Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  The genius smokes thoughtfully.

  •

  A giant brown pantechnicon disgorges the complete works of the Venerable Bede, in all translations, upon the genius’s lawn—a gift from the people of Cincinnati!

  •

  The genius is leafing through a magazine. Suddenly he is arrested by an advertisement:

  WHY DON’T YOU

  BECOME A

  PROFESSIONAL

  INTERIOR DECORATOR?

  Interior decoration is a high-income field, the advertisement says. The work is varied and interesting. One moves in a world of fashion, creativity, and ever-new challenge.

  The genius tears out the advertisement’s coupon.

  •

  Q: Is America a good place for genius?

  A: I have found America most hospitable to genius.

  •

  “I always say to myself, ‘What is the most important thing I can be thinking about at this minute?’ But then I don’t think about it.”

  •

  His driver’s license expires. But he does nothing about renewing it. He is vaguely troubled by the thought of the expired license (although he does not stop driving). But he loathes the idea of taking the examination again, of going physically to the examining station, of waiting in line for an examiner. He decides that if he writes a letter to the License Bureau requesting a new license, the bureau will grant him one without an examination, because he is a genius. He is right. He writes the letter and the License Bureau sends him a new license, by return mail.

  •

  In the serenity of his genius, the genius reaches out to right wrongs—the sewer systems of cities, for example.

  •

  The genius is reading The Genius, a 736-page novel by Theodore Dreiser. He arrives at the last page:

  “. . . What a sweet welter life is—how rich, how tender, how grim, how like a colorful symphony.”

  Great art dreams welled up into his soul as he viewed the sparkling deeps of space . . .

  The genius gets up and looks at himself in a mirror.

  •

  An organization has been formed to appreciate his thought: the Blaufox Gesellschaft. Meetings are held once a month, in a room over a cafeteria in Buffalo, New York. He has always refused to have anything to do with the Gesellschaft, which reminds him uncomfortably of the Browning Society. However, he cannot prevent himself from glancing at the group’s twice-yearly Proceedings, which contains such sentences as “The imbuement of all reaches of the scholarly community with Blaufox’s views must, ab ovo, be our . . .”

  He falls into hysteria.

  •

  Moments of self-doubt . . .

  “Am I really a—”

  “What does it mean to be a—”

  “Can one refuse to be a—”

  •

  His worst moment: He is in a church, kneeling in a pew near the back. He is gradually made aware of a row of nuns, a half dozen, kneeling twenty feet ahead of him, their heads bent over their beads. One of the nuns however has turned her head almost completely around, and seems to be staring at him. The genius glances at her, glances away, then looks again: she is still staring at him. The genius is only visiting the church in the first place because the nave is said to be a particularly fine example of Burgundian Gothic. He places his eyes here, there, on the altar, on the stained glass, but each time they return to the nuns, his nun is still staring. The genius says to himself, This is my worst moment.

  •

  He is a drunk.

  •

  “A truly potent abstract concept avoids, resists closure. The ragged, blurred outlines of such a concept, like a net in which the fish have eaten large, gaping holes, permit entry and escape equally. What does one catch in such a net? The sea horse with a Monet in his mouth. How did the Monet get there? Is the value of the Monet less because it has gotten wet? Are there tooth marks in the Monet? Do sea horses have teeth? How large is the Monet? From which period? Is it a water lily or group of water lilies? Do sea horses eat water lilies? Does Parke-Bernet know? Do oil and water mix? Is a mixture of oil and water bad for the digestion of the sea horse? Should art be expensive? Should artists wear beards? Ought beards to be forbidden by law? Is underwater art better than overwater art? What does the expression ‘glad rags’ mean? Does it refer to Monet’s paint rags? In the Paris of 1878, what was the average monthly rent for a north-lit, spacious studio in an unfashionable district? If sea horses eat water lilies, what percent of their daily work energy, expressed in ergs, is generated thereby? Should the holes in the net be mended? In a fight between a sea horse and a flittermouse, which would you bet on? If I mend the net, will you forgive me? Do water rats chew upon the water lilies? Is there a water buffalo in the water cooler? If I fill my water gun to the waterline, can I then visit the watering place? Is fantasy an adequate substitute for correct behavior?”

  •

  The genius proposes a world inventory of genius, in order to harness and coordinate the efforts of genius everywhere to create a better life for all men.

  Letters are sent out . . .

  The response is staggering!

  Telegrams pour in . . .

  Geniuses of every stripe offer their cooperation.

  The Times prints an editorial praising the idea . . .

  Three thousand geniuses in one room!

  The genius falls into an ill humor. He refuses to speak to anyone for eight days.

  •

  But now a green Railway Express truck arrives at his door. It contains a field of stainless-steel tulips, courtesy of the Mayor and City Council of Houston, Texas. The genius signs the receipt, smiling . . .

  Perpetua

  1.

  NOW PERPETUA was living alone. She had told her husband that she didn’t want to live with him any longer.

  “Why not?” he had asked.

  “For all the reasons you know,” she said.

  Harold’s farewell gift was a Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance policy, paid up for one year. Now Perpetua was putting valve oil on her trumpet. One of the valves was sticking. She was fourth-chair trumpet with the New World Symphony Orchestra.

  Perpetua thought: That time he banged the car door on my finger. I am sure it was deliberate. That time he locked me out while I was pregnant and I had to walk four miles after midnight to my father’s house. One does not forget.

  Perpetua smiled at the new life she saw spread out before her like a red velvet map.

  Back in the former house, Harold watched television.

  Perpetua remembered the year she was five. She had to learn to be nice, all in one year. She only learned part of it. She was not fully nice until she was seven.

  Now I must obtain a lover, she thought. Perhaps more than one. One for Monday, one for Tuesday, one for Wednesday . . .

  2.

  Harold was looking at a picture of the back of a naked girl, in a magazine for men. The girl was pulling a dress over her head, in the picture. This girl has a nice-looking back, Harold thought. I wonder where she lives?

  Perpetua sat on the couch in her new apartment smoking dope with a handsome bassoon player. A few cats walked around.

  “Our art contributes nothing to the revolution,” the bassoon player said. “We cosmeticize reality.”

  “We are trustees of Form,” Perpetua said.

  “It is hard to make the revolution with a bassoon,” the bassoon player said.

  “Sabotage?” Perpetua suggested.

  “Sabotage would get me fired,” her companion replied. “The sabotage would be confused with ineptness anyway.”

  I am tired of talking about the revolution, Perpetua thought.

  “Go away,” she said. The bassoon player put on his black raincoa
t and left.

  It is wonderful to be able to tell them to go away, she reflected. Then she said aloud, “Go away. Go away. Go away.”

  Harold went to visit his child, Peter. Peter was at school in New England. “How do you like school?” Harold asked Peter.

  “It’s O.K.,” Peter said. “Do you have a light?”

  Harold and Peter watched the game together. Peter’s school won. After the game, Harold went home.

  3.

  Perpetua went to her mother’s house for Christmas. Her mother was cooking the eighty-seventh turkey of her life. “God damn this turkey!” Perpetua’s mother shouted. “If anyone knew how I hate, loathe, and despise turkeys. If I had known that I would cook eighty-seven separate and distinct turkeys in my life, I would have split forty-four years ago. I would have been long gone for the tall timber.”

  Perpetua’s mother showed her a handsome new leather coat. “Tanned in the bile of matricides,” her mother said, with a meaningful look.

  Harold wrote to the magazine for men asking for the name and address of the girl whose back had bewitched him. The magazine answered his letter saying that it could not reveal this information. The magazine was not a pimp, it said.

  Harold, enraged, wrote to the magazine and said that if the magazine was not a pimp, what was it? The magazine answered that while it could not in all conscience give Harold the girl’s address, it would be glad to give him her grid coordinates. Harold, who had had map reading in the Army, was delighted.

  4.

  Perpetua sat in the trumpet section of the New World Symphony Orchestra. She had a good view of the other players because the sections were on risers and the trumpet section sat on the highest riser of all. They were playing Brahms. A percussionist had just split a head on the bass drum. “I luff Brahms,” he explained.

  Perpetua thought: I wish this so-called conductor would get his movie together.

  After the concert she took off her orchestra uniform and put on her suède jeans, her shirt made of a lot of colored scarves sewn together, her carved-wood neck bracelet, and her D’Artagnan cape with its silver lining.

  Perpetua could not remember what was this year and what was last year. Had something just happened, or had it happened a long time ago? She met many new people. “You are different,” Perpetua said to Sunny Marge. “Very few of the girls I know wear a tattoo of the head of Marshal Foch on their backs.”

  “I am different,” Sunny Marge agreed. “Since I posed for that picture in that magazine for men, many people have been after my back. My back has become practically an international incident. So I decided to alter it.”

  “Will it come off? Ever?”

  “I hope and pray.”

  Perpetua slept with Robert in his loft. His children were sleeping on mattresses in the other room. It was cold. Robert said that when he was a child he was accused by his teacher of being “pert.”

  “Pert?”

  Perpetua and Robert whispered to each other, on the mattress.

  5.

  Perpetua said, “Now, I am alone. I have thrown my husband away. I remember him. Once he seemed necessary to me, or at least important, or at least interesting. Now none of these things is true. Now he is as strange to me as something in the window of a pet shop. I gaze into the pet-shop window, the Irish setters move about, making their charming moves, I see the moves and see that they are charming, yet I am not charmed. An Irish setter is what I do not need. I remember my husband awaking in the morning, inserting his penis in his penis sheath, placing ornaments of bead and feather on his upper arms, smearing his face with ochre and umber—broad lines under the eyes and across the brow. I remember him taking his blowpipe from the umbrella stand and leaving for the office. What he did there I never knew. Slew his enemies, he said. Our dinner table was decorated with the heads of his enemies, whom he had slain. It was hard to believe one man could have so many enemies. Or maybe they were the same enemies, slain over and over and over. He said he saw girls going down the street who broke his heart, in their loveliness. I no longer broke his heart, he said. I had not broken his heart for at least a year, perhaps more than a year, with my loveliness. Well screw that, I said, screw that. My oh my, he said, my oh my, what a mouth. He meant that I was foulmouthed. This, I said, is just the beginning.”

  In the desert, Harold’s Land-Rover had a flat tire. Harold got out of the Land-Rover and looked at his map. Could this be the wrong map?

  6.

  Perpetua was scrubbing Sunny Marge’s back with a typewriter eraser.

  “Oh. Ouch. Oh. Ouch.”

  “I’m not making much progress,” Perpetua said.

  “Well I suppose it will have to be done by the passage of time,” Sunny Marge said, looking at her back in the mirror.

  “Years are bearing us to Heaven,” Perpetua agreed.

  Perpetua and Sunny Marge went cruising, on the boulevard. They saw a man coming toward them.

  “He’s awfully clean-looking,” Perpetua said.

  “Probably he’s from out of town,” Sunny Marge said.

  Edmund was a small farmer.

  “What is your cash crop?” Sunny Marge asked.

  “We have two hundred acres in hops,” the farmer replied. “That reminds me, would you ladies like a drink?”

  “I’d like a drink,” Perpetua said.

  “I’d like a drink too,” Sunny Marge said. “Do you know anywhere he can go, in those clothes?”

  “Maybe we’d better go back to my place,” Perpetua said.

  At Perpetua’s apartment Edmund recounted the history of hops.

  “Would you like to see something interesting?” Sunny Marge asked Edmund.

  “What is it?”

  “A portrait of Marshal Foch, a French hero of World War I.”

  “Sure,” Edmund said.

  The revolution called and asked Perpetua if she would tape an album of songs of the revolution.

  “Sure,” Perpetua said.

  Harold took ship for home. He shared a cabin with a man whose hobby was building scale models of tank battles.

  “This is a Sturmgeschütz of the 1945 period,” the man said. “Look at the bullet nicks. The bullet nicks are done by applying a small touch of gray paint with a burst effect of flat white. For small holes in the armor, I pierce with a hot nail.”

  The floor of Harold’s cabin was covered with tanks locked in duels to the death.

  Harold hurried to the ship’s bar. I wonder how Perpetua is doing, he thought. I wonder if she is happier without me. Probably she is. Probably she has found deep contentment by now. But maybe not.

  7.

  Perpetua met many new people. She met Henry, who was a cathedral builder. He built cathedrals in places where there were no cathedrals—Twayne, Nebraska, for example. Every American city needed a cathedral, Henry said. The role of the cathedral in the building of the national soul was well known. We should punish ourselves in our purses, Henry said, to shape up the national soul. An arch never sleeps, Henry said, pointing to the never-sleeping arches in his plans. Architecture is memory, Henry said, and the nation that had no cathedrals to speak of had no memory to speak of either. He did it all, Henry said, with a 30-man crew composed of 1 superintendent 1 masonry foreman 1 ironworker foreman 1 carpenter foreman 1 pipefitter foreman 1 electrician foreman 2 journeyman masons 2 journeyman ironworkers 2 journeyman carpenters 2 journeyman pipefitters 2 journeyman electricians 1 mason’s helper 1 ironworker’s helper 1 carpenter’s helper 1 pipefitter’s helper 1 electrician’s helper 3 gargoyle carvers 1 grimer 1 clerk-of-the-works 1 master fund-raiser 2 journeyman fund-raisers and 1 fund-raiser’s helper. Cathedrals are mostly a matter of thrusts, Henry said. You got to balance your thrusts. The ribs of your vaults intersect collecting the vertical and lateral thrusts at fixed points which are then buttressed or grounded although that�
��s not so important anymore when you use a steel skeleton as we do which may be cheating but I always say that cheating in the Lord’s name is O.K. as long as He don’t catch you at it. Awe and grace, Henry said, awe and grace, that’s what we’re selling and we offer a Poet’s Corner where any folks who were poets or even suspected of being poets can be buried, just like Westminster Abbey. The financing is the problem, Henry said. What we usually do is pick out some old piece of ground that was a cornfield or something like that, and put it in the Soil Bank. We take that piece of ground out of production and promise the government we won’t grow no more corn on it no matter how they beg and plead with us. Well the government sends a man around from the Agriculture Department and he agrees with us that there certainly ain’t no corn growing there. So we ask him about how much he thinks we can get from the Soil Bank and he says it looks like around a hundred and fifty thousand a year to him but that he will have to check with the home office and we can’t expect the money before around the middle of next week. We tell him that will be fine and we all go have a drink over to the Holiday Inn. Of course the hundred and fifty thousand is just a spit in the ocean but it pays for the four-color brochures. By this time we got our artist’s rendering of the Twayne Undenominational Cathedral sitting right in the lobby of the Valley National Bank on a card table covered with angel hair left over from Christmas, and the money is just pouring in. And I’m worrying about how we’re going to staff this cathedral. We need a sexton and a bellringer and a beadle and maybe an undenominational archbishop, and that last is hard to come by. Pretty soon the ground is broken and the steel is up, and the Bell Committee is wrangling about whether the carillon is going to be sixteen bells or thirty-two. There is something about cathedral building that men like, Henry said, this has often been noticed. And the first thing you know it’s Dedication Day and the whole state is there, it seems like, with long lines of little girls carrying bouquets of mistflowers and the Elks Honor Guard presenting arms with M-16s sent back in pieces from Nam and reassembled for domestic use, and the band is playing the Albinoni Adagio in G Minor which is the saddest piece of music ever written by mortal man and the light is streaming through the guaranteed stained-glass windows and the awe is so thick you could cut it with a knife.