Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  Bishop’s writing a biography of the nineteenth-century American painter William Michael Harnett. But today he can’t make himself work.

  Cara’s been divorced, once.

  At twenty minutes to twelve he makes himself a martini.

  Hideous bouts of black anger in the evening. Then a word or a sentence in the tone she can’t bear. The next morning he remembers nothing about it.

  The artist Peto was discovered when, after his death, his pictures were exhibited with the faked signatures of William Michael Harnett, according to Alfred Frankenstein.

  His second wife, working in London, recently fainted at her desk. The company doctor sent her home with something written on a slip of paper—a diagnosis. For two days she stared at the piece of paper, then called Bishop and read him the word: lipothymia. Bishop checked with the public library, called her again in London. “It means fainting,” he said.

  On the FM, a program called How to Protect Against Radiation Through Good Nutrition. He switches it off.

  In the morning he remembers nothing of what had been said the previous night. But, coming into the kitchen and seeing her harsh, set face, he knows there’s been a quarrel.

  His eyes ache.

  He’s not fat.

  She calls.

  “I can’t make it.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “I’ll have to see. I’ll let you know.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  “Can you give me a rough idea?”

  “Before six.”

  Bishop types a letter to a university declining a speaking engagement.

  He’s been in the apartment for seventeen years.

  His rent has just been raised forty-nine dollars a month.

  Bishop is not in love with Cara, and she is certainly not in love with him. Still, they see each other rather often, sleep together rather often.

  When he’s given up on Cara, on a particular evening, he’ll make a Scotch to take to bed with him. He lies on one elbow in the dark, smoking and sipping the Scotch.

  He has a birthday in July, he’ll be forty-nine.

  Waking in the middle of the night he notices, again and again and again, that he sleeps with one fist jammed against his jaw—forearm, upper arm, and jaw making a rigid defensive triangle.

  Cara says: “Everyone’s got good taste, it just doesn’t mean that much.”

  She’s in textiles, a designer.

  He rarely goes to lunch with anyone now.

  On the street, he greets a neighbor he’s never even nodded to before, a young man who is, he’s heard, a lawyer. Bishop remembers the young man as a tall thin child with evasive eyes.

  He buys flowers, daffodils.

  In front of his liquor store there are six midday drunks in a bunch, youngish men, perhaps late thirties. They’re lurching about and harassing passersby, a couple of open half pints visible (but this liquor store, Bishop knows, doesn’t sell half pints). One of them, a particularly clumsy man with a red face under red stubble, makes a grab for his paper-wrapped flowers, Bishop sidesteps him easily, so early in the day, where do they get the money?

  He thinks of correspondences between himself and the drunks.

  He’s not in love with Cara but he admires her, especially her ability to survive the various men she takes up with from time to time, all of whom (he does not include himself) seem intent on tearing her down (she confides to him), on tearing her to pieces. . . .

  When Bishop puts out a grease fire in the oven by slapping at it with a dish towel she criticizes his performance, even though he’s burned his arm.

  “You let too much oxygen in.”

  He’s convinced that his grandfather and grandmother, who are dead, will come back to life one day.

  Bishop’s telephone bill is a nightmare of long-distance charges: Charleston, Beverly Hills, New Orleans, Charleston, Charleston, London, Norfolk, Boston, Beverly Hills, London—

  When they make love in the darkness of his very small bedroom, with a bottle of indifferent California wine on the night table, she locks her hands in the small of his back, exerting astonishing pressure.

  Gray in his beard, three wavy lines across his forehead.

  “He would frequently paint one picture over another and occasionally a third picture over the second.” Frankenstein, on Peto.

  The flowers remain in their paper wrapping in the kitchen, on the butcher-block bar.

  He watches the four o’clock movie, a film he’s seen possibly forty times, Henry Fonda as Colonel Thursday dancing with Sergeant Major Ward Bond’s wife at the Fort Apache noncommissioned officers’ ball. . . .

  Cara calls. Something’s come up.

  “Have a good evening.”

  “You too.”

  Bishop makes himself a Scotch, although it’s only four-thirty and the rule about Scotch is not before five.

  Robert Young says: “Sanka brand coffee is real coffee.”

  He remembers driving to his grandparents’ ranch, the stack of saddles in a corner of the ranch house’s big inner room, the rifles on pegs over the doors, sitting on the veranda at night and watching the headlights of cars coming down the steep hill across the river.

  During a commercial he gets out the television schedule to see what he can expect of the evening.

  6:00 (2, 4, 7, 31) News

  6:00 1(5) I Love Lucy

  6:00 1(9) Joker’s Wild

  6:00 (11) Sanford and Son

  6:00 (13) As We See It

  6:00 (21) Once Upon a Classic

  6:00 (25) Mister Rogers

  A good movie, Edison, with Spencer Tracy, at eight.

  He could call his brother in Charleston.

  He could call a friend in Beverly Hills.

  He could make a couple of quarts of chili, freeze some of it.

  Bishop stands in front of a mirror, wondering why his eyes hurt.

  He could read some proofs that have been sitting on his desk for two weeks.

  Another Scotch. Fort Apache is over.

  He walks from the front of the apartment to the back, approving of the furniture, the rugs, the peeling paint.

  Bishop puts on his down jacket and goes out to the market. At the meat counter a child in a stroller points at him and screams: “Old man!”

  The child’s mother giggles and says: “Don’t take it personally, it’s the beard.”

  What’s easiest? Steak, outrageously priced, what he doesn’t eat will be there for breakfast.

  He picks out two bunches of scallions to chop up for his baked potato.

  He looks around for something foolish to buy, to persuade himself he’s on top of things.

  His right arm still has three ugly red blotches from the episode of the grease fire.

  Caviar is sixty-seven dollars for four ounces. But he doesn’t like caviar.

  Bishop once bought records, Poulenc to Bob Wills, but now does not.

  Also, he formerly bought prints. He has a Jim Dine and a de Chirico and a Bellmer and a Richard Hamilton. It’s been years since he’s bought a print.

  (Although he reads the art magazines religiously.)

  A shrink once said to him: “Big Daddy, is that it?”

  He’s had wives, thick in emotional texture, with many lovely problems, his advice is generally good.

  Diluted by caution perhaps.

  When his grandfather and grandmother come back to life, Bishop sits with them on the veranda of the ranch house looking down to the river, they seem just the same and talk about the things they’ve always talked about. He walks with his grandfather over the terrain studded with caliche like half-buried skulls
, a dirty white, past a salt lick and the windmill and then another salt lick, and his grandfather points out the place where his aunt had been knocked off her horse by a low-lying tree branch. His grandmother is busy burning toast and then scraping it (the way they like it), and is at the same time reading the newspaper, crying aloud “Ben!” and then reading him something about the Stewart girl, you remember who she is, getting married to that fellow who, you remember, got in all the trouble. . . .

  With his Scotch in bed, Bishop summons up an image of felicity: walking in the water, the shallow river, at the edge of the ranch, looking for minnows in the water under the overhanging trees, skipping rocks across the river, intent . . .

  Grandmother’s House

  —GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE? What? Landmark status? What? She’s been eating? What? Strangers? She’s been eating strangers? Sitting up in bed eating strangers? Hey? Pale, pink strangers? Zuti Lithium? What? They’re giving her lithium? Hey? She’s a what? Wolf? She’s a wolf? Gad! Second opinion? Hey? She’s a wolf. Well. Well, then. And Grandfather? What? Living with a stranger? Hey? A pale, pink stranger? Abominable! What’s her name? What? What? Belle? Tush. Belle­BelleBelleBelleBelle no I don’t like it. Well if Grandmother’s house has landmark status that means we can’t build the brothel, right? Can’t build the brothel, right? No brothel, right? Damn and damn and damn.

  —Right.

  —Well if we can’t build the brothel we’d better go out and look for nymphs, right? Do a little nymphing? Get us to the glade?

  —Right.

  —Or we could steal a kid. A child. A kid. Steal one. Grab it and keep it. Raise it for our very own. Tickle it, light judicious tickling, swab it with rubbing alcohol against the itch, bundle it up and make it warm where previously it had been cold, right? Wham it when it is bad, right? Teach it to be afraid of the dark, the vast, unplumbed dark, the wet, glowing dark . . .

  —Right.

  —Shoulder the so-called real parents off the stage, those lunks. The former parents, those lunks, standing there uttering dull threats. Get off my case! and the like. Their connubial bliss in tatters, at this juncture. The bonds of gamomania but a spider-work, at this juncture. Send them notes from time to time, progress reports, little Luke has produced a tooth. Hey? Little Luke showing every sign of that sweetness of soul characteristic of breech presentations. Hey? Hey? Hey? Sing to it and pinch it, “Greensleeves” and “I’m an Old Cowhand.” Teach it to figger and bottom-deal, get it a job cleaning telephone booths for the Telephone Company. And in our dotage—

  —Our what?

  —And in our senescence, it will take us by the hand, take you by your hand and me by my hand, and lead us gently over the hill to the poorhouse. Luke. Our kid.

  —There’s a naked woman in the next room.

  —There’s a what?

  —Naked woman in the next room. On a couch. Blue velvet couch. Reclining. Flowers in her hair.

  —I’ve seen one. In a magazine.

  —Well they’re all different, jackass. You can’t just say I’ve seen one.

  —Well I’ve got jury duty had an interesting case on Thursday guy’d got his car crushed in an elevator in a parking garage we gave him the Blue Book price, twenty-three hundred something. Right?

  —I mean you can’t just say I’ve seen one. That’s not enough.

  —Well I’m tired, man, tired, I’ve been tired ever since I heard the truly dreadful news about Grandmother’s house, a thing like that brings you down, man, brings you down and makes you tired, know what I mean?

  —They’re all different. That’s what makes them so . . . luminous.

  —But she’s a stranger.

  —But after you sleep with them they’re less strange. Get downright familiar, laugh at you and pull your beard.

  —I remember.

  —Demystify themselves with repeated actions of a repetitive kind.

  —Their moves. Their cold moves and their cozy moves.

  —Want to go to the flicks, the flicks, the flicks—

  —I saw one once, about this guy who jumped from place to place swinging on a vine, and yodeled, yodeled and jumped from place to place swinging on a vine, ran around with an ape a small ape, wore these leather flaps with a knife stuck in the back flap—It was a good flick. I enjoyed it.

  —I’ve seen a bunch. Six or seven thousand.

  —Of course this is not to say that what has been demystified cannot be remystified.

  —How?

  —Well you can take them on a trip or something. To a far place. Bergen.

  —And then what?

  —Seen with tall cool drinks in fetching costumes against the hot white sands or whatever they are partially remystified.

  —No hot white sands in Bergen, man.

  —Seen against the deep cool fjords with penguins in their hands they are partially remystified.

  —No penguins in Bergen, man.

  —Or some kind of new erotic behavior you can start biting them some people like that. People who’ve never been bitten much.

  —How do you know how hard to bite?

  —It’s a skill.

  —It is?

  —As a matter of fact I saw another movie, movie about this guy who meets this woman and then they fall in love and then she leaves him and then he meets another woman.

  —So what happens?

  —He begins living with the second one. She’s very nice.

  —And then what?

  —She leaves him.

  —That’s all?

  —He is seen in a crowded street. Walking away from the camera. The figure becoming smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s lost in the crowd. It was a very good movie. I liked it. I liked the one about the guy swinging on the vine a little better, maybe. Well. Want to steal a kid?

  —I don’t know.

  —We could tickle the little sumbitch for a while and then, wham it.

  —Feed it brownies and bubble gum.

  —Tell it stories and great flaming lies.

  —Gypsies steal kids.

  —Right.

  —Gypsies steal kids every day.

  —It’s well known.

  —Hardly ever prosecuted.

  —The wily gypsy. Hard to catch.

  —What do they do with the kids I wonder?

  —The wily, terrible gypsy. Gone today and gone tomorrow.

  —What do they do with the kids I wonder?

  —Train them in the gypsy arts. Wine-watering, horse-dyeing, the barbering of dreams.

  —Gypsy airs scratched into the gypsy firelight.

  —Deconstructing dreams like nobody’s business. You want to know, go see the gypsy.

  —Ever interfere with a gypsy?

  —Well not an official gypsy. They only interfere with other gypsies. Now if you’re talking about gypsy-like—

  —Under the caravan. In the rank, sweet grass.

  —Now if you’re talking about a gypsy-like individual, wild and free and snarling and biting—

  —I meant a real one.

  —No.

  —I’m sorry.

  —But when I saw the great Gaudí church in Barcelona, the great Sagrada Familia, the great ghost of a cathedral or rather great skeleton of a cathedral, then did I realize especially after seeing also the plans and models in the basement for those portions of the great cathedral not yet built and perhaps never to be built, the plans under plastic on the walls of the basement and the models on sawhorses on the floor of the basement, the artisans in smocks still working on the beautifully inked plans and the white plaster models, and the workmen on the extant towers of the Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the workmen on and between the extant towers and walls of the Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the amazingly few workmen st
ill working and still to be working for God knows how many decades hence, if the money can be got together, we left our contribution in a plastic box, the amazingly few but truly dedicated workmen still working under the burning inspiration of the sainted Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí, having seen all this I then realized what I had not realized before, what had escaped my notice these many years, that not only is less more but that more is more too. I swooned, under the impact of the ethical corollary.

  —What is the ethical corollary?

  —More.

  —When you swooned, did you fall?

  —I swooned upward. While staring from the ground at the great extant towers of the Sagrada Familia. Reverse vertigo.

  —Gaudí however was laboring in nomine Domini. I do not see that the ethical corollary as you put it applies, privately.

  —Puts an idea under greed.

  —My life is a poor one. Relative to—

  —I know that.

  —Your life is a poor one. Not bad, but not replete.

  —Well I can think can’t I? I thought of the brothel, didn’t I?

  —Poorly that was a very poor idea this one guy thinks of a cathedral and you think of a brothel? Congratulations. You see what I mean?

  —I say we steal one, a kid. Find a good-looking one and steal it, it’s not the worst idea I ever heard.

  —Not the worst idea.

  —And when it grew to the age of sexual availability, we could tell it to wait.

  —That’s what I told her.

  —That’s what I told mine too. Told her to wait.

  —You told her to wait?

  —That’s what I told her.

  —How did she take it?

  —She sat silently listening to me telling her to wait.

  —I told mine to wait too.

  —How did she react?

  —She just sat there.

  —You think she’s waiting?

  —How do I know?

  —Some people think sixteen.

  —Biologically of course it’s a bitch. For them.

  —I never understood why things were so . . . out of phase. The biological with the cultural.