Gallery-going
K. enters a large gallery on Fifty-seventh Street, in the Fuller Building. His entourage includes several ladies and gentlemen. Works by a geometricist are on show. K. looks at the immense, rather theoretical paintings.
“Well, at least we know he has a ruler.”
The group dissolves in laughter. People repeat the remark to one another, laughing.
The artist, who has been standing behind a dealer, regards K. with hatred.
K. Puzzled by His Children
The children are crying. There are several children, one about four, a boy, then another boy, slightly older, and a little girl, very beautiful, wearing blue jeans, crying. There are various objects on the grass, an electric train, a picture book, a red ball, a plastic bucket, a plastic shovel.
K. frowns at the children whose distress issues from no source immediately available to the eye, which seems indeed uncaused, vacant, a general anguish. K. turns to the mother of these children who is standing nearby wearing hip-huggers which appear to be made of linked marshmallows studded with diamonds but then I am a notoriously poor observer.
“Play with them,” he says.
This mother of ten quietly suggests that K. himself “play with them.”
K. picks up the picture book and begins to read to the children. But the book has a German text. It has been left behind, perhaps, by some foreign visitor. Nevertheless K. perseveres.
“A ist der Affe, er isst mit der Pfote.” (“A is the Ape, he eats with his Paw.”)
The crying of the children continues.
A Dream
Orange trees.
Overhead, a steady stream of strange aircraft which resemble kitchen implements, bread boards, cookie sheets, colanders.
The shiny aluminum instruments are on their way to complete the bombing of Sidi-Madani.
A farm in the hills.
Matters (from an Administrative Assistant)
“A lot of matters that had been pending came to a head right about that time, moved to the front burner, things we absolutely had to take care of. And we couldn’t find K. Nobody knew where he was. We had looked everywhere. He had just withdrawn, made himself unavailable. There was this one matter that was probably more pressing than all the rest put together. Really crucial. We were all standing around wondering what to do. We were getting pretty nervous because this thing was really. . . . Then K. walked in and disposed of it with a quick phone call. A quick phone call!”
Childhood of K. as Recalled by a Former Teacher
“He was a very alert boy, very bright, good at his studies, very thorough, very conscientious. But that’s not unusual; that describes a good number of the boys who pass through here. It’s not unusual, that is, to find these qualities which are after all the qualities that we look for and encourage in them. What was unusual about K. was his compassion, something very rare for a boy of that age—even if they have it, they’re usually very careful not to display it for fear of seeming soft, girlish. I remember, though, that in K. this particular attribute was very marked. I would almost say that it was his strongest characteristic.”
Speaking to No One but Waiters, He—
“The dandelion salad with bacon, I think.”
“The rijsttafel.”
“The poached duck.”
“The black bean purée.”
“The cod fritters.”
K. Explains a Technique
“It’s an expedient in terms of how not to destroy a situation which has been a long time gestating, or, again, how to break it up if it appears that the situation has changed, during the gestation period, into one whose implications are not quite what they were at the beginning. What I mean is that in this business things are constantly altering (usually for the worse) and usually you want to give the impression that you’re not watching this particular situation particularly closely, that you’re paying no special attention to it, until you’re ready to make your move. That is, it’s best to be sudden, if you can manage it. Of course you can’t do that all the time. Sometimes you’re just completely wiped out, cleaned out, totaled, and then the only thing to do is shrug and forget about it.”
K. on His Own Role
“Sometimes it seems to me that it doesn’t matter what I do, that it is enough to exist, to sit somewhere, in a garden for example, watching whatever is to be seen there, the small events. At other times, I’m aware that other people, possibly a great number of other people, could be affected by what I do or fail to do, that I have a responsibility, as we all have, to make the best possible use of whatever talents I’ve been given, for the common good. It is not enough to sit in that garden, however restful or pleasurable it might be. The world is full of unsolved problems, situations that demand careful, reasoned and intelligent action. In Latin America, for example.”
As Entrepreneur
The original cost estimates for burying the North Sea pipeline have been exceeded by a considerable margin. Everyone wonders what he will say about this contretemps which does not fail to have its dangers for those responsible for the costly miscalculations, which are viewed in many minds as inexcusable.
He says only: “Exceptionally difficult rock conditions.”
With Young People
K., walking the streets of unknown towns, finds himself among young people. Young people line these streets, narrow and curving, which are theirs, dedicated to them. They are everywhere, resting on the embankments, their guitars, small radios, long hair. They sit on the sidewalks, back to back, heads turned to stare. They stand implacably on street corners, in doorways, or lean on their elbows in windows, or squat in small groups at that place where the sidewalk meets the walls of buildings. The streets are filled with these young people who say nothing, reveal only a limited interest, refuse to declare themselves. Street after street contains them, a great number, more displayed as one turns a corner, rank upon rank stretching into the distance, drawn from the arcades, the plazas, staring.
He Discusses the French Writer, Poulet
“For Poulet, it is not enough to speak of seizing the moment. It is rather a question of, and I quote, ‘recognizing in the instant which lives and dies, which surges out of nothingness and which ends in dream, an intensity and depth of significance which ordinarily attaches only to the whole of existence.’
“What Poulet is describing is neither an ethic nor a prescription but rather what he has discovered in the work of Marivaux. Poulet has taken up the Marivaudian canon and squeezed it with both hands to discover the essence of what may be called the Marivaudian being, what Poulet in fact calls the Marivaudian being.
“The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant. The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line. The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events. He is constantly being overtaken by events. A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. In consequence he exists in a certain freshness which seems, if I may say so, very desirable. This freshness Poulet, quoting Marivaux, describes very well.”
K. Saved from Drowning
K. in the water. His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the shore. He retains his mask. His hands beat the surface of the water which tears and rips about him. The white foam, the green depths. I throw a line, the coils leaping out over the surface of the water. He has missed it. No, it appears that he has it. His right hand (sword arm) grasps the line that I have thrown him. I am on the bank, the rope wound round my waist, braced against a rock. K. now has both hands on the line. I pull him out of the water. He stands now on the bank, gasping.
“Thank you.”
Report
OUR GROUP is against the
war. But the war goes on. I was sent to Cleveland to talk to the engineers. The engineers were meeting in Cleveland. I was supposed to persuade them not to do what they are going to do. I took United’s 4:45 from LaGuardia arriving in Cleveland at 6:13. Cleveland is dark blue at that hour. I went directly to the motel, where the engineers were meeting. Hundreds of engineers attended the Cleveland meeting. I noticed many fractures among the engineers, bandages, traction. I noticed what appeared to be fracture of the carpal scaphoid in six examples. I noticed numerous fractures of the humeral shaft, of the os calcis, of the pelvic girdle. I noticed a high incidence of clay-shoveller’s fracture. I could not account for these fractures. The engineers were making calculations, taking measurements, sketching on the blackboard, drinking beer, throwing bread, buttonholing employers, hurling glasses into the fireplace. They were friendly.
They were friendly. They were full of love and information. The chief engineer wore shades. Patella in Monk’s traction, clamshell fracture by the look of it. He was standing in a slum of beer bottles and microphone cable. “Have some of this chicken à la Isambard Kingdom Brunel the Great Ingineer,” he said. “And declare who you are and what we can do for you. What is your line, distinguished guest?”
“Software,” I said. “In every sense. I am here representing a small group of interested parties. We are interested in your thing, which seems to be functioning. In the midst of so much dysfunction, function is interesting. Other people’s things don’t seem to be working. The State Department’s thing doesn’t seem to be working. The U.N.’s thing doesn’t seem to be working. The democratic left’s thing doesn’t seem to be working. Buddha’s thing—”
“Ask us anything about our thing, which seems to be working,” the chief engineer said. “We will open our hearts and heads to you, Software Man, because we want to be understood and loved by the great lay public, and have our marvels appreciated by that public, for which we daily unsung produce tons of new marvels each more life-enhancing than the last. Ask us anything. Do you want to know about evaporated thin-film metallurgy? Monolithic and hybrid integrated-circuit processes? The algebra of inequalities? Optimization theory? Complex high-speed micro-miniature closed and open loop systems? Fixed variable mathematical cost searches? Epitaxial deposition of semi-conductor materials? Gross interfaced space gropes? We also have specialists in the cuckooflower, the doctorfish, and the dumdum bullet as these relate to aspects of today’s expanding technology, and they do in the damnedest ways.”
I spoke to him then about the war. I said the same things people always say when they speak against the war. I said that the war was wrong. I said that large countries should not burn down small countries. I said that the government had made a series of errors. I said that these errors once small and forgivable were now immense and unforgivable. I said that the government was attempting to conceal its original errors under layers of new errors. I said that the government was sick with error, giddy with it. I said that ten thousand of our soldiers had already been killed in pursuit of the government’s errors. I said that tens of thousands of the enemy’s soldiers and civilians had been killed because of various errors, ours and theirs. I said that we are responsible for errors made in our name. I said that the government should not be allowed to make additional errors.
“Yes, yes,” the chief engineer said, “there is doubtless much truth in what you say, but we can’t possibly lose the war, can we? And stopping is losing, isn’t it? The war regarded as a process, stopping regarded as an abort? We don’t know how to lose a war. That skill is not among our skills. Our array smashes their array, that is what we know. That is the process. That is what is.
“But let’s not have any more of this dispiriting downbeat counterproductive talk. I have a few new marvels here I’d like to discuss with you just briefly. A few new marvels that are just about ready to be gaped at by the admiring layman. Consider for instance the area of realtime online computer-controlled wish evaporation. Wish evaporation is going to be crucial in meeting the rising expectations of the world’s peoples, which are as you know rising entirely too fast.”
I noticed then distributed about the room a great many transverse fractures of the ulna. “The development of the pseudo-ruminant stomach for underdeveloped peoples,” he went on, “is one of our interesting things you should be interested in. With the pseudo-ruminant stomach they can chew cuds, that is to say, eat grass. Blue is the most popular color worldwide and for that reason we are working with certain strains of your native Kentucky Poa pratensis, or bluegrass, as the staple input for the p/r stomach cycle, which would also give a shot in the arm to our balance-of-payments thing don’t you know. . . .” I noticed about me then a great number of metatarsal fractures in banjo splints. “The kangaroo initiative . . . eight hundred thousand harvested last year . . . highest percentage of edible protein of any herbivore yet studied . . .”
“Have new kangaroos been planted?”
The engineer looked at me.
“I intuit your hatred and jealousy of our thing,” he said. “The ineffectual always hate our thing and speak of it as anti-human, which is not at all a meaningful way to speak of our thing. Nothing mechanical is alien to me,” he said (amber spots making bursts of light in his shades), “because I am human, in a sense, and if I think it up, then ‘it’ is human too, whatever ‘it’ may be. Let me tell you, Software Man, we have been damned forbearing in the matter of this little war you declare yourself to be interested in. Function is the cry, and our thing is functioning like crazy. There are things we could do that we have not done. Steps we could take that we have not taken. These steps are, regarded in a certain light, the light of our enlightened self-interest, quite justifiable steps. We could, of course, get irritated. We could, of course, lose patience.
“We could, of course, release thousands upon thousands of self-powered crawling-along-the-ground lengths of titanium wire eighteen inches long with a diameter of .0005 centimetres (that is to say, invisible) which, scenting an enemy, climb up his trouser leg and wrap themselves around his neck. We have developed those. They are within our capabilities. We could, of course, release in the arena of the upper air our new improved pufferfish toxin which precipitates an identity crisis. No special technical problems there. That is almost laughably easy. We could, of course, place up to two million maggots in their rice within twenty-four hours. The maggots are ready, massed in secret staging areas in Alabama. We have hypodermic darts capable of piebalding the enemy’s pigmentation. We have rots, blights, and rusts capable of attacking his alphabet. Those are dandies. We have a hut-shrinking chemical which penetrates the fibres of the bamboo, causing it, the hut, to strangle its occupants. This operates only after 10 P.M., when people are sleeping. Their mathematics are at the mercy of a suppurating surd we have invented. We have a family of fishes trained to attack their fishes. We have the deadly testicle-destroying telegram. The cable companies are coöperating. We have a green substance that, well, I’d rather not talk about. We have a secret word that, if pronounced, produces multiple fractures in all living things in an area the size of four football fields.”
“That’s why—”
“Yes. Some damned fool couldn’t keep his mouth shut. The point is that the whole structure of enemy life is within our power to rend, vitiate, devour, and crush. But that’s not the interesting thing.”
“You recount these possibilities with uncommon relish.”
“Yes I realize that there is too much relish here. But you must realize that these capabilities represent in and of themselves highly technical and complex and interesting problems and hurdles on which our boys have expended many thousands of hours of hard work and brilliance. And that the effects are often grossly exaggerated by irresponsible victims. And that the whole thing represents a fantastic series of triumphs for the multi-disciplined problem-solving team concept.”
“I appreciate that.”
“We could
unleash all this technology at once. You can imagine what would happen then. But that’s not the interesting thing.”
“What is the interesting thing?”
“The interesting thing is that we have a moral sense. It is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced and sensitive moral sense the world has ever known.”
“Because it is on punched cards?”
“It considers all considerations in endless and subtle detail,” he said. “It even quibbles. With this great new moral tool, how can we go wrong? I confidently predict that, although we could employ all this splendid new weaponry I’ve been telling you about, we’re not going to do it.”
“We’re not going to do it?”
I took United’s 5:44 from Cleveland arriving at Newark at 7:19. New Jersey is bright pink at that hour. Living things move about the surface of New Jersey at that hour molesting each other only in traditional ways. I made my report to the group. I stressed the friendliness of the engineers. I said, It’s all right. I said, We have a moral sense. I said, We’re not going to do it. They didn’t believe me.
The Dolt
EDGAR WAS preparing to take the National Writers’ Examination, a five-hour fifty-minute examination, for his certificate. He was in his room, frightened. The prospect of taking the exam again put him in worlds of hurt. He had taken it twice before, with evil results. Now he was studying a book which contained not the actual questions from the examination but similar questions. “Barbara, if I don’t knock it for a loop this time I don’t know what we’ll do.” Barbara continued to address herself to the ironing board. Edgar thought about saying something to his younger child, his two-year-old daughter, Rose, who was wearing a white terrycloth belted bathrobe and looked like a tiny fighter about to climb into the ring. They were all in the room while he was studying for the examination.
Donald Barthelme Page 18
