Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  —Meant to be one of those new towns where everyone would be happier, much happier, that was the idea.

  —Serenity. Peace. The dead are shown in art galleries, framed. Or sometimes, put on pedestals. Not much different from the practice elsewhere except that in Pool they display the actual—

  —Person.

  —Yes.

  —And they play a tape of the guy or woman talking, right next to his or her—

  —Frame or pedestal.

  —Prerecorded.

  —Naturally.

  —Shocked white faces talking.

  —Killed a few flowers and put them in pots under the faces, everybody does that.

  —Something keeps drawing you back like a magnet.

  —Watching the buffalo graze. It can’t be this that I’ve waited for, I’ve waited too long. I find it intolerable, all this putter. Yet in the end, wouldn’t mind doing a little grazing myself, it would look a little funny.

  —Is there bluegrass in heaven? Make inquiries. I saw the streets of Pool, a few curs broiling on spits.

  —And on another corner, a man spinning a goat into gold.

  —Pool projects positive images of itself through the great medium of film.

  —Cinemas filled with industrious product.

  —Real films. Sent everywhere.

  —Film is the great medium of this century—hearty, giggling film.

  —So even if one does not go there, one may assimilate the meaning of Pool.

  —I’d just like to rest and laze around.

  —Soundtracks in Burmese, Italian, Twi, and other tongues.

  —One film is worth a thousand words. At least a thousand.

  —There’s a film about the new barracks, and a film about the new amphitheater.

  —Good. Excellent.

  —In the one about the new barracks we see Squadron A at morning roll call, tense and efficient. “Mattingly!” calls the sergeant. “Yo!” says Mattingly. “Morgan!” calls the sergeant. “Yo!” says Morgan.

  —A fine bunch of men. Nervous, but fine.

  —In the one about the amphitheater, an eight-day dramatization of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.

  —What does Goethe say?

  —Goethe says: “I have devoted my whole life to the people and their improvement.”

  —Goethe said that?

  —And is quoted in the very superior Pool production which is enlustering the perception of Pool worldwide.

  —Rich, very rich.

  —And there is a film chronicling the fabulous Pool garage sales, where one finds solid-silver plates in neglected bags.

  —People sighing and leaning against each other, holding their silver plates. Think I’ll just whittle a bit, whittle and spit.

  —Lots of accommodations in Pool, all of the hotels are empty.

  —See if I have any benefits left under the G.I. Bill.

  —Pool is new, can make you new too.

  —I have not the heart.

  —I can get us a plane or a train, they’ve cut all the fares.

  —People sighing and leaning against one another, holding their silver plates.

  —So you just want to stay here? Stay here and be yourself?

  —Drop by the shoe store, pick up a pair of shoes.

  —Blackberries, buttercups, and wild red clover. I find the latest music terrific, although I don’t generally speaking care much for the new, qua new. But this new music! It has won from our group the steadiest attention.

  —Momma didn’t ’low no clarinet played in here. Unfortunately.

  —Momma.

  —Momma didn’t ’low no clarinet played in here. Made me sad.

  —Momma was outside.

  —Momma was very outside.

  —Sitting there ’lowing and not-’lowing. In her old rocking chair.

  —’Lowing this, not-’lowing that.

  —Didn’t ’low oboe.

  —Didn’t ’low gitfiddle. Vibes.

  —Rock over your damn foot and bust it, you didn’t pop to when she was ’lowing and not-’lowing.

  —Right. ’Course, she had all the grease.

  —True.

  —You wanted a little grease, like to buy a damn comic book or something, you had to go to Momma.

  —Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Her variously colored moods.

  —Mauve. Warm gold. Citizen’s blue.

  —Mauve mood that got her thrown in the jug that time.

  —Concealed weapons. Well, what can you do?

  —Carried a .357 daytimes and a .22 for evenings. Well, what can you do?

  —Momma didn’t let nobody work her over, nobody.

  —She just didn’t give a hang. She didn’t care.

  —I thought she cared. There were moments.

  —She never cared. Didn’t give pig shit.

  —You could even cry, she wouldn’t come.

  —I tried that, I remember. Cried and cried. Didn’t do a damn bit of good.

  —Lost as she was in the Eleusinian mysteries and the art of love.

  —Cried my little eyes out. The sheet was sopping.

  —Momma was not to be swayed. Unswayable.

  —Staring into the thermostat.

  —She had a lot on her mind. The chants. And Daddy, of course.

  —Let’s not do Daddy today.

  —Yes, I remember Momma, jerking the old nervous system about with her electric diktats.

  —Could Christ have performed the work of the Redemption had He come into the world in the shape of a pea? That was one she’d drop on you.

  —Then she’d grade your paper.

  —I got a C, once.

  —She dyed my beard blue, on the eve of my seventh marriage. I was sleeping on the sun porch.

  —Not one to withhold comment, Momma.

  —Got pretty damned tired of that old woman, pretty damned tired of that old woman. Gangs of ecstatics hanging about beating on pots and pans, trash-can lids—

  —Trying for a ticket to the mysteries.

  —You wanted a little grease, like to go to the brothel or something, you had to say, Momma can I have a little grease to go to the brothel?

  —She was often underly generous.

  —Give you eight when she knew it was ten.

  —She had her up days and her down days. Like most.

  —Out for a long walk one early evening I noticed in the bare brown cut fields to the right of me and to the left of me the following items of interest: in the field to the right of me, couple copulating in the shade of a car, tan Studebaker as I remember, a thing I had seen previously only in old sepia-toned photographs taken from the air by playful barnstormers capable of flying with their knees, I don’t know if that’s difficult or not—

  —And in the field to your left?

  —Momma. Rocking.

  —She’d lugged the old rocking chair all that way. In a mauve mood.

  —I tipped my hat. She did not return the greeting.

  —She was pondering. “The goddess Demeter’s anguish for all her children’s mortality.”

  —Said my discourse was sickening. That was the word she used. Said it repeatedly.

  —I asked myself: Do I give a bag of beans?

  —This bird that fell into the back yard?

  —The south lawn.

  —The back yard. I wanted to give it a Frito?

  —Yeah?

  —Thought it might be hungry. Sumbitch couldn’t fly you understand. It had crashed. Couldn’t fly. So I went into the house to get it a Frito. So I was trying to get it to eat the Frito. I had the damn bird in one hand, and in the other, the Frito.

  —She saw you and whopped you.

  —She did.
r />   —She gave you that “the bird is our friend and we never touch the bird because it hurts the bird” number.

  —She did.

  —Then she threw the bird away.

  —Into the gutter.

  —Anticipating no doubt handling of the matter by the proper authorities.

  —Momma. You’d ask her how she was and she’d say, “Fine.” Like a little kid.

  —That’s what they say. “Fine.”

  —That’s all you can get out of ’em. “Fine.”

  —Boy or girl, don’t make a penny’s worth of difference. “Fine.”

  —Fending you off. Similarly, Momma.

  —Momma ’lowed lute.

  —Yes. She had a thing for lute.

  —I remember the hours we spent. Banging away at our lutes.

  —Momma sitting there rocking away. Dosing herself with strange intoxicants.

  —Lime Rickeys.

  —Orange Blossoms.

  —Rob Roys.

  —Cuba Libres.

  —Brandy Alexanders and Bronxes. How could she drink that stuff?

  —An iron gut. And divinity, of course.

  —Well. Want to clean up some of this mess?

  —Some monster with claws, maybe velvet-covered claws or Teflon-covered claws, inhabits my dreams. Whistling, whistling. I say, Monster, how goes it with you? And he says, Quite happily, dreammate, there are certain criticisms, the Curator of Archetypes thinks I don’t quite cut it, thinks I’m shuckin’ and jivin’ when what I should be doing is attacking, attacking, attacking—

  —Ah, my bawcock, what a fine fellow thou art.

  —But on the whole, the monster says, I feel fine. Then he says, Gimme that corn flake back. I say, What? He says, Gimme that corn flake back. I say, You gave me that corn flake it’s my corn flake. He says, Gimme that corn flake back or I’ll claw you to thread. I say, I can’t man you gave it to me I already ate it. He says, C’mon man gimme the corn flake back did you butter it first? I say, C’mon man be reasonable, you don’t butter a corn flake—

  —How does it end?

  —It doesn’t end.

  —Is there help coming?

  —I called that number and they said whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.

  —Where is succor?

  —In the new music.

  —Yes, it isn’t often you hear a disco version of Un Coup de Dés. It’s strengthening.

  —The new music is drumless, which is brave. To make up for the absence of drums the musicians pray nightly to the Virgin, kneeling in their suits of lights in damp chapels provided for the purpose off the corridors of the great arenas—

  —Momma wouldn’t have ’lowed it.

  —As with much else. Momma didn’t ’low Patrice.

  —I remember. You still see her?

  —Once in a way. Saw her Saturday. I hugged her and her body leaped. That was odd.

  —How did that feel?

  —Odd. Wonderful.

  —The body knows.

  —The body is perspicacious.

  —The body ain’t dumb.

  —Words can’t say what the body knows.

  —Sometimes I hear them howling from the hospital.

  —The detox ward.

  —Tied to the bed with beige cloths.

  —We’ve avoided it.

  —So far.

  —Knock wood.

  —I did.

  —Well, it’s a bitch.

  —Like when she played Scrabble. She played to kill. Used the filthiest words insisting on their legitimacy. I was shocked.

  —In her robes of deep purple.

  —Seeking the ecstatic vision. That which would lift people four feet off the floor.

  —Six feet.

  —Four feet or six feet off the floor. Persephone herself appearing.

  —The chanting in the darkened telesterion.

  —Persephone herself appearing, hovering. Accepting offerings, balls of salt, solid gold serpents, fig branches, figs.

  —Hallucinatory dancing. All the women drunk.

  —Dancing with jugs on their heads, mixtures of barley, water, mint—

  —Knowledge of things unspeakable—

  —Still, all I wanted to do was a little krummhorn. A little krummhorn once in a while.

  —Can open graves, properly played.

  —I was never good. Never really good.

  —Who could practice?

  —And your clavier.

  —Momma didn’t ’low clavier.

  —Thought it would unleash in her impulses better leashed? I don’t know.

  —Her dark side. They all have them, mommas.

  —I mean they’ve seen it all, felt it all. Spilled their damn blood and then spooned out buckets of mushy squash meanwhile telling the old husband that he wasn’t number three on the scale of all husbands . . .

  —Tossed him a little bombita now and then just to keep him on his toes.

  —He was always on his toes, spent his whole life on his toes, the poor fuck. Piling up the grease.

  —We said we weren’t going to do Daddy.

  —I forgot.

  —Old Momma.

  —Well, it’s not easy, conducting the mysteries. It’s not easy, making the corn grow.

  —Asparagus too.

  —I couldn’t do it.

  —I couldn’t do it.

  —Momma could do it.

  —Momma.

  —Luckily we have the new music now. To give us aid and comfort.

  —And Susie.

  —Our Susie.

  —Our darling.

  —Our pride.

  —Our passion.

  —I have to tell you something. Susie’s been reading the Hite Report. She says other women have more orgasms than she does. Wanted to know why.

  —Where does one go to complain? Where does one go to complain, when fiends have worsened your life?

  —I told her about the Great Septuagesimal Orgasm, implying she could have one, if she was good. But it is growing late, very late indeed, for such as we.

  —But perhaps one ought not to complain, when fiends have worsened your life. But rather, emulating the great Stoics, Epictetus and so on, just zip into a bar and lift a few, whilst listening to the new, incorrigible, great-white-shark, knife, music.

  —I handed the tall cool Shirley Temple to the silent priest. The new music, I said, is not specifically anticlerical. Only in its deepest effects.

  —I know the guy who plays washboard. Wears thimbles on all his fingers.

  —The new music burns things together, like a welder. The new music says, life becomes more and more exciting as there is less and less time.

  —Momma wouldn’t have ’lowed it. But Momma’s gone.

  —To the curious: A man who was a Communist heard the new music, and now is not. Fernando the fish-seller was taught to read and write by the new music, and is now a leper, white as snow. William Friend was caught trying to sneak into the new music with a set of bongos concealed under his cloak, but was garroted with his own bicycle chain, just in time. Propp the philosopher, having dinner with the Holy Ghost, was told of the coming of the new music but also informed that he would not live to hear it.

  —The new, down-to-earth, think-I’m-gonna-kill-myself music, which unwraps the sky.

  —Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

  —The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties.

  —The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties. The thing to keep your eye on is less time, more exciting. Remember that.

  —As if it were late, late, and we were ready to pull on our red-and-gold-striped nightshirts.

  —Cu
p of tea before retiring.

  —Cup of tea before retiring.

  —Dreams next.

  —We can deal with that.

  —Remembering that the new music will be there tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  —There is always a new music.

  —Thank God.

  —Pull a few hairs out of your nose poised before the mirror.

  —Routine maintenance, nothing to write home about.

  Cortés and Montezuma

  BECAUSE CORTÉS lands on a day specified in the ancient writings, because he is dressed in black, because his armor is silver in color, a certain ugliness of the strangers taken as a group—for these reasons, Montezuma considers Cortés to be Quetzalcoatl, the great god who left Mexico many years before, on a raft of snakes, vowing to return.

  Montezuma gives Cortés a carved jade drinking cup.

  Cortés places around Montezuma’s neck a necklace of glass beads strung on a cord scented with musk.

  Montezuma offers Cortés an earthenware platter containing small pieces of meat lightly breaded and browned which Cortés declines because he knows the small pieces of meat are human fingers.

  Cortés sends Montezuma a huge basket of that Spanish bread of which Montezuma’s messengers had said, on first encountering the Spaniards, “As to their food, it is like human food, it is white and not heavy, and slightly sweet . . .”

  Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. Little green flies fill the air. Cortés and Montezuma are holding hands; from time to time one of them disengages a hand to brush away a fly.

  Montezuma receives new messages, in picture writing, from the hills. These he burns, so that Cortés will not learn their contents. Cortés is trimming his black beard.

  Doña Marina, the Indian translator, is sleeping with Cortés in the palace given him by Montezuma. Cortés awakens; they share a cup of chocolate. She looks tired, Cortés thinks.

  Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma walk, holding hands. “Are you acquainted with a Father Sanchez?” Mon­tezuma asks. “Sanchez, yes, what’s he been up to?” says Cortés. “Overturning idols,” says Montezuma. “Yes,” Cortés says vaguely, “yes, he does that, everywhere we go.”

  At a concert later that evening, Cortés is bitten on the ankle by a green insect. The bug crawls into his velvet slipper. Cortés removes the slipper, feels around inside, finds the bug and removes it. “Is this poisonous?” he asks Doña Marina. “Perfectly,” she says.