Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  When I say that I sometimes hear music in my head, incidentally, I often even know whose voice I am hearing, if the music is vocal music.

  I do not remember who it was yesterday for The Alto Rhapsody, however.

  I had not read the life of Brahms. But I do believe there is one book in this house which I did read, since I came.

  As a matter of fact one could say two books, since it was a two-volume edition of the ancient Greek plays.

  Although where I actually read that book was in the other house, farther down the beach, which I burned to the ground. The only book I have looked into in this house is an atlas, wishing to remind myself where Savona is.

  As a matter of fact I did that not ten minutes ago, when I decided to bring the painting of the house back out here.

  Which I now cannot be positive is a painting of this house, or of a house that is simply very much like this house.

  The atlas was on a shelf directly behind where the painting had been leaning.

  And directly beside a life of Brahms, printed on extraordinarily cheap paper and standing askew in such a way that it has become permanently misshapen.

  Presumably it was another book altogether, from which I tore the pages and set fire to them, in wishing to simulate a seagull.

  Unless of course there were two lives of Brahms in this house, both printed on cheap paper and both ruined by dampness.

  Kathleen Ferrier is who was singing The Alto Rhapsody.

  I assume I do not have to explain that any version of any music that comes into my head would be the version I was once most familiar with.

  In SoHo, my recording of The Alto Rhapsody was an old Kathleen Ferrier recording.

  And now that strand of tape is scratching at the window in the next room again, again sounding like a cat.

  One does not name a seagull.

  Once, when I was listening to myself read the Greek plays out loud, certain of the lines sounded as if they had been written under the influence of William Shakespeare.

  One had to be quite perplexed as to how Aeschylus or Euripides might have read Shakespeare.

  I did remember an anecdote, about some other Greek author, who had remarked that if he could be positive of a life after death he would happily hang himself to see Euripides. Basically this did not seem relevant, however.

  Finally it occurred to me that the translator had no doubt read Shakespeare.

  Normally I would not consider that a memorable insight, except for the fact that I was otherwise undeniably mad at the time when I read the plays.

  As a matter of fact I only now realize that I may not have been cooking after all, when I burned that other house to the ground, but may well have burned it in the process of dropping the pages of The Trojan Women into the fire after I had finished reading their reverse sides.

  Conversely I have no idea why I would have stated that it was a life of Brahms I had set fire to, out on the beach, when it was not ten minutes earlier that I had noticed the life of Brahms next to the atlas behind where the painting was.

  Certain questions would appear unanswerable.

  Such as, in addition, what my father may have thought about, looking through old snapshots and then looking into the mirror that had been beside my mother's bed.

  Or whether one would have ever arrived at the castle or not, had one continued to follow that same road.

  Well, in that case doubtless there was ultimately a cutoff.

  To the castle, a sign must have said.

  In a Jeep, one could have maneuvered directly up the hillside, instead of following the road.

  Meanwhile one does not spend any time viewing castles in La Mancha without being reminded of Don Quixote also, of course.

  Any more than one can spend time in Toledo without being reminded of El Greco, even if it happens that El Greco was not Spanish.

  All too often one hears of him spoken of as if he were, however.

  The famous Spanish artists such as Velazquez or Zurbaran or El Greco, being the sort of thing that one hears.

  One hardly ever hears of him being spoken of as a Greek, on the other hand.

  The famous Greek artists such as Phidias or Theophanes the Greek or El Greco, being the sort of thing that one almost never hears.

  Yet it is not beyond imagining that El Greco was even directly descended from some of those other Greeks, when one stops to think about it.

  Surely it would have been easy to lose track, in so many years. But who is to say that it might not go back even farther than that, to somebody like Achilles, why not?

  I am almost certain that Helen had at least one child, at any rate.

  Now the painting does appear to be of this house.

  As a matter of fact there also appears to be somebody at the very window, upstairs, from which I watch the sunset.

  I had not noticed her at all, before this.

  If it is a she. The brushwork is fairly abstract, at that point, so that there is little more than a hint of anybody, really.

  Still, it is interesting to speculate suddenly about just who might be lurking at my bedroom window while I am typing down here right below.

  Well, and on the wall just above and to the side of me, at the same time.

  All of this being merely in a manner of speaking, of course.

  Although I have also just closed my eyes, and so could additionally say that for the moment the person was not only both upstairs and on the wall, but in my head as well.

  Were I to walk outside to where I can see the window, and do the same thing all over again, the arrangement could become much more complicated than that.

  For that matter I have only now noticed something else in the painting.

  The door that I generally use, coming and going from the front deck, is open.

  Not two minutes ago, I happen to have closed that same door.

  Obviously no action of my own, such as that, changes anything in the painting.

  Nonetheless I have again just closed my eyes, trying to see if I could imagine the painting with the door to the deck closed.

  I was not able to close the door to the deck in the version of the painting in my head.

  Had I any pigments, I could paint it closed in the painting itself, should this begin to trouble me seriously.

  There are no painting materials in this house.

  Unquestionably there would have had to be all sorts of such materials here at one time, however.

  Well, with the exception of those that she carried to the dunes, where else would the painter have deposited them?

  Now I have made the painter a she, also. Doubtless because of my continued sense of it being a she at the window.

  But in either case one may still assume that there must be additional painting materials inside of the house in the painting, even if one cannot see any of them in the painting itself.

  As a matter of fact it is no less possible that there are additional people inside of the house as well, above and beyond the woman at my window.

  Then again, very likely the others could be at the beach, since it is late on a summer afternoon in the canvas, although no later than four o'clock.

  So that next one is forced to wonder why the woman at the window did not go to the beach herself, for that matter.

  Although on second thought I have decided that the woman may well be a child.

  So that perhaps she had been made to remain at home as a punishment, after having misbehaved.

  Or perhaps she was even ill.

  Possibly there is nobody at the window in the canvas.

  At four o'clock I will try to estimate exactly where at the dunes the painter took her perspective, and then see how the shadows fall, up there.

  Even if I will be forced to guess at when it is four o'clock, there being no clocks or watches in this house, either.

  All one will have to do is to match the real shadows on the house with the painted shadows in the painting, however.

  Alt
hough perhaps the real shadows at the window when I go out will not solve a thing in regard to the painting.

  Perhaps I will not go out.

  Once, I believed I saw somebody at a real window, while I am on the subject.

  In Athens, this was, and while I was still looking, which made it something of an occurrence.

  Well. And even more so than the cat at the Colosseum, rather.

  As a matter of fact one could also see the Acropolis, from beside the very window in question.

  Which was in a street full of taverns.

  Still, when the sun had gotten to the angle from which Phidias had taken his perspective, the Parthenon almost seemed to glow.

  Actually, the best time to see that is generally also at four o'clock.

  Doubtless the taverns from which one could see that did better business than the taverns from which one could not, in fact, even though they were all in the same street.

  Unless of course the latter were patronized by people who had lived in Athens long enough to have gotten tired of seeing it.

  Such things can happen. As in the case of Guy de Maupassant, who ate his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower.

  Well, the point being that this was the only place in Paris from which he did not have to look at it.

  For the life of me I have no idea how I know that. Any more than I have any idea how I also happen to know that Guy de Maupassant liked to row.

  When I said that Guy de Maupassant ate his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower, so that he did not have to look at it, I meant that it was the Eiffel Tower he did not wish to look at, naturally, and not his lunch.

  One's language being frequently imprecise in such ways, I have discovered.

  Although I have a rowboat of my own, as it happens.

  Now and again, I row out a good distance.

  Beyond the breakers, the currents will do most of the work.

  The row back can be difficult, however, if one allows one's self to be carried too far.

  Actually, the rowboat is my second rowboat.

  The first rowboat disappeared.

  Doubtless I had not beached it securely enough. One morning, or possibly one afternoon, it was simply gone.

  Some days afterward I walked along the beach farther than I had ever walked before, but it had not come ashore.

  It would scarcely be the only boat adrift, of course, if it is still adrift.

  Well, like that ketch in the Aegean, for starters.

  Sometimes I like to believe it has been carried all of the way across the ocean by now, however. As far as to the Canary Islands, say, or to Cádiz, on the coast of Spain.

  Well, or who is to argue that it might not have gotten to Scyros itself, even?

  I do not remember the name of the street with all of those taverns in it.

  Possibly I never knew the names of any of the streets in Athens in either case, not speaking one word of Greek.

  When I say not speaking one word, I mean not reading one either, obviously.

  One would certainly wish to conceive of the Greeks as having been imaginative in that regard, however.

  Penelope Avenue being an agreeable possibility, for instance. Or Cassandra Street.

  At least there must have been an Aristotle Boulevard, surely. Or a Herodotus Square.

  Why did I imply that it was Phidias who built the Parthenon when it was somebody named Ictinus?

  In spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned, I did well in college, actually.

  So that one could even generally identify the floor plans of such structures, on final exams.

  But so what poem am I now thinking about, then, about singing birds sweet, being sold in the shops for the people to eat?

  Being sold in the shops, does it go, on Stupidity Street?

  I do not believe I have ever mentioned Cassandra in any of these pages before, come to think about it. Let me name the street with the taverns in it Cassandra Street.

  Cassandra certainly being an appropriate name for a street in which I believed I saw somebody at a window in either case.

  Well, and especially lurking at it.

  Or is it simply the notion of somebody lurking at my window in the painting that has made me make this connection?

  Still, lurking at such a window is exactly where one is apt to visualize Cassandra after Agamemnon had brought her back as one of his spoils from Troy, as a matter of fact.

  Even while Clytemnestra is saying hello to Agamemnon and suggesting a nice hot bath, one is apt to visualize her that way.

  Well, but with Cassandra also always able to see things, of course. So that even without a window to lurk at, she would have soon known about those swords near the tub.

  Not that anybody ever learned to pay any attention to a word Cassandra ever said, however.

  Well, those mad trances of hers.

  Nor would there have been a street in Athens named for her after all, obviously. Any more than there would have been one named for Hector, or for Paris.

  Then again it is not impossible that people's sentiments might change, after so many years.

  At the intersection of Cassandra Street and El Greco Road, at four o'clock in the afternoon, I saw somebody at a window, lurking.

  There was nobody at the window, which was a window in a shop selling artists' supplies.

  It was a small stretched canvas, coated with gesso, that had highlighted my own reflection as I passed.

  Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

  Though as a matter of fact where I saw my own reflection may well have been in a bookstore window.

  At any rate the two stores were adjacent. The one with the books was the one that I chose to let myself into.

  All of the books in the store were in Greek, naturally.

  Possibly some few of them were actually books that I had even read, in English, although naturally I would have had no way of knowing which ones.

  Possibly one of them was even a Greek edition of William Shakespeare's plays. By a translator who had been under the influence of Euripides.

  Gesso has such a silly look, for a word, when one types it.

  It would have helped to prevent my canvases from warping if I had not shot holes into those skylights, obviously.

  Had the smoke backed up, winters there at the Metropolitan would have been difficult, however.

  Actually one can be saddened, letting one's self into a store full of books and not being able to recognize a single one.

  The bookstore on the street below the Acropolis saddened me.

  Although I have now made a categorical decision that the painting is not a painting of this house.

  Assuredly, it is a painting of the other house, farther down the beach, which burned.

  To tell the truth I cannot call that other house to mind at all, any longer.

  Although perhaps that house and this house were identical. Or quite similar, at any rate.

  Houses along a beach are often that way, being constructed by people with basically similar tastes.

  Though as a matter of fact I cannot be absolutely certain that the painting is on the wall beside me any longer itself, since I am no longer looking at it.

  Quite possibly I put it back into the room with the atlas and the life of Brahms. I have a distinct suspicion that it had entered my mind to do that.

  The painting is on the wall.

  And at least we have verified that it was not the life of Brahms that I set fire to the pages from also, out on the beach.

  Unless as I have suggested somebody in this house had owned two lives of Brahms, both printed on cheap paper and both ruined by dampness.

  Or two people had owned them, which is perhaps more likely.

  Perhaps two people who were not particularly friendly with each other, in fact. Though both of whom were interested in Brahms.

  Perhaps one of those was the painter. Well, and the other the person in the window, wh
y not?

  Perhaps the painter, being a landscape painter, did not wish to paint the other person at all, actually. But perhaps the other person insisted upon looking out of the window while the painter was at work.

  Very possibly this could have been what made them angry with each other to begin with.

  If the painter had closed her eyes, or had simply refused to look, would the other person have still been at the window?

  One might as well ask if the house itself would have been there.

  And why have I troubled to close my own eyes again?

  I am still feeling the typewriter, naturally. And hearing the keys.

  Also I can feel the seat of this chair, through my underpants.

  Doing this out at the dunes, the painter would have felt the breeze. And a sense of the sunshine.

  Well, and she would have heard the surf.

  Yesterday, when I was hearing Kirsten Flagstad singing The Alto Rhapsody, what exactly was I hearing?

  Winters, when the snow covers everything, leaving only that strange calligraphy of the spines of the trees, it is a little like closing one's eyes.

  Certainly reality is altered.

  One morning you awaken, and all color has ceased to exist.

  Everything that one is able to see, then, is like that nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of plaster and glue.

  I have said that.

  Still, it is almost as if one might paint the entire world, and in any manner one wished.

  Letting one's brushing become abstract at a window, or not.

  Though perhaps it was Cassandra whom I had intended to portray to begin with, on those forty-five square feet, rather than Electra.

  Even if a part I have always liked is when Orestes finally comes back, after so many years, and Electra does not recognize her own brother.

  What do you want, strange man? I believe this is what Electra says to him.

  Well, it is the opera that I am thinking about now, I suspect.

  At the intersection of Richard Strauss Avenue and Johannes Brahms Road, at four o'clock in the afternoon, somebody called my name.

  You? Can that be you?

  Imagine! And here, of all places!

  It was only the Parthenon, I am quite certain, so beautiful in the afternoon sun, that had touched a chord.