The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966

by Richard Brautigan

  ‘I don’t want to sleep with your clothes,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never slept with a librarian before,’ she said, 99 per cent towards me. The other 1 per cent was waiting to turn. I saw it starting to turn.

  ‘I brought a book in here tonight denouncing my own body as grotesque and elephant-like, but now I want to take this awkward machine and lie down beside you here in this strange library.

  Counting Towards Tijuana

  What an abstract thing it is to take your clothes off in front of a stranger for the very first time. It isn’t really what we planned on doing. Your body almost looks away from itself and is a stranger to this world.

  We live most of our lives privately under our clothes, except in a case like Vida whose body lived outside of herself like a lost continent, complete with dinosaurs of her own choosing.

  ‘I’ll turn the lights out,’ she said, sitting next to me on the bed.

  I was startled to hear her panic. She seemed almost relaxed a few seconds before. My, how fast she could move the furniture about in her mind. I responded to this by firmly saying, ‘No, please don’t.’ Her eyes stopped moving for a few seconds. They came to a crashing halt like blue aeroplanes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s a good idea. It will be very hard, but I have no other choice. I can’t go on like this forever.’

  She gestured towards her body as if it were far away in some lonesome valley and she, on top of a mountain, looking down. Tears came suddenly to her eyes. There was now rain on the blue wings of the aeroplanes.

  Then she stopped crying without a tear having left her eyes. I looked again and all the tears had vanished. ‘We have to leave the lights on,’ she said. ‘I won’t cry. I promise.’

  I reached out and, for the first time in two billion years, I touched her. I touched her hand. My fingers went carefully over her fingers. Her hand was almost cold.

  ‘You’re cold,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s only my hand.’

  She moved slightly, awkwardly towards me and rested her head on my shoulder. When her head touched me, I could feel my blood leap forward, my nerves and muscles stretch like phantoms towards the future.

  My shoulder was drenched in smooth white skin and long bat-flashing hair. I let go of her hand and touched her face. It was tropical.

  ‘See,’ she said, smiling faintly. ‘It was only my hand.’

  It was fantastic trying to work around her body, not wanting to startle her like a deer and have her go running off into the woods.

  I poetically shifted my shoulder like the last lines of a Shakespearean sonnet (Love is a babe; then might I not say so, / To give full growth to that which still doth grow.) and at the same time lowered her back on to the bed.

  She lay there looking up at me as I crouched forward, descending slowly, and kissed her upon the mouth as gently as I could. I did not want that first kiss to have attached to it the slightest gesture or flower of the meat market.

  The Decision

  It’s a hard decision whether to start at the top or the bottom of a girl. With Vida I just didn’t know where to begin. It was really a problem.

  After she reached up awkwardly and put my face in a small container which was her hands and kissed me quietly again and again, I had to start somewhere.

  She stared up at me all the time, her eyes never leaving me as if I were an airfield.

  I changed the container and her face became a flower in my hands. I slowly let my hands drift down her face while I kissed her and then further down her neck to her shoulders.

  I could see the future being moved in her mind while I arrived at the boundaries of her bosom. Her breasts were so large, so perfectly formed under her sweater that my stomach was standing on a stepladder when I touched them for the first time.

  Her eyes never left me and I could see in her eyes the act of my touching her breasts. It was like brief blue lightning.

  I was almost hesitant in a librarian sort of way.

  ‘I promise,’ she said, reaching up and awkwardly pressing my hands harder against her breasts. She of course had no idea what that did to me. The stepladder started swirling.

  She kissed me again, but this time with her tongue. Her tongue slid past my tongue like a piece of hot glass.

  A Continuing Decision

  Well, it had been my decision to start at the top and I was going to have to carry it out and soon we arrived at the time to take off her clothes.

  I could tell that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. She wasn’t going to help. It was all up to me.

  Damn it.

  It wasn’t exactly what I had planned on doing when I started working at the library. I just wanted to take care of the books because the other librarian couldn’t do it any more. He was afraid of children, but of course it was too late now to think about his fears. I had my own problems.

  I had gone further than taking this strange awkward beautiful girl’s book. I was now faced with taking her body which lay before me and had to have its clothes taken off, so we could join our bodies together like a bridge across the abyss.

  ‘I need your help,’ I said.

  She didn’t say anything. She just continued staring at me. That brief blue lightning flashed again in her eyes, but it was relaxed at the edges.

  ‘What can I do?’ she said.

  ‘Sit up, please,’ I said.

  °All right.’

  She sat up awkwardly.

  ‘Please put your arms up,’ I said.

  ‘It’s that simple, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Whatever was happening I was certainly getting down to it. It would have been much simpler just to have kindly taken her book for the library and sent her on her way but that was history now or like the grammar of a forgotten language.

  ‘How’s this?’ she said and then smiled. ‘I feel like a San Francisco bank teller.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Just do what the note says,’ and I started her sweater gently off. It slid up her stomach and went on over her breasts, getting briefly caught on one of them, so I had to reach down and help it over the breast, and then her neck and face disappeared in the sweater and came out again when the sweater went g off her fingers.

  It was really fantastic the way she looked. I could have been hung up for a long time there, but I kept moving on, had to. It was my mission in life to take her bra off.

  ‘I feel like a child,’ she said. She turned sideways from me, so I could get at the brassiere clasp in the back. I fumbled at the clasp for a few moments. I’ve never had much luck with brassieres.

  ‘Want me to help?’ she said.

  ‘No, I can get it,’ I said. ‘It may take me a few days but I’ll get it. Don’t dishearten. There… AH!’

  That made Vida laugh.

  She did not need a bra at all. Her breasts stayed right up there after the bra left them like an extra roof on a house and joined her sweater. It was a difficult pile of clothes. Each garment was won in a strange war.

  Her nipples were small and delicately coloured in relationship to the large full expansion of her breasts. Her nipples were very gentle. They were another incongruity fastened like a door to Vida.

  Then at the same time we both looked down at her boots, long and black and leather like a cloud of animals gathered about her feet.

  ‘I’ll take your boots off,’ I said.

  I had_ finished with the top of her and now it was time to start on the bottom. There certainly are a lot of parts to girls.

  I took off her boots and then I took off her socks. I liked the way my hands ran along her feet like water over a creek. Her toes were the cutest pebbles I have ever seen.

  ‘Stand up, please,’ I said. We were really moving along now. She got awkwardly to her feet and I unzipped her skirt. I brought it down her hips to the floor and she stepped out of it and I put it on the pile of other battles.
/>   I looked into her face before I took her panties off. Her features were composed and though there still flashed bolts of brief blue lightning in her eyes, her eyes remained gentle at the edges and the edges were growing.

  I took her panties off and the deed was done. Vida was without clothes, naked, there.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘This isn’t me. I’m not here.’ She reached out and put her arms about my neck. ‘But I’ll try to be here for you, Mr Librarian.’

  Two (37-19-36) Soliloquies

  ‘I just don’t understand why women want bodies like this. The grotesqueness of them and they try so very hard to get these bodies, moving hell and high water with dieting, operations, injections, obscene under garments to arrive at one of these damn things and then if they try everything and still can’t get one, the dumb cunts fake it. Well, here’s one they can have for free. Come and get it, you bitches.

  ‘They don’t know what they’re getting into or maybe they like it. Maybe they’re all pigs like the women who use these bodies to turn the tides of money: the movie stars, models, whores.

  ‘Oh Christ!

  ‘I just can’t see the fatal attraction that bodies like this hold for men and women. My sister has my body: tall and skinny. All these layers are beyond me. These aren’t my breasts. These aren’t my hips. This isn’t my ass. I’m inside of all this junk. Can you see me? Look hard. I’m in here, Mr Librarian.’

  She reached out and put her arms about my neck and I put my hands upon her hips. We stood there looking at each other.

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘Whether you like it or not, you’re a very beautiful woman and you’ve got a grand container. It may not be what you want, but this body is in your keeping and you should take good care of it and with pride, too. I know it’s hard but don’t worry about what other people want and what they get. You’ve got something that’s beautiful and try to live with it.

  ‘Beauty is the hardest damn thing in the world to understand. Don’t buy the rest of the world’s juvenile sexual thirsts. You’re a smart young lady and you’d better start using your head instead of your body because that’s what you’re doing.

  ‘Don’t be a fatalist winner. Life’s a little too short to haul that one around. This body is you and you’d better get used to it because this is all she wrote for this world and you can’t hide from yourself.

  ‘This is you.

  ‘Let your sister have her own body and start learning how to appreciate and use this one. I think you might enjoy it if you let yourself relax and get your mind out of other people’s sewers.

  ‘If you get hung up on everybody else’s hang-ups, then the whole world’s going to be nothing more than one huge gallows.’

  We kissed.

  Book Three: Calling the Caves

  Calling the Caves

  Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with Foster up at the caves when Vida discovered that she was pregnant. Vida and I talked it over. The decision to have the abortion was arrived at without bitterness and was calmly guided by gentle necessity.

  Tm not ready to have a child yet,’ Vida said. ‘And neither are you, working in a kooky place like this. Maybe another time, perhaps for certain another time, but not now. I love children, but this isn’t the time. If you can’t give them the maximum of yourself, then it’s best to wait. There are too many children in the world and not enough love. An abortion is the only answer.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘I d0n’t know about this library being a kooky place, but we’re not ready for a child yet. Perhaps in a few years. I think you should use the pill after we have the abortion.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s the pill from now on.’

  Then she smiled and said, ‘It looks like our bodies got us.’

  ‘It happens sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know anything about this kind of business?’ Vida said. ‘I know a little bit. My sister had an abortion last year in Sacramento, but before she had the abortion, she went to a doctor in Marin County who gave her some hormone shots, but they didn’t work because it was too late. The shots work if you take them soon enough and they’re quite a bit cheaper than an abortion.

  ‘I think I’d better call Foster,’ I said. ‘He got into a thing like this last year and had to go down to Tijuana with one of his Indian girls.’

  ‘Who’s Foster?’ Vida said.

  ‘He takes care of the caves,’ I said.

  ‘What caves?’

  ‘This building is too small,’ I said.

  ‘What caves?’ she said.

  I guess I was rattled by the events in Vida’s stomach. I hadn’t realized it. I calmed myself down a little bit and said, ‘Yes, we have some caves up in Northern California where we store most of our books because this building is too small for our collection.

  ‘This library is very old. Foster takes care of the caves. He comes down here every few months and loads his van up with books and stores them in the caves.

  ‘He also brings me food and the little things that I need. The rest of the time he stays drunk and chases the local women, mostly Indians. He’s quite a guy. A regular explosion of a man.

  ‘He had to go down to Tijuana last year. He told me all about it. He knows a very good doctor there. There’s a telephone at the caves. I’ll give him a ring. I’ve never done it before. Never had to. Things are usually pretty calm down here. We might as well get this thing going. Would you watch the library while I do it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vida said. ‘Of course. It would be a privilege. I never thought that I would end up being the librarian of this place, but I guess I should have had an inkling when I came in here with my book under my arm.’

  She was smiling and wearing a short green dress. Her smile was on top of the dress. It looked like a flower.

  ‘It will only take a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I think there’s a pay telephone down at the corner. That is, if it’s still there. I haven’t been out of here in so long that they may have moved it.’

  ‘No, it’s still there,’ Vida said, smiling. ‘I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry. Your library is in good hands.’

  She held her hands out to me and I kissed them.

  ‘See?’ she said.

  ‘You know how to put the books down in the Library Contents Ledger?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know how to do it and I’ll give anyone who» rings in a book the royal carpet treatment. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. Stop worrying. Mr Librarian. I think you have been in here too long. I think I’ll kidnap you soon.’

  ‘You could ask them to wait,’ I said. ‘1’ll only be gone for a few minutes.’

  ‘Come on now!’ Vida said. ‘Let your granny gland relax a little and slow down those rocking chair secretions.’

  Outside (Briefly)

  Gee, it had been a long time. I hadn’t realized that being in that library for so many years was almost like being in some kind of timeless thing. Maybe an aeroplane of books, flying through the pages of eternity.

  Actually being outside was quite different from looking out of the window or the door. I walked down the street, feeling strangely awkward on the sidewalk. The concrete was too hard, aggressive or perhaps I was too light, passive.

  It was something to think about.

  I had a lot of trouble opening the telephone booth door but finally I got inside and started to call Foster up at the caves when suddenly I realized that I didn’t have any money with me. I searched all my pockets but, alas, not a cent. I didn’t need money in the library.

  ‘Back already? Vida said. She looked very pretty behind the counter in her green dress with her flower-like head.

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ I said.

  After she stopped laughing, which took about five minutes, very funny, she went and got her purse and gave me a handful of change.

  ‘You’re too much,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you haven’t forgotten how to use money? You
hold it like this.’ She held an imaginary coin between her fingers and started laughing all over again.

  I left. I had my dime.

  Foster’s Coming

  I called Foster up at the caves. I could hear his telephone ringing. It rang seven or eight times and then Foster answered it.

  ‘What’s happening? Foster said. ‘Who is this? What are you up to, you son-of-a-bitch? Don’t you know it’s one o’clock in the afternoon. What are you? A vampire?’

  ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘You old drunk!’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘The kid. Hell, why didn’t you say so? What’s up down there? Somebody bring in an elephant with a book written on it? Well, feed it some hay and I’ll be down with the van.’

  ‘Very funny, Foster,’ I said.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s impossible at that loony bin you’ve got down there. What’s up, kid?’

  ‘I’ve got a problem.’

  ‘You?’ he said. ‘How in the hell can you have a problem? You’re inside all the time. Is that prison pallor of yours beginning to flake?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘My girlfriend is pregnant.’

  ‘DINGALING CUCKOO!’ Foster said and the conversation stopped for a moment while Foster laughed so hard it almost shook the telephone booth hundreds of miles away.

  Finally he stopped laughing and said, ‘It sounds like you’ve really been working hard at the library, but when did fornication become one of its services? Girlfriend, huh? Pregnant, huh? Cuckoo, kid!’

  He started to laugh all over again. It was everybody’s day to laugh except mine.

  ‘Well, what do you need?’ he said. ‘A little trip down to Tijuana? A short visit with my abortionist buddy, Dr Garcia?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.