Can't and Won't

by Lydia Davis

  Humanity is turning into an animal!

  To make a single pin requires five or six different specialists.

  What can you expect from the people of Manchester—

  who spend their lives making pins?!!

  The Sky Above Los Angeles

  The sky is always above a tract house in Los Angeles. As the day passes, the sun comes in the large window from the east, then the south, then the west. As I look out the window at the sky, I see cumulus clouds pile up suddenly in complex, pastel-colored geometrical shapes and then immediately collapse and dissolve. After this has happened a number of times in succession, at last it seems possible for me to begin painting again.

  dream

  Two Characters in a Paragraph

  The story is only two paragraphs long. I’m working on the end of the second paragraph, which is the end of the story. I’m intent on this work, and my back is turned. And while I’m working on the end, look what they’re up to in the beginning! And they’re not very far away! He seems to have drifted from where I put him and is hovering over her, only one paragraph away (in the first paragraph). True, it is a dense paragraph, and they’re in the very middle of it, and it’s dark in there. I knew they were both in there, but when I left it and turned to the second paragraph, there wasn’t anything going on between them. Now look …

  dream

  Swimming in Egypt

  We are in Egypt. We are about to go deep-sea diving. They have erected a vast tank of water on land next to the Mediterranean Sea. We strap oxygen to our backs and descend into this tank. We go all the way to the bottom. Here, there is a cluster of blue lights shining on the entrance to a tunnel. We enter the tunnel. The tunnel will lead into the Mediterranean. We swim and swim. At the far end of the tunnel, we see more lights, white ones. When we have passed through the lights, we come out of the tunnel, suddenly, into the open sea, which drops away beneath us a full kilometer or more. There are fish all around and above us, and reefs on all sides. We think we are flying, over the deep. We forget, for now, that we must be careful not to get lost, but must find our way back to the mouth of the tunnel.

  dream

  The Language of Things in the House

  The washing machine in spin cycle: “Pakistani, Pakistani.”

  The washing machine agitating (slow): “Firefighter, firefighter, firefighter, firefighter.”

  Plates rattling in the rack of the dishwasher: “Neglected.”

  The glass blender knocking on the bottom of the metal sink: “Cumberland.”

  Pots and dishes rattling in the sink: “Tobacco, tobacco.”

  The wooden spoon in the plastic bowl stirring the pancake mix: “What the hell, what the hell.”

  An iron burner rattling on its metal tray: “Bonanza.”

  The suction-cup pencil sharpener being peeled up from the top of the bookcase: “Rip van Winkle.”

  Markers rolling and bumping in a drawer that is opened and then shut: “Purple fruit.”

  The lid of a whipped butter tub being prised off and then put down on the counter: “Horóscopy.”

  A spoon stirring yeast in a bowl: “Unilateral, unilateral.”

  Could it be that subliminally we are hearing words and phrases all the time?

  These words and phrases must be lingering in the upper part of our subconscious, readily available.

  Almost always, there has to be something hollow involved: a resonating chamber.

  Water going down the drain of the kitchen sink: “Late ball game.”

  Water running into a glass jar: “Mohammed.”

  The empty Parmesan cheese jar when set down on counter: “Believe me.”

  A fork clattering on the countertop: “I’ll be right back.”

  The metal slotted spoon rattling as it is put down on the stove: “Pakistani.”

  A pot in the sink with water running in: “A profound respect.”

  A spoon stirring a mug of tea: “Iraqi, -raqi, -raqi, -raqi.”

  The washing machine in agitation cycle: “Pocketbook, pocketbook.”

  The washing machine in agitation cycle: “Corporate re-, corporate re-.”

  Maybe the words we hear spoken by the things in our house are words already in our brain from our reading; or from what we have been hearing on the radio or talking about to each other; or from what we often read out the car window, as for instance the sign of Cumberland Farms; or they are simply words we have always liked, such as Roanoke (as in Virginia). If these words (“Iraqi, -raqi”) are in the tissue of our brain all the time, we then hear them because we hear exactly the right rhythm for the word along with more or less the right consonants and, often, something close to the right vowels. Once the rhythm and the consonants are there, our brain, having this word somewhere in it already, may be supplying the appropriate vowels.

  Two hands washing in the basin: “Quote unquote.”

  Stove dial clicking on: “Rick.”

  Metal rug beater being hung up on a hook against the wooden wall of the basement stairs: “Carbohydrate.”

  Man’s wet foot squeaking on the gas pedal: “Lisa!”

  The different language sounds are created by these objects in the following way: hard consonants are created by hard objects striking hard surfaces. Vowels are created with hollow spaces, such as the inside of the butter tub whose lid and inner volume created the sounds of the word “horóscopy”—“horó” when the lid was coming off and “scopy” when the lid was put down on the counter. Some vowels, such as the e’s in “neglected,” spoken by the plates in the dishwater, are supplied by our brain to fill out what we hear as merely consonants: “nglctd.”

  Either consonants function to punctuate or to stop vowel sounds; or vowels function to fill out or to color consonants.

  Wooden-handled knife hitting counter: “Background.”

  Plastic salad spinner being set down on counter: “Julie! Check it out!”

  Drain gurgling: “Hórticult.”

  Orange juice container shaken once: “Genoa.”

  Cat jumping down onto bathroom tiles: “Va bene.”

  Kettle being set on clay tile: “Palermo.”

  Wicker laundry basket as its lid is being opened: “Vobiscum” or “Wo bist du?”

  Sneeze: “At issue.”

  Winter jacket as it is being unzipped: “Allumettes.”

  Grating of wire mesh dryer filter being cleaned with fingers: “Philadelphia.”

  Water being sucked down drain of kitchen sink: “Dvořák.”

  First release of water from toilet tank as handle is depressed: “Rudolph.”

  I don’t think I’ve heard or read these words recently—does this mean I always have the word “Rudolph,” for instance, in my head, maybe from Rudolph Giuliani, but more probably from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”?

  Zipper: “Rip.”

  Rattling of dishwashing utensils: “Collaboration.”

  Rubber flip-flop squeaking on wooden floor: “Echt.”

  If you hear one of these words, and pay attention, you are more likely to hear another. If you stop paying attention, you will stop hearing them.

  You can hear the squawking of ducks in the scrape of a knife on a plastic cutting board. You can hear ducks, also, in the squeaking of a wet sponge rubbing a refrigerator shelf. More friction (wet sponge) will produce a squeak, whereas less friction (dry sponge) will produce a soft brushing sound. You can hear a sort of monotonous wailing music in a fan or two fans going at once if there is some slight variation in their sound.

  There is no meaningful connection between the action or object that produces the sound (man’s foot on gas pedal) and the significance of the word (“Lisa!”).

  Bird: “Dix-huit.”

  Bird: “Margueríte!”

  Bird: “Hey, Frederíka!”

  Soup bowl on counter: “Fabrizio!”

  The Washerwomen

  story from Flaubert

  Yesterday I went back to a village two hours from h
ere that I had visited eleven years ago with good old Orlowski.

  Nothing had changed about the houses, or the cliff, or the boats. The women at the washing trough were kneeling in the same position, in the same numbers, and beating their dirty linen in the same blue water.

  It was raining a little, like the last time.

  It seems, at certain moments, as though the universe has stopped moving, as though everything has turned to stone, and only we are still alive.

  How insolent nature is!

  Letter to a Hotel Manager

  Dear Hotel Manager,

  I am writing to point out to you that the word “scrod” has been misspelled on your restaurant menu, so that it appears as “schrod,” with an “sch.” This word was very puzzling to me when I first read it, dining alone on the first night of my two-night stay at your hotel, in your restaurant on the ground floor off your very beautiful lobby with its carved wood panels, lofty ceiling, and rank of gold elevators. I thought this spelling must be right and I must be wrong, since here I was in New England, in Boston in fact, home of the cod and the scrod. But when I came down from my room to the lobby the following night, about to dine in your restaurant for the second time, this time with my older brother, and as I waited there in the lobby for him, which is something I generally like to do if the setting is a pleasant one and I am looking forward to a good dinner, though in fact on this occasion I was quite early and my brother was quite late, so that the wait became rather long and I began to wonder if something had happened to my brother, I was reading some literature provided to me by the friendly clerk behind the reception desk, whose manner, like that of the other staff, with the exception, perhaps, of the restaurant manager, was so natural and unaffected that my stay in your hotel was greatly enhanced by it, after I asked if he had any account of the history of your hotel, since so many interesting and famous people have stayed here or worked here or eaten or drunk here, including my own great-great-grandmother, though she was not famous, and in this literature presumably written by the hotel I read that your restaurant claimed, in fact, to have invented the word “scrod” to describe the catch of the day, in contrast to “cod,” I suppose, for which this city is also famous. I also remembered, perhaps wrongly, seeing this word elsewhere spelled “shrod,” unless that is a different word with a different meaning. I had thought, I suppose mistakenly, that “scrod” meant “young cod,” or perhaps it was “shrod” that meant “young cod” and “scrod” that meant “catch of the day,” if the word “shrod” existed at all. I don’t know much about scrod, only the old joke about the two genteel ladies returning home on the train from Boston and in the course of their conversation one of them mistaking the word “scrod” for a past tense. For a moment the previous evening, as I say, I thought this spelling might even be correct, and then I was fairly certain it was not correct, but I was unsure whether it should be shrod or scrod, if the word “shrod” existed. But nowhere else have I seen it spelled “schrod,” with an “sch.” I did eventually, on the second evening, make a connection, perhaps a false one, between this misspelling and the accent with which your restaurant manager addressed my brother and me. This manager was present in the dining room both nights I ate there and, although courteous, seemed a bit cool in his manner, not to me in particular but to everyone, and on the second evening did not seem to want to prolong the conversation I started with him in which I suggested that the restaurant might add baked beans to the menu, since baked beans are also native to Boston and the restaurant boasts of being the inventor of Boston cream pie, the official Massachusetts state dessert, as I learned from the hotel literature, as well as the Parker House roll. He seemed almost transparently impatient to end the conversation and move on, though move on to what I did not know, since he did not appear to have more of a function than to walk rather self-importantly—by which I mean with an excessively erect posture—from one end of the long, rather dim, splendid room to the other, that is, from the wide doorway through which a handful of people now and then came in from the lobby to have dinner, to what must have been the kitchen, well hidden behind some sort of bar and two large potted palms. In any case, I noticed, as he stood conversing with us, inclined slightly towards us but at each pause turning to move away, that his accent might be identified as German, and this caused me later, when I was thinking about the misspelling of “scrod,” to speculate that the very Germanic “sch” spelling was his doing. This may be quite unfair, and perhaps it was someone else, someone younger, who misspelled “scrod,” and the mistake was not caught by your manager because of his Germanic predisposition towards beginning a word with “sch.” Here I should add in his defense, parenthetically, that despite his cool manner he seemed quite open to my idea that baked beans might be included on the menu. He explained that at one time the restaurant had brought out little pots of baked beans with the rolls and butter at the start of the meal and that they had stopped doing this because so many other restaurants in Boston featured baked beans. I did not want him to think I liked the idea of the little pots at the start of the meal—far from it. I thought it was a terrible idea. Baked beans at the start of the meal would not be a good appetizer, being so heavy and sweet. No, no, I said, they should simply be listed somewhere on the menu. I happen to love baked beans, and I had been disappointed not to find them here in this Boston restaurant, along with the scrod, the Parker House rolls, and the Boston cream pie, all of which I ordered on the second night. My dinner companion, that is, my brother, was tolerant of this protracted and perhaps pointless conversation, either because he was happy enough to be sitting over a nice dinner and a glass of red wine after the difficult day he had had, going here and there in the city, which is not his native city, as he attempted to complete several pieces of business in connection with our mother’s estate, not all of which were successful, or else because my behavior reminded him, in fact, of our mother, who was so very likely to start a conversation with a stranger, or rather, it would be more truthful to say, could hardly let a stranger come anywhere near her without striking up a conversation with him, learning something about his life and letting him know about some firmly held conviction of hers, and who passed away last fall, much to our regret. Although, naturally enough, certain of her habits bothered us while she was alive, we like to be reminded of her now, because we miss her, and we are probably both adopting some of those very habits, if we had not already adopted them long ago. I think my brother even added a suggestion of his own to the manager, after sitting listening quietly to mine, though I can’t remember what he said. This was actually the second time, now at the urging of our waiter, who thought my idea was a good one, that I had called the manager over to our table. The first time I waved to him it was not to speak to him about the baked beans or the spelling of scrod but about another guest in the nearly empty dining room, a very poised little old woman, her hair in a pearl-gray bun at the nape of her neck, who sat surprisingly low down on the banquette, by the side of her much younger hired companion, so that she had to reach quite far up and out to find her food. I had noticed her during my dinner the night before, since we were near each other and there were even fewer guests, and the companion and I had at last struck up a conversation, during which I learned that the old woman lived a short walk away and had been having her dinner at the hotel every night for many years, and that in fact I was inadvertently occupying her usual spot in the dining room, under the brightest light. The companion, after consulting the old woman, had specified that she had been coming here for thirty years, which astounded me, but now, on the second night, the restaurant manager corrected this to a mere five or six years. I wanted to suggest, perhaps because I had drunk my glass of Côtes du Rhône by then and was feeling inspired, that the hotel should make a photographic portrait of her and hang it on the wall in one of the rooms, since she was now part of the history of the hotel. I still think that would be a good idea, and that you might consider it. In fact, later I got up from my chair, perhap
s indiscreetly, and went over to the old woman and her companion as they were leaving and suggested the same thing, to their obvious pleasure. I did not think it would be tactful, however, to bring up the spelling of “scrod” so directly with the manager, and that is why I am instead now mentioning it in a letter to you. My stay in your grand hotel was delightful, and apart from, perhaps, the coolness of the restaurant manager, every aspect of the service and presentation was flawless except for this one spelling mistake. I do believe the purported home of the scrod should be a place where it is spelled correctly. Thank you for your attention.

  Yours sincerely.

  Her Birthday

  105 years old:

  she wouldn’t be alive today

  even if she hadn’t died.

  V

  My Childhood Friend

  Who is this old man walking along looking a little grim with a wool cap on his head?

  But when I call out to him and he turns around, he doesn’t know me at first, either—this old woman smiling foolishly at him in her winter coat.

  Their Poor Dog

  That irritating dog:

  They didn’t want it and gave it to us.

  We pushed it away and smacked it on the head and tied it up.

  It barked, it panted, it lunged.

  We gave it back to them. They kept it for a while.

  Then they sent it to an animal shelter. It was put in a concrete pen.

  Visitors came and looked at it. It stood on the concrete on its four black-and-white paws.

  No one wanted it.

  It had no good qualities. It did not know that.

  New dogs kept coming in to the shelter. After a while, they had no more space for it.

  They took it into the euthanizing room to be euthanized.

  It had to walk around the other dogs that were on the floor.