Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  The black one, for Brooklyn. Well, and the other black one.

  And Stan Usual, I perhaps meant.

  None of which has answered the question as to how one can have one piece of music in mind and be hearing a different piece of music entirely, meanwhile.

  When I say one can be hearing a different piece of music entirely, by the way, I scarcely mean that one will hear the entire piece of music. What I mean is that one hears an entirely different composition, obviously.

  Possibly I did not need to make that explanation.

  At any rate what is now in my head is that painting by Jan Vermeer again.

  Although what I am more exactly thinking about is the sentence I typed just a few pages ago, in which I said that the young woman is asleep in the Metropolitan Museum.

  Unquestionably, where the young woman is asleep is in Delft, which is in Holland, and which is where Jan Vermeer painted.

  Well, Jan Vermeer of Delft being what he was generally called, in fact.

  Nonetheless, what has now struck me is that there is undeniably a way in which the young woman is likewise asleep in the Metropolitan Museum after all.

  Unless for some reason the painting itself is no longer in the museum, which one can sincerely doubt.

  Even if I had had need of the frame, I would have nailed the painting back into place.

  I always took the time to do that, by the way. No matter how chilly it happened to be at the moment.

  Once, in the National Gallery, I did crack a canvas by Carel Fabritius, but not so badly that I was not able to wax it and tape the back.

  But be that as it may, if I can sincerely doubt that the other painting is not not in the Metropolitan, then it is a fact that the young woman is asleep in the Metropolitan also.

  As it is also a fact that in the painting by Rogier van der Weyden they are taking Jesus down from the cross at Calvary, but they are also taking him down on the top floor of the Prado, in Madrid.

  Right next to the windows I washed.

  I see no way of refuting either of those statements. Even if, as I indicated, there appeared to be something wrong with the first of them when I typed it before.

  This is not something I intend to worry about, although I can fully understand how one might worry.

  Well, perhaps I have already said that I actually do worry.

  Although I have just now eaten a salad.

  While I was eating the salad I thought about Van Gogh being mad again.

  Lord above.

  Van Gogh was not mad for a second time. It was I who was thinking about him once more.

  And in any case it was Van Gogh trying to eat his pigments that I was more exactly once more thinking about.

  Perhaps the fact that I was eating myself was what reminded me of this, although what I was eating myself were various sorts of lettuce, along with mushrooms.

  When Friedrich Nietzsche was mad, he once started to cry because somebody was hitting a horse.

  And Jackie Robinson was who, for Brooklyn.

  Also Campy, was somebody called?

  Actually, there were prostitutes in Van Gogh's life too, although I know of no record of Gustave Flaubert having written to Van Gogh either.

  I scarcely mean to give any particular weight to this matter of prostitutes, incidentally, even if I would perhaps sometimes appear to.

  Certain matters simply come up, being connected to the subject at hand.

  Being sweaty after hitting tennis balls would hardly have appeared to be connected to the subject of Richard Strauss getting into bed to die, for instance, though it proved to be connected to that subject.

  As a matter of fact even so trivial an item as Guy de Maupassant eating his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower is very likely connected to something, just as inevitably.

  Even forgetting that I have just eaten my own lunch, or that Maupassant was even more mad than Van Gogh.

  In fact I would almost be willing to wager that there is some way in which Maupassant is even connected to the soccer shirt with the name Savona on its front, should one wish to pursue such a question.

  I cannot conceive of why anyone would wish to pursue such a question.

  And actually I never really knew what it was, about wearing that soccer shirt.

  Although Maupassant's rowing is now in my mind again, too.

  Had I held onto the shirt, doubtless I might have worn it when rowing my own boat.

  In fact it is perhaps unfortunate that I did not hold onto the lot of those shirts, in which case I might have worn a different one each time I rowed.

  What I find interesting about this notion is that from the front it would have always looked as if I were wearing the same shirt.

  Savona, it would have always said.

  From under one arm to the other.

  Assuredly the numerals on the back of each shirt would have been different, however.

  So that possibly I could have even changed my back in sequence.

  Although I am perhaps overlooking the question of sizes.

  What with the one I did wear having already been too large, doubtless many of the others would have been even larger than that.

  One is scarcely about to return to Savona to check on this, however.

  And in any event I have practically never worn a shirt, while rowing.

  Very likely I was not wearing anything on the day when I played tennis either, to tell the truth.

  I am still having my period, by the way.

  Having my period is another matter I do not particularly mean to give any weight to.

  In this case it is just something that happens to be happening.

  Although I have lost track of how long it is now, actually.

  Doubtless I could look back through what I have been writing, and try to calculate that. But I am fairly certain that I have not indicated all of the days.

  Sometimes I indicate them and sometimes I do not.

  Lately I have often merely stopped typing and then started again, without putting in that it is tomorrow.

  I did not put in throwing away the lilacs either, which was at least yesterday.

  And doubtless if I did look back I would be distracted by other things I have written anyhow.

  In fact without looking back at all, but by merely thinking about doing so, I have now remembered that a prostitute with whom Van Gogh once lived was named Sien.

  Something I doubtless did put in, somewhere, is that I once knew a great deal about many painters.

  Well, I knew a great deal about many painters for the same reason that Menelaus must surely have known a great deal about Paris, say.

  Even if I seem to have skipped Rogier van der Weyden and Jan Steen.

  Somehow I would also appear to know that Bach had eleven children, however.

  Or perhaps it was twenty children.

  Then again it may have been Vermeer who had eleven children.

  Though possibly what I have in mind is that Vermeer left only twenty paintings.

  Leonardo left fewer than that, perhaps only fifteen.

  Not one of these figures may be correct.

  Fifteen paintings do not seem like very many, especially when several of them are not even finished.

  Or are deteriorating.

  Then again it is perhaps quite a lot if one is Leonardo.

  Actually Vermeer left forty paintings.

  Brahms had no children at all, although he was known for carrying candy in his pocket to give to the children of other people, when he visited people who had children.

  And at least we have finally solved the question as to which life of Brahms it was that I read.

  Surely a history of music written for children, and printed in extraordinarily large type, would place emphasis on the fact that somebody being written about in that very book was known for carrying candy in his pocket to give to children when he visited people who had children.

  Even if Brahms had not done this very often, surely i
t would have been emphasized there.

  In fact it is not even impossible that Brahms hardly ever carried candy in his pocket to give to children.

  Very possibly Brahms did not even do this more than once in his life, and the entire legend was based on that single incident.

  Helen ran off with a lover only once in her life herself, and for three thousand years nobody would ever let her forget it.

  Here is some candy, children, Brahms doubtless said, once.

  Brahms gave candy to children, somebody wrote.

  The latter statement is in no way untrue. Any more than it is untrue that Helen was unfaithful.

  Although when one comes right down to it, who is to say that Brahms may even have not liked children?

  Or even disliked them, to the extreme?

  As a matter of fact quite possibly the only reason Brahms ever gave candy to any of them, even the once, may have been so they would go away altogether.

  Actually, Leonardo did not have children either, although nothing appears to have been said about candy either way, in his instance.

  Still, so much for your basic legend.

  So much for solving the question as to which life of Brahms it was that I read, as well, since what I have also now just remembered is the affair that Brahms perhaps had with Clara Schumann.

  I say perhaps, since it would appear that nobody has ever quite solved this, either.

  Assuredly there would have been no hint of it in the history of music written for children, however.

  Doubtless what Van Gogh wished was to reform Sien, when he invited her to live with him.

  This was before he cut off his ear, I believe.

  Often, in reading about Van Gogh, one gets the impression he must have been the first person to say hello to Dostoievski, in St. Petersburg.

  Actually, it strikes me as quite agreeable to think of Brahms having had an affair with Clara Schumann.

  Once, when I was a girl, I saw a film about music in Vienna, called Song of Love.

  All I can remember about the film is that everybody took turns playing the piano.

  But also that Katharine Hepburn had the part of Clara Schumann.

  So perhaps it is the notion of Brahms having had an affair with somebody like Katharine Hepburn which strikes me as so agreeable.

  Especially if his affair with Jane Avril did not last.

  And even if I have no idea what I have been saying that has now reminded me that Bach was almost blind, before he died.

  This was from copying too many scores late at night, if I remember.

  Homer was blind too, of course.

  Although possibly this was only something that was said, insofar as Homer was concerned.

  I believe I have already mentioned that there were no pencils, then.

  Which is to say that when people said Homer was blind, it was because what they really did not wish to say was that Homer did not know how to write.

  Emily Brontë was one more person who did not have children.

  Well, doubtless it would have been extraordinarily interesting if Emily Brontë did, what with the considerable likelihood that she never even once had a lover.

  Still, I would perhaps find it difficult to think of anybody I would rather be descended from than Emily Brontë.

  Unless Sappho, of course.

  Well, or Helen.

  To tell the truth, I may even have made believe that I was Helen, once.

  At Hisarlik, this would have been. Looking out across the plains that once were Troy, and dreaming for a while that the Greek ships were beached there still.

  Or that one could even see the evening's watchfires, being lighted along the shore.

  Well, it would have been a harmless enough thing to make believe.

  Even if Troy itself was disappointingly small. Like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.

  Although now that I remember, everything in William Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon was astonishingly tiny, too. As if only imaginary people had lived there then.

  Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed.

  I do wish that that last sentence had some meaning, since it certainly came close to impressing me for a moment.

  There is a great deal of sadness in the Iliad in either case, incidentally.

  Well, all that death. Wrist deep in that, and in loss, so many of them so often being.

  But too, with all of it so long ago, and forever gone.

  On the way to certain of his own conquests, Alexander the Great once stopped at Troy himself, to lay a wreath at Achilles's grave.

  That older war seeming so much closer to then than to now, of course.

  Still, even by the time of Alexander, it was almost a thousand years.

  I can almost not conceive of that, come to think about it.

  Julius Caesar laid a wreath at Achilles's grave, as well. Although that was only about three hundred years after Alexander.

  When I say only, what I imagine I mean is that it was practically as close as between Shakespeare and today, for instance.

  In which case I have unquestionably now lost track of what I was trying to conceive of altogether.

  Bertrand Russell was born fifteen years before Rupert Brooke, and was still alive more than fifty years after Brooke had died on Scyros, if that is perhaps connected to anything?

  If I have not mentioned having been at Stratford-on-Avon before, by the way, this is only because I assume it is taken for granted that everybody who goes to London will sooner or later also go to Stratford-on-Avon.

  London and Stratford-on-Avon always remaining equidistant from each other too, as it happens.

  Whatever the people who wrote the instructions in Japanese about situating phonograph speakers may have believed.

  And in the meantime I would appear to have let still another day pass without putting that one in, either.

  As a matter of fact I did not sit here at all, yesterday.

  For some reason, what I felt like doing yesterday was dismantling.

  Although after that I went for a ride in the pickup truck, as far as to the garbage disposal area.

  The tires on the pickup truck are getting a little soft.

  Have I said that on certain mornings, when the leaves are dewy, some of them are like jewels where the earliest sunlight glistens?

  It is what I sometimes have instead of a rosy-fingered dawn, possibly.

  Possibly the garbage disposal area is one more thing that I have never mentioned before, as well.

  One would have little reason to do so, however, it being nothing more extraordinary than a hole in the ground.

  It is quite a huge hole, but still.

  One follows a sign, to get there.

  To the Garbage Disposal Area, the sign says.

  In a manner of speaking, one follows the sign.

  What one is actually following is a road, of course.

  Possibly I did not need to make that explanation.

  My own garbage is always meager enough to be disposed of by being buried on the beach, incidentally.

  I do this while taking my walks, perhaps every third time I take one.

  And doubtless it goes without saying that any such garbage as had once been disposed of at the hole has long since decomposed.

  So that the hole is just a hole, as I have said.

  Although there is an enormous heap of broken bottles nearby.

  Perhaps the latter is somewhat extraordinary, after all.

  Certainly the bottles are extraordinarily pretty, being of various colors.

  Too, they glisten much more dramatically than do my wet morning leaves.

  In fact the entire mound of them is sometimes like a kind of glistening sculpture.

  Michelangelo would not have thought so, but I think so.

  Sculpture is the art of taking away superfluous material, Michelangelo once said.

  He al
so said, conversely, that painting is the art of adding things on.

  Although doubtless he would not have thought that the heap of added-on bottles is like a painting, either.

  Yet it is not one hundred percent unlike a painting by Van Gogh at that, when one comes right down to it.

  If one squints just a little, it is even very like a painting by Van Gogh.

  It is all of those swirls in Van Gogh that I am no doubt thinking about. Such as for instance in his painting called The Starry Night.

  As a matter of fact, at night is exactly when Van Gogh would have most probably chosen to paint such bottles.

  Assuming there was a moon, obviously.

  El Greco was fond of painting at night also, but only indoors. And one seriously doubts that El Greco would have been given inspiration by a garbage disposal area, in either case.

  Actually, the bottles could be effectively done by the light of a fire, as well.

  Even if it would have to be quite a large fire.

  Now and again I have built fires along the beach, by the way.

  This is always a pleasant diversion.

  This is also not including when I have built other sorts of fires along the beach. Such as out of entire houses.

  Doubtless it has generally been on an unexpectedly chilly evening in summer, when I have built the former.

  Or on the first evenings when one senses that winter is finally almost ending.

  Along the sand there will be frisky shadows, that will dance and fall away.

  Or, if there is snow, the flames will write a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.

  For the life of me, I cannot remember what I had been trying to get that nine-foot canvas up the main stairway in the Metropolitan Museum for.

  Doubtless my ankle was only sprained. Though it was swollen to twice its normal size.

  One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.

  Although probably where I should build my next one is at the garbage disposal area after all.

  One would have never created a painting by merely lighting a match and then squinting, before.

  El Greco did not care very much for Michelangelo as a painter, by the way.

  For that matter Picasso did not care very much for him, either.

  A good deal of Michelangelo reminded Picasso of Daumier, as a matter of fact.

  One doubts that Alfred North Whitehead's little bell would have rung if he had heard Picasso saying that.