Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Donald Barthelme

  Is the bodyguard frightened by the initials D.I.T.?

  Is the bodyguard frightened by the initials C.N.D.?

  Will the bodyguard be relieved, today, in time to see the film he has in mind—Emmanuelle Around the World? If the bodyguard is relieved in time to see Emmanuelle Around the World, will there be a queue for tickets? Will there be students in the queue?

  Is the bodyguard frightened by the slogan Remember 17 June? Is the bodyguard frightened by black spray paint, tall letters ghostly at the edges, on this wall, on this wall? At what level of education did the bodyguard leave school?

  Is the bodyguard sufficiently well-paid? Is he paid as well as a machinist? As well as a foreman? As well as an army sergeant? As well as a lieutenant? Is the Citroën armored? Is the Mercedes armored? What is the best speed of the Mercedes? Can it equal that of a BMW? A BMW motorcycle? Several BMW motorcycles?

  Does the bodyguard gauge the importance of his principal in terms of the number of bodyguards he requires? Should there not be other cars leading and following his principal’s car, these also filled with bodyguards? Are there sometimes such additional precautions, and does the bodyguard, at these times, feel himself part of an ocean of bodyguards? Is he exalted at these times? Does he wish for even more bodyguards, possibly flanking cars to the right and left and a point car far, far ahead?

  After leaving technical school, in what sort of enterprises did the bodyguard engage before accepting his present post? Has he ever been in jail? For what sort of offense? Has the bodyguard acquired a fondness for his principal? Is there mutual respect? Is there mutual contempt? When his principal takes tea, is the bodyguard offered tea? Beer? Who pays?

  Can the bodyguard adduce instances of professional success?

  Had he a previous client?

  Is there a new bodyguard in the group of bodyguards? Why?

  How much does pleasing matter? What services does the bodyguard provide for his principal other than the primary one? Are there services he should not be asked to perform? Is he nevertheless asked from time to time to perform such services? Does he refuse? Can he refuse? Are there, in addition to the bodyguard’s agreed-upon compensation, tips? Of what size? On what occasions?

  In the restaurant, a good table for his principal and the distinguished gray man with whom he is conferring. Before it (between the table with the two principals and the door), a table for the four bodyguards, What is the quality of the conversation between the two sets of bodyguards? What do they talk about? Soccer, perhaps, Holland vs. Peru, a match which they have all seen. Do they rehearse the savaging of the Dutch goalkeeper Piet Schrijvers by die bastard Peruvian? Do they discuss Schrijvers’s replacement by the brave Jan Jongbloed, and what happened next? Has the bodyguard noted the difference in quality between his suit and that of his principal? Between his shoes and those of his principal?

  In every part of the country, large cities and small towns, bottles of champagne have been iced, put away, reserved for a celebration, reserved for a special day. Is the bodyguard aware of this?

  Is the bodyguard tired of waking in his small room on the Calle Caspe, smoking a Royale Filtre, then getting out of bed and throwing wide the curtains to discover, again, eight people standing at the bus stop across the street in postures of depression? Is there on the wall of the bodyguard’s small room a poster showing Bruce Lee in a white robe with his feet positioned in such-and-such a way, his fingers outstretched in such-and-such a way? Is there a rosary made of apple beads hanging from a nail? Is there a mirror whose edges have begun to craze and flake, and are there small blurrish Polaroids stuck along the left edge of the mirror, Polaroids of a woman in a dark-blue scarf and two lean children in red pants? Is there a pair of dark-blue trousers plus a long-sleeved white shirt (worn once already) hanging in the dark-brown wardrobe? Is there a color foldout of a naked young woman torn from the magazine VIR taped inside the wardrobe door? Is there a bottle of Long John Scotch atop the cheese-colored mini-refrigerator? Two-burner hotplate? Dull-green ceramic pot on the windowsill containing an unhealthy plant? A copy of Explication du Tai Chi, by Bruce Tegner? Does the bodyguard read the newspaper of his principal’s party? Is he persuaded by what he reads there? Does the bodyguard know which of the great blocs his country aligned itself with during the Second World War? During the First World War? Does the bodyguard know which countries are the preeminent trading partners of his own country, at the present time?

  Seated in a restaurant with his principal, the bodyguard is served, involuntarily, turtle soup. Does he recoil, as the other eats? Why is this near-skeleton, his principal, of such importance to the world that he deserves six bodyguards, two to a shift with the shifts changing every eight hours, six bodyguards of the first competence plus supplementals on occasion, two armored cars, stun grenades ready to hand under the front seat? What has he meant to the world? What are his plans?

  Is the retirement age for bodyguards calculated as it is for other citizens? Is it earlier, fifty-five, forty-five? Is there a pension? In what amount? Those young men with dark beards staring at the Mercedes, or staring at the Citroën, who are they? Does the bodyguard pay heed to the complaints of his fellow bodyguards about the hours spent waiting outside this or that Ministry, this or that Headquarters, hours spent propped against the fenders of the Mercedes while their principal is within the (secure) walls? Is the thick glass of these specially prepared vehicles thick enough? Are his fellow bodyguards reliable? Is the new one reliable?

  Is the bodyguard frightened by young women of good family? Young women of good family whose handbags contain God knows what? Does the bodyguard feel that the situation is unfair? Will the son of the bodyguard, living with his mother in a city far away, himself become a bodyguard? When the bodyguard delivers the son of his principal to the school where all of the children are delivered by bodyguards, does he stop at a grocer’s on the way and buy the child a peach? Does he buy himself a peach?

  Will the bodyguard, if tested, be equal to his task? Does the bodyguard know which foreign concern was the successful bidder for the construction of his country’s nuclear reprocessing plant? Does the bodyguard know which sections of the National Bank’s yearly report on debt service have been falsified? Does the bodyguard know that the general amnesty of April coincided with the rearrest of sixty persons? Does the bodyguard know that the new, liberalized press laws of May were a provocation? Does the bodyguard patronize a restaurant called The Crocodile? A place packed with young, loud, fat Communists? Does he spill a drink, to disclose his spite? Is his gesture understood?

  Are the streets full of stilt-walkers? Stilt-walkers weaving ten feet above the crowd in great papier-mâché bird heads, black and red costumes, whipping thirty feet of colored cloth above the heads of the crowd, miming the rape of a young female personage symbolizing his country? In the Mercedes, the bodyguard and his colleague stare at the hundreds, men and women, young and old, who move around the Mercedes, stopped for a light, as if it were a rock in a river. In the rear seat, the patron is speaking into a telephone. He looks up, puts down the telephone. The people pressing around the car cannot be counted, there are too many of them; they cannot be known, there are too many of them; they cannot be predicted, they have volition. Then, an opening. The car accelerates.

  Is it the case that, on a certain morning, the garbage cans of the city, the garbage cans of the entire country, are overflowing with empty champagne bottles? Which bodyguard is at fault?

  Rif

  LET me tell you something. New people have moved into the apartment below me and their furniture is, shockingly, identical to mine, the camelback sofa in camel-colored tweed is there as are the two wrong-side-of-the-blanket sons of the Wassily chair and the black enamel near-Mackintosh chairs, they have the pink-and-purple dhurries and the brass quasi-Eames torchères as well as the fake Ettore Sottsass faux-marble coffee table with cannonball legs. I’m shocked, in a state of shock—

  —I taught you that. Overstatement. You
’re shocked. You reel, you fall, you collapse in Rodrigo’s arms, complaining of stress. He slowly begins loosening your stays, stay by stay, singing the great Ah, je vois le jour, ah, Dieu, and the second act is over.

  —You taught me that, Rhoda. You, my mentor in all things.

  —You were apt Hettie very apt.

  —I was apt.

  —The most apt.

  —Cold here in the garden.

  —You were complaining about the sun.

  —But when it goes behind a cloud—

  —Well, you can’t have everything.

  —The flowers are beautiful.

  —Indeed.

  —Consoling to have the flowers.

  —Half-consoled already.

  —And these Japanese rocks.

  —Artfully placed, most artfully.

  —You must admit, a great consolation.

  —And our work.

  —A great consolation.

  —God, aren’t these flowers beautiful.

  —Only three of them. But each remarkable, of its kind.

  —What are they?

  —Some kind of Japanese dealies, I don’t know.

  —Lazing here in the garden. This is really most luxurious.

  —I think that they provide, the company provides, a space like this, in the middle of this vast building, it’s—

  —Most enlightened.

  —It drains away. The tensions.

  —We still haven’t decided what color to paint the trucks.

  —I said blue.

  —Surely not your last word on the subject.

  —I have some swatches. If you’d care to take a gander.

  —Not now. This sun is blistering.

  —New skin. You’re going to complain?

  —Those new people. Upstairs. They make me feel bad. Wouldn’t you feel bad?

  —It’s not my furniture that’s being replicated in every detail. Every last trite detail. So I don’t feel bad. The implications don’t—

  —I have something to tell you, Rhoda.

  —What, Hettie?

  —We’re having a thirteen-percent reduction-in-force. A rif. You’re in line to be riffed, Rhoda.

  —I am?

  —If you take early retirement voluntarily you get a better package. If I have to release you, you get less.

  —How much less?

  —Rounds out at about forty-two percent. Less.

  —Well.

  —Yes.

  —I’ll need something to do with myself. I am young yet Hettie. Relatively speaking.

  —Very relatively very.

  —What about the windows?

  —What about them?

  —They need washing. Badly in want of washing.

  —You? Washing windows?

  —Maybe work my way up through the ranks. Again.

  —Your delicate hands in the ammonia-bright bucket—I can’t see it.

  —Is cheese alive when it’s killed? My daughter asked me that she’s beginning to get the hang of things.

  —Perhaps too early?

  —On schedule I would say. The windows radiate filth, building-wide. I can do it.

  —I will plunge the dagger into my breast before I send you to Support Services.

  —All part of the program, Hettie.

  —Will I be okay without you, Rhoda?

  —Fine, Hettie, fine. My parting advice is, cut the dagger.

  —The only person I ever stuck with it was Bruce.

  —He smiled slightly as he slid to the floor, a vivid pinkness obscuring the Polo emblem on his chest.

  —He was most gracious about it, called it a learning experience.

  —Most gracious. Above and beyond.

  —I remember the year we got the two-percent increase.

  —Then the four-percent increase.

  —Then the eight-percent across-the-board cut.

  —The year the Easter bonus came through.

  —Our ups and downs.

  —Wonderful memories, wonderful.

  —Bruce. Mentor-at-large. First he was your Bruce. Then he was my Bruce.

  —Taught me much, Bruce.

  —That’s what they’re for. To teach. That’s how I regarded him. That’s why I took him.

  —A good poke too, not a bad poke, fair poke not too bad a poke.

  —Mentoring away. Through dark and dank.

  —Yes.

  —He always said you cast him off like an old spreadsheet.

  —I remember a night in California. I’ve always hated California. But on this night, in California, he by God taught me lost-horse theory. Where you have a lost horse and have to find it. Has to do with the random movement of markets and the taming of probability. I was by God entranced.

  —Well we’ve moved beyond that now haven’t we?

  —If you say so Hettie.

  —I mean we don’t want to get hung up on the Bruce question at this late date.

  —What good would it do? He’s gone.

  —He thought he could cook.

  —He prided himself upon his cooking.

  —He couldn’t cook.

  —He could do gizzards. Something about gizzards that engaged his attention.

  —Nothing he could do I couldn’t do better. In addition, I could luxuriously stretch out my naked, golden leg. He couldn’t do that.

  —His, a rather oaklike leg covered with lichen.

  —Oh he was a sturdy boy. Head like a chopping block. Many’s the time I tried to bash the new into it.

  —Your subtle concept shattered upon the raw butchered surface.

  —And when it was necessary to put him out to pasture—

  —Did we flinch? We did not flinch.

  —Grazing now with all the other former vice-presidents in Kentucky.

  —Muzzle-deep in the sweetest clover.

  —I have the greatest of expectations, still.

  —Of course you do. Part of the program.

  —My expectations are part of the program?

  —The soul of the program.

  —No no no no. My expectations come from within.

  —I think not. Blown into being, as it were, by the program.

  —My expectations are a function of my thinking. My own highly individuated thinking which includes elements of the thought of Immanuel Kant and Harry S. Truman.

  —Absolutely. Unique to you.

  —Furthermore I’m going to bust out of this constraining smothering retrograde environment at the first opportunity. I give you fair warning.

  —Why tell me? I’m the mere window person.

  —To me, Rhoda, you will always be the rock upon which my church is founded.

  —Why you ragged kid, you ain’t got no church.

  —I ain’t?

  —At most, a collection plate.

  —I circulate among the worshipers, taking tithes.

  —It’s a living. Put a bunch of tithes one on top of another, you have a not inconsiderable sum.

  —The priestly function, mine. The one who understands the arcanum, me.

  —Also you get to herd the flock. Tell the flock to flock here, to flock there.

  —Divine inspiration. That’s all it is. Nothing to it.

  —You yourself awash in humility all the while.

  —I can do humility.

  —Don’t wave the dagger. The argument of the third act, as it spreads itself before us, is perfectly plain: If we recognize ourselves to be part of a larger whole with which we are in relations, those relations and that whole cannot be created by the finite self but must be produced by an absolute all-inclusive mind of which our minds are parts and of which the world-process in its totality is the experience. Don’t wave the dagger.

  —I’ll bare my breast, place the point of the knife upon its plump surface. Then explain the issues.

  —I tell you people lust for consummation. They see a shining dagger poised above a naked breast, they want it shoved in.

  —I w
onder what it would have been like. If I’d had another mentor. One less sour, perhaps.

  —You’d be a different person, Hettie.

  —I would, wouldn’t I. Strange to think.

  —Are you satisfied? You needn’t answer.

  —No, I’m not. You taught me that. Not to be satisfied.

  —The given can always be improved upon. Screwed around with.

  —You were a master. Are a master. Wangling and diddling, fire and maneuver.

  —I can sit and watch my daughter. Scrape the city off her knees and tell her to look both ways when she crosses the street.

  —They have to learn. Like everybody else.

  —Maybe I’ll teach her to look only to the left. Not both ways.

  —That’s wrong. That’s not right. It’s unsafe.

  —The essence of my method.

  —You were a wild old girl, Rhoda. I’ll remember.

  —I was, wasn’t I.

  —We still haven’t decided what color to paint the trucks.

  —Blue?

  The Palace At Four A.M.

  MY father’s kingdom was and is, all authorities agree, large. To walk border to border east-west, the traveler must budget no less than seventeen days. Its name is Ho, the Confucian term for harmony. Confucianism was an interest of the first ruler (a strange taste in our part of the world), and when he’d cleared his expanse of field and forest of his enemies, two centuries ago, he indulged himself in an hommage to the great Chinese thinker, much to the merriment of some of our staider neighbors, whose domains were proper Luftlunds and Dolphinlunds. We have an economy based upon truffles, in which our forests are spectacularly rich, and electricity, which we were exporting when other countries still read by kerosene lamp. Our army is the best in the region, every man a colonel—the subtle secret of my father’s rule, if the truth be known. In this land every priest is a bishop, every ambulance-chaser a robed justice, every peasant a corporation and every street-corner shouter Hegel himself. My father’s genius was to promote his subjects, male and female, across the board, ceaselessly; the people of Ho warm themselves forever in the sun of Achievement. I was the only man in the kingdom who thought himself a donkey.