Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  “Screw that,” Rebecca said plainly, and pushed Hilda away. “Go hang out with Stephanie Sasser.”

  “I am not interested in Stephanie Sasser,” Hilda said for the second time.

  Very often one “pushes away” the very thing that one most wants to grab, like a lover. This is a common, although distressing, psychological mechanism, having to do (in my opinion) with the fact that what is presented is not presented “purely,” that there is a tiny little canker or grim place in it somewhere. However, worse things can happen.

  “Rebecca,” said Hilda, “I really don’t like your slight greenishness.”

  The term “lizard” also includes geckos, iguanas, chameleons, slowworms, and monitors. Twenty existing families make up the order, according to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Animal Life, and four others are known only from fossils. There are about twenty-five hundred species, and they display adaptations for walking, running, climbing, creeping, or burrowing. Many have interesting names, such as the Bearded Lizard, the Collared Lizard, the Flap-Footed Lizard, the Frilled Lizard, the Girdle-Tailed Lizard, and the Wall Lizard.

  “I have been overlooking it for these several years, because I love you, but I really don’t like it so much,” Hilda said. “It’s slightly—”

  “Knew it,” said Rebecca.

  Rebecca went into the bedroom. The color-television set was turned on, for some reason. In a greenish glow, a film called Green Hell was unfolding.

  I’m ill, I’m ill.

  I will become a farmer.

  Our love, our sexual love, our ordinary love!

  Hilda entered the bedroom and said, “Supper is ready.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pork with red cabbage.”

  “I’m drunk,” Rebecca said.

  Too many of our citizens are drunk at times when they should be sober—suppertime, for example. Drunkenness leads to forgetting where you have put your watch, keys, or money clip, and to a decreased sensitivity to the needs and desires and calm good health of others. The causes of overuse of alcohol are not as clear as the results. Psychiatrists feel in general that alcoholism is a serious problem but treatable, in some cases. A.A. is said to be both popular and effective. At base, the question is one of will power.

  “Get up,” Hilda said. “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “You told the truth,” said Rebecca.

  “Yes, it was the truth,” Hilda admitted.

  “You didn’t tell me the truth in the beginning. In the beginning, you said it was beautiful.”

  “I was telling you the truth, in the beginning. I did think it was beautiful. Then.”

  This “then,” the ultimate word in Hilda’s series of three brief sentences, is one of the most pain-inducing words in the human vocabulary, when used in this sense. Departed time! And the former conditions that went with it! How is human pain to be measured? But remember that Hilda, too . . . It is correct to feel for Rebecca in this situation, but, reader, neither can Hilda’s position be considered an enviable one, for truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.

  “What remains?” Rebecca said stonily.

  “I can love you in spite of—”

  Do I want to be loved in spite of? Do you? Does anyone? But aren’t we all, to some degree? Aren’t there important parts of all of us which must be, so to say, gazed past? I turn a blind eye to that aspect of you, and you turn a blind eye to that aspect of me, and with these blind eyes eyeball-to-eyeball, to use an expression from the early 1960’s, we continue our starched and fragrant lives. Of course it’s also called “making the best of things,” which I have always considered a rather soggy idea for an American ideal. But my criticisms of this idea must be tested against those of others—the late President McKinley, for example, who maintained that maintaining a good, if not necessarily sunny, disposition was the one valuable and proper course.

  Hilda placed her hands on Rebecca’s head.

  “The snow is coming,” she said. “Soon it will be snow time. Together then as in other snow times. Drinking busthead ’round the fire. Truth is a locked room that we knock the lock off from time to time, and then board up again. Tomorrow you will hurt me, and I will inform you that you have done so, and so on and so on. To hell with it. Come, viridian friend, come and sup with me.”

  They sit down together. The pork with red cabbage steams before them. They speak quietly about the McKinley Administration, which is being revised by revisionist historians. The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love. Which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page.

  The Reference

  “WARP.”

  “In the character?”

  “He warp ever’ which way.”

  “You don’t think we should consider him, then.”

  “My friend Shel McPartland whom I have known deeply and intimately and too well for more than twenty years, is, sir, a brilliant O.K. engineer–master builder–cum–city and state planner. He’ll plan your whole cotton-pickin’ state for you, if you don’t watch him. Right down to the flowers on the sideboard in the governor’s mansion. He’ll choose marginalia.”

  “I sir am not familiar sir with that particular bloom sir.”

  “Didn’t think you would be, you bein’ from Arkansas and therefore likely less than literate. You are the Arkansas State Planning Commission, are you not?”

  “I am one of it. Mr. McPartland gave you as a reference.”

  “Well sir let me tell you sir that my friend Shel McPartland who has incautiously put me down as a reference has a wide-ranging knowledge of all modern techniques, theories, dodges, orthodoxies, heresies, new and old innovations, and scams of all kinds. The only thing about him is, he warp.”

  “Sir, it is not necessary to use dialect when being telephone-called from the state of Arkansas.”

  “Different folk I talk to in different ways. I got to keep myself interested.”

  “I understand that. Leaving aside the question of warp for a minute, let me ask you this: Is Mr. McPartland what you would call a hard worker?”

  “Hard, but warp. He sort of goes off in his own direction.”

  “Not a team player.”

  “Very much a team player. You get you your team out there, and he’ll play it, and beat it, all by his own self.”

  “Does he fiddle with women?”

  “No. He has too much love and respect for women. He has so much love and respect for women that he has nothing to do with them. At all.”

  “You said earlier that you wouldn’t trust him to salt a mine shaft with silver dollars.”

  “Well sir that was before I fully understood the nature of your interest. I thought maybe you were thinking of going into business with him. Or some other damn-fool thing of that sort. Now that I understand that it’s a government gig . . . You folks don’t go around salting mine shafts with silver dollars, do you?”

  “No sir, that work comes under the competence of the Arkansas Board of Earth Resources.”

  “So, not to worry.”

  “But it doesn’t sound very likely if I may say so Mr. Cockburn sir that Mr. McPartland would neatly infit with our outfit. Which must of necessity as I’m sure you’re hip to sir concern itself mostly with the mundanities.”

  “McPartland is sublime with the mundanities.”

  “Truly?”

  “You should see him tying his shoes. Tying other people’s shoes. He’s good at inking-in. Excellent at erasing. One of the great erasers of our time. Plotting graphs. Figuring use-densities. Diddling flow charts. Inflating statistics. Issuing modestly deceptive reports. Chairing and charming. Dowsing for foundation funds. Only a fool and a simpleton sir would let a McPartland sl
ip through his fingers.”

  “But before you twigged to the fact sir that your role was that of a referencer, you signaled grave and serious doubts.”

  “I have them still. I told you he was warp and he is warp. I am attempting dear friend to give you McPartland in the round. The whole man. The gravamen and the true gen. When we reference it up, here in the shop, we don’t stint. Your interrobang meets our galgenspiel. We do good work.”

  “But is he reliable?”

  “Reliability sir is much overrated. He is inspired. What does this lick pay, by the way?”

  “In the low forties with perks.”

  “The perks include?”

  “Arkansas air. Chauffeured VW to and from place of employment. Crab gumbo in the cafeteria every Tuesday. Ruffles and flourishes played on the Muzak upon entry and exit from building. Crab gumbo in the cafeteria every Thursday. Sabbaticals every second, third, and fifth year. Ox stoptions.”

  “The latter term is not known to me.”

  “Holder of the post is entitled to stop a runmad ox in the main street of Little Rock every Saturday at high noon, preventing thereby the mashing to strawberry yogurt of one small child furnished by management. Photograph of said act to appear in the local blats the following Sunday, along with awarding of medal by the mayor. On TV.”

  “Does the population never tire of this heroicidal behavior?”

  “It’s bread and circuitry in the modern world, sir, and no place in that world is more modern than Arkansas.”

  “Wherefrom do you get your crabs?”

  “From our great sister state of Lose-e-anna, whereat the best world-class eating crabs hang out.”

  “The McPartland is a gumbohead from way back, this must be known to you from your other investigations.”

  “The organization is not to be tweedled with. Shel-baby’s partialities will be catered to, if and when. Now I got a bunch more questions here. Like, is he good?”

  “Good don’t come close. One need only point to his accomplishments in re the sewer system of Detroit, Mich. By the sewage of Detroit I sat down and wept, from pure stunned admiration.”

  “Is he fake?”

  “Not more than anybody else. He has façades but who does not?”

  “Does he know the blue lines?”

  “Excellent with the blue lines.”

  “Does he know the old songs?”

  “He’ll crack your heart with the old songs.”

  “Does he have the right moves?”

  “People all over America are sitting in darkened projection rooms right this minute, studying the McPartland moves.”

  “What’s this dude look like?”

  “Handsome as the dawn. If you can imagine a bald dawn.”

  “You mean he’s old?”

  “Naw, man, he’s young. A boy of forty-five, just like the rest of us. The thing is, he thinks so hard he done burned all the hair off his head. His head overheats.”

  “Is that a danger to standers-by?”

  “Not if they exercise due caution. Don’t stand too close.”

  “Maybe he’s too fine for us.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s got a certain common-as-dirt quality. That’s right under his laser-sharp M.I.T. quality.”

  “He sounds maybe a shade too rich for our blood. For us folk here in the downhome heartland.”

  “Lemme see, Arkansas, that’s one of them newer states, right? Down there at the bottom edge? Right along with New Mexico and Florida and such as that?”

  “Mr. Cockburn sir, are you jiving me?”

  “Would I jive you?”

  “Just for the record, how would you describe your personal relation to Mr. McPartland?”

  “Oh I think ‘bloody enemy’ might do it. Might come close. At the same time, I am forced to acknowledge merit. In whatever obscene form it chooses to take. McPartland worked on the kiss of death, did you know that? When he was young. Never did get it perfected but the theoretical studies were elegant, elegant. He’s what you might call a engineer’s engineer. He designed the artichoke that is all heart. You pay a bit of a premium for it but you don’t have to do all that peeling.”

  “Some people like the peeling. The leaf-by-leaf unveiling.”

  “Well, some people like to bang their heads against stone walls, don’t they? Some people like to sleep with their sisters. Some people like to put on suits and ties and go sit in a concert hall and listen to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for God’s sake. Some people—”

  “Is this part of his warp?”

  “It’s related to his warp. The warp to power.”

  “Any other glaring defects or lesions of the usual that you’d like to touch upon—”

  “I think not. Now you, I perceive, have got this bad situation down there in the great state of Arkansas. Your population is exploding. It’s mobile. You got people moving freely about, colliding and colluding, pairing off just as they please and exploding the population some more, lollygagging and sailboating and making leather moccasins from kits and God knows what all. And enjoying free speech and voting their heads off and vetoing bond issues carefully thought up and packaged and rigged by the Arkansas State Planning Commission. And generally helter-skeltering around under the gross equity of the democratic system. Is that the position, sir?”

  “Worse. Arkansas is, at present, pure planarchy.”

  “I intuited as much. And you need someone who can get the troops back on the track or tracks. Give them multifamily dwellings, green belts, dayrooms, grog rations, and pleasure stamps. Return the great state of Arkansas to its originary tidiness. Exert a planipotentiary beneficence while remaining a masked marvel. Whose very existence is known only to the choice few.”

  “Exactly right. Can McPartland do it?”

  “Sitting on his hands. Will you go to fifty?”

  “Fervently and with pleasure, sir. It’s little enough for such a treasure.”

  “I take 10 percent off the top, sir.”

  “And can I send you as well, sir, a crate of armadillo steaks, sugar-cured, courtesy of the A.S.P.C.? It’s a dream of beauty, sir, this picture that you’ve limned.”

  “Not a dream, sir, not a dream. Engineers, sir, never sleep, and dream only in the daytime.”

  The New Member

  THE PRESIDING officer noted that there was a man standing outside the window looking in.

  The members of the committee looked in the direction of the window and found that the presiding officer’s observation was correct: There was a man standing outside the window looking in.

  Mr. Macksey moved that the record take note of the fact.

  Mr. O’Donoghue seconded. The motion passed.

  Mrs. Brown wondered if someone should go out and talk to the man standing outside the window.

  Mrs. Mallory suggested that the committee proceed as if the man standing outside the window wasn’t there. Maybe he’d go away, she suggested.

  Mr. Macksey said that that was an excellent idea and so moved.

  Mr. O’Donoghue wondered if the matter required a motion.

  The presiding officer ruled that the man standing outside the window looking in did not require a motion.

  Ellen West said that she was frightened.

  Mr. Birnbaum said there was nothing to be frightened about.

  Ellen West said that the man standing outside the window looked larger than a man to her. Maybe it was not human, she said.

  Mr. Macksey said that that was nonsense and that it was only just a very large man, probably.

  The presiding officer stated that the committee had a number of pressing items on the agenda and wondered if the meeting could go forward.

  Not with that thing out there, Ellen West said.

  The presiding officer stated that the next order of
business was the matter of the Worth girl.

  Mr. Birnbaum noted that the Worth girl had been doing very well.

  Mrs. Brown said quite a bit better than well, in her opinion.

  Mr. O’Donoghue said that the improvement was quite remarkable.

  The presiding officer noted that the field in which she, the Worth girl, was working was a very abstruse one and, moreover, one in which very few women had successfully established themselves.

  Mrs. Brown said that she had known the girl’s mother quite well and that she had been an extremely pleasant person.

  Ellen West said that the man was still outside the window and hadn’t moved.

  Mr. O’Donoghue said that there was, of course, the possibility that the Worth girl was doing too well.

  Mr. Birnbaum said there was such a thing as too much too soon.

  Mr. Percy inquired as to the girl’s age at the present time and was told she was thirty-five. He then said that that didn’t sound like “too soon” to him.

  The presiding officer asked for a motion.

  Mr. O’Donoghue moved that the Worth girl be hit by a car.

  Mr. Birnbaum seconded.

  The presiding officer asked for discussion.

  Mrs. Mallory asked if Mr. O’Donoghue meant fatally. Mr. O’Donoghue said he did.

  Mr. Percy said he thought that a fatal accident, while consonant with the usual procedures of the committee, was always less interesting than something that left the person alive, so that the person’s situation was still, in a way, “open.”

  Mr. O’Donoghue said that Mr. Percy’s well-known liberalism was a constant source of strength and encouragement to every member of the committee, as was Mr. Percy’s well-known predictability.

  Mrs. Mallory said wouldn’t it look like the committee was punishing excellence?

  Mr. O’Donoghue said that a concern for how things looked was not and should never be a consideration of the committee.

  Ellen West said that she thought the man standing outside the window looking in was listening. She reminded the committee that the committee’s deliberations were supposed to be held in camera.