Carpenter's Gothic

by William Gaddis

  — Oh. Do you think that? Her hand had come up now to the fork of his leg, opened, as though to weigh what it found there, — because I mean I don't think so, I don't think they sell out she said, her voice weighing the idea as though for the first time, — I mean these poor people writing all these bad books and these awful songs, and singing them? I think they're doing the best they can… her hand closing there gently. — That's what makes it so sad.

  — Yes… he shifted almost stealthily, trying to rid himself of those trousers — you're right aren't you.

  — And then when it doesn't work… her grasp closed tighter on the sudden surge, — when they try and it doesn't work…

  — Yes that's the, when they, that's worse yes… his thumb tugging down at a beltloop with the haste he'd drawn the trouserleg on — that's the, isn't it that's the worst yes, failing at something that wasn't worth doing in the first place that's the…

  — Because you could couldn't you! and her hand was gone. — Write wonderful things I mean, couldn't you. Because your hands… she'd seized the one nearest, — I've watched them. They've done so many things… and she held it up before him.

  — Yes, I've seen it he said, sinking back.

  — Because haven't you ever wanted to? write I mean? I mean all the places you've been and all the romantic, all the things you talked about last night sitting in front of the fire, about finding gold that first time in Africa when you were so young and they thought you were crazy? and all these places you've been? I mean like Maracaibo they just sound so, they all sound so mysterious and… she broke off, intent examining his hand, splaying its fingers. He'd never been there he told her, that phone call? It was just a job, he'd been looking for work there. — Oh. Because I thought… She'd isolated the thumb, bringing its blackened nail closer, examining it — what happened. What happened… He'd slammed it in a car door he said, three or four years ago, just damned lucky not to lose the nail when the phone rang and she sprawled across the bed for it, — hello…? No it's not no, you've called before I told you she's been gone for two years, I don't even…

  — Here give me that! and he had it, — Brian? is that you? What do you… You were just told weren't you? she's been gone for two years? She's not… good, fine, you've been gone for a long time too, I don't… Brian listen, I'm not interested in your trip to Yucatan. I don't want to hear about you living with the Indians. Nothing about you interests… No and I don't want your address to give her when I see her! I don't know where she is can you get that through your head? Just stop calling here, can you get that through your… and he held the dead phone a moment longer before he handed it over, out flat on his back for her hand back from hanging it up to run open down the flat of his belly and back, and back where the surge she'd raised hot in its grasp lay drained at its search, at its seizure dwindling further, — that damned idiot…

  — Was that somebody you…

  — Nobody! just a, he was just a damned kid who used to, stringy beard and sandals sitting on the floor in there talking about building a houseboat, about Easter Island, about peyote and her eyes just glowed listening to it, that whole superior damned, pour a whisky light a cigarette you're treated like a pariah while he rolls a joint they pass back and forth and she pours the wine no, no he didn't mean any harm but she, neither did she really but I, but jealousy gets you through the night when you wake up alone there. Turn on the light, pour a drink and wander around an empty house at least you've got that, at least you've got somebody you see yourself ripping his beard out, kicking his face in, standing over them both naked in bed with a smoking gun in your hand while she's really probably somewhere alone washing a dish wondering what in hell tomorrow will do no, no that's what jealousy's for. It's like cauterizing a wound, even when it's finally clear there was nothing to it but your own rage it's what's got you through.

  — I never knew what it was like she said, — I mean it was always just something in books or the movies because, because I never knew what it would feel like because I never had anybody to be jealous of until, I mean you don't think she'd just come here do you? Right now I mean? just suddenly be down at the front door and just walk in? Because she, because all her lovely things down there, as if as long as it all stays just like she left it she could just walk in and you wouldn't even have missed her… her hand running over his calf where she'd come down pinning his arm with a knee. — You could write about that… fingertips tending his ankle — I mean, you could write about that.

  — Could I? Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended The summer insects enviable…

  — What's that about.

  — The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers, Death's a fierce meadowlark…

  — Yes that's lovely, I mean did you write it?

  — Well I… his head reared to look down his own naked length for hers tumbling its torrent of red at his feet, — not really no, no in fact it's a poem by…

  — I mean have you ever seen them mating? Grasshoppers, praying mantises something like that they were so, they were so precise… her fingers tracing along the bone, — you have such lovely ankles don't you, where there's no hair just so clear and smooth till way up here… over his calf, past the knee foraging higher, coming over him taking the upper hand where her fingers rose hoarding the roothairs of the surge filling their encirclement — when I saw them on television once and they were so, just so elegant… her hand in its rise and fall, rise and fall like the leafbroken sunlight climbing her shoulder, falling away as she came down, rising and falling away, her fingertip tracing the vein engorged up that stiffening rise to the crown cleft fierce where the very tip of her tongue came to lead a glint of beading off caught in the sunlight over her shoulder pausing, holding it off as though getting in focus — what's this… and, for the tip of her tongue, the plucking edge of her nail — look, this little place, it's like there was a little scab on the…

  — Then that's what it is! Good God I don't know what it is, it's a battle scar, laid out here like one of your grasshoppers pinned on a board what's this, what's that, examine every damned…

  — But I didn't mean… and her hand closed tight, its prey swollen the colour of rage, she came up catching balance, reaching out for the phone — Who, hello…? She swallowed and cleared her throat. — Yes who, who… the breath gone out of her, — what…? Well I did! I tried to talk to him but he… Twenty five dollars marked full and final payment yes, that's… No now stop, stop! you, you have no right to call like this and, to call and harass me like this Mister Stumpp, I tried to talk to Doctor Schak about my condition about his nurse about that consultation he wouldn't even listen, he just said my bill why haven't you paid my… Well all right then all right! Tell him that tell him take his fucking bill and she slammed it down, knees drawn up and her face buried there, getting breath.

  — Glad I'm not Mister Stumpp.

  — It's not funny! She pulled the sheet round her shoulders and a shiver sent breath through her — a, a doctor a stupid doctor… and she got out the iniquities she'd borne at the hands of Doctor Schak and his staff, his — nasty nurse screaming at me when I was right in the middle of a spasm and, and… still having trouble, now, getting breath, her face pressed against her knees, the comprehensive consultation he'd sent to the wrong man the wrong doctor if he'd sent it at all and her records they said they'd sent and they hadn't and this detailed, — what he called this detailed medical history I hardly saw him for five minutes he was leaving for Palm Springs, to play golf in Palm Springs and then this Mister Stumpp, this bill collector Mister Stumpp he's turning it over to Doctor Schak's attorney Mister Lopots if I don't make a deal and send them a hundred dollars I'll hear from Mister Lopots and he'll, it's not funny it's not! And small as her hand was she managed a fist with it and hit him on the shoulder, hit him again with the heel of it.

  — No no no, Mister Stumpp? Mister Lo…

  — Stop it! She'd g
one down with her face in the pillow, both hands drawn in fists — no! for his breath at her shoulder, on the glints of perspiration beading the white of her neck and his hand down her back spreading the rift wide, his weight coming over when that suddenly she turned seizing him with her arms to bring him in, head thrown back and the full swell of her throat rising in the hollowed arch of her jaw surging to meet him with choked bleats of sound for as long as it lasted until he came down, fighting desperate for breath himself, lying still there beside her when he got it and when, minutes later, he slipped off the edge of the bed gathering up trousers, socks, pulling on his shirt he stopped, looking down at her. She lay with her head on her right shoulder, eyes drawn and her mouth hung open with no betrayal of life but the uneven trembling of her lower lip sucked in with each effort at breathing and then falling away spilling the stilled tip of her tongue and he stood there, looking down at her as though she were no one he'd ever seen, as though years and her very identity had fled taking with them any intelligence or the hope of it and surely any beauty, or the claim to it, legs flung wide and her arms loose beside her, her thumbs still crushed into the palms of her hands and as he leaned down to pull the sheet over her, as it sank between her breasts and between her knees lifting again at the tips of her toes, all at once her chest heaved rapidly, her tongue came out licking the perspiration free of her upper lip and the sound in her throat getting breath grew louder, and then with a great sigh she turned on her side and was still, and he stooped to pick up his shoes and hurried from the room.

  The sound that waked her was already gone when she listened, the movement no more than the dapple of sun on the wall, on the bed empty beside her, and then again, the bleat of a dove in the branches outside and she was up, her glance at the naked fright in the mirror as startled as the one it gave her back getting past for the hall where she stopped, a bare shiver run through her at the eruption of the toilet flushing below, cowered there against the cold wall until the sounds of a cough, of a chair scraping the floor down there eased her step up the hall where she drew a bath, turning the pallor of her face to every possible angle where her eyes could contain the surfeit of those in the mirror before she took up a comb to fight the damp tangle of her hair.

  In the bedroom she rattled drawers opened and closed holding this up to her, that, a veil of a blouse in a printed chiffon she hadn't worn, hadn't seen since this forthright Ragg knit sweater now, country and fall in a light grey flecked with brown though held away it looked, oddly, green enough to pick up her eyes without the urgency of something here in a hard Kelly green from a Christmas long buried and almost unworn, and she'd dressed twice, and drawn her eyes with slow concentration, before she came down the stairs.

  Planes of smoke had already settled through the room where he was down on one knee pulling a magazine heap together with twine. — Do you want anything? she said there in the door, — for breakfast I mean? He'd had coffee, he told her without looking up, a cup of it there cold beside the teeming ashtray, pulling the knot tight. — Can I help you?

  — Have you got any trash bags?

  — I'll look… but instead she came on into the room, standing over him for a minute, picking things up, putting one aside for something else, — oh look! What is it.

  — That? It's called banded malachite.

  — Isn't it lovely. The greens in it, I've never seen such lovely green… she turned the rock face in her hand, — where did it come from? From Katanga, just copper sulfides it wasn't that uncommon, he went on, down again wiping cobwebs from a heap of printer's galleys to add to the litter on the table when — Oh look! is it real? She unfurled the stripes up the punctured face, the sparse bristled mane — did you shoot it?

  — Shoot it?

  — Well I meant, I mean if they shoot zebras, don't they? in Africa?

  — They shoot zebras… and he sat down, leveling a cigarette paper, tapping the tobacco into it, watching her pick things up, put things down, a pair of field glasses turned on him wrong end to, examining him from this distance she'd put him at intent as she'd been over his hand, his ankle, tracing up the delicate blue vein with the tip of her tongue as though he'd fallen into some sort of compact up there rummaging her bed, her body nook and ravined cranny licensed as she was now to rummage through his life, holding up a yellow orange rock from the litter, dropping it back for a glossy square of colour.

  — You're not throwing this away?

  — Why not.

  — But it's pretty. What is it.

  — The northern end of the Great Rift, it's a scanning taken from a satellite. You've got it upside down.

  — Oh. She let it go to the floor, — I thought it was art, and she was turning up pages in a folder of typewritten pages, — but you wrote all this? did you?

  He lit the cigarette he'd made. — You said you had some trash bags?

  — But did you? I mean you said you weren't a writer.

  — I'm not a writer Mrs Booth! I'm, now can you, those trash bags can you…

  — Mrs Booth?

  — Yes, he was up again, — can you find me those trash…

  — I mean honestly, Mrs Booth? She sank down on the bundled magazines — as if you'd just walked in the door like a, like some bill collector or something you didn't even, no don't pat me, no! She reached out to seize something, anything, dragged up the ragged folds of the zebra hide by the scruff and sat smoothing it, white stripe to black, — I'm not a writer Mrs Booth. I mean it's not even my name my name is Elizabeth, she thrust out at the pages in the folder — and I mean if I'm not Mrs Booth and you're not a writer then what's all that.

  He had no jacket on, it was still where he'd dropped it on a chair in the living room and from behind his shoulders appeared to fall, to turn in, to shed substance, standing there watching the morning arrival of the old man out on the corner, broom in one hand and the flattened dustpan in the other as though reporting for duty. — Read it then, he said. — Take it and read it.

  Instead, she said simply — You're not throwing it away too?

  — Why not! He crumpled a page of it, holding it out — what do you think it is, rich intoxicating prose? poignant insights? exploring the dark passions hidden in the human heart? Rhapsodic, God knows what, towering metaphor? thwarted genius? that little glimpse of the truth you forgot to ask for? It's a chapter for a school textbook that's what it is, a chapter on life forms that appeared in the Paleozoic era half a billion years ago. It's what I did when I made a fresh start here, writing for textbooks, for encyclopaedias that's all it is. All these bookshelves? I built them myself, hadn't seen my books for years they'd been stacked up in boxes, I put up the ceiling and the floor, I laid the whole floor in here, end up staring out the window at that old man out there with his damned recessional toward the garbage can trying to look useful till I, till he finally drove me out of the house.

  — But he, that old man? I mean do you know him?

  — Know him! A cloud of smoke billowed at the windows, and he leaned down to stamp out the cigarette — every time I'd look up, see him out there every time I looked up pretending he's doing something worth doing look at him, ten dead leaves in his damned dustpan he's still trying to prove he was put here for some purpose? Swing low sweet chariot, staring up there at that string of toilet paper comin for to carry him home good God, you talk about bare ruined choirs? Gaping up there as if he hears their gentle voices calling, that's when I started pouring a drink in the morning.

  — No but all this work, I mean I don't see what he has to do with…

  — Because it's the same damned thing! here… he dug in another heap, — a high school encyclopaedia entry on Darwin, see all this blue penciling? They cut it from sixteen hundred words to thirty six, evolution theory went from three thousand to a hundred and ten the next edition it won't be there at all. Origins of life get twenty eight, twenty eight mealy mouthed words listen… he had a book, or what was left of one, pages torn from it — here's what they want now, listen.
Some people believe that evolution explains the diversity of organisms on earth. Some people do not believe in evolution. These people believe that the various types of organisms were created as they appear. No one knows for sure how the many different kinds of living things came to be. No one knows for sure how many smug illiterate idiots are out there peddling this kind of drivel here's another one, listen to this. Another hypothesis about the creation of the universe with all its life forms is special creation, which gives God the critical role in creation. In some school systems, it is mandated that the evolution and special creation theories be taught side by side. That seems a healthy attitude in view of the tenuous nature of hypothesis. A healthy attitude! He flung it into the carton, — find their biology textbook, you look up geologic eras? fossil remains? Nothing. Paleontology? The word itself it's gone, it's just disappeared. That's when I started pouring a drink and watching the old man out there, watched him trying to pretend there's some damned reason to get up in the morning… He reached for the bottle, but simply stood there resting his hand on it — now, look at him now. See his lips moving when he stops to get his balance? My name is death, the last best friend am I out there with his damned broom justifying an existence that won't turn him loose, how cold your hands are, death. Come warm them at my heart God, how I learned to hate him.

  She sat now pursuing black stripe to white, intent as though bent over an embroidery frame. — Wouldn't he be surprised, she said finally. — That you hate him I mean, he doesn't even know it. He'd be amazed…

  — Be amazed if I went out there and pushed him under a car to put him out of his misery. I've thought of that.