Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  A man entered from the chartroom behind me. He immediately walked over to me and removed my hands from the wheel.

  He wore a uniform, but it seemed more a steward’s or barman’s dress than a naval officer’s. His face was not unimpressive: dark hair carefully brushed, a strong nose, good mouth and chin. I judged him to be in his late fifties. He re-entered the chartroom. I followed him.

  “May I ask where this . . .”

  “Mothball fleet,” he supplied.

  “—is bound?”

  He did not answer my question. He was looking at a chart.

  “If it’s a matter of sealed orders or something . . .”

  “No no,” he said, without looking up. “Nothing like that.” Then he said, “A bit careless with your little boat, aren’t you?”

  This made me angry. “Not normally. On the contrary. But something—”

  “Of course,” he said. “You were anticipated. Why d’you think that ladder wasn’t secured?”

  I thought about this for a moment. I decided to shift the ground of the conversation slightly.

  “Are there crews aboard the other ships?”

  “No,” he said. I felt however that he had appreciated my shrewdness in guessing that there were no crews aboard the other ships.

  “Radio?” I asked. “Remote control or something?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  The forty destroyers, four light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and the carrier were moving in perfect formation toward the open sea. The sight was a magnificent one. I had been in the Navy—two years as a supply officer in New London, principally.

  “Is this a test of some kind?” I asked. “New equipment or—”

  “You’re afraid that we’ll be used for target practice? Hardly.” He seemed momentarily amused.

  “No. But ship movements on this scale—”

  “It was difficult,” he said. He then walked out of the chartroom and seated himself in one of the swivel chairs on posts in front of the bridge windows. I followed him.

  “May I ask your rank?”

  “Why not ask my name?”

  “All right.”

  “I am the Admiral.”

  I looked again at his uniform which suggested no such thing.

  “Objectively,” he said, smiling slightly.

  “My name is—” I began.

  “I am not interested in your name,” he said. “I am only interested in your behavior. As you can see, I have at my disposal forty-seven brigs, of which the carrier’s is the most comfortable. Not that I believe you will behave other than correctly. At the moment, I want you to do this: Go down to the galley and make a pot of coffee. Make sandwiches. You may make one for yourself. Then bring them here.” He settled back in his seat and regarded the calm, even sea.

  “All right,” I said. “Yes.”

  “You will say: ‘Yes, sir,’” he corrected me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I wandered about the destroyer until I found the galley. I made the coffee and sandwiches and returned with them to the bridge.

  The “Admiral” drank his coffee silently. Seabirds made passes at the mast where the radar equipment, I saw, was covered with the same plastic material that enclosed the gun installations.

  “What is that stuff used for the mothballing?” I asked.

  “It’s a polyvinylchloride solution which also contains vinyl acetate,” he said. “It’s sprayed on and then hardens. If you were to cut it open you’d find inside, around the equipment, four or five small cloth bags containing silicate of soda in crystals, to absorb moisture. A very neat system. It does just what it’s supposed to do, keeps the equipment good as new.”

  He had finished his sandwich. A bit of mustard had soiled the sleeve of his white coat, which had gold epaulets. I thought again that he most resembled not an admiral but a man from whom one would order drinks.

  “What is your mission?” I asked, determined not to be outfaced by a man with mustard on his coat.

  “To be at sea,” he said.

  “Only that?”

  “Think a bit,” he said. “Think first of shipyards. Think of hundreds of thousands of men in shipyards, on both coasts, building these ships. Think of the welders, the pipefitters, the electricians, naval architects, people in the Bureau of the Budget. Think of the launchings, each with its bottle of champagne on a cord of plaited ribbons hurled at the bow by the wife of some high official. Think of the first sailors coming aboard, the sea trials, the captains for whom a particular ship was a first command. Each ship has a history, no ship is without its history. Think of the six-inch guns shaking a particular ship as they were fired, the jets leaving the deck of the carrier at tightly spaced intervals, the maneuvering of the cruisers during this or that engagement, the damage taken. Think of each ship’s log faithfully kept over the years, think of the Official Naval History which now runs, I am told, to three hundred some–odd very large volumes.

  “And then,” he said, “think of each ship moving up the Hudson, or worse, being towed, to a depot in New Jersey where it is covered with this disgusting plastic substance. Think of the years each ship has spent moored next to other ships of its class, painted, yes, at scheduled times, by a crew of painters whose task it is to paint these ships eternally, finished with one and on to the next and back to the first again five years later. Watchmen watching the ships, year in and year out, no doubt knocking off a little copper pipe here and there—”

  “The ships were being stockpiled against a possible new national emergency,” I said. “What on earth is wrong with that?”

  “I was a messman on the Saratoga,” he said, “when I was sixteen. I lied about my age.”

  “But what are your intentions?”

  “I am taking these ships away from them,” he said.

  “You are stealing forty-seven ships from the government of the United States?”

  “There are also the submarines,” he said. “Six submarines of the Marlin class.”

  “But why?”

  “Remember that I was, once, in accord with them. Passionately, if I may say so, in accord with them. I did whatever they wished, without thinking, hated their enemies, participated in their crusades, risked my life. Even though I only carried trays and wiped up tables. I heard the singing of the wounded and witnessed the burial of the dead. I believed. Then, over time, I discovered that they were lying. Consistently. With exemplary skill, in a hundred languages. I decided to take the ships. Perhaps they’ll notice.” He paused. “Now. Do you wish to accompany me, assist me?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Good.” He moved the lever of the bridge telegraph to Full Ahead.

  Now that I am older I am pleased to remember. Those violent nights. When having laid theorbo aside I came to your bed. You, having laid phonograph aside, lay there. Awaiting. I, having laid aside all cares and other business, approached. Softly so as not to afright the sour censorious authorities. You, undulating restlessly under the dun coverlet. Under the framed, signed and numbered silverprint. I, having laid aside all frets and perturbations, approached.

  Prior to this, the meal. Sometimes the meal was taken in, sometimes out. If in, I sliced the onions and tossed them into the pot, or you sliced the chanterelles and tossed them into the pot. The gray glazed pot with the black leopard-spot meander. What an infinity of leeks, lentils, turnips, green beans we tossed into the pot, over the years. Celery.

  Sometimes the meal was taken out. There we sat properly with others in crowded rooms, green-flocked paper on the walls, the tables too close together. Decent quiet servitors in black-and-white approached and with many marks of respect and good will, fed us. Tingle of choice, sometimes we elected the same dish, lamb in pewter sauce on one occasion. Three yellow daffs and a single red tulip in the tall slender vase to your rig
ht. My thumb in my martini nudging the olives from the white plastic sword.

  Prior to the meal, the Happy Hour. You removed your shoes and sat, daintily, on your feet. I loosened my tie, if the day’s business had required one, and held out my hand. You smashed a glass into it, just in time. Fatigued from your labors at the scriptorium where you illuminated manuscripts having to do with the waxing/waning fortunes of International Snow. We snuggled, there on the couch, there is no other word for it, as God is my witness. The bed awaiting.

  I remember the photograph over your bed. How many mornings has it greeted me banded with the first timorous light through the blind-slats. A genuine Weegee, car crash with prostrate forms, long female hair in a pool of blood shot through booted cop legs. In a rope-molding frame. Beside me, your form, not yet awake but bare of dull unnecessary clothing and excellently positioned to be prowled over. After full light, tickling permitted.

  Fleet through the woods came I upon that time toward your bed. A little pouch of mealie-mealie by my side, for our repast. You, going into the closet, plucked forth a cobwebbed bottle. On the table in front of the couch, an artichoke with its salty dip. Hurling myself through the shabby tattering door toward the couch, like an (arrow from the bow) (spear from the hand of Achilles), I thanked my stars for the wisdom of my teachers, Smoky and Billy, which had enabled me to find a place in the labor market, to depart in the morning and return at night, bearing in the one hand a pannier of periwinkles and in the other, a disc new-minted by the Hot Club of France.

  Your head in my arms.

  Wrack

  —COLD HERE in the garden.

  —You were complaining about the sun.

  —But when it goes behind a cloud—

  —Well, you can’t have everything.

  —The flowers are beautiful.

  —Indeed.

  —Consoling to have the flowers.

  —Half-way consoled already.

  —And these Japanese rocks—

  —Artfully placed, most artfully.

  —You must admit, a great consolation.

  —And Social Security.

  —A great consolation.

  —And philosophy. Furthermore.

  —I read a book. Just the other day.

  —Sexuality, too.

  —They have books about it. I read one.

  —We’ll to the woods no more. I assume.

  —Where there’s a will there’s a way. That’s what my mother always said.

  —I wonder if it’s true.

  —I think not.

  —Well, you’re driving me crazy.

  —Well you’re driving me crazy too. Know what I mean?

  —Going to snap one of these days.

  —If you were a Japanese master you wouldn’t snap. Those guys never snapped. Some of them were ninety.

  —Well, you can’t have everything.

  —Cold, here in the garden.

  —Caw caw caw caw.

  —You want to sing that song.

  —Can’t remember how it goes.

  —Getting farther and farther away from life.

  —How do you feel about that?

  —Guilty but less guilty than I should.

  —Can you fine-tune that for me?

  —Not yet I want to think about it.

  —Well, I have to muck out the stable and buff up the silver.

  —They trust you with the silver?

  —Of course. I have their trust.

  —You enjoy their trust.

  —Absolutely.

  —Well we still haven’t decided what color to paint the trucks.

  —I said blue.

  —Surely not your last word on the subject.

  —I have some swatches. If you’d care to take a gander.

  —Not now. This sun is blistering.

  —New skin. You’re going to complain?

  —Thank the Lord for all small favors.

  —The kid ever come to see you?

  —Did for a while. Then stopped.

  —How does that make you feel?

  —Oh, I don’t blame him.

  —Well, you can’t have everything.

  —That’s true. What’s the time?

  —Looks to be about one.

  —Where’s your watch?

  —Hocked it.

  —What’d you get?

  —Twelve-fifty.

  —God, aren’t these flowers beautiful!

  —Only three of them. But each remarkable, of its kind.

  —What are they?

  —Some kind of Japanese dealies I don’t know.

  —Lazing in the garden. This is really most luxurious.

  —Listening to the radio. “Elmer’s Tune.”

  —I don’t like it when they let girls talk on the radio.

  —Never used to have them. Now they’re everywhere.

  —You can’t really say too much. These days.

  —Doesn’t that make you nervous? Girls talking on the radio?

  —I liked H. V. Kaltenborn. He’s long gone.

  —What’d you do yesterday?

  —Took a walk. In the wild trees.

  —They spend a lot of time worrying about where to park their cars. Glad I don’t have one.

  —Haven’t eaten anything except some rice, this morning. Cooked it with chicken broth.

  —This place is cold, no getting around it.

  —Forgot to buy soap, forgot to buy coffee—

  —All right. The hollowed-out book containing the single Swedish municipal bond in the amount of fifty thousand Swedish crowns is not yours. We’ve established that. Let’s go on.

  —It was never mine. Or it might have been mine, once. Perhaps it belonged to my former wife. I said I wasn’t sure. She was fond of hiding things in hollowed-out books.

  —We want not the shadow of a doubt. We want to be absolutely certain.

  —I appreciate it. She had gray eyes. Gray with a touch of violet.

  —Yes. Now, are these your doors?

  —Yes. I think so. Are they on spring hinges? Do they swing?

  —They swing in either direction. Spring hinges. Wood slats.

  —She did things with her eyebrows. Painted them gold. You had the gray eyes with a touch of violet, and the gold eyebrows. Yes, the doors must be mine. I seem to remember her bursting through them. In one of the several rages of a summer’s day.

  —When?

  —It must have been some time ago. Some years. I don’t know what they’re doing here. It strikes me they were in another house. Not this house. I mean it’s kind of cloudy.

  —But they’re here.

  —She sometimes threw something through the doorway before bursting through the doorway herself. Acid, on one occasion.

  —But the doors are here. They’re yours.

  —Yes. They seem to be. I mean, I’m not arguing with you. On the other hand, they’re not something I want to remember, particularly. They have sort of an unpleasant aura around them, for some reason. I would have avoided them, left to myself.

  —I don’t want to distress you. Unnecessarily.

  —I know, I know, I know. I’m not blaming you, but it just seems to me that you could have let it go. The doors. I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but still—

  —I didn’t mean anything by it. Well, let’s leave the doors, then, and go on to the dish.

  —Plate.

  —Let’s go on to the plate, then.

  —Plate, dish, I don’t care, it’s something of an imposition, you must admit, to have to think about it. Normally I wouldn’t think about it.

  —It has your name on the back. Engraved on the back.

  —Where? Show me.

  �
�Your name. Right there. And the date, 1962.

  —I don’t want to look. I’ll take your word for it. That was twenty years ago. My God. She read R. D. Laing. Aloud, at dinner. Every night. Interrupted only by the telephone. When she answered the telephone, her voice became animated. Charming and animated. Gaiety. Vivacity. Laughter. In contrast to her reading of R. D. Laing. Which could only be described as punitive. O.K., so it’s mine. My plate.

  —It’s a dish. A bonbon dish.

  —You mean to say that you think that I would own a bonbon dish? A sterling-silver or whatever it is bonbon dish? You’re mad.

  —The doors were yours. Why not the dish?

  —A bonbon dish?

  —Perhaps she craved bonbons?

  —No no no no no. Not so. Sourballs, perhaps.

  —Let’s move on to the shoe, now. I don’t have that much time.

  —The shoe is definitely not mine.

  —Not yours.

  —It’s a woman’s shoe. It’s too small for me. My foot, this foot here, would never in the world fit into that shoe.

  —I am not suggesting that the shoe is yours in the sense that you wear or would wear such a shoe. It’s obviously a woman’s shoe.

  —The shoe is in no sense a thing of mine. Although found I admit among my things.

  —It’s here. An old-fashioned shoe. Eleven buttons.

  —There was a vogue for that kind of shoe, some time back, among the young people. It might have belonged to a young person. I sometimes saw young persons.

  —With what in mind?

  —I fondled them, if they were fondleable.

  —Within the limits of the law, of course.

  —Certainly. “Young person” is an elastic term. You think I’m going to mess with jailbait?

  —Of course not. Never occurred to me. The shoe has something of the pathetic about it. A wronged quality. Do you think it possible that the shoe may be in some way a cri de coeur?

  —Not a chance.

  —You were wrong about the dish.

  —I’ve never heard a cri de coeur.

  —You’ve never heard a cri de coeur?