouth of it. I feel abandoned. After a hard day tending the vats, one wants to come home and find a leg of mutton on the table, in a rich gravy, with little pearly onions studded in it, and perhaps a small pot of Irish potatoes somewhere about. Instead I come home to all this nothingness.

  HENRY (holding a glass of whiskey): Now she sits in her room reading Liberation and admiring her figure in the mirror. She still loves us, in a way, but it isn’t enough. It is a failure of leadership, I feel. We have been left sucking the mop again. True leadership would make her love us fiercely, excitingly. As in the old days. True leadership would find a way out of this hairy imbroglio. I am tired of Bill’s halting explanations, promises. If he doesn’t want to lead, then let us vote.

  CLEM (holding four bottles of beer, two in each hand): They can treat me like a rube if they wish. I suppose I am a rubish hayseed in some sense, full of down-home notions that contradict the more sophisticated notions of my colleagues. But I notice that it is me they come to when it is a qu
estion of grits or chitlins or fried catfish. Of course these questions do not arise very often. I have not had a whiff of fried catfish these twelve years! How many nights have I trudged home with my face fixed for fried catfish, only to find that we were having fried calimaretti or some other Eastern dish. (Pause) But why am I talking about dishes? Dishes are not what is troubling me. I am worried by the fact that no one has responded to Snow White’s hair. Even though I am at the same time relieved. But it suggests that Americans cannot or will not see themselves as princely. Even Paul, that most princely of our contemporaries, did not respond appropriately. I hope he’s doing well in the monastery. Be-damned if I don’t feel like maybe goin’ and joinin’ him.

  KEVIN (semihysterical): THE VALUE THAT THE MIND SETS ON EROTIC NEEDS instantly sinks as soon as satisfaction is readily available! An obstacle is needed to swell the tide of the libido to its height! (KEVIN holds up a red towel, then begins waving it like a flag.) And at all periods of history, whenever natural barriers have not sufficed, men have erected conventional ones!

  (Blackout)

  (Lights up on the seven MEN and SNOW WHITE, all wearing pajamas)

  SNOW WHITE: If Bill takes off his pajamas; I will remove my own pajamas, and allow you to remove all of your pajamas, and who knows what will happen then? (She flirts with her pajama top, buttoning and unbuttoning.) Take off your pajamas, Bill.

  BILL (austere): I will not. I will not take off my pajamas. (The others crowd around him, angry, urging him to take off his pajamas.) I won’t. I will not.

  SNOW WHITE: Take off your pajamas, Bill. (More pajama business by SNOW WHITE)

  BILL (to audience): I must hold the whole thing together. Everything depends on me. I cannot fall apart, yet. I must conceal my wounds, contrive to appear unwounded. The bloody handkerchief stuffed under the shirt. Under the pajamas. They must not know. (Music, the opening bars of “The Ride of the Valkyries is heard for a moment, then fades) The great black horse! For which I have waited all my days, since I was twelve years old! I know that the great black horse may appear at any moment. They don’t know that. That is the difference between me and them—I know that and they don’t know that.