Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  Edward turned away from the window. Edward received a cable from his wife in Maine. “Many happy birthdays,” the cable said. He was thirty-four. His father was in the hospital. His mother was in the hospital. Pia wore white plastic boots with her brown coat. When Edward inhaled sharply—a sharp intake of breath—they could hear a peculiar noise in his chest. Edward inhaled sharply. Pia heard the noise. She looked up. “When will you go to the doctor?” “I have to get something to read,” Edward said. “Something in English.” They walked to Markaryd. Pia wore a white plastic hat. At the train station they bought a Life magazine with a gold-painted girl on the cover. “Shall we eat something?” Edward asked. Pia said no. They bought a crowbar for the farm. Pia was sick on the way back. She vomited into a ditch.

  Pia and Edward walked the streets of Amsterdam. They were hungry. Edward wanted to go to bed with Pia but she didn’t feel like it. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “The wood isn’t catching.” “It’s too wet,” she said, “perhaps.” “I know it’s too wet,” Edward said. He went out to the wood barn and broke up more wood. He wore a leather glove on his right hand. Pia told Edward that she had been raped once, when she was twenty-two, in the Botanical Gardens. “The man that raptured me has a shop by the Round Tower. Still.” Edward walked out of the room. Pia looked after him placidly. Edward reëntered the room. “How would you like to have some Southern fried chicken?” he asked. “It’s the most marvellous-tasting thing in the world. Tomorrow I’ll make some. Don’t say ‘rapture.’ In English it’s ‘rape.’ What did you do about it?” “Nothing,” Pia said. Pia wore green rings, dresses with green sleeves, a green velvet skirt.

  Edward put flour in a paper bag and then the pieces of chicken, which had been dipped in milk. Then he shook the paper bag violently. He stood behind Pia and tickled her. Then he hugged her tightly. But she didn’t want to go to bed. Edward decided that he would never go to bed with Pia again. The telephone rang. It was for Fru Schmidt. Edward explained that Fru Schmidt was in Rome, that she would return in three months, that he, Edward, was renting the flat from Fru Schmidt, that he would be happy to make a note of the caller’s name, and that he would be delighted to call this note to the attention of Fru Schmidt when she returned, from Rome, in three months. Pia vomited. Pia lay on the bed sleeping. Pia wore a red dress, green rings on her fingers.

  Then Edward and Pia went to the cinema to see an Eddie Constantine picture. The film was very funny. Eddie Constantine broke up a great deal of furniture chasing international bad guys. Edward read two books he had already read. He didn’t remember that he had read them until he reached the last page of each. Then he read four paperback mysteries by Ross Macdonald. They were excellent. He felt slightly sick. Pia walked about with her hands clasped together in front of her chest, her shoulders bent. “Are you cold?” Edward asked. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her, and she said she was thinking about Amboise, where she had contrived to get locked in a chateau after visiting hours. She was also thinking, she said, about the green-and-gold wooden horses they had seen in Amsterdam. “I would like enormously to have one for this flat,” she said. “Even though the flat is not ours.” Edward asked Pia if she felt like making love now. Pia said no.

  It was Sunday. Edward went to the bakery and bought bread. Then he bought milk. Then he bought cheese and the Sunday newspaper, which he couldn’t read. Pia was asleep. Edward made coffee for himself and looked at the pictures in the newspaper. Pia woke up and groped her way to the bathroom. She vomited. Edward bought Pia a white dress. Pia made herself a necklace of white glass and red wood beads. Edward worried about his drinking. Would there be enough gin? Enough ice? He went out to the kitchen and looked at the bottle of Gordon’s gin. Two inches of gin.

  Edward and Pia went to Berlin on the train. Pia’s father thrust flowers through the train window. The flowers were wrapped in green paper. Edward and Pia climbed into the Mercedes-Benz taxi. “Take us to the Opera if you will, please,” Edward said to the German taxi-driver in English. “Ich verstehe nicht,” the driver said. Edward looked at Pia’s belly. It was getting larger, all right. Edward paid the driver. Pia wondered if the Germans were as loud in Germany as they were abroad. Edward and Pia listened for loudness.

  Edward received a letter from London, from Bedford Square Office Equipment, Ltd. “We have now completed fitting new parts and adjusting the Olivetti portable that was unfortunately dropped by you. The sum total of parts and labour comes to £7.10.0 and I am adding £1.00.0 hire charges, which leaves a balance of £1.10.0 from your initial deposit of £10. Yours.” Yours. Yours. Edward received a letter from Rome, from Fru Schmidt, the owner of the flat in Frederiksberg Allé. “Here are many Americans who have more opportunities to wear their mink capes than they like, I guess! I wish I had one, just one of rabbit or cat, it is said to be just as warm! but I left all my mink clothes behind me in Denmark! We spend most of our time in those horrible subways-metros which are like the rear entrance to Hell and what can you see of a city from there? Well you are from New York and so are used to it but I was born as a human being and not as a—” Here there was a sketch of a rat, in plan. Kurt poured a fresh cup of coffee for Edward. There were three people Pia and Edward did not know in the room, two men and a woman. Everyone watched Kurt pouring a cup of coffee for Edward. Edward explained the American position in South Vietnam. The others looked dubious. Edward and Pia discussed leaving each other.

  Pia slept on the couch. She had pulled the red-and-brown blanket up over her feet. Edward looked in the window of the used-radio store. It was full of used radios. Edward and Pia drank more sherry. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her and she said she was wondering if they should separate. “You don’t seem happy,” she said. “You don’t seem happy either,” he said. Edward tore the cover off a book. The book cover showed a dog’s head surrounded by flowers. The dog wore a black domino. Edward went to the well for water. He lifted the heavy wooden well cover. He was wearing a glove on his right hand. He carried two buckets of water to the kitchen. Then he went to the back of the farmhouse and built a large wooden veranda, roofed, thirty metres by nine metres. Fortunately there was a great deal of new lumber stacked in the barn. In the Frederiksberg Allé apartment in Copenhagen he stared at the brass mail slot in the door. Sometimes red-and-blue airmail envelopes came through the slot.

  Edward put his hands on Pia’s breasts. The nipples were the largest he had ever seen. Then he counted his money. He had two hundred and forty crowns. He would have to get some more money from somewhere. Maurice came in. “My house is three times the size of this one,” Maurice said. Maurice was Dutch. Pia and Edward went to Maurice’s house with Maurice. Maurice’s wife Randy made coffee. Maurice’s son Pieter cried in his wooden box. Maurice’s cats walked around. There was an open fire in Maurice’s kitchen. There were forty empty beer bottles in a corner. Randy said she was a witch. She pulled a long dark hair from her head. Randy said she could tell if the baby was to be a boy or a girl. She slipped a gold ring from her finger and, suspending the ring on the hair, dangled it over Pia’s belly. “It has to be real gold,” Randy said, referring to the ring. Randy was rather pretty.

  Pia and Edward and Ole and Anita sat on a log in France drinking white Algerian wine. It was barely drinkable. Everyone wiped the mouth of the bottle as it was passed from hand to hand. Edward wanted to sleep with Pia. “Yes,” Pia said. They left the others. Edward looked at his red beard in the shiny bottom part of the kerosene lantern. Pia thought about her first trip to the Soviet Union. Edward sat at the bar in Le Ectomorph listening to the music. Pia thought about her first trip to the Soviet Union. There had been a great deal of singing. Edward listened to the music. Don Cherry was playing trumpet. Steve Lacey was playing soprano sax. Kenny Drew was playing piano. The drummer and bassist were Scandinavians. Pia remembered a Russian boy she had known. Edward talked to a Swede. “You want to know who killed Kennedy?” the Swede said. “Y
ou killed Kennedy.” “No,” Edward said. “I did not.” Edward went back to Frederiksberg Allé. Pia was sleeping. She was naked. Edward lifted the blankets and looked at Pia sleeping. Pia moved in the bed and grabbed at the blankets. Edward went into the other room and tried to find something to read. Edward had peculiar-looking hair. Parts of it were too short and parts of it were too long. Edward and Pia telephoned friends in another city. “Come stay with us,” Edward and Pia said. “Please!”

  Edward regarded Pia. Pia felt sick: “Why doesn’t he leave me alone sometimes?” Edward told Pia about Harry. Once he had gotten Harry out of jail. “Harry was drunk. A cop told him to sit down. Harry stood up. Blam! Five stitches.” “What are stitches?” Edward looked it up in the Dansk-Engelsk Ordbog. Edward had several maneuvers that were designed to have an effect on Pia. One of them was washing the dishes. At other times he was sour for several hours. In Leningrad they visited Pia’s former lover, Paul. The streets in Leningrad are extremely wide. Paul called his friend Igor, who played the guitar. Paul called Igor on the telephone. Pia and Paul were happy to see each other again. Paul talked to Edward about South Vietnam. There was tea. Edward thought that he, Edward, was probably being foolish. But how could he tell? Edward washed more dishes. Igor’s fingers moved quickly among the frets. Edward had drunk too much tea. Edward had drunk too much brandy. Edward was in bed with Pia. “You look beautiful,” Edward said to Pia. Pia thought: I feel sick.

  In Copenhagen Edward bought The Penguin English Dictionary. Sixteen crowns. Pia told a story about one of the princesses. “She is an archeologist, you know? Her picture comes in the newspaper standing over a great hole with her end sticking up in the air.” Pia’s little brother wore a black turtleneck sweater and sang “We Shall Overcome.” He played the guitar. Kurt played the guitar. Kirsten played the guitar. Anita and Ole played the guitar. Deborah played the flute. Edward read Time and Newsweek. On Tuesday Edward read Newsweek, and on Wednesday, Time. Pia bought a book about babies. Then she painted her nails silver. Pia’s nails were very long. Organ music played by Finn Viderø was heard on the radio. Edward suggested that Pia go back to the university. He suggested that Pia study French, Russian, English, guitar, flute, and cooking. Pia’s cooking was rotten. Suddenly she wished she was with some other man and not with Edward. Edward was listening to the peculiar noise inside his chest. Pia looked at Edward. She looked at his red beard, his immense spectacles. I don’t like him, she thought. That red beard, those immense spectacles. SAAB jets roared overhead. Edward turned off the radio.

  Pia turned on the radio. Edward made himself a dry vermouth on the rocks with two onions. It was a way of not drinking. Edward felt sick. He had been reading Time and Newsweek. It was Thursday. Pia said to Edward that he was the only person she had ever loved for this long. “How long is it?” Edward asked. It was seven months. Edward cashed a check at American Express. The girl gave him green-and-blue Scandinavian money. Edward was pleased. Little moans of pleasure. He cashed another check at Cook’s. More money. Edward sold Pia’s farm for eighteen thousand crowns. Much more money. Pia was pleased. Edward sold Pia’s piano for three thousand crowns. General rejoicing. Klaus opened the door. Edward showed him the money. Pia made a chocolate cake with little red-and-white flags on the top. Pia lay in bed. She felt sick. They plugged in an electric heater. The lights went out. Herr Kepper knocked on the door. “Is here an electric heater?” Edward showed him the money. Pia hid the electric heater.

  Edward watched the brass slot on the door. Pia read to Edward from the newspaper. She read a story about four Swedes sent to prison for rapture. Edward asked Pia if she wanted to make love. “No,” she said. Edward said something funny. Pia tried to laugh. She was holding a piece of cake with a red-and-white flag on top. Edward bought a flashlight. Pia laughed. Pia still didn’t want to go to bed with Edward. It was becoming annoying. He owed the government back home a thousand dollars. Edward laughed and laughed. “I owe the government a thousand dollars,” Edward said to Pia, “did you know that?” Edward laughed. Pia laughed. They had another glass of wine. Pia was pregnant. They laughed and laughed. Edward turned off the radio. The lights went out. Herr Kepper knocked on the door. “The lights went out,” he said in Danish. Pia and Edward laughed. “What are you thinking about?” Edward asked Pia and she said she couldn’t tell him just then because she was laughing.

  A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking

  EDWARD WOKE up. Pia was already awake.

  “What did you dream?”

  “You were my brother,” Pia said. “We were making a film. You were the hero. It was a costume film. You had a cape and a sword. You were jumping about, jumping on tables. But in the second half of the film you had lost all your weight. You were thin. The film was ruined. The parts didn’t match.”

  “I was your brother?”

  Scarlatti from the radio. It was Sunday. Pete sat at the breakfast table. Pete was a doctor on an American nuclear submarine, a psychiatrist. He had just come off patrol, fifty-eight days under the water. Pia gave Pete scrambled eggs with mushrooms, wienerbrød, salami with red wine in it, bacon. Pete interpreted Pia’s dream.

  “Edward was your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your real brother is going to Italy, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “It may be something as simple as a desire to travel.”

  Edward and Pia and Pete went for a boat ride, a tour of the Copenhagen harbor. The boat held one hundred and twenty tourists. They sat, four tourists abreast, on either side of the aisle. A guide spoke into a microphone in Danish, French, German, and English, telling the tourists what was in the harbor.

  “I interpreted that dream very sketchily,” Pete said to Edward.

  “Yes.”

  “I could have done a lot more with it.”

  “Don’t.”

  “This is the Danish submarine fleet,” the guide said into the microphone. Edward and Pia and Pete regarded the four black submarines. There had been a flick every night on Pete’s submarine. Pete discussed the fifty-eight flicks he had seen. Pete sat on Edward’s couch discussing “The Sound of Music.” Edward made drinks. Rose’s Lime Juice fell into the Gimlet glasses. Then Edward and Pia took Pete to the airport. Pete flew away. Edward bought The Interpretation of Dreams.

  Pia dreamed that she had journeyed to a great house, a castle, to sing. She had found herself a bed in a room overlooking elaborate gardens. Then another girl appeared, a childhood friend. The new girl demanded Pia’s bed. Pia refused. The other girl insisted. Pia refused. The other girl began to sing. She sang horribly. Pia asked her to stop. Other singers appeared, demanding that Pia surrender the bed. Pia refused. People stood about the bed, shouting and singing.

  Edward smoked a cigar. “Why didn’t you just give her the bed?”

  “My honor would be hurt,” Pia said. “You know, that girl is not like that. Really she is very quiet and not asserting—asserting?—asserting herself. My mother said I should be more like her.”

  “The dream was saying that your mother was wrong about this girl?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What else?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Did you sing?”

  “I can’t remember,” Pia said.

  Pia’s brother Søren rang the doorbell. He was carrying a pair of trousers. Pia sewed up a split in the seat. Edward made instant coffee. Pia explained blufaerdighedskraenkelse. “If you walk with your trousers open,” she said. Søren gave Edward and Pia “The Joan Baez Songbook.” “It is a very good one,” he said in English. The doorbell rang. It was Pia’s father. He was carrying a pair of shoes Pia had left at the farm. Edward made more coffee. Pia sat on the floor cutting a dress out of blue, red, and green cloth. Ole arrived. He was carrying his guitar. He began to play something from “The Joan Baez Songbook.” Edward regarded Ole’s Mowgli hair. We be of o
ne blood, thee and I. Edward read The Interpretation of Dreams. “In cases where not my ego but only a strange person appears in the dream content, I may safely assume that by means of identification my ego is concealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement my ego.”

  Edward sat at a sidewalk café drinking a beer. He was wearing his brown suède shoes, his black dungarees, his black-and-white checked shirt, his red beard, his immense spectacles. Edward regarded his hands. His hands seemed old. “I am thirty-three.” Tiny girls walked past the sidewalk café wearing skintight black pants. Then large girls in skintight white pants.

  Edward and Pia walked along Frederiksberg Allé, under the queer box-cut trees. “Here I was knocked off my bicycle when I was seven,” Pia said. “By a car. In a snowstorm.”

  Edward regarded the famous intersection. “Were you hurt?”

  “My bicycle was demolished utterly.”

  Edward read The Interpretation of Dreams. Pia bent over the sewing machine, sewing blue, red, and green cloth.

  “Freud turned his friend R. into a disreputable uncle, in a dream.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted to be an assistant professor. He was bucking for assistant professor.”

  “So why was it not allowed?”

  “They didn’t know he was Freud. They hadn’t seen the movie.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Edward and Pia talked about dreams. Pia said she had been dreaming about unhappy love affairs. In these dreams, she said, she was very unhappy. Then she woke, relieved.

  “How long?”

  “For about two months, I think. But then I wake up and I’m happy. That it is not so.”

  “Why are they unhappy love affairs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it means you want new love affairs?”