Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  “An irony.”

  “I suppose.”

  There is no day on which this conversation is not held and no detail of this conversation which is not replicated on any particular day on which the conversation is held.

  The catechist produces from beneath his cloak a banner. He unfurls the banner and holds the unfurled banner above his head with both hands. The banner says, YOU ARE INTERRUPTED IN THE MIDST OF MORE CONGENIAL WORK? BUT THIS IS GOD’S WORK. The catechist refurls the banner. He replaces the banner under his cloak. He says: “But you’ll go there again?”

  I say: “Yes. At eleven.”

  He says: “But the rain . . .”

  I say: “With her hands in the back pockets of her trousers.”

  He says: “Deo gratias.”

  The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace

  IN THE abandoned palazzo, weeds and old blankets filled the rooms. The palazzo was in bad shape. We cleaned the abandoned palazzo for ten years. We scoured the stones. The splendid architecture was furbished and painted. The doors and windows were dealt with. Then we were ready for the show.

  The noble and empty spaces were perfect for our purposes. The first act we hired was the amazing Numbered Man. He was numbered from one to thirty-five, and every part moved. And he was genial and polite, despite the stresses to which his difficult métier subjected him. He never failed to say “Hello” and “Goodbye” and “Why not?” We were happy to have him in the show.

  Then, the Sulking Lady was obtained. She showed us her back. That was the way she felt. She had always felt that way, she said. She had felt that way since she was four years old.

  We obtained other attractions—a Singing Sword and a Stone Eater. Tickets and programs were prepared. Buckets of water were placed about, in case of fire. Silver strings tethered the loud-roaring strong-stinking animals.

  The lineup for opening night included:

  A startlingly handsome man

  A Grand Cham

  A tulip craze

  The Prime Rate

  Edgar Allan Poe

  A colored light

  We asked ourselves: How can we improve the show?

  We auditioned an explosion.

  There were a lot of situations where men were being evil to women—dominating them and eating their food. We put those situations in the show.

  In the summer of the show, grave robbers appeared in the show. Famous graves were robbed, before your eyes. Winding-sheets were unwound and things best forgotten were remembered. Sad themes were played by the band, bereft of its mind by the death of its tradition. In the soft evening of the show, a troupe of agoutis performed tax evasion atop tall, swaying yellow poles. Before your eyes.

  The trapeze artist with whom I had an understanding . . . The moment when she failed to catch me . . .

  Did she really try? I can’t recall her ever failing to catch anyone she was really fond of. Her great muscles are too deft for that. Her great muscles at which we gaze through heavy-lidded eyes . . .

  We recruited fools for the show. We had spots for a number of fools (and in the big all-fool number that occurs immediately after the second act, some specialties). But fools are hard to find. Usually they don’t like to admit it. We settled for gowks, gulls, mooncalfs. A few babies, boobies, sillies, simps. A barmie was engaged, along with certain dumdums and beefheads. A noodle. When you see them all wandering around, under the colored lights, gibbering and performing miracles, you are surprised.

  I put my father in the show, with his cold eyes. His segment was called My Father Concerned about His Liver.

  Performances flew thick and fast.

  We performed The Sale of the Public Library.

  We performed Space Monkeys Approve Appropriations.

  We did Theological Novelties and we did Cereal Music (with its raisins of beauty) and we did not neglect Piles of Discarded Women Rising from the Sea.

  There was faint applause. The audience huddled together. The people counted their sins.

  Scenes of domestic life were put in the show.

  We used The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace.

  It is difficult to keep the public interested.

  The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders.

  Often we don’t know where our next marvel is coming from.

  The supply of strange ideas is not endless.

  The development of new wonders is not like the production of canned goods. Some things appear to be wonders in the beginning, but when you become familiar with them, are not wonderful at all. Sometimes a seventy-five-foot highly paid cacodemon will raise only the tiniest frisson. Some of us have even thought of folding the show—closing it down. That thought has been gliding through the hallways and rehearsal rooms of the show.

  The new volcano we have just placed under contract seems very promising . . .

  The Rise of Capitalism

  THE FIRST thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude—melancholy sadness—toward it. This attitude is not correct. Fortunately your letter came, at that instant. “Dear Rupert, I love you every day. You are the world, which is life. I love you I adore you I am crazy about you. Love, Marta.” Reading between the lines, I understood your critique of my attitude toward capitalism. Always mindful that the critic must “studiare da un punto di vista formalistico e semiologico il rapporto fra lingua di un testo e codificazione di un—” But here a big thumb smudges the text—the thumb of capitalism, which we are all under. Darkness falls. My neighbor continues to commit suicide, once a fortnight. I have his suicides geared into my schedule because my role is to save him; once I was late and he spent two days unconscious on the floor. But now that I have understood that I have not understood capitalism, perhaps a less equivocal position toward it can be “hammered out.” My daughter demands more Mr. Bubble for her bath. The shrimp boats lower their nets. A book called Humorists of the 18th Century is published.

  •

  Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most do not. The sense of community falls victim to this struggle. Increased abundance and prosperity are tied to growing “productivity.” A hierarchy of functionaries interposes itself between the people and the leadership. The good of the private corporation is seen as prior to the public good. The world market system tightens control in the capitalist countries and terrorizes the Third World. All things are manipulated to these ends. The King of Jordan sits at his ham radio, inviting strangers to the palace. I visit my assistant mistress. “Well, Azalea,” I say, sitting in the best chair, “what has happened to you since my last visit?” Azalea tells me what has happened to her. She has covered a sofa, and written a novel. Jack has behaved badly. Roger has lost his job (replaced by an electric eye). Gigi’s children are in the hospital being detoxified, all three. Azalea herself is dying of love. I stroke her buttocks, which are perfection, if you can have perfection, under the capitalistic system. “It is better to marry than to burn,” St. Paul says, but St. Paul is largely discredited now, for the toughness of his views does not accord with the experience of advanced industrial societies. I smoke a cigar, to disoblige the cat.

  •

  Meanwhile Marta is getting angry. “Rupert,” she says, “you are no better than a damn dawg! A plain dawg has more sensibility than you, when it comes to a woman’s heart!” I try to explain that it is not my fault but capitalism’s. She will have none of it. “I stand behind the capitalistic system,” Marta says. “It has given us everything we have—the streets, the parks, the great avenues and boulevards, the promenades and malls—and other things, too, that I can’t think of right now.” But what has the market been doing? I scan the list of the fifteen Most Loved Stocks:

 
Occident Pet

  983,100

  20⅝

 

  3¾

  Natomas

  912,300

  58⅜

 

  18½

  What chagrin! Why wasn’t I into Natomas, as into a fine garment, that will win you social credit when you wear it to the ball? I am not rich again this morning! I put my head between Azalea’s breasts, to hide my shame.

  •

  Honoré de Balzac went to the movies. He was watching his favorite flick, The Rise of Capitalism, with Simone Simon and Raymond Radiguet. When he had finished viewing the film, he went out and bought a printing plant, for fifty thousand francs. “Henceforth,” he said, “I will publish myself, in handsome expensive de-luxe editions, cheap editions, and foreign editions, duodecimo, sextodecimo, octodecimo. I will also publish atlases, stamp albums, collected sermons, volumes of sex education, remarks, memoirs, diaries, railroad timetables, daily newspapers, telephone books, racing forms, manifestos, libretti, abecedaries, works on acupuncture, and cookbooks.” And then Honoré went out and got drunk, and visited his girl friend’s house, and, roaring and stomping on the stairs, frightened her husband to death. And the husband was buried, and everyone stood silently around the grave, thinking of where they had been and where they were going, and the last handfuls of wet earth were cast upon the grave, and Honoré was sorry.

  •

  The Achievements of Capitalism:

  (a) The curtain wall

  (b) Artificial rain

  (c) Rockefeller Center

  (d) Casals

  (e) Mystification

  •

  “Capitalism sure is sunny!” cried the unemployed Laredo ­toolmaker, as I was out walking, in the streets of Laredo. “None of that noxious Central European miserabilism for us!” And indeed, everything I see about me seems to support his position. Laredo is doing very well now, thanks to application of the brilliant principles of the “new capitalism.” Its Gross Laredo Product is up, and its internal contradictions are down. Catfish-farming, a new initiative in the agri-business sector, has worked wonders. The dram-house and the card-house are each nineteen stories high. “No matter,” Azalea says. “You are still a damn dawg, even if you have ‘unveiled existence.’” At the Laredo Country Club, men and women are discussing the cathedrals of France, where all of them have just been. Some liked Tours, some Lyon, some Clermont. “A pious fear of God makes itself felt in this spot.” Capitalism arose and took off its pajamas. Another day, another dollar. Each man is valued at what he will bring in the marketplace. Meaning has been drained from work and assigned instead to remuneration. Unemployment obliterates the world of the unemployed individual. Cultural underdevelopment of the worker, as a technique of domination, is found everywhere under late capitalism. Authentic self-determination by individuals is thwarted. The false consciousness created and catered to by mass culture perpetuates ignorance and powerlessness. Strands of raven hair floating on the surface of the Ganges . . . Why can’t they clean up the Ganges? If the wealthy capitalists who operate the Ganges wig factories could be forced to install sieves, at the mouths of their plants . . . And now the sacred Ganges is choked with hair, and the river no longer knows where to put its flow, and the moonlight on the Ganges is swallowed by the hair, and the water darkens. By Vishnu! This is an intolerable situation! Shouldn’t something be done about it?

  •

  Friends for dinner! The crudités are prepared, green and fresh . . . The good paper napkins are laid out . . . Everyone is talking about capitalism (although some people are talking about the psychology of aging, and some about the human use of human beings, and some about the politics of experience). “How can you say that?” Azalea shouts, and Marta shouts, “What about the air?” As a flower moves toward the florist, women move toward men who are not good for them. Self-actualization is not to be achieved in terms of another person, but you don’t know that, when you begin. The negation of the negation is based on a correct reading of the wrong books. The imminent heat-death of the universe is not a bad thing, because it is a long way off. Chaos is a position, but a weak one, related to that “unfocusedness” about which I have forgotten to speak. And now the saints come marching in, saint upon saint, to deliver their message! Here are St. Albert (who taught Thomas Aquinas), and St. Almachius (martyred trying to put an end to gladiatorial contests), and St. Amadour (the hermit), and St. Andrew of Crete (whose “Great Kanon” runs to two hundred and fifty strophes), and St. Anthony of the Caves, and St. Athanasius the Athonite, and St. Aubry of the Pillar, and many others. “Listen!” the saints say. “He who desires true rest and happiness must raise his hope from things that perish and pass away and place it in the Word of God, so that, cleaving to that which abides forever, he may also together with it abide forever.” Alas! It is the same old message. “Rupert,” Marta says, “the embourgeoisment of all classes of men has reached a disgusting nadir in your case. A damn hawg has more sense than you. At least a damn hawg doesn’t go in for ‘the bullet wrapped in sugar,’ as the Chinese say.” She is right.

  •

  Smoke, rain, abulia. What can the concerned citizen do to fight the rise of capitalism, in his own community? Study of the tides of conflict and power in a system in which there is structural inequality is an important task. A knowledge of European intellectual history since 1789 provides a useful background. Information theory offers interesting new possibilities. Passion is helpful, especially those types of passion which are non-licit. Doubt is a necessary precondition to meaningful action. Fear is the great mover, in the end.

  The Temptation of St. Anthony

  YES, THE saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn’t like things that were ineffable. I think that’s quite understandable—that kind of thing can be extremely irritating, to some people. After all, everything is hard enough without having to deal with something that is not tangible and clear. The higher orders of abstraction are just a nuisance, to some people, although to others, of course, they are quite interesting. I would say that on the whole, people who didn’t like this kind of idea, or who refused to think about it, were in the majority. And some were actually angry at the idea of sainthood—not at the saint himself, whom everyone liked, more or less, except for a few, but about the idea he represented, especially since it was not in a book or somewhere, but actually present, in the community. Of course some people went around saying that he “thought he was better than everybody else,” and you had to take these people aside and tell them that they had misperceived the problem, that it wasn’t a matter of simple conceit, with which we are all familiar, but rather something pure and mystical, from the realm of the extraordinary, as it were; unearthly. But a lot of people don’t like things that are unearthly, the things of this earth are good enough for them, and they don’t mind telling you so. “If he’d just go out and get a job, like everybody else, then he could be saintly all day long, if he wanted to”—that was a common theme. There is a sort of hatred going around for people who have lifted their sights above the common run. Probably it has always been this way.

  For this reason, in any case, people were always trying to see the inside of the saint’s apartment, to find out if strange practices were being practiced there, or if you could discern, from the arrangement of the furniture and so on, if any had been, lately. They would ring the bell and pretend to be in the wrong apartment, these people, but St. Anthony would let them come in anyhow, even though he knew very well what they were thinking. They would stand around, perhaps a husband-and-wife team, and stare at the rug, which was ordinary beige wall-to-wall carpet from Kaufman’s, and then at the coffee table and so on, they would sort of slide into
the kitchen to see what he had been eating, if anything. They were always surprised to see that he ate more or less normal foods, perhaps a little heavy on the fried foods. I guess they expected roots and grasses. And of course there was a big unhealthy interest in the bedroom, the door to which was usually kept closed. People seemed to think he should, in pursuit of whatever higher goals he had in mind, sleep on the floor; when they discovered there was an ordinary bed in there, with a brown bedspread, they were slightly shocked. By now St. Anthony had made a cup of coffee for them, and told them to sit down and take the weight off their feet, and asked them about their work and if they had any children and so forth: they went away thinking, He’s just like anybody else. That was, I think, the way he wanted to present himself, at that time.

  Later, after it was all over, he moved back out to the desert.

  I didn’t have any particular opinion as to what was the right thing to think about him. Sometimes you have to take the long way round to get to a sound consensus, and of course you have to keep the ordinary motors of life running in the meantime. So, in that long year that saw the emergence of his will as one of its major landmarks, in our city, I did whatever I could to help things along, to direct the stream of life experience at him in ways he could handle. I wasn’t a disciple, that would be putting it far too strongly; I was sort of like a friend. And there were things I could do. For example, this town is pretty goodsized, more than a hundred thousand, and in any such town—maybe more so than in the really small ones, where everyone is scratching to survive—you run into people with nothing much to do who don’t mind causing a little trouble, if that would be diverting, for someone who is unusual in any way. So the example that Elaine and I set, in more or less just treating him like any one of our other friends, probably helped to normalize things, and very likely protected him, in a sense, from some of the unwelcome attentions he might otherwise have received. As men in society seem to feel that the problem is to get all opinions squared away with all other opinions, or at least in recognizable congruence with the main opinion, as if the world were a jury room that no one could leave until everybody agreed (and keeping in mind the ever-present threat of a mistrial), so the men, and the women too, of the city (which I won’t name to spare possible embarrassment to those of the participants who still live here) tried to think about St. Anthony, and by extension saintliness, in the approved ways of their time and condition.