Ida a Novel

by Gertrude Stein

  She went out, everybody did, and soon she met the five little aunts, they did not seem to be liking her very much but they all went on together, it was cold it was in March and there was almost snow. There were trees of course there was a sidewalk but nobody was on it except themselves, and then all of a sudden some one a man of course jumped out from behind the trees and there was another with him. Ida said to the aunts go on go on quickly I will walk back of you to protect you, the aunts hurried on, Ida hurried a little less quickly, she turned toward the men but they were gone. The five aunts and Ida went on, they said good-night to her but she never saw them again. These were the first and last friends she ever had, and she really never went to church again not really.

  When she got home her dog Love met her and she began to sing about her twin and this is the way she sang.

  Oh dear oh dear Love (that was her dog), if I had a twin well nobody would know which one I was and which one she was and so if anything happened nobody could tell anything and lots of things are going to happen and oh Love I feel it yes I know I have a twin.

  And then she began to look far away and she began to think about her parents. She remembered them when she grew a little older but there were plenty to take care of her and they did. (Think of all the refugees there are in the world just think.) And then one day she looked and she saw some one, she saw two of them but they were not her parents. She was learning to read and write then and the first thing she learned was that there were miracles and so she asked any one to give her one. Then one day, she said she had one. She sat alone and it was summer and suddenly it was snowing and as it snowed she saw two dogs a black and a white one both little and as she looked they both both the little dogs ran away and they ran away together. Ida said this was a miracle and it was.

  Ida gradually was a little older and every time she was a little older some one else took care of her. She liked the change of address because in that way she never had to remember what her address was and she did not like having to remember. It was so easy to forget the last address and she really forgot to guess what the next address was.

  Little by little she knew how to read and write and really she said and she was right it was not necessary for her to know anything else. And so quite gradually little by little she grew older.

  She always had a dog, at every address she had a dog and the dog always had a name and once she had one and its name was Iris. Just at this time Ida was living up in the mountains. She liked it up there. But then Ida liked living anywhere. She had lived in so many places and she liked any where.

  Her dog Iris was not afraid of thunder and lightning but he was afraid of the rain and when it began to rain he ran away from Ida and then he ran back to her because after all he could not run away from the rain because the rain followed him. And so he ran back again to Ida.

  And then Ida left there and went to live in a city. She lived with her old grandfather. He was so old and weak you wondered how he could walk any farther but he always could. Ida paid no attention to her grandfather.

  While she was in the city funny things happened to her.

  It was the month of August. August is a month when if it is hot weather it is really very hot.

  Some funny things happened then. Ida was out, she was always out or in, both being exciting.

  She was out it was towards evening it was time when public parks were closed and Ida was looking in through the railing, and she saw right across the corner that some one else was looking and looking at her. It was a policeman. He was bending down and looking at her. She was not worrying but she did wonder why he was getting down to look at her across the corner. And then she saw next to her a very old woman, well was it or was it not a woman, she had so much clothing on and so many things hanging from her and she was carrying so many things she might have been anything.

  Ida went away it was time for her to be at home.

  Finally August was over and then it was September.

  Sometimes in a public park she saw an old woman making over an old brown dress that is pieces of it to make herself another dress. She had it all on all she owned in the way of clothes and she was very busy. Ida never spoke to her.

  Ida was getting to be older. Sometimes she thought about a husband but she knew that a husband meant marriage and marriage meant changes and changes meant names and after all she had so many changes but she did have just that one name Ida and she liked it to stay with her. And then another funny thing happened to her.

  It was winter and Ida never wondered because thunder rumbled in winter, that lightning struck and thunder rumbled in winter. It just did.

  Ida paid no attention to that but she did one day see a man carrying an advertisement on his back, a sandwich man, that was all right but what was funny was that he stopped and he was talking as if he knew him to a big well dressed rich man.

  Ida very quickly went off home.

  Then she went to live with another great-aunt outside of the city and there she decided and she told her dog Love about it, she decided that she would be a twin.

  She had not yet decided to be a twin when another funny thing happened to her.

  She was walking with her dog Love, they were walking and suddenly he left her to bark at something, that something was a man stretched out by the side of the road, not sleeping, because his legs were kicking, not dead, because he was rolling, not happy, because he just was not, and he was dressed in soldier’s clothing. Love the dog went up to him, not to sniff, not to bark, he just went up to him and when Ida came near she saw he was not a white man, he was an Arab, and of course the dog Love did not bark at him. How could he when an Arab smells of herbs and fields and not of anything human. Ida was not frightened, he got up the Arab and he began to make motions of drinking. Ida might have been frightened if it had been toward evening, which it was, and she had been all alone, which she was, but she motioned back that she had nothing, and the Arab got up, and stood, and then suddenly, he went away. Ida instead of going on the way she was going went back the way she had come.

  She heard about religion but she never really did happen to have any. One day, it was summer, she was in another place and she saw a lot of people under the trees and she went too. They were there and some one was moving around among them, they were all sitting and kneeling, not all of them but most of them and in the middle there was one slowly walking and her arms were slowly moving and everybody was following and some when their arms were started moving could not stop their arms from going on moving. Ida stayed as long as she could and then she went away. She always stayed as long as she could.

  One day, it was before or after she made up her mind to be a twin, she joined a walking marathon. She kept on moving, sleeping or walking, she kept on slowly moving.4 This was one of the funny things that happened to her. Then she lived outside of a city, she was eighteen then, she decided that she had had enough of only being one and she told her dog Love that she was going to be two she was going to be a twin. And this did then happen.

  Ida often wrote letters to herself that is to say she wrote to her twin.

  Dear Ida my twin,

  Here I am sitting not alone because I have dear Love with me, and I speak to him and he speaks to me, but here I am all alone and I am thinking of you Ida my dear twin. Are you beautiful as beautiful as I am dear twin Ida, are you, and if you are perhaps I am not. I can not go away Ida, I am here always, if not here then somewhere, but just now I am here, I am like that, but you dear Ida you are not, you are not here, if you were I could not write to you. Do you know what I think Ida, I think that you could be a queen of beauty, one of the ones they elect when everybody has a vote. They are elected and they go everywhere and everybody looks at them and everybody sees them. Dear Ida oh dear Ida do do be one. Do not let them know you have any name but Ida and I know Ida will win, Ida Ida Ida,

  from your twin Ida

  Ida sat silently looking at her dog Love and playing the piano softly until the light was di
m. Ida went out first locking the door she went out and as she went out she knew she was a beauty and that they would all vote for her. First she had to find the place where they were going to vote, but that did not make any difference anywhere would do they would vote for her just anywhere, she was such a beauty.

  As she went she saw a nicely dressed little girl with a broken arm who threw a stone at a window. It was the little girl’s right arm that was broken. This was a sign.5

  So when Ida arrived they voted that she was a great beauty and the most beautiful and the completest beauty and she was for that year the winner of the beauty prize for all the world. Just like that. It did happen. Ida was her name and she had won.

  Nobody knew anything about her except that she was Ida but that was enough because she was Ida the beauty Ida.

  Part Two

  There was an older man who happened to go in where they were voting. He did not know they were voting for the prize beauty but once there he voted too. And naturally he voted for her. Anybody would. And so she won. The only thing for her to do then was to go home which she did. She had to go a long way round otherwise they would have known where she lived of course she had to give an address and she did, and she went there and then she went back outside of the city where she was living.

  On the way, just at the end of the city she saw a woman carrying a large bundle of wash. This woman stopped and she was looking at a photograph, Ida stopped too and it was astonishing, the woman was looking at the photograph, she had it in her hand, of Ida’s dog Love. This was astonishing.6

  Ida was so surprised she tried to snatch the photograph and just then an automobile came along, there were two women in it, and the automobile stopped and they stepped out to see what was happening. Ida snatched the photograph from the woman who was busy looking at the automobile and Ida jumped into the automobile and tried to start it, the two women jumped into the automobile threw Ida out and went on in the automobile with the photograph. Ida and the woman with the big bundle of wash were left there. The two of them stood and did not say a word.

  Ida went away, she was a beauty, she had won the prize she was judged to be the most beautiful but she was bewildered and then she saw a package on the ground. One of the women in the automobile must have dropped it. Ida picked it up and then she went away.

  So then Ida did everything an elected beauty does but every now and then she was lost.

  One day she saw a man he looked as if he had just come off a farm and with him was a very little woman and behind him was an ordinary-sized woman. Ida wondered about them. One day she saw again the woman with a big bundle of wash. She was talking to a man, he was a young man. Ida came up near them. Just then an automobile with two women came past and in the automobile was Ida’s dog Love, Ida was sure it was Love, of course it was Love and in its mouth it had a package, the same package Ida had picked up. There it all was and the woman with the bundle of wash and the young man and Ida, they all stood and looked and they did not any one of them say anything.

  Ida went on living with her great-aunt, there where they lived just outside of the city, she and her dog Love and her piano. She did write letters very often to her twin Ida.

  Dear Ida, she said.

  Dear Ida,

  So pleased so very pleased that you are winning, I might even call you Winnie because you are winning. You have won being a beautiful one the most beautiful one. One day I was walking with my dog Love and a man came up to him, held out his hand to him and said how do you do you the most beautiful one. I thought he was a very funny man and now they have decided that you are the one the most beautiful one. And one day the day you won, I saw a funny thing, I saw my dog Love belonging to some one. He did not belong to me he did belong to them. That made me feel very funny, but really it is not true he is here he belongs to me and you and now I will call you Winnie because you are winning everything and I am so happy that you are my twin.

  Your twin, Ida-Ida

  And so Winnie was coming to be known to be Winnie.

  Winnie Winnie is what they said when they saw her and they were beginning to see her.

  They said it different ways. They said Winnie. And then they said Winnie.

  She knew.

  It is easy to make everybody say Winnie, yes Winnie. Sure I know Winnie. Everybody knows who Winnie is. It is not so easy, but there it is, everybody did begin to notice that Winnie is Winnie.

  This quite excited Ida and she wrote more letters to Winnie.

  Dear Winnie,

  Everybody knows who you are, and I know who you are. Dear Winnie we are twins and your name is Winnie. Never again will I not be a twin,

  Your twin Ida

  So many things happened to Winnie. Why not when everybody knew her name.

  Once there were two people who met together. They said. What shall we do. So what did they do. They went to see Winnie. That is they went to look at Winnie.

  When they looked at her they almost began to cry. One said. What if I did not look at her did not look at Winnie. And the other said. Well that is just the way I feel about it.

  After a while they began to think that they had done it, that they had seen Winnie, that they had looked at her. It made them nervous because perhaps really had they.

  One said to the other. Say have we and the other answered back, say have we.

  Did you see her said one of them. Sure I saw her did you. Sure he said sure I saw her.

  They went back to where they came from.

  One day Ida went to buy some shoes. She liked to look at yellow shoes when she was going to buy red ones. She liked to look at black shoes when she was not going to buy any shoes at all.

  It was crowded in the shoe store. It was the day before Easter.

  There were a great many places but each one had some one, it is hard to try on shoes standing, hard, almost impossible and so she waited for her turn, a man was sitting next to his wife who was trying on shoes, he was not, and so not Ida but the saleswoman told him to get up, he did, and he did not look at Ida. Ida was used to that.

  The place was full, nobody looked at Ida. Some of them were talking about Winnie. They said. But really, is Winnie so interesting. They just talked and talked about that.

  So that is the way life went on.

  There was Winnie.

  Once in a while a man is a man and he comes from Omaha, where they catch all they can. He almost caught Ida. It happened like this.

  He went out one night and he saw Winnie. Winnie was always there. She went everywhere.

  He followed Winnie.

  He did it very well.

  The next day he went and rang the bell.

  He asked for Winnie.

  Of course there was no Winnie.

  That was not surprising and did not surprise him.

  He could not ask for Ida because he did not know Ida. He almost asked for Ida. Well in a way he did ask for Ida.

  Ida came.

  Ida was not the same as Winnie. Not at all.

  Ida and he, the man from Omaha said. How do you do. And then they said. Good-bye.

  The Omaha man went away. He did follow Winnie again but he never rang the bell again. He knew better.

  Ida lived alone. She tried to make her dog Iris notice birds but he never did. If he had she would have had more to do because she would have had to notice them too.

  It is funny the kind of life Ida led but all the same it kept her going day after day.

  But all the same something did happen.

  One day she was there doing nothing and suddenly she felt very funny. She knew she had lost something. She looked everywhere and she could not find out what it was that she had lost but she knew she had lost something. All of a sudden she felt or rather she heard somebody call to her. She stopped, she really had not been walking but anyway she stopped and she turned and she heard them say, Ida is that you Ida. She saw somebody coming toward her. She had never seen them before. There were three of them, three women. But soon
there was only one. That one came right along. It is funny isn’t it. She said. Yes said Ida. There, said the woman, I told them I knew it was.

  That was all that happened.

  They all three went away.

  Ida did not go on looking for what she had lost, she was too excited.

  She remembered that one day in front of the house a man with a hat a cane and a bottle stopped. He put down the cane but then he did not know what to do with his hat, so he began again. He put his cane into a window so that stuck out, and he hung his hat on the cane and then with the bottle he stood up. This, he said, is a bottle and in it there is wine, and I who am drunk am going to drink this wine. He did.

  And then he said.

  It might be like having a handkerchief in a drawer and never taking it out but always knowing it was there. It would always be new and nobody ever would be through with having it there.

  What is peace what is war said the man, what is beauty what is ice, said the man. Where is my hat said the man, where is my wine said the man, I have a cane, he said, I have a hat, he said, I have a bottle full of wine. Goodbye, he said, but Ida had gone away.

  She had certain habits. When she counted ten she always counted them on her fingers to make ten times ten. It was very hard to remember how many times she had counted ten when once she had counted them because she had to remember twice and then when she had counted a hundred then what happened. Really nothing. Ida just sat down. Living alone as she did counting was an occupation.

  She was walking and she saw a woman and three children, two little girls and a littler boy. The boy was carrying a black coat on his arms, a large one.

  A woman said to Ida, I only like a white skin. If when I die I come back again and I find I have any other kind of skin then I will be sure that I was very wicked before.