by Lydia Davis
At last she stopped trying, and when her children came they saw an expression on her face that had not been there before—a stiff, dead look, a look of blankness and defeat that reflected her hopelessness. They immediately seized upon this expression as evidence of senility. She was astonished and hurt by their reaction. If they had been more patient with her, if they had stayed with her for longer periods of time, they would have seen something in her that was not senility. Yet they clung to the idea of senility and registered her name in a nursing home.
At first she was horrified, and everything in her cried out against the coming change. With renewed vigor she frowned at them and sent them a look that her husband had well understood. But they were not moved. In their eyes, her every gesture could now be called senile. Even quite normal behavior seemed mad to them, and nothing she did could reach them.
But once she was actually living in the nursing home, she made peace with her surroundings. During the day she sat in the library reading and thinking. She read very slowly and spent many more hours staring at the wall than at the book. She tested her mind against what she read and it grew stronger. Only the nurses were not quite real to her and puzzled her: she thought their brittle good humor was not honest. They did not like her, because her lucid eye made them uneasy. But she moved comfortably among her bloodless, wrinkled companions, more comfortably than she had ever moved among the vigorous people of her former life. She found the silence in the crowded dining room appropriate. She understood very well the morose men and women who struggled along the garden paths in the afternoon or sat staring through the porch railings at the street during the long summer twilight. Tentatively at first, and with growing wonder, she realized that she had been nearly dead among the living. Among the nearly dead, she was at last beginning to live.
Almost Over: Separate Bedrooms
They have moved into separate bedrooms now.
That night she dreams she is holding him in her arms. He dreams he is having dinner with Ben Jonson.
Money
I don’t want any more gifts, cards, phone calls, prizes, clothes, friends, letters, books, souvenirs, pets, magazines, land, machines, houses, entertainments, honors, good news, dinners, jewels, vacations, flowers, or telegrams. I just want money.
Acknowledgment
I have only to add
that the plates in the present volume
have been carefully re-etched
by Mr. Cuff.
VARIETIES OF DISTURBANCE (2007)
A Man from Her Past
I think Mother is flirting with a man from her past who is not Father. I say to myself: Mother ought not to have improper relations with this man “Franz”! “Franz” is a European. I say she should not see this man improperly while Father is away! But I am confusing an old reality with a new reality: Father will not be returning home. He will be staying on at Vernon Hall. As for Mother, she is ninety-four years old. How can there be improper relations with a woman of ninety-four? Yet my confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh.
Dog and Me
An ant can look up at you, too, and even threaten you with its arms. Of course, my dog does not know I am human, he sees me as dog, though I do not leap up at a fence. I am a strong dog. But I do not leave my mouth hanging open when I walk along. Even on a hot day, I do not leave my tongue hanging out. But I bark at him: “No! No!”
Enlightened
I don’t know if I can remain friends with her. I’ve thought and thought about it—she’ll never know how much. I gave it one last try. I called her, after a year. But I didn’t like the way the conversation went. The problem is that she is not very enlightened. Or I should say, she is not enlightened enough for me. She is nearly fifty years old and no more enlightened, as far as I can see, than when I first knew her twenty years ago, when we talked mainly about men. I did not mind how unenlightened she was then, maybe because I was not so enlightened myself. I believe I am more enlightened now, and certainly more enlightened than she is, although I know it’s not very enlightened to say that. But I want to say it, so I am willing to postpone being more enlightened myself so that I can still say a thing like that about a friend.
The Good Taste Contest
The husband and wife were competing in a Good Taste Contest judged by a jury of their peers, men and women of good taste, including a fabric designer, a rare-book dealer, a pastry cook, and a librarian. The wife was judged to have better taste in furniture, especially antique furniture. The husband was judged to have overall poor taste in lighting fixtures, tableware, and glassware. The wife was judged to have indifferent taste in window treatments, but the husband and wife both were judged to have good taste in floor coverings, bed linen, bath linen, large appliances, and small appliances. The husband was felt to have good taste in carpets, but only fair taste in upholstery fabrics. The husband was felt to have very good taste in both food and alcoholic beverages, while the wife had inconsistently good to poor taste in food. The husband had better taste in clothes than the wife though inconsistent taste in perfumes and colognes. While both husband and wife were judged to have no more than fair taste in garden design, they were judged to have good taste in number and variety of evergreens. The husband was felt to have excellent taste in roses but poor taste in bulbs. The wife was felt to have better taste in bulbs and generally good taste in shade plantings with the exception of hostas. The husband’s taste was felt to be good in garden furniture but only fair in ornamental planters. The wife’s taste was judged consistently poor in garden statuary. After a brief discussion, the judges gave the decision to the husband for his higher overall points score.
Collaboration with Fly
I put that word on the page,
but he added the apostrophe.
Kafka Cooks Dinner
I am filled with despair as the day approaches when my dear Milena will come. I have hardly begun to decide what to offer her. I have hardly confronted the thought yet, only flown around it the way a fly circles a lamp, burning my head over it.
I am so afraid I will be left with no other idea but potato salad, and it’s no surprise to her anymore. I mustn’t.
The thought of this dinner has been with me constantly all week, weighing on me in the same way that in the deep sea there is no place that is not under the greatest pressure. Now and then I summon all my energy and work at the menu as if I were being forced to hammer a nail into a stone, as if I were both the one hammering and also the nail. But at other times, I sit here reading in the afternoon, a myrtle in my buttonhole, and there are such beautiful passages in the book that I think I have become beautiful myself.
I might as well be sitting in the garden of the insane asylum staring into space like an idiot. And yet I know I will eventually settle on a menu, buy the food, and prepare the meal. In this, I suppose I am like a butterfly: its zigzagging flight is so irregular, it flutters so much it is painful to watch, it flies in what is the very opposite of a straight line, and yet it successfully covers miles and miles to reach its final destination, so it must be more efficient or at least more determined than it seems.
To torture myself is pathetic, too, of course. After all, Alexander didn’t torture the Gordian knot when it wouldn’t come untied. I feel I am being buried alive under all these thoughts, though at the same time I feel compelled to lie still, since perhaps I am actually dead after all.
This morning, for instance, shortly before waking up, which was also shortly after falling asleep, I had a dream that has not left me yet: I had caught a mole and carried it into the hops field, where it dove into the earth as though into water and disappeared. When I contemplate this dinner, I would like to disappear into the earth like that mole. I would like to stuff myself into the drawer of the laundry chest, and open the drawer from time to time to see if I have suffocated yet. It’s so much more surprising that one gets up every morning at all.
I know beet salad would be better. I
could give her beets and potatoes both, and a slice of beef, if I include meat. Yet a good slice of beef does not require any side dish, it is best tasted alone, so the side dish could come before, in which case it would not be a side dish but an appetizer. Whatever I do, perhaps she will not think very highly of my effort, or perhaps she will be feeling a little ill to begin with and not stimulated by the sight of those beets. In the case of the first, I would be dreadfully ashamed, and in the case of the second, I would have no advice—how could I?—but just a simple question: would she want me to remove all the food from the table?
Not that this dinner alarms me, exactly. I do after all have some imagination and energy, so perhaps I will be able to make a dinner that she will like. There have been other, passable dinners since the meal I cooked for Felice that was so unfortunate—though perhaps more good than bad came of that one.
It was last week that I invited Milena. She was with a friend. We met by accident on the street and I spoke impulsively. The man with her had a kind, friendly, fat face—a very correct face, as only Germans have. After making the invitation, for a long time I walked through the city as though it were a cemetery, I was so at peace.
Then I began to torment myself, like a flower in a flower box that is thrashed by the wind but loses not a single petal.
Like a letter covered with corrective pencil marks, I have my defects. After all, I am not strong to begin with, and I believe even Hercules fainted once. I attempt all day, at work, not to think about what lies ahead, but this costs me so much effort that there is nothing left for my work. I handle telephone calls so badly that after a while the switchboard operator refuses to connect me. So I had better say to myself, Go ahead and polish the silverware beautifully, then lay it out ready on the sideboard and be done with it. Because I polish it in my mind all day long—this is what torments me (and doesn’t clean the silver).
I love German potato salad made with good, old potatoes and vinegar, even though it is so heavy, so coercive, almost, that I feel a little nauseated even before I taste it—I might be embracing an oppressive and alien culture. If I offer this to Milena I may be exposing a gross part of myself to her that I should spare her above all, a part of myself that she has not yet encountered. A French dish, however, even if more agreeable, would be less true to myself, and perhaps this would be an unpardonable betrayal.
I am full of good intentions and yet inactive, just as I was that day last summer when I sat on my balcony watching a beetle on its back waving its legs in the air, unable to right itself. I felt great sympathy for it, yet I would not leave my chair to help it. It stopped moving and was still for so long I thought it had died. Then a lizard walked over it, slid off it, and tipped it upright, and it ran up the wall as though nothing had happened.
I bought the tablecloth on the street yesterday from a man with a cart. The man was small, almost tiny, weak, and bearded, with one eye. I borrowed the candlesticks from a neighbor, or I should say, she lent them to me.
I will offer her espresso after dinner. As I plan this meal I feel a little the way Napoleon would have felt while designing the Russian campaign, if he had known exactly what the outcome would be.
I long to be with Milena, not just now but all the time. Why am I a human being? I ask myself—what an extremely vague condition! Why can’t I be the happy wardrobe in her room?
Before I knew my dear Milena, I thought life itself was unbearable. Then she came into my life and showed me that that was not so. True, our first meeting was not auspicious, for her mother answered the door, and what a strong forehead the woman had, with an inscription on it that read: “I am dead, and I despise anyone who is not.” Milena seemed pleased that I had come, but much more pleased when I left. That day, I happened to look at a map of the city. For a moment it seemed incomprehensible to me that anyone would build a whole city when all that was needed was a room for her.
•
Perhaps, in the end, the simplest thing would be to make for her exactly what I made for Felice, but with more care, so that nothing goes wrong, and without the snails or the mushrooms. I could even include the sauerbraten, though when I cooked it for Felice, I was still eating meat. At that time I was not bothered by the thought that an animal, too, has a right to a good life and perhaps even more important a good death. Now I can’t even eat snails. My father’s father was a butcher and I vowed that the same quantity of meat he butchered in his lifetime was the quantity I would not eat in my own lifetime. For a long time now I have not tasted meat, though I eat milk and butter, but for Milena, I would make sauerbraten again.
My own appetite is never large. I am thinner than I should be, but I have been thin for a long time. Some years ago, for instance, I often went rowing on the Moldau in a small boat. I would row upriver and then lie on my back in the bottom of the boat and drift back down with the current. A friend once happened to be crossing a bridge and saw me floating along under it. He said it was as if Judgment Day had arrived and my coffin had been opened. But then he himself had grown almost fat by then, massive, and knew little about thin people except that they were thin. At least this weight on my feet is really my own property.
She may not even want to come anymore, not because she is fickle, but because she is exhausted, which is understandable. If she does not come it would be wrong to say I will miss her, because she is always so present in my imagination. Yet she will be at a different address and I will be sitting at the kitchen table with my face in my hands.
If she comes, I will smile and smile, I have inherited this from an old aunt of mine who also used to smile incessantly, but both of us out of embarrassment rather than good humor or compassion. I won’t be able to speak, I won’t even be happy, because after the preparation of the meal I won’t have the strength. And if, with my sorry excuse for a first course resting in a bowl in my hands, I hesitate to leave the kitchen and enter the dining room, and if she, at the same time, feeling my embarrassment, hesitates to leave the living room and enter the dining room from the other side, then for that long interval the beautiful room will be empty.
Ah, well—one man fights at Marathon, the other in the kitchen.
Still, I have decided on nearly all the menu now and I have begun to prepare it by imagining our dinner, every detail of it, from beginning to end. I repeat this sentence to myself senselessly, my teeth chattering: “Then we’ll run into the forest.” Senselessly, because there is no forest here, and there would be no question of running in any case.
I have faith that she will come, though along with my faith is the same fear that always accompanies my faith, the fear that has been inherent in all faith, anyway, since the beginning of time.
Felice and I were not engaged at the time of that unfortunate dinner, though we had been engaged three years before and were to be engaged again one week later—surely not as a result of the dinner, unless Felice’s compassion for me was further aroused by the futility of my efforts to make a good kasha varnishke, potato pancakes, and sauerbraten. Our eventual breakup, on the other hand, probably has more explanations than it really needs—this is ridiculous, but certain experts maintain that even the air here in this city may encourage inconstancy.
I was excited as one always is by something new. I was naturally somewhat frightened as well. I thought a traditional German or Czech meal might be best, even if rather heavy for July. I remained for some time undecided even in my dreams. At one point I simply gave up and contemplated leaving the city. Then I decided to stay, although simply lying around on the balcony may not really deserve to be called a decision. At these times I appear to be paralyzed with indecision while my thoughts are beating furiously within my head, just as a dragonfly appears to hang motionless in midair while its wings are beating furiously against the steady breeze. At last I jumped up like a stranger pulling another stranger out of bed.
The fact that I planned the meal carefully was probably insignificant. I wanted to prepare something wholesome, since she nee
ded to build up her strength. I remember gathering the mushrooms in the early morning, creeping among the trees in plain sight of two elderly sisters—who appeared to disapprove deeply of me or my basket. Or perhaps of the fact that I was wearing a good suit in the forest. But their approval would have been more or less the same thing.
As the hour approached, I was afraid, for a little while, that she would not come, instead of being afraid, as I should have been, that she would in fact come. At first she had said she might not come. It was strange of her to do that. I was like an errand boy who could no longer run errands but still hoped for some kind of employment.
Just as a very small animal in the woods makes a disproportionate amount of noise and disturbance among the leaves and twigs on the ground when it is frightened and rushes to its hole, or even when it is not frightened but merely hunting for nuts, so that one thinks a bear is about to burst into the clearing, whereas it is only a mouse—this is what my emotion was like, so small and yet so noisy. I asked her please not to come to dinner, but then I asked her please not to listen to me but to come anyway. Our words are so often those of some unknown, alien being. I don’t believe any speeches anymore. Even the most beautiful speech contains a worm.
Once, when we ate together in a restaurant, I was as ashamed of the dinner as though I had made it myself. The very first thing they brought to the table ruined our appetite for the rest, even if it had been any good: fat white Leberknödeln floating in a thin broth whose surface was dotted with oil. The dish was clearly German, rather than Czech. But why should anything be more complicated between us than if we were to sit quietly in a park and watch a hummingbird fly up from the petunias to rest at the top of a birch tree?
