Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  In Greece, no less, from where all arts and all stories came.

  Still, for a time I almost wished to weep.

  Perhaps I did weep, that one afternoon.

  Though perhaps it was weariness too, behind the veil of madness that had protected me, and which, that afternoon, had slipped away.

  One afternoon you see the Parthenon, and with that one glance your madness has momentarily slipped away.

  Weeping, you walk the streets whose names you do not know, and somebody calls out after you.

  I ran into an alley, which was actually a cul-de-sac.

  Surely that is you!

  I also had a weapon. My pistol, from the skylights.

  Well, when I was looking, I almost always carried that.

  Looking in desperation, as I have said.

  But still, never knowing just whom one might find, as well.

  Not until dusk did I emerge from the cul-de-sac.

  And saw my own reflection behind the window of an artists' supplies shop, highlighted there against a small stretched canvas.

  To tell the truth, one book in the shop next door to that one did happen to be in English.

  This was a guide to the birds of Southern Connecticut and Long Island Sound.

  I slept in the car that I was making use of at the time. Which was a Volkswagen van, filled with musical instruments.

  Kathleen Ferrier had very possibly died even before I had purchased that old recording, I now believe.

  I have forgotten whatever point I might have intended to make by mentioning that, however.

  Veil of madness was a terribly pretentious phrase for me to have written, too.

  The next morning I drove counterclockwise, among mountains, toward Sparta, which I wished to visit before departing Greece.

  Not thinking to look into the book on birds for what it might have told me about seagulls.

  Halfway to Sparta, I got my period.

  Throughout my life, my period has always managed to surprise me.

  Even in spite of my generally having been out of sorts for some days beforehand, this is, which I will almost invariably have attributed to other causes.

  So doubtless it was not the Parthenon which had made me weep after all.

  Or even necessarily my madness temporarily slipping away.

  Already, obviously, the other had been coming on.

  And so somebody called my name.

  I still do menstruate today, incidentally, if irregularly.

  Or else I will stain. For weeks on end.

  But then may not do so again for months.

  There is naturally nothing in the Iliad, or in any of the plays, about anybody menstruating.

  Or in the Odyssey. So doubtless a woman did not write that after all.

  Before I was married, my mother discovered that Terry and I were sleeping together.

  Was there anybody else before Terry? This was one of the first questions my mother then asked me.

  I told her that there had been.

  Does Terry know?

  I said yes to that, also.

  Oh you young fool, my mother said.

  As the years passed I often felt a great sadness, over much of the life that my mother had lived.

  What do any of us ever truly know, however?

  I can think of no reason why this should remind me of the time when having my period caused me to fall down the central staircase in the Metropolitan and break my ankle.

  Actually it may not have been broken but only sprained.

  The next morning it was swollen to twice its normal size nonetheless.

  One moment I had been halfway up the stairs, and a moment after that I was making believe I was Icarus.

  What I had been doing was carrying that monstrosity of a canvas, which was extraordinarily unwieldy.

  How one carries such a monstrosity is by gripping the crossbars between the stretchers, at its back, meaning that one has no way whatsoever of seeing where one is going.

  Still, I had believed I was managing. Until such time as the entire contraption floated away from me.

  Possibly it was a wind, which caused that, since there were many more broken windows in the museum than those I had broken on purpose, by that time.

  Presumably it was a wind from below, in fact, since what the canvas seemed to do was to rise up in front of me. And then to rise up some more.

  Remarkably soon after that it was underneath me, however.

  The pain was excruciating.

  I am gushing, being what I thought at first, however. And I do not even have underpants on, under this wraparound skirt.

  To tell the truth, when I had actually thought that had been perhaps two seconds earlier.

  And so had shifted the way in which I was standing, naturally, to close my thighs.

  Forgetting for the same instant that I was carrying forty-five square feet of canvas, on stretchers, up a stone stairway.

  In retrospect it does not even become unlikely that there had been no wind after all.

  And naturally all of this had occurred with what seemed no warning whatsoever, either.

  Although doubtless I had been feeling out of sorts for some days, which I would have invariably laid to other causes.

  The museum of course possessed crutches, and even wheelchairs, for just such emergencies.

  Well, perhaps not for exactly just such.

  All of these were on the main floor, in any event, along with other first aid items.

  It would have been inordinately easier for me to crawl to the top of the stairs, rather than to the bottom.

  Most of my accouterments were down there too, however. I believe I have mentioned having still possessed accouterments, in those days.

  As it turned out, I became astonishingly adept at maneuvering my wheelchair in next to no time.

  Skittering from one end of the main floor to the other, in fact, when the mood took me.

  From the Greek and Roman antiquities to the Egyptian, or whoosh! and here we go round the Temple of Dendur.

  Often even with music by Berlioz, or Igor Stravinsky, to accompany myself.

  Now and again, the same ankle still pains me.

  This is generally only in regard to the weather, actually.

  For the life of me I cannot remember what I had been trying to get that canvas up the stairway for, on the other hand.

  To paint on it, would be a natural supposition.

  Then again, after not having painted on it for months, perhaps I had wished to put it someplace where I would not have to be continually reminded that I had not done so.

  A canvas nine feet tall and five feet wide being hardly your most easily ignored reminder.

  Doubtless I had had something in mind, at any rate.

  There is a tape deck in the pickup truck here, now that I think about it.

  There would appear to be no tapes, however.

  Once, changing vehicles beside some tennis courts at Bayonne, in France, I turned an ignition key and found myself hearing the Four Serious Songs, by Brahms.

  Though I am possibly thinking about the Four Last Songs, by Richard Strauss.

  In either event it was not Kathleen Ferrier singing.

  Actually, a fairly high percentage of the vehicles that one comes upon will have tape decks, many still set to the on position.

  Rarely would it occur to me to give this any attention, however.

  Obviously, one's chief interest at such moments would concern whether the battery on hand still functioned.

  Assuming one had already determined that there was a key in the vehicle, and gasoline.

  Kirsten Flagstad was singing, at Bayonne. Which was in fact Bordeaux.

  To tell the truth, one was generally pleased enough that a car was moving so as to have driven some distance before noticing whether a tape deck was playing or not.

  Or at least to have gotten clear of whatever obstacles had made it necessary to switch vehicles to begin with.

/>   Often, bridges caused such switching. One solitary nuisance car can render your average bridge impassable.

  For some years I normally troubled to transfer my baggage from one vehicle to the next, as well. On certain trips I even thought to carry along a hand truck.

  When I was living at the Metropolitan I towed clear a number of my access routes, finally.

  Well, or sometimes made use of a Land Rover, and came or went directly across the lawns in Central Park.

  There is no longer any problem in regard to my husband's name, by the way. Even if I never saw him again, once we separated after Simon died.

  As a matter of fact there is a hand truck in the basement of this house.

  It is not one of my own, since I rarely make use of such contrivances any longer. Rather it was there when I came.

  There are eight or nine cartons of books in the basement also, in addition to the many books in the various rooms up here.

  The hand truck is badly rusted, as are the several bicycles.

  The basement is even more damp than the remainder of the house. I leave that door closed.

  The entrance to the basement is at the rear of the house, and below a sandy embankment, so that one does not see that in the painting.

  The perspective in the painting having been taken from out in front, if I have not indicated that.

  There are several baseballs in the basement also, on a ledge.

  There is also a lawnmower, although there is only one exceedingly small patch of grass, at one side of the house, that I can imagine ever having been mowed.

  That patch, on the other hand, does appear to be discernible in the painting.

  I can see now that it had, in fact, been mowed at the time when the painter painted it.

  The things one tardily becomes aware of.

  Which reminds me that I am now convinced that the sentence that came into my head yesterday, or the day before yesterday, about wandering through an endless nothingness, was written by Friedrich Nietzsche.

  Even if I am equally convinced that I have never read a single word written by Friedrich Nietzsche.

  I do believe that I once read Wuthering Heights, however, which I mention because all that I seem able to remember about it is that people are continually looking in or out of windows.

  The book called the Pensees was written by Pascal, by the way.

  I also believe I have not indicated that this is another day of typing, which is why I expressed hesitation as to whether quoting Friedrich Nietzsche had occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday.

  I did not make any sort of note about where I stopped, simply leaving that sheet in the machine.

  Possibly I stopped at the point where I came to the baseballs in the basement, since the topic of baseball has always bored me.

  Afterward I went for a walk along the beach, as far as the other house, which burned.

  Yesterday's sunset was a Vincent Van Gogh sunset, with a certain amount of anxiety in it.

  Perhaps I am only thinking about streaks.

  I have more than once wondered why the books in the basement are not upstairs with the others, actually.

  There is space. Many of the shelves up here are half empty.

  Although doubtless when I say they are half empty I should really be saying they are half filled, since presumably they were totally empty before somebody half filled them.

  Then again it is not impossible that they were once filled completely, becoming half empty only when somebody removed half of the books to the basement.

  I find this second possibility less likely than the first, although it is not utterly beyond consideration.

  In either event the present state of the shelves is an explanation for why so many of the books in the house are tilted, or standing askew. And thus have become permanently misshapen.

  Baseball When the Grass Was Real is actually the name of one of those, I believe.

  In that case one is at least made halfway curious about the meaning of the title, I must admit.

  Less than inordinately curious, baseball remaining baseball, but at least halfway curious.

  As a matter of fact perhaps I will mow my own grass, which is undeniably real, even if it is inordinately overgrown.

  I cannot mow the grass. Not with the lawnmower being as badly rusted as the hand truck and the bicycles.

  I have other bicycles, actually.

  One is doubtless beside the pickup truck. Another may be at the gas station, in the town.

  There was a bicycle in the cul-de-sac beneath the Acropolis, come to think about it.

  Perhaps the books in the basement are duplicate books.

  Like the two lives of Brahms, that would be. Even if both of those would appear to have been upstairs.

  There is nobody at the window in the painting of the house, by the way.

  I have now concluded that what I believed to be a person is a shadow.

  If it is not a shadow, it is perhaps a curtain.

  As a matter of fact it could actually be nothing more than an attempt to imply depths, within the room.

  Although in a manner of speaking all that is really in the window is burnt sienna pigment. And some yellow ochre.

  In fact there is no window either, in that same manner of speaking, but only shape.

  So that any few speculations I may have made about the person at the window would therefore now appear to be rendered meaningless, obviously.

  Unless of course I subsequently become convinced that there is somebody at the window all over again.

  I have put that badly.

  What I intended to say was that I may possibly become newly convinced that there is somebody at the window, hardly that somebody who had been at the window has gone away but might come back.

  In either case it remains a fact that no altered perception of my own, such as this one, changes anything in the painting.

  So that perhaps my earlier speculations remain valid after all.

  I have very little idea what I mean by that.

  One can scarcely speculate about a person when there is no person to speculate about.

  Yet there is no way of denying that one did make such speculations.

  Two days ago, when I was hearing Kathleen Ferrier, what exactly was I hearing?

  Yesterday, when I was speculating about a person at the window in the painting, what exactly was I speculating about?

  I have just put the painting back into the room with the atlas and the life of Brahms.

  As a matter of fact I have now also had another night's sleep.

  I mention that, this time, only because in a manner of speaking one could now say that it has this quickly become the day after tomorrow.

  Certain questions would still continue to appear unanswerable, however.

  Such as, for instance, if I have concluded that there is nothing in the painting except shapes, am I also concluding that there is nothing on these pages except letters of the alphabet?

  If one understood only the Greek alphabet, what would be on these pages?

  Doubtless, in Russia, I drove right past St. Petersburg without knowing it was St. Petersburg.

  As a matter of fact Anna Karenina could have driven right past without knowing it was St. Petersburg either.

  Seeing a sign indicating Stalingrad, how would Anna Karenina have been able to tell?

  Especially since the sign would have more likely indicated Leningrad?

  I have obviously now lost my train of thought altogether.

  Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.

  I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.

  Robert Rauschenberg came to my loft in SoHo one afternoon, actually. I do not remember that he erased anything.

  The reason for one of my bicycles being at the gas station is that I sometimes dec
ide to walk home, after having ridden somewhere.

  Although what I really decided that day was to bring back kerosene, which was difficult to ride with.

  I say was difficult, instead of is difficult, since I no longer carry kerosene, no longer making use of those lamps.

  When I stopped making use of them was after I knocked over the one that set fire to the other house, although doubtless I have mentioned this.

  One moment I was adjusting the wick, and a moment after that the entire bedroom was ablaze.

  These beach houses are all wood, of course. All I could do was sit at the dunes and watch it burn.

  For most of the night the entire sky was Homeric.

  It was on that same night that my rowboat disappeared, as it happened, although that is perhaps beside the point.

  One hardly pays attention to a missing rowboat when one's house is burning to the ground.

  Still, there it was, no longer on the beach.

  Sometimes I like to believe that it has been carried all of the way across the ocean by now, to tell the truth.

  As far as to the island of Lesbos, say. Or to Ithaca, even.

  Frequently, certain objects wash up onto the shore here that could well have been carried just as far in the opposite direction, as a matter of fact.

  Such as my stick, for instance, which I sometimes take with me when I walk.

  Doubtless the stick served some other purpose than simply being taken along on walks, at one time. One can no longer guess at what other purpose, however, because of the way it has been worn smooth by waves.

  Now and again I have also made use of the stick to write in the sand with, actually.

  In fact I have even written in Greek.

  Well, or in what looked like Greek, although I was actually only inventing that.

  What I would write were messages, to tell the truth, like the ones I sometimes used to write in the street.

  Somebody is living on this beach, the messages would say.

  Obviously it did not matter by then that the messages were only in an invented writing that nobody could read.

  Actually, nothing that I wrote was ever still there when I went back in any case, always being washed away.

  Still, if I have concluded that there is nothing in the painting except shapes, am I also concluding that there was not even invented writing in the sand, but only grooves from my stick?