Ida a Novel

by Gertrude Stein

As she walked along people began to be bewildered as they saw her and they did not call out to her but some did begin to notice her. Was she a twin well was she.

  She went away again. Going away again was not monotonous although it seemed so. Ida ate no fruit. It was the end of the week and she had gone away and she did not come back there.

  Pretty soon she said to herself Now listen to me, I am here and I know it, if I go away I will not like it because I am so used to my being here. I would not know what has happened, now just listen to me, she said to herself, listen to me, I am going to stop talking and I will.

  Of course she had gone away and she was living with a friend.

  How many of those who are yoked together have ever seen oxen.

  This is what Ida said and she cried. Her eyes were full of tears and she waited and then she went over everything that had ever happened and in the middle of it she went to sleep.

  When she awoke she was talking.

  How do you do she said.

  First she was alone and then soon everybody was standing listening. She did not talk to them.

  Of course she did think about marrying. She had not married yet but she was going to marry.

  She said if I was married I’d have children and if I had children then I’d be a mother and if I was a mother I’d tell them what to do.

  She decided that she was not going to marry and was not going to have children and was not going to be a mother.

  Ida decided that she was just going to talk to herself. Anybody could stand around and listen but as for her she was just going to talk to herself.

  She no longer even needed a twin.

  Somebody tried to interrupt her, he was an officer of course but how could he interrupt her if she was not talking to him but just talking to herself.

  She said how do you do and people around answered her and said how do you do. The officer said how do you do, here I am, do you like peaches and grapes in winter, do you like chickens and bread and asparagus in summer. Ida did not answer, of course not.

  It was funny the way Ida could go to sleep and the way she could cry and the way she could be alone and the way she could lie down and the way anybody knew what she did and what she did not do.

  Ida thought she would go somewhere else but then she knew that she would look at everybody and everything and she knew it would not be interesting.

  She was interesting.

  She remembered everything and she remembered everybody but she never talked to any of them, she was always talking to herself.

  She said to herself. How old are you, and that made her cry. Then she went to sleep and oh it was so hard not to cry. So hard.

  So Ida decided to earn a living. She did not have to, she never had to but she decided to do it.

  There are so many ways of earning a living and most of them are failures. She thought it was best to begin with one way which would be most easy to leave. So she tried photography and then she tried just talking.

  It is wonderful how easy it is to earn a living that way. To be sure sometimes everybody thinks you are starving but you never are. Ida never starved.

  Once she stayed a week in a hotel by herself. She said when she saw the man who ran it, how often do you have your hotel full. Quite often he answered. Well, said Ida, wait awhile and I will leave and then everybody will come, but while I am here nobody will come. Why not said the hotel keeper. Because said Ida, I want to be in the hotel all alone. I only want you and your wife and your three boys and your girl and your father and your mother and your sister in it while I am here. Nobody else. But do not worry, you will not have to keep the others out, they will not come while I am here.

  Ida was right. The week she was there nobody came to eat or sleep in the hotel. It just did happen that way.

  Ida was very much interested in the wife of the hotel keeper who was sweet-voiced and managed everything because Ida said that sooner or later she would kill herself, she would go out of a window, and the hotel would go to pieces.9

  Ida knew just what was going to happen. This did not bother her at all. Mostly before it happened she had gone away.

  Once she was caught.

  It was in a hilly country.

  She knew two young men there, one painted in water colors and the other was an engineer. They were brothers. They did not look alike.

  Ida sat down on a hillside. A brother was on each side of her.

  The three sat together and nothing was said.

  Then one brother said. I like to sit here where nothing is ever said. The other brother said. I I like bread, I like to sit here and eat bread. I like to sit here and look about me. I like to sit here and watch the trees grow. I like to sit here.

  Ida said nothing. She did not hear what they said. Ida liked sitting. They all three did.

  One brother said. It pleases me very much that I have discovered how prettily green looks next to blue and how water looks so well rushing down hill. I am going away for a little while. He said this to his brother. He got up and he went away.

  His brother who was very polite did not go away as long as Ida stayed. He sat on and Ida sat on. They did not go to sleep but they almost stopped breathing. The brother said out loud. I am talking to myself. I am not disturbing anyone. I feel it is better that everybody is dangerous than that they are not and if they are everybody will either die or be killed.

  He waited a minute to listen to himself and then he went on.

  I feel that it is easy to expect that we all wish to do good but do we. I know that I will follow any one who asks me to do anything. I myself am strong and I will help myself to anything I need.

  Ida paid no attention.

  Slowly this other brother went away.

  Ida sat on. She said to herself. If a great many people were here and they all said hello Ida, I would not stand up, they would all stand up. If everybody offered me everything I would not refuse anything because everything is mine without my asking for it or refusing it.

  Ida understood what she was saying, she knew who she was and she knew it was better that nobody came there. If they did she would not be there, not just yet.

  It is not easy to forget all that. Ida did not say that but it is true it is not easy to forget all that.

  It was very quiet all day long but Ida was ready for that.

  And then she went away.

  She went away on a train in an automobile by airplane and walking.

  When she answered she looked around for water she looked around for a bay, for a plowed field and then she saw a man standing and she said to him, do you live here. The man said no.

  Ida was always ready to wait but there was nothing to wait for here and she went away.

  When she came to the next place she had better luck. She saw two men standing and she said to them, do you live here. They both said, they did. That did seem a good place to begin and Ida began.

  This time she did not talk to herself she talked to them.

  She sat down and the two men sat down. Ida began. She said. Do you know that I have just come. Yes said one of the men because we have never seen you before.

  The other man said, Perhaps you are not going to stay.

  I am not answered Ida.

  Well then said one of the men it is not interesting and I am not listening.

  Ida got very angry.

  You are not listening to me, she said, you do not know what you are saying, if I talk you have to listen to what I say, there is nothing else you can do.

  Then she added.

  I never talk much anyway so if you like both of you can go away.

  They both did go away.

  Ida sat down. She was very satisfied to be sitting.

  Sit again she said to some one and they sat, they just sat.

  I do not think that Ida could like Benjamin Williams.

  He did get up again and he did walk on.

  Ida was not careful about whom she met, how could she be if she was always walking or sitt
ing and she very often was.

  She saw anybody who was on her way. That was her way. A nice way.

  Ida went back again not to Connecticut but to New Hampshire. She sighed when she said New Hampshire.

  New Hampshire, she said, is near Vermont and when did I say Vermont and New Hampshire.

  Very often, she whispered, very often.

  That was her answer.

  This time she was married.

  Part Three

  Ida did not get married so that never again would she be alone. As a matter of fact until the third time she was married she would not be married long. This first time she was married her husband came from Montana. He was the kind that when he was not alone he would look thoughtful. He was the kind that knew that in Montana there are mountains and that mountains have snow on them. He was not born in Montana. He had not lived very long in Montana, he would leave Montana, he had to to marry Ida and he was very thoughtful.

  Ida, he said and then he sighed.

  Oh Ida, he said.

  How often, he said, how often have I said, Oh Ida.

  He was careful. He began to count. He counted the number of times he said, Oh Ida.

  It is not easy to count, said he to himself because when I count, I lose count.

  Oh dear he said, it is lovely in Montana, there are mountains in Montana and the mountains are very high and just then he looked up and he saw them and he decided, it was not very sudden, he decided he would never see Montana again and he never did.

  He went away from Montana and he went to Virginia. There he saw trees and he was so pleased. He said I wonder if Ida has ever seen these trees. Of course she had. It was not she who was blind, it was her dog Iris.

  Funnily enough even if Ida did see trees she always looked on the ground to see what had fallen from the trees. Leaves might and nuts and even feathers and flowers. Even water could fall from a tree. When it did well there was her umbrella. She had a very pretty short umbrella. She had lost two and now she had the third. Her husband said, Oh Ida.

  Ida’s husband did not love his father more than he did his mother or his mother more than he did his father.

  Ida and he settled down together and one night she dreamed of a field of orchids, white orchids each on their stalk in a field. Such a pretty girl to have dreamed of white orchids each on its stalk in a field. That is what she dreamed.

  And she dreamed that now she was married, she was not Ida she was Virginia. She dreamed that Virginia was her name and that she had been born in Wyoming not in Montana. She dreamed that she often longed for water. She dreamed that she said. When I close my eyes I see water and when I close my eyes I do see water.

  What is water, said Virginia.

  And then suddenly she said. Ida.

  Ida was married and they went to live in Ohio. She did not love anybody in Ohio.

  She liked apples. She was disappointed but she did not sigh. She got sunburned and she had a smile on her face. They asked her did she like it. She smiled gently and left it alone. When they asked her again she said not at all. Later on when they asked her did she like it she said. Perhaps only not yet.

  Ida left Ohio.

  As she left they asked her can you come again. Of course that is what she said, she said she could come again. Somebody called out, who is Ida, but she did not hear him, she did not know that they were asking about her, she really did not.

  Ida did not go directly anywhere. She went all around the world. It did not take her long and everything she saw interested her.

  She remembered all the countries there were but she did not count them.

  First they asked her, how long before you have to go back to Washington.

  Second they said, how soon after you get back to Washington will you go back to Ohio.

  Thirdly they asked her. How do you go back to Washington from Ohio.

  She always answered them.

  She did not pay much attention to weather. She had that kind of money to spend that made it not make any difference about weather.

  Ida had not been in love very much and if she were there she was.

  Some said, Please like her.

  They said regularly. Of course we like her.

  Ida began to travel again.

  She went from Washington to Wyoming, from Wyoming to Virginia and then she had a kind of feeling that she had never been in Washington although of course she had and she went there again.

  She said she was going there just to see why they cry.

  That is what they do do there.

  She knew just how far away one state is from another. She said to herself. Yes it is all whole.

  And so there she was in Washington and her life was going to begin. She was not a twin.

  Once upon a time a man had happened to begin walking. He lived in Alabama and walking made it seem awfully far away. While he was walking all of a sudden he saw a tree and on that tree was a bird and the bird had its mouth open. The bird said Ida, anyway it sounded like Ida, and the man, his name was Frederick, Frederick saw the bird and he heard him and he said, that kind of a bird is a mocking bird. Frederick went on walking and once every once in a while he saw another tree and he remembered that a bird had said Ida or something like Ida. That was happening in Alabama.

  Frederick went into the army became an officer and came to Washington. There he fell in love with a woman, was she older was she younger or was she the same age. She was not older perhaps she was younger, very likely she was not the same age as his age.

  Her name was not Ida.

  Ida was in Washington.

  If there are two little dogs little black dogs and one of them is a female and the other a male, the female does not look as foolish as the male, no not.

  So Ida did not look foolish and neither she was.

  She might have been foolish.

  Saddest of all words are these, she might have been.

  Ida felt very well.

  Part Four

  So Ida settled down in Washington. This is what happened every day.

  Ida woke up. After a while she got up. Then she stood up. Then she ate something. After that she sat down.

  That was Ida.

  And Ida began her life in Washington. In a little while there were more of them there who sat down and stood up and leaned. Then they came in and went out. This made it useful to them and to Ida.

  Ida said. I am not careful. I do not win him to come away. If he goes away I will not have him. Ida said I can count any one up to ten. When I count up to ten I stop counting. When she said that they listened to her. They were taken with her beginning counting and she counted from one to ten. Of course they listened to her.

  Ida knew that. She knew that it is not easy to count while anybody listens to them, but it is easy to listen to them while they are counting.

  More and more came to see Ida. Frederick came to see Ida.

  Little by little Frederick fell in love with Ida. Ida did not stop him. He did not say that he was in love with her. He did not say that, not that.

  And then he was and then they were all there together.

  He married her and she married him.

  Then suddenly not at all suddenly, they were sent there, he was in the army, they got up and had decided to leave for Ohio. Yesterday or today they would leave for Ohio.

  When they got to Ohio, Ohio is a state, it is only spelled with four letters. All of a sudden there they were in Ohio.

  Ohio very likely was as large as that.

  Everybody said to Ida and they said it to Frederick too. Smile at me please smile at me.

  Ida smiled.

  They settled down in Ohio.

  What did they do in Ohio.

  Well they did not stay there long.

  They went to Texas.

  There they really settled down.

  It is easier for an officer in the army to settle down in Texas than in Ohio.

  Ida said one day.

  Is there anything strange in
just walking along.

  One day in Texas it was not an accident, believe it or not, a lizard did sit there. It was almost black all over and curled, with yellow under and over, hard to tell, it was so curled, but probably under.

  Ida was not frightened, she thought she was thinking. She thought she heard everybody burst out crying and then heard everybody calling out, it is not Ohio, it is Texas, it is not Ohio.

  Ida was funny that way, it was so important that all these things happened to her just when and how they did.

  She settled down and she and Frederick stayed there until they were not there together or anywhere.

  All this time Ida was very careful.

  Everything that happened to her was not strange. All along it was not strange Ida was not strange.

  It is so easy not to be a mother.

  This too happened to Ida.

  She never was a mother.

  Not ever.

  Her life in Ohio which turned out to be her life in Texas went on just like that. She was not a mother. She was not strange. She just knew that once upon a time there was a necessity to know that they would all leave Texas. They did not leave Texas all together but they all left Texas. She left Texas and he left Texas, he was Frederick, and they left Texas. They were all the people they knew when they were in Texas.

  As they one and all left Texas, they all fastened their doors and as they fastened their doors nobody saw them leave. That is a way to leave.

  Ida always left everywhere in some way. She left Texas in this way. So did they.

  She left Texas never to return.

  She never went back anywhere so why would she go back to Ohio and to Texas. She never did. Ida never did.

  She did not go back to Frederick either.

  Ida never did.

  She did not remember just how many years she had been with Frederick and in Ohio and in Texas.

  She did not remember even when she was with him and there because when she was there she did not count, that is she could count up to ten but it did not give her any pleasure to count then.

  How pleasant it is to count one two three four five six seven, and then stop and then go on counting eight nine and then ten or eleven.

  Ida just loved to do that but as she certainly was not in Ohio or in Texas that long and certainly not with Frederick that long counting was not anything to do.