Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  The presiding officer said that the man could not hear through the glass of the window.

  Ellen West said was he sure?

  The presiding officer asked if Ellen West would like to be put on some other committee.

  Ellen West said that she only felt safe on this committee.

  The presiding officer reminded her that even members of the committee were subject to the decisions of the committee, except of course for the presiding officer.

  Ellen West said she realized that and would like to move that the Worth girl fall in love with somebody.

  The presiding officer said that there was already a motion before the committee and asked if the committee was ready for a vote. The committee said it was. The motion was voted on and failed, 14–4.

  Ellen West moved that the Worth girl fall in love with the man standing outside the window.

  Mr. Macksey said you’re just trying to get him inside so we can take a look at him.

  Ellen West said well, why not, if you’re so sure he’s harmless.

  The presiding officer said that he felt that if the man outside were invited inside, a confusion of zones would result, which would be improper.

  Mr. Birnbaum said that it might not be a bad idea if the committee got a little feedback from the people for whom it was responsible, once in a while.

  Mrs. Mallory stated that she thought Mr. Birnbaum’s idea about feedback was a valuable and intelligent one but that she didn’t approve of having such a warm and beautiful human being as the Worth girl fall in love with an unknown quantity with demonstrably peculiar habits, vide the window, just to provide feedback to the committee.

  Mrs. Brown repeated that she had known the Worth girl’s mother.

  Mr. Macksey asked if Ellen West intended that the Worth girl’s love affair be a happy or an unhappy one.

  Ellen West said she would not wish to overdetermine somebody else’s love affair.

  Mr. O’Donoghue moved that the Worth girl be run over by a snowmobile.

  The presiding officer said that O’Donoghue was out of order and also that in his judgment Mr. O’Donoghue was reintroducing a defeated motion in disguised form.

  Mr. O’Donoghue said that he could introduce new motions all night long, if he so chose.

  Mrs. Brown said that she had to be home by ten to receive a long-distance phone call from her daughter in Oregon.

  The presiding officer said that as there was no second, Ellen West’s motion about the man outside the window need not be discussed further. He suggested that as there were four additional cases awaiting disposition by the committee he wondered if the case of the Worth girl, which was after all not that urgent, might not be tabled until the next meeting.

  Mr. Macksey asked what were the additional cases.

  The presiding officer said those of Dr. Benjamin Pierce, Casey McManus, Cynthia Croneis, and Ralph Lorant.

  Mr. Percy said that those were not very interesting names. To him.

  Mr. Macksey moved that the Worth girl be tabled. Mr. Birnbaum seconded. The motion carried.

  Mr. Birnbaum asked if he might have a moment for a general observation bearing on the work of the committee. The presiding officer graciously assented.

  Mr. Birnbaum said that he had observed, in the ordinary course of going around taking care of his business and so on, that there were not many pregnant women now. He said that yesterday he had seen an obviously pregnant woman waiting for a bus and had remembered that in the last half year he had seen no others. He said he wondered why this was and whether it wasn’t within the purview of the committee that there be more pregnant women, for the general good of the community, to say nothing of the future.

  Mrs. Mallory said she knew why it was.

  Mr. Birnbaum said why? and Mrs. Mallory smiled enigmatically.

  Mr. Birnbaum repeated his question and Mrs. Mallory smiled enigmatically again.

  Oh me oh my, said Mr. Birnbaum.

  The presiding officer said that Mr. Birnbaum’s observations, as amplified in a sense by Mrs. Mallory, were of considerable interest.

  He said further that such matters were a legitimate concern of the committee and that if he might be allowed to speak for a moment not as the presiding officer but merely as an ordinary member of the committee he would urge, strongly urge, that Cynthia Croneis become pregnant immediately and that she should have twin boys.

  Hear hear, said Mr. Macksey.

  How about a boy and a girl? asked Ellen West.

  The presiding officer said that would be O.K. with him.

  This was moved, seconded, and voted unanimously.

  On Mr. Macksey’s motion it was decided that Dr. Pierce win fifty thousand dollars in the lottery.

  It was pointed out by Mrs. Brown that Dr. Pierce was already quite well fixed, financially.

  The presiding officer reminded the members that justice was not a concern of the committee.

  On Mr. Percy’s motion it was decided that Casey McManus would pass the Graduate Record Examination with a score in the upper 10 percent. On Mr. O’Donoghue’s motion it was decided that Ralph Lorant would have his leg broken by having it run over by a snowmobile.

  Mr. Birnbaum looked at the window and said he’s still out there.

  Mr. O’Donoghue said for God’s sake, let’s have him in.

  Mr. Macksey went outside and asked the man in.

  The man hesitated in the doorway for a moment.

  Mr. Percy said come in, come in, don’t be nervous.

  The presiding officer added his urgings to Mr. Percy’s.

  The man left the doorway and stood in the middle of the room.

  The presiding officer inquired if the man had, perhaps, a grievance he wished to bring to the attention of the committee.

  The man said no, no grievance.

  Why then was he standing outside the window looking in? Mr. Macksey asked.

  The man said something about just wanting to “be with somebody.”

  Mr. Percy asked if he had a family, and the man said no.

  Are you from around here? asked Mrs. Mallory, and the man shook his head.

  Employed? asked Mr. Birnbaum, and the man shook his head.

  He wants to be with somebody, Mrs. Mallory said.

  Yes, said the presiding officer, I understand that.

  It’s not unusual, said Mr. Macksey.

  Not unusual at all, said Mrs. Brown. She again reminded the members that she had to be home by ten to receive a call from her daughter in Oregon.

  Maybe we should make him a member of the committee, said Mr. Percy.

  He could give us some feedback, said Mr. Birnbaum. I mean, I would assume that.

  Ellen West moved that the man be made a member of the committee. Mr. Birnbaum seconded. The motion was passed, 12–6.

  Mr. Percy got up and got a folding chair for the man and pulled it up to the committee table.

  The man sat down in the chair and pulled it closer to the table.

  All right, he said. The first thing we’ll do is, we’ll make everybody wear overalls. Gray overalls. Gray overalls with gray T-shirts. We’ll have morning prayers, evening prayers, and lunch prayers. Calisthenics for everyone over the age of four in the 5–7 P.M. time slot. Boutonnieres are forbidden. Nose rings are forbidden. Gatherings of one or more persons are prohibited. On the question of bedtime, I am of two minds.

  You Are as Brave as Vincent van Gogh

  YOU EAVESDROP in three languages. Has no one ever told you not to pet a leashed dog? We wash your bloody hand with Scotch from the restaurant.

  Children. I want one, you say, pointing to a mother pushing a pram. And there’s not much time. But the immense road-mending machine (yellow) cannot have children, even though it is a member of a family, it has siblings—the sheep’s-foot roller, the a
ir hammer.

  You ask: Will there be fireworks?

  I would never pour lye in your eyes, you say.

  Where do you draw the line? I ask. Top Job?

  Shall we take a walk? Is there a trout stream? Can one rent a car? Is there dancing? Sailing? Dope? Do you know Saint-Exupéry? Wind? Sand? Stars? Night flight?

  You don’t offer to cook dinner for me again today.

  The air hammer with the miserable sweating workman hanging on to the handles. I assimilated the sexual significance of the air hammer long ago. It’s new to you. You are too young.

  You move toward the pool in your black bikini, you will open people’s pop-top Pepsis for them, explicate the Torah, lave the brown shoulders of new acquaintances with Bain de Soleil.

  You kick me in the backs of the legs while I sleep.

  You are staring at James. James is staring back. There are six of us sitting on the floor around a low, glass-topped table. I become angry. Is there no end to it?

  See, there is a boy opening a fire hydrant, you stand closer, see, he has a large wrench on top of the hydrant and he is turning the wrench, the water rushes from the hydrant, you bend to feel the water on your hand.

  You are reading From Ritual to Romance, by Jessie L. Weston. But others have read it before you. Practically everyone has read it.

  At the pool, you read Saint-Exupéry. But wait, there is a yellow nylon cord crossing the pool, yellow nylon supported by red-and-blue plastic floats, it divides the children’s part from the deeper part, you are in the pool investigating, flexing the nylon cord, pulling on it, yes, it is firmly attached to the side of the pool, to both sides of the pool. And in the kitchen you regard the salad chef, a handsome young Frenchman, he stares at you, at your tanned breasts, at your long dark (wet) hair, can one, would it be possible, at this hour, a cup of coffee, or perhaps tea . . .

  Soon you will be thirty.

  And the giant piece of yellow road-mending equipment enters the pool, silently, you are in the cab, manipulating the gears, levers, shove this one forward and the machine swims. Swims toward the man in the Day-Glo orange vest who is waving his Day-Glo orange flags in the air, this way, this way, here!

  He’s a saint, you say. Did you ever try to live with a saint?

  You telephone to tell me you love me before going out to do something I don’t want you to do.

  If you are not asking for fireworks you are asking for Miles Davis bound hand and foot, or Iceland. You make no small plans.

  See, there is a blue BOAC flight bag, open, on the floor, inside it a folded newspaper, a towel, and something wrapped in silver foil. You bend over the flight bag (whose is it? you don’t know) and begin to unwrap the object wrapped in silver foil. Half a loaf of bread. Satisfied, you wrap it up again.

  You return from California too late to vote. One minute too late. I went across the street to the school with you. They had locked the doors. I remember your banging on the doors. No one came to open them. Tears. What difference does one minute make? you screamed, in the direction of the doors.

  Your husband, you say, is a saint.

  And did no one ever tell you that the staircase you climbed in your dream, carrying the long brown velvet skirt, in your dream, is a very old staircase?

  I remind myself to tell you that you are abnormally intelligent. You kick me in the backs of the legs again, while I sleep.

  Parades, balloons, fêtes, horse races.

  You feel your time is limited. Tomorrow, you think, there will be three deep creases in your forehead. You offer to quit your job, if that would please me. I say that you cannot quit your job, because you are abnormally intelligent. Your job needs you.

  The salad chef moves in your direction, but you are lying on your back on the tennis court, parallel with and under the net, turning your head this way and that, applauding the players, one a tall man with a rump as big as his belly, which is huge, the other a fourteen-year-old girl, intent, lean stringy hair, sorry, good shot, nice one, your sunglasses stuck in your hair. You rush toward the mountain which is furnished with trees, ski lifts, power lines, deck chairs, wedding invitations, you invade the mountain as if it were a book, leaping into the middle, checking the ending, ignoring the beginning. And look there, a locked door! You try the handle, first lightly, then viciously.

  You once left your open umbrella outside the A&P, tied to the store with a string. When you came out of the store with your packages, you were surprised to find it gone.

  The three buildings across the street from my apartment—one red, one yellow, one brown—are like a Hopper in the slanting late-afternoon light. See? Like a Hopper.

  Is that a rash on my chest? Between the breasts? Those little white marks? Look, those people at the next table, all have ordered escargots, seven dozen in garlic butter arriving all at once, eighty-four dead snails on a single surface, in garlic butter. And last night, when it was so hot, I opened the doors to the balcony, I couldn’t sleep, I lay awake, I thought I heard something, I imagined someone climbing over the balcony, I got up to see but there was no one.

  You are as beautiful as twelve Hoppers.

  You are as brave as Vincent van Gogh.

  I make fireworks for you:

  * !* !]*!!*[!* !* and * % % *+&+&+ * % % *.

  If he is a saint, why did you marry him? It makes no sense. Outside in the street, some men with a cherry picker are placing new high-intensity bulbs in all the street lights, so that our criminals will be scalded, transfigured with light.

  Yesterday you asked me for the Princeton University Press.

  The Princeton University Press is not a toy, I said.

  It’s not?

  And then: Can we go to a movie in which there are fireworks?

  But there are fireworks in all movies, that is what movies are for—what they do for us.

  You should not have left the baby on the lawn. In a hailstorm. When we brought him inside, he was covered with dime-size blue bruises.

  At the End of the Mechanical Age

  I WENT to the grocery store to buy some soap. I stood for a long time before the soaps in their attractive boxes, RUB and FAB and TUB and suchlike, I couldn’t decide so I closed my eyes and reached out blindly and when I opened my eyes I found her hand in mine.

  Her name was Mrs. Davis, she said, and TUB was best for important cleaning experiences, in her opinion. So we went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant which as it happened she owned, she took me into the kitchen and showed me her stacks of handsome beige tortillas and the steam tables which were shiny-brite. I told her I wasn’t very good with women and she said it didn’t matter, few men were, and that nothing mattered, now that Jake was gone, but I would do as an interim project and sit down and have a Carta Blanca. So I sat down and had a cool Carta Blanca, God was standing in the basement reading the meters to see how much grace had been used up in the month of June. Grace is electricity, science has found, it is not like electricity, it is electricity and God was down in the basement reading the meters in His blue jump suit with the flashlight stuck in the back pocket.

  “The mechanical age is drawing to a close,” I said to her.

  “Or has already done so,” she replied.

  “It was a good age,” I said. “I was comfortable in it, relatively. Probably I will not enjoy the age to come quite so much. I don’t like its look.”

  “One must be fair. We don’t know yet what kind of an age the next one will be. Although I feel in my bones that it will be an age inimical to personal well-being and comfort, and that is what I like, personal well-being and comfort.”

  “Do you suppose there is something to be done?” I asked her.

  “Huddle and cling,” said Mrs. Davis. “We can huddle and cling. It will pall, of course, everything palls, in time . . .”

  Then we went back to my house to huddle and cling, most wo
men are two different colors when they remove their clothes especially in summer but Mrs. Davis was all one color, an ocher. She seemed to like huddling and clinging, she stayed for many days. From time to time she checked the restaurant keeping everything shiny-brite and distributing sums of money to the staff, returning with tortillas in sacks, cases of Carta Blanca, buckets of guacamole, but I paid her for it because I didn’t want to feel obligated.

  There was a song I sang her, a song of great expectations.

  “Ralph is coming,” I sang, “Ralph is striding in his suit of lights over moons and mountains, over parking lots and fountains, toward your silky side. Ralph is coming, he has a coat of many colors and all major credit cards and he is striding to meet you and culminate your foggy dreams in an explosion of blood and soil, at the end of the mechanical age. Ralph is coming preceded by fifty running men with spears and fifty dancing ladies who are throwing leaf spinach out of little baskets, in his path. Ralph is perfect,” I sang, “but he is also full of interesting tragic flaws, and he can drink fifty running men under the table without breaking his stride and he can have congress with fifty dancing ladies without breaking his stride, even his socks are ironed, so natty is Ralph, but he is also right down in the mud with the rest of us, he markets the mud at high prices for specialized industrial uses and he is striding, striding, striding, toward your waiting heart. Of course you may not like him, some people are awfully picky . . . Ralph is coming,” I sang to her, “he is striding over dappled plains and crazy rivers and he will change your life for the better, probably, you will be fainting with glee at the simple touch of his grave gentle immense hand although I am aware that some people can’t stand prosperity, Ralph is coming, I hear his hoofsteps on the drumhead of history, he is striding as he has been all his life toward you, you, you.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Davis said, when I had finished singing, “that is what I deserve, all right. But probably I will not get it. And in the meantime, there is you.”

  •

  God then rained for forty days and forty nights, when the water tore away the front of the house we got into the boat, Mrs. Davis liked the way I maneuvered the boat off the trailer and out of the garage, she was provoked into a memoir of Jake.