Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Donald Barthelme

  Tennis: Yes, he could do this sort of thing all day. Something he can go home and talk about (assuming that he gets back to Baghdad alive), how he played tennis with two ogres tall as houses and brought them to their knees. Each ogre has a single red eye in the middle of his forehead and a single wire-rimmed lens framing the eye. He can sucker the one on the left out of position merely by glancing at the one on the right before he serves, and anything placed to the left of the one on the right is invariably missed, the one on the right has no backhand whatsoever. So how-he-played- tennis-with-two-ogres will be added to the repertoire, two female ogres following the game intently, their two staring eyes with the single tinted lenses turning right, left, right, left, the sun bursting off the lenses like the beams of two lighthouses….

  At night: At night, the Department’s offices are empty. The cleaning women make their telephone calls, in Spanish, from Professor This’s office, from Professor That’s office, taking care of business. The parking lots are infernos of yellow light.

  Sitting one night on the steps of the power plant I saw a man carrying a typewriter, an IBM Selectric III. I judged him to be one of those people who stole typewriters from the university at night. “Can you type?” I asked him. He said, “Shit, man, don’t be a fool.” I asked him why he stole typewriters and he said, “Them mothers ain’t got nothin’ else worth stealin’.” I was going to suggest that he return the typewriter, when another man came out of the darkness carrying another typewriter. “This mother’s heavy,” he said to the first, and they went off together, cursing. An IBM Selectric III weighs approximately forty pounds.

  The students, no doubt, whispered about me:

  “I heard this is the first time he’s taught in the daytime.”

  “They wouldn’t let that sucker teach in sunlight ’cept that all the real teachers are dead.”

  “Did you get a shot of that coat? Tack-eeee.”

  I stood in the corridor gazing at them from behind my shades. What a good-looking group! I thought. In the presto of the morning, as Stevens puts it.

  Experience: Sindbad learns nothing from experience.

  A prudent man, after the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh voyages, would never again set foot on a ship’s deck. Every vessel upon which he has ever embarked has either headed for the bottom not two days out of port or marooned him, has been stove in by a gigantic whale (first voyage), seduced into distraction by jubilant creatures of the air (second voyage), stolen by apelike savages no more than three feet high (third voyage), crushed by a furious squall (fourth voyage), bombed from the air by huge birds carrying huge rocks (fifth voyage), or dashed against a craggy shore (sixth voyage) by the never-sleeping winds.

  But there is always a sturdy (wooden trough, floating beam, stray piece of wreckage from the doomed vessel) to cling to, and an island (garnished with rubies and diamonds, large quantities of priceless pearls, bales of the choicest ambergris) to pillage. Sindbad never fails to return to Baghdad richer than before, with many sumptuous presents for the friends and relatives who gather at his house to hear the news of his latest heroic impertinence.

  Sindbad is not a prudent but a daring man. In Who’s Who at Sea he is listed, disapprovingly, as an “adventurer.”

  Water cannon: The graduates don’t wish to leave the campus. We’ll have to blast them out. I say “we” because I identify with the administration although no member of the administration has asked my opinion on the matter. I think water cannon are the means of choice. I have never seen a water cannon except in TV news reports from East Germany but it seems to be an effective and relatively humane means of blasting people out of there. I wouldn’t mind having a water cannon of my own. There are certain people I wouldn’t mind blasting.

  The grounds crew was standing at the edge of the field, waiting to fold the folding chairs. The band was putting away its instruments. The graduates must have had some boards stashed away among the trees. They began building lean-tos, many of them leaned against the Science Building, some against the Student Center. Cooking fires were lit, the graduates squatted around the cooking fires, roasting corn on spits. Totem poles were erected before the lean-tos. The provost went to the microphone. “Time to go, time to go,” he said. The graduates refused to leave.

  Waltzes: Sindbad gets to his feet, shakes himself, and heads toward the tree line. Waltzes? The music is exotic to him, he has never heard such music before. He congratulates himself that on his eighth voyage the world can still reward him with new enchantments.

  Teaching: I reentered the classroom and fixed them with my fiercest glare. I began to teach. They had to put down their drinks and shrimp on toothpicks and listen.

  It was true, I said, that I had never taught in the daytime before, and that my refrigerator was small and my jacket far, far too baggy.

  Nonetheless, I said, I have something to teach. Be like Sindbad! Venture forth! Embosom the waves, let your shoes be sucked from your feet and your very trousers enticed by the frothing deep. The ambiguous sea awaits, I told them, marry it!

  There’s nothing out there, they said.

  Wrong, I said, absolutely wrong. There are waltzes, sword canes, and sea wrack dazzling to the eyes.

  What’s a sword cane? they asked, and with relief I plunged into the Romantics.

  The Explanation

  Q: Do you believe that this machine could be helpful in changing the government?

  A: Changing the government …

  Q: Making it more responsive to the needs of the people?

  A: I don’t know what it is. What does it do?

  Q: Well, look at it.

  A: It offers no clues.

  Q: It has a certain … reticence.

  A: I don’t know what it does.

  Q: A lack of confidence in the machine?

  Q: Is the novel dead?

  A: Oh yes. Very much so.

  Q: What replaces it?

  A: I should think that it is replaced by what existed before it was invented.

  Q: The same thing?

  A: The same sort of thing.

  Q: Is the bicycle dead?

  Q: You don’t trust the machine?

  A: Why should I trust it?

  Q: (States his own lack of interest in machines)

  Q: What a beautiful sweater.

  A: Thank you. I don’t want to worry about machines.

  Q: What do you worry about?

  A: I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change when I noticed, across the street among the people there waiting for the light to change, an extraordinarily handsome girl who was looking at me. Our eyes met, I looked away, then I looked again, she was looking away, the light changed. I moved into the street as did she. First I looked at her again to see if she was still looking at me, she wasn’t but I was aware that she was aware of me. I decided to smile. I smiled but in a curious way—the smile was supposed to convey that I was interested in her but also that I Was aware that the situation was funny. But I bungled it. I smirked. I dislike even the word “smirk.” There was, you know, the moment when we passed each other. I had resolved to look at her directly in that moment. I tried but she was looking a bit to the left of me, she was looking fourteen inches to the left of my eyes.

  Q: This is the sort of thing that—

  A: I want to go back and do it again.

  Q: Now that you’ve studied it for a bit, can you explain how it works?

  A: Of course. (Explanation)

  Q: Is she still removing her blouse?

  A: Yes, still.

  Q: Do you want to have your picture taken with me?

  A: I don’t like to have my picture taken.

  Q: Do you believe that, at some point in the future, one will be able to achieve sexual satisfaction, “complete” sexual satisfaction, for instance by taking a pill?

  A: I doubt that it’s impossible.

  Q: You don’t like the idea.

  A: No. I think that under those condi
tions, we would know less than we do now.

  Q: Know less about each other.

  A: Of course.

  Q: It has beauties.

  A: The machine.

  Q: Yes. We construct these machines not because we confidently expect them to do what they are designed to do—change the government in this instance—but because we intuit a machine, out there, glowing like a shopping center….

  A: You have to contend with a history of success.

  Q: Which has gotten us nowhere.

  A: (Extends consolation)

  Q: What did you do then?

  A: I walked on a tree. For twenty steps.

  Q: What sort of tree?

  A: A dead tree. I can’t tell one from another. It may have been an oak. I was reading a book.

  Q: What was the book?

  A: I don’t know, I can’t tell one from another. They’re not like films. With films you can remember, at a minimum, who the actors were….

  Q: What was she doing?

  A: Removing her blouse. Eating an apple.

  Q: The tree must have been quite large.

  A: The tree must have been quite large.

  Q: Where was this?

  A: Near the sea. I had rope-soled shoes.

  Q: I have a number of error messages I’d like to introduce here and I’d like you to study them carefully… they’re numbered. I’ll go over them with you: undefined variable … improper sequence of operators … improper use of hierarchy… missing operator … mixed mode, that one’s particularly grave … argument of a function is fixed-point … improper character in constant … improper fixed-point constant … improper floating-point constant … invalid character transmitted in sub-program statement, that’s a bitch … no END statement.

  A: I like them very much.

  Q: There are hundred of others, hundreds and hundreds.

  A: You seem emotionless.

  Q: That’s not true.

  A: To what do your emotions … adhere, if I can put it that way?

  Q: Do you see what she’s doing?

  A: Removing her blouse.

  Q: How does she look?

  A: … Self-absorbed.

  Q: Are you bored with the question-and-answer form?

  A: I am bored with it but I realize that it permits many valuable omissions: what kind of day it is, what I’m wearing, what I’m thinking. That’s a very considerable advantage, I would say.

  Q: I believe in it.

  Q: She sang and we listened to her.

  A: I was speaking to a tourist.

  Q: Their chair is here.

  A: I knocked at the door; it was shut.

  Q: The soldiers marched toward the castle.

  A: I had a watch.

  Q: He has struck me.

  A: I have struck him.

  Q: Their chair is here.

  A: We shall not cross the river.

  Q: The boats are filled, with water.

  A: His father will strike him.

  Q: Filling his pockets with fruit.

  Q: The face … the machine has a face. This panel here …

  A: That one?

  Q: Just as the human face developed … from fish … it’s traceable, from, say, the … The first mouth was that of a jellyfish. I can’t remember the name, the Latin name…. But a mouth, there’s more to it than just a mouth, a mouth alone is not a face. It went on up through the sharks …

  A: Up through the sharks …

  Q: … to the snakes….

  A: Yes.

  Q: The face has three main functions, detection of desirable energy sources, direction of the locomotor machinery toward its goal, and capture….

  A: Yes.

  Q: Capture and preliminary preparation of food. Is this too …

  A: Not a bit.

  Q: The face, a face, also serves as a lure in mate acquisition. The broad, forwardly directed nose—

  A: I don’t see that on the panel.

  Q: Look at it.

  A: I don’t—

  Q: There is an analogy, believe it or not. The … We use industrial designers to do the front panels, the controls. Designers, artists. To make the machines attractive to potential buyers. Pure cosmetics. They told us that knife switches were masculine. Men felt… So we used a lot of knife switches….

  A: I know that a great deal has been written about all this but when I come across such articles, in the magazines or in a newspaper, I don’t read them. I’m not interested.

  Q: What are your interests?

  A: I’m a director of the Schumann Festival.

  Q: What is she doing now?

  A: Taking off her jeans.

  Q: Has she removed her blouse?

  A: No, she’s still wearing her blouse.

  Q: A yellow blouse?

  A: Blue.

  Q: Well, what is she doing now?

  A: Removing her jeans.

  Q: What is she wearing underneath?

  A: Pants. Panties.

  Q: But she’s still wearing her blouse?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Has she removed her panties?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Still wearing the blouse?

  A: Yes. She’s walking along a log.

  Q: In her blouse. Is she reading a book?

  A: No. She has sunglasses.

  Q: She’s wearing sunglasses?

  A: Holding them in her hand.

  Q: How does she look?

  A: Quite beautiful.

  Q: What is the content of Maoism?

  A: The content of Maoism is purity.

  Q: Is purity quantifiable?

  A: Purity has never been quantifiable.

  Q: What is the incidence of purity worldwide?

  A: Purity occurs in .004 percent of all cases.

  Q: What is purity in the pure state often consonant with?

  A: Purity in the pure state is often consonant with madness.

  Q: This is not to denigrate madness.

  A: This is not to denigrate madness. Madness in the pure state offers an alternative to the reign of right reason.

  Q: What is the content of right reason?

  A: The content of right reason is rhetoric.

  Q: And the content of rhetoric?

  A: The content of rhetoric is purity.

  Q: Is purity quantifiable?

  A: Purity is not quantifiable. It is inflatable.

  Q: How is our rhetoric preserved against attacks by other rhetorics?

  A: Our rhetoric is preserved by our elected representatives. In the fat of their heads.

  Q: There’s no point in arguing that the machine is wholly successful, but it has its qualities. I don’t like to use anthropomorphic language in talking about these machines, but there is one quality …

  A: What is it?

  Q: It’s brave.

  A: Machines are braver than art.

  Q: Since the death of the bicycle.

  Q: There are ten rules for operating the machine. The first rule is turn it on.

  A: Turn it on.

  Q: The second rule is convert the terms. The third rule is rotate the inputs. The fourth rule is you have made a serious mistake.

  A: What do I do?

  Q: You send the appropriate error message.

  A: I will never remember these rules.

  Q: I’ll repeat them a hundred times.

  A: I was happier before.

  Q: You imagined it.

  A: The issues are not real.

  Q: The issues are not real in the sense that they are touchable. The issues raised here are equivalents. Reasons and conclusions exist although they exist elsewhere, not here. Reasons and conclusions are in the air and simple to observe even for those who do not have the leisure to consult or learn to read the publications of the specialized disciplines.

  A: The situation bristles with difficulties.

  Q: The situation bristles with difficulties but in the end young people and workers will live on the same plane as old people and govern
ment officials, for the mutual good of all categories. The phenomenon of masses, in following the law of high numbers, makes possible exceptional, and rare events, which—

  A: I called her then and told her that I had dreamed about her, that she was naked in the dream, that we were making love. She didn’t wish to be dreamed about, she said—not now, not later, not ever, when would I stop. I suggested that it was something over which I had no control. She said that it had all been a long time ago and that she was married to Howard now, as I knew, and that she didn’t want … irruptions of this kind. Think of Howard, she said.

  Q: He has struck me.

  A: I have struck him.

  Q: We have seen them.

  A: I was looking at the window.

  Q: Their chair is here.

  A: She sang and we listened to her.

  Q: Soldiers marching toward the castle.

  A: I spoke to a tourist.

  Q: I knocked at the door.

  A: We shall not cross the river.

  Q: The river has filled the boats with water.

  A: I think that I have seen her with my uncle.

  Q: Getting into their motorcar, I heard them.

  A: He will strike her if he has lost it.

  A (concluding): There’s no doubt in my mind that the ballplayers today are the greatest ever. They’re brilliant athletes, extremely well coordinated, tremendous in every department. The ballplayers today are so magnificent that scoring is a relatively simple thing for them.

  Q: Thank you for confiding in me.

  Q: … show you a picture of my daughter.

  A: Very nice.

  Q: I can give you a few references for further reading.

  A: (Claps hand to ear)

  Q: What is she doing now?

  A: There is a bruise on her thigh. The right.

  Concerning The Bodyguard

  DOES the bodyguard scream at the woman who irons his shirts? Who has inflicted a brown burn on his yellow shirt purchased expensively from Yves St. Laurent? A great brown burn just over the heart?

  Does the bodyguard’s principal make conversation with the bodyguard, as they wait for the light to change, in the dull gray Citroën? With the second bodyguard, who is driving? What is the tone? Does the bodyguard’s principal comment on the brown young women who flock along the boulevard? On the young men? On the traffic? Has the bodyguard ever enjoyed a serious political discussion with his principal?