Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  —Now we are grown, grown and proper.

  —Well, I misled you. The naked models are emotionally meaningful to us.

  —They are?

  —We love them and sleep with them all the time—before breakfast, after breakfast, during breakfast.

  —Why that’s all right!

  —Why that’s rather neat!

  —I like that!

  —That’s not so bad!

  —I wish you hadn’t told me that.

  —C’mon Hilda don’t be so single-minded, there are lots of other things you can do if you want.

  —I guess they operate on some kind of principle of exclusivity. Keeping some people out while letting other people in.

  —We got a Coushatta Indian in there, real full-blooded Coushatta Indian.

  —In there?

  —Yes. He does hanging walls out of scraps of fabric and twigs, very beautiful, and he does sand paintings and plays on whistles of various kinds, sometimes he chants, and he bangs on a drum, works in silver, and he’s also a weaver, and he translates things from Coushatta into English and from English into Coushatta and he’s also a crack shot and can bulldog steers and catch catfish on trotlines and ride bareback and make medicine out of common ingredients, aspirin mostly, and he sings and he’s also an actor. He’s very talented.

  —My whole life depends on it.

  —Listen Hilda maybe you could be an Associate. We have this deal whereby you pay twelve bucks a year and that makes you an Associate. You get the Circular and have all the privileges of an Associate.

  —What are they?

  —You get the Circular.

  —That’s all?

  —Well I guess you’re right.

  —I’m just going to sit here I’m not going to go away.

  —Your distress is poignant to me.

  —I’ll have the baby right here right on these steps.

  —Well maybe there’ll be good news one of these days.

  —I feel like a dead person sitting in a chair.

  —You’re still pretty and attractive.

  —That’s good to hear I’m pleased you think that.

  —And warm you’re warm you’re very warm.

  —Yes I have a warm nature very warm.

  —Weren’t you in the Peace Corps also years ago?

  —I was and drove ambulances too down in Nicaragua.

  —The Conservatory life is just as halcyon as you imagine it—precisely so.

  —I guess I’ll just have to go back to my house and clean up, take out the papers and the trash.

  —I guess that kid’ll be born one of these days, right?

  —Continue working on my études no matter what they say.

  —That’s admirable I think.

  —The thing is not to let your spirit be conquered.

  —I guess that kid’ll be born after a while, right?

  —I guess so. Those boogers are really gonna keep me out of there, you know that?

  —Their minds are inflexible and rigid.

  —Probably because I’m a poor pregnant woman don’t you think?

  —You said you didn’t tell them.

  —But maybe they’re very shrewd psychologists and they could just look at my face and tell.

  —No it doesn’t show yet how many months are you?

  —Two and a half just about you can tell when I take my clothes off.

  —You didn’t take your clothes off did you?

  —No I was wearing you know what the students wear. Jeans and a sarape. I carried a green book bag.

  —Jam-packed with études.

  —Yes. He asked where I had gotten my previous training and I told him.

  —Oh boy I remember when it was flat, flat as the deck of something, a boat or a ship.

  —You’re not important, they told me.

  —Oh sweetie I am so sorry for you.

  —We parted then I walking through the gorgeous Conservatory light into the foyer and then through the great black ironwork Conservatory doors.

  —I was a face on the other side of the glass.

  —My aspect as I departed most dignified and serene.

  —Time heals everything.

  —No it doesn’t.

  —Cut lip fat lip puffed lip split lip.

  —Haw! haw! haw! haw!

  —Well Hilda there are other things in life.

  —Yes Maggie I suppose there are. None that I want.

  —Non-Conservatory people have their own lives. We Conservatory people don’t have much to do with them but we are told they have their own lives.

  —I suppose I could file an appeal if there’s anywhere to file an appeal to. If there’s anywhere.

  —That’s an idea we get stacks of appeals, stacks and stacks.

  —I can wait all night. Here on the steps.

  —I’ll sit with you. I’ll help you formulate the words.

  —Are they looking out of the windows?

  —Yes I think so. What do you want to say?

  —I want to say my whole life depends on it. Something like that.

  —It’s against the rules for Conservatory people to help non-Conservatory people you know that.

  —Well Goddammit I thought you were going to help me.

  —Okay. I’ll help you. What do you want to say?

  —I want to say my whole life depends on it. Something like that.

  —We got man naked models and woman naked models, harps, giant potted plants, and drapes. There are hierarchies, some people higher up and others lower down. These mingle, in the gorgeous light. We have lots of fun. There’s lots of green furniture you know with paint on it. Worn green paint. Gilt lines one-quarter inch from the edges. Worn gilt lines.

  —And probably flambeaux in little niches in the walls, right?

  —Yeah we got flambeaux. Who’s the father?

  —Guy named Robert.

  —Did you have a good time?

  —The affair ran the usual course. Fever, boredom, trapped.

  —Hot, rinse, spin dry.

  —Is it wonderful in there Maggie?

  —I have to say it is. Yes. It is.

  —Do you feel great, being there? Do you feel wonderful?

  —Yes, it feels pretty good. Very often there is, upon the tray, a rose.

  —I will never be admitted to the Conservatory.

  —You will never be admitted to the Conservatory.

  —How do I look?

  —Okay. Not bad. Fine.

  —I will never get there. How do I look?

  —Fine. Great. Time heals everything Hilda.

  —No it doesn’t.

  —Time heals everything.

  —No it doesn’t. How do I look?

  —Moot.

  The Leap

  —TODAY WE make the leap to faith. Today.

  —Today?

  —Today.

  —We’re really going to do it? At last?

  —Spent too much time fooling around. Today we do it.

  —I don’t know. Maybe we’re not ready?

  —I am cheered by the wine of possibility and the growing popularity of light. Today’s the day.

  —You’re serious.

  —Intensely. First, we examine our consciences.

  —I am a double-minded man. Have always been a double-minded man.

  —Each examining his own conscience, rooting out, naming, remembering and re-experiencing every last little cank and wrinkle. Root and branch.

  —Smiting each conscience hip and thigh.

  —Thigh and hip. Smite! Smite!

  —God is good and we are but poor wretches who—

  —Wait.

  —Poor slovening wret
ches who but for the goodness of God would—

  —Wait. This will be painful, you know. A bit.

  —Oh my God.

  —What?

  —I just had a thought.

  —A prick of conscience.

  —Yes. Item 34.

  —What’s Item 34?

  —An unkindness. One of a series. Series long as your arm.

  —You list them separately.

  —Yes.

  —You don’t just throw them all together into a great big trash bag labeled—

  —No. I sweat each one. Seriatim.

  —I said it would be painful.

  —Might we postpone it?

  —Meditate instead on His works? Their magnificence.

  —Not that we could in a hundred million years exhaust—

  —It’s a sort of if-a-bird-took-one-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life-and-then-another-bird-took-another-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life situation.

  —Contemplate only the animals. Restrict the field. ’Course we got over a million species, so far. New ones being identified every day. Insects, mostly.

  —I like plants better than animals.

  —Animals give you a lot of warmth. A dog would be an example.

  —I like people better than plants, plants better than animals, paintings better than animals, and music better than animals.

  —Praising the animals, then, would not be your first impulse.

  —I respect the animals. I admire the animals. But could we contemplate something else?

  —Take a glass of water, for example. A glass of water is a miraculous thing.

  —The blue of the sky, against which we find the shocking green of the leaves of the trees.

  —The trees. “I think that I shall never see slash A poem lovely as a tree.”

  —“A tree whose hungry mouth is prest slash Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.”

  —Why “mouth”?

  —Why “breast”?

  —The working of the creative mind.

  —An unfathomable mystery.

  —Never to be fathomed.

  —I wouldn’t even want to fathom it. If one fathomed it, who can say what frightful things might thereupon be fathomed?

  —Fathoming such is beyond the powers of poor ravening noodles like ourselves, who but for the—

  —And another thing. The human voice.

  —My God you’re right. The human voice.

  —Bessie Smith.

  —Alice Babs.

  —Joan Armatrading.

  —Aretha Franklin.

  —Each voice testifying to the greater honor and glory of God, each in its own way.

  —Damn straight.

  —Sweet Emma Barrett the Bell Gal.

  —Got you.

  —Das Lied von der Erde.

  —I couldn’t agree more.

  —Then there are the bad things. Cancer.

  —An unfathomable mystery, at this point. But one which must inevitably succumb to the inexorable forward march of scientific progress.

  —Economic inequality.

  —In my view, this will be ameliorated in the near future by the pressure of population growth. Pressure of population growth being such that economic inequality simply cannot endure.

  —What about Z.P.G.?

  —An ideal rather than a social slash political reality.

  —So God’s creatures, in your opinion, multiplying and multiplying and multiplying as per instruction, will—

  —Propagate fiercely until the sum total of what has been propagated yields a pressure so intense that every feature great or small of every life great or small is instantly scrutinized weighed judged decided upon and disposed of by the sum total of one’s peers in doubtless electronic ongoing all-seeing everlasting congress assembled. Thus if one guy has a little advantage, a little edge, it is instantly taken away from him and similarly if another guy has a little lack, some little lack, this little lack is instantly supplied, by the arbiters. Things cannot be otherwise. Because there’s not going to be any room to fucking move, man, do you follow me? there’s not going to be any room to fucking sneeze, without you’re sneezing on somebody . . .

  —This is the Divine plan?

  —Who can know the subtle workings of His mind? But it seems to be the way events are—

  —That’s another thing. The human mind.

  —Good God yes. The human mind.

  —The human mind which is in my judgment the finest of our human achievements.

  —Much the finest. I can think of nothing remotely comparable.

  —Is a flower, however beautiful and interesting, comparable to the human mind? I think not.

  —Matter of higher and lower levels of complexity.

  —I concur. This is not to knock the flower.

  —This is not to say that the beautiful, interesting flower is not, in its own terms, entirely fantastic.

  —The toast of the earth. Did I ever tell you about that time when I was in Korea and Cardinal Spellman came to see us at Christmas and his plane was preceded by another plane broadcasting sacred music over the terrain? Spraying the terrain as it were with sacred music?

  —So that those on earth could hear and be edified.

  —“O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  —Yes, the human mind deserves the greatest respect. Not so good of course as the Divine mind, but not bad.

  —Leibniz. William of Ockham. Maimonides. The Vienna Circle. The Frankfurt School. Manichaeus. Peirce. Occasionalism. A pretty array. I believe Occasionalism’s been discredited. But let it stand. It was a nice try, and philosophy, as my dear teacher taught me so long long ago, is not to be regarded as a graveyard of dead systems.

  —The question of suicide. Self-slaughter. Maybe we ought to think about it?

  —What’s to think about?

  —Look at this.

  —What is it?

  —The bill.

  —For what is it the bill?

  —A try.

  —Whose?

  —An acquaintance.

  —Good God.

  —Yes.

  —Ought two slash twenty-four electrocardiogram ought two ought ought ought ought one, thirty-five bucks.

  —Ought two slash twenty-four cardiopulmonary two ought ought ought ought ought one, forty bucks.

  —Ought two slash twenty-four inhalation therapy one four ought ought ought ought one, sixty bucks.

  —Ought two slash twenty-four room four nine one five, a neat one-eighty.

  —It goes on for miles.

  —What’s the total?

  —Shade under two thousand. Nineteen hundred and two dollars and ninety cents.

  —You’d think they’d give you the ninety cents.

  —You’d think they would.

  —And the acquaintance?

  —She’s well.

  —This being an example of the leap away from faith.

  —Exactly. You can jump either way.

  —Shall we examine our consciences now?

  —You are mad with hurry.

  —We are but poor lapsarian futiles whose preen glands are all out of whack and who but for the grace of God’s goodness would—

  —Do you think He wants us to grovel quite so much?

  —I don’t think He gives a rap. But it’s traditional.

  —We hang by a slender thread.

  —The fire boils below us.

  —The pit. Crawling with roaches and other things.

  —Tortures unimaginable, but the worst the torture of knowing it could have been otherwise, had we shaped up.

  —Purity of heart is to will one thing.

  —No. Here I differ with Kierkegaard.
Purity of heart is, rather, to will several things, and not know which is the better, truer thing, and to worry about this, forever.

  —A continuing itch of the mind.

  —Sometimes assuagable by timely masturbation.

  —I forgot. Love.

  —Oh my God, yes. Love. Both human and divine.

  —Love, the highest form of human endeavor.

  —Coming or going, the absolute zenith.

  —Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?

  —Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.

  —Love, which is a kind of permission to come closer than ordinary norms of good behavior might usually sanction.

  —Back rubs.

  —Which enables us to see each other without clothes on, for example, in lust and shame.

  —Examining perfections, imperfections.

  —Which allows us to say wounding things to each other which would not be kosher under the ordinary rules of civilized discourse.

  —Walkin’ my baby back home.

  —Love which allows us to live together male and female in small grubby apartments that would only hold one sane person, normally.

  —Misting the plants together—the handsome, talented plants.

  —He who hath not love is a sad cookie.

  —This is the way, walk ye in it. Isaiah 30:21.

  —Can’t make it, man.

  —What?

  —I can’t make it.

  —The leap.

  —Can’t make it. I am a double-minded man.

  —Well.

  —An incorrigibly double-minded man.

  —What then?

  —Keep on trying?

  —Yes. We must.

  —Try again another day?

  —Yes. Another day when the plaid cactus is watered, when the hare’s-foot fern is watered.

  —Seeds tingling in the barrens and veldts.

  —Garden peas yellow or green wrinkling or rounding.

  —Another day when locust wings are baled for shipment to Singapore, where folks like their little hit of locust-wing tea.

  —A jug of wine. Then another jug.

  —The Brie-with-pepper meeting the toasty loaf.

  —Another day when some eighty-four-year-old guy complains that his wife no longer gives him presents.

  —Small boys bumping into small girls, purposefully.

  —Cute little babies cracking people up.

  —Another day when somebody finds a new bone that proves we are even ancienter than we thought we were.