The Teachings of Don B.

by Donald Barthelme

  (Music: “The Star-Spangled Banner” up)

  HUBER (confidential): Having acquired in exchange for an house that had been theirs, his and hers, a radio or more properly radio station, Bloomsbury could now play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which he had always admired immoderately, on account of its finality, as often as he liked. He could also announce some of his favorite words, the word nevertheless, for example.

  (Music: “The Star-Spangled Banner” fading)

  BLOOMSBURY: Nevertheless. Nevertheless. Nevertheless. Nevertheless. (Pause, BLOOMSBURY elegaic) Well, old girl, here we are. Me speaking into the tube, you lying on your back most likely, giving an ear, I don’t doubt. Swell of you to tune me in. (Pause) I remember the time you went walking without your shoes, what an evening! You were wearing, I recall, your dove-gray silk (pause) or was it liver-gray? (Pause) No matter. (Pause) Or was it dove’s-liver-gray? (Pause) No matter. You were wearing, I recall, your gray silk, with a flowered hat. There were chestnuts on the ground; you complained that they felt like rocks under your feet.

  MARTHA (peevish): My shoes! I forgot my shoes!

  BLOOMSBURY (ardent): I’ll get down, on my hands and knees, and clear a path, my darling. I’ll sweep them away with my hands. My bare hands. (Pause) Dear Martha!

  (Sound: BLOOMSBURY kneeling, sweeping)

  MARTHA: You look absurd down there.

  BLOOMSBURY (from the sidewalk): What an evening! The chestnut trees are letting go their fruit. Soon it will be time for a turkey. With liver gravy.

  MARTHA: I want an ice—a raspberry ice.

  BLOOMSBURY (from the sidewalk): Certainly, my dear, anything, raspberry ice, cherryberry ice, let me just . . . get . . . these . . . little . . . mothers. . . .

  (Sound: Frenzied sweeping; then door slamming)

  MARTHA (at home): Next time, if there is a next time, I will wear my shoes. Even if it kills me.

  BLOOMSBURY: Did you enjoy your ice?

  MARTHA: Minimally.

  BLOOMSBURY (pleading): We were happy there, weren’t we? In the ice-cream parlor? We were pretty as a picture! Man and wife.

  MARTHA: When you placed your raspberry-stained muzzle in my glove . . .

  BLOOMSBURY: HI always be here, to sweep away the chestnuts. Whatever happens. Even if nothing happens.

  MARTHA (doubtfully): You always have been here.

  BLOOMSBURY: Swell of you to notice that.

  MARTHA: It’s dark.

  BLOOMSBURY: Time for our quarrel.

  MARTHA: What is the subject?

  BLOOMSBURY (as if reading from a bulletin board): “Smallness in the Human Male.”

  MARTHA (with satisfaction): Yes. I say it’s willfulness.

  BLOOMSBURY: Martha . . .

  MARTHA: Simple . . . willfulness.

  BLOOMSBURY (pleading): It was a lack of proper nourishment, during my young years.

  MARTHA (taking a high tone): Simple and deliberate . . . willfulness. I have decided that you can’t have any supper.

  BLOOMSBURY: No supper?

  MARTHA: You’ve already gorged yourself on raspberry ice.

  BLOOMSBURY: Only two scoops!

  MARTHA: You’ve ruined a good glove with your ardor. And the knees of a decent pair of trousers, too.

  BLOOMSBURY: But it was for the love of you!

  MARTHA: Hush! Or there’ll be no breakfast either.

  BLOOMSBURY: But love makes the world go!

  MARTHA: Or lunch tomorrow either!

  BLOOMSBURY: But we were everything to each other once!

  MARTHA: Or supper tomorrow night.

  BLOOMSBURY: But perhaps a little toffee?

  MARTHA: Ruin your teeth then for all I care!

  (Sound: Pieces of toffee flung on floor)

  BLOOMSBURY: Ah Martha coom now to bed there’s a darlin’ gul.

  MARTHA: Hump off blatherer I’ve no yet read me Mallarmé for this evenin’.

  BLOOMSBURY (dialect gets heavier): Ooo Martha dear canna we noo let the dear lad rest this night? When the telly’s already shut doon an’ th’ man o’ the house ’as a ’ard-on?

  MARTHA: Don’t be cornin’ around wit’ yer lewd proposals on a Tuesday night when ye know better.

  BLOOMSBURY: But Martha dear where is yer love for me that we talked about in 19 and 58? In the cemetery by the sea?

  MARTHA (contemptuous): Pisht Mishtar Hard-on ye’d better be lookin’ after the Disposall, what’s got itself all plogged up.

  BLOOMSBURY (urgent): Ding the Disposall! Martha me gul, it’s yer sweet hide I’m after havin’.

  MARTHA: Get yer hands from out of me Playtex, viper, I’m dreadful bored wit yer silly old tool.

  BLOOMSBURY: But Marthy dear what of the poetry we vowed wit’, in 19 and 58? Aboot the curlew’s cry and the white giant’s thigh? That we consecrated our union by?

  MARTHA: That was then and this is now, ye can be runnin’ after that bicycle gul wit’ th’ tight pants if yer wants a bit of th’ auld shiver an’ shake.

  BLOOMSBURY (desperate): Ah Marthy it’s no Bicycle Gul that’s breakin’ me heart but yer sweet self.

  MARTHA (bored): Keep yer paws off me derrière dear yer makin’ me lose me page i’ th’ book.

  (Music: “The Star-Spangled Banner” up softly)

  BLOOMSBURY (elegaic): We went to bed then. We were pretty as a picture. (Pause) Man and wife.

  (Music: Theme)

  (Sound: The car: traffic)

  HUBER: It’s idiotic—

  BLOOMSBURY (agreeing in advance): Yes . . .

  HUBER:—that we know no more of the bloody details. Of the extinguishment of your union. Than you have chosen to tell us.

  WHITTLE (accusatory): Monk.

  BLOOMSBURY: What do you want to know?

  HUBER: Everything.

  WHITTLE (casual): It would be interesting, I think, as well as instructive to know, for instance, at what point the situation of living together became untenable, whether you were the instigator or she was the instigator, whether she wept when you told her, whether you wept when she told you, whether there were physical fights involving bodily blows or merely objects thrown on your part and on her part, if there were mental cruelties, cruelties of what order and on whose part, whether she had a lover or did not have a lover, whether you had a lover or did not, (getting down to business), whether you kept the television or she kept the television, the disposition of the balance of the furnishings including tableware, linens, light bulbs, beds, and baskets, who got the baby if there was a baby, what food remains in the pantry at this time, what happened to the medicine bottles, was it a fun divorce or not a fun divorce, whether she paid the lawyers or you paid the lawyers, what the judge said if there was a judge, whether you asked her for a “date” after the granting of the decree or did not so ask, whether she was touched or not touched by this gesture if there was such a gesture, whether the “date” if there was such a “date” was champagne and roses or not champagne and roses—

  HUBER (suave): In short, we’d like to get the feel of the thing.

  WHITTLE: We’re interested.

  HUBER: I remember how it was when my old wife, Eleanor, flew away.

  BLOOMSBURY (thoughtful): Yes.

  HUBER: But only dimly. Because of the years. (Pause) The pain of the parting was . . . shall I say . . . exquisite?

  WHITTLE: “Exquisite”—what a stupid word.

  HUBER: How would you know? You never married.

  WHITTLE (firm): I may not know about marriage but I know about words. (Giggles) Exquisite!

  HUBER (aloof): You have no delicacy.

  WHITTLE: Delicacy! You get better and better!

  (Sound: Another car passing, sounding horn)

  WHITTLE: Good Lord!

  HUBER (calm): An ape. Did you get his license number?

  WHITTLE: The brandy has been too much for you. Better let me drive.

  HUBER: Out of the question. I am perfectly competent.

  WHITTLE: Competent! Your ugly old wife
, Eleanor, left you precisely because you were a mechanical idiot, she confided in me on the day of the hearing.

  HUBER (amazed): A mechanical idiot! I wonder what she meant by that?

  BLOOMSBURY (rousing himself): Surprise, that’s the great thing. It keeps the old tissues tense.

  (Sound: “The Star-Spangled Banner”)

  BLOOMSBURY (remembering): On that remarkable day, that day unlike any other, that day, if you will pardon me, of days, on that old day from the old days when we were, as they say, young—we walked, if you will forgive the extravagance, hand in hand into a theater where there was a film playing.

  (Sound: Movie sound track, violent)

  BLOOMSBURY: We were there, you and I, because we hadn’t rooms and there were no parks and we hadn’t an automobile and there were no beaches. We climbed to the topmost balcony.

  (Sound: Movie sound track, more violent)

  BLOOMSBURY: The first thing I knew I was inside your shirt with my hand and I found there something very lovely, soft and warm and, as they say, desirable. It belonged to you. I did not know, then, what to do with it, therefore, I simply (pause) simply! (pause) held it in my hand.

  (Sound: Movie sound track, most violent)

  MARTHA (violent): Get on with it, can’t you?

  BLOOMSBURY (abstracted): I’m watching the picture.

  (Sound: Swelling movie fade-out strings)

  BLOOMSBURY: We watched the picture together, and although this was a kind of intimacy, the other kind had been lost. And to that row of the balcony we, you and I, never returned.

  (Sound: BLOOMSBURY weeping as music fades)

  (Sound: Finger tapping on glass; muffled words)

  BLOOMSBURY: What?

  (Sound: Muffled shouting)

  BLOOMSBURY: What? (Pause) Wait a minute, I’ll come out.

  (Sound: Door opening and closing, footsteps)

  BLOOMSBURY: Who are you?

  WOMAN: A fan. I’ve been listening to your . . . announcements.

  BLOOMSBURY: Oh. I didn’t know anyone . . . listened.

  WOMAN: Probably a great many people. (Pause) You’re staring.

  BLOOMSBURY: Oh, yes I am. You have a grand . . . figure.

  WOMAN: Also a terrific sense of humor. (Pause) Do you have to stare?

  BLOOMSBURY: Oh. I’m sorry. (Making conversation) So, you’re a fan.

  WOMAN: Yes. A professional fan. Started very early. You pick out a person to be a fan of, and then you adulate that person. (Pause) You ad-u-late him. (Pause) Or her.

  BLOOMSBURY: Yes.

  WOMAN: To begin with, I was president of the Howling Calf Fan Club. That was in, I don’t remember the year. I was very young. His magnetism and personality got me. His voice and gestures fascinated me. I ad-u-lated him. We ad-u-lated him. When he died, it seemed that a vital part of my imagination died, too.

  BLOOMSBURY: That’s interesting.

  WOMAN: My world of dreams was bare! Do you want to see a picture of Howling Calf?

  (Sound: Crackle of photograph)

  BLOOMSBURY: Very affecting.

  WOMAN: I never actually met Mr. Calf. It wasn’t that sort of club. I mean we weren’t in actual communication with the star. There was a Tom Jones fan club, and those people, now, they were in actual communication with the star. When they wanted a remembrance . . .

  BLOOMSBURY: A remembrance?

  WOMAN: Such as Kleenex that had been used by the star, for instance, with the star’s actual sweat on it. Or fingernail clippings, or a hair from the star’s horse’s tail or mane . . .

  BLOOMSBURY: Tail or mane?

  WOMAN: The star naturally, noblesse oblige, forwarded that object to them.

  BLOOMSBURY: I see.

  WOMAN: You’re staring.

  BLOOMSBURY: I didn’t know.

  WOMAN: Do you stare at a lot of women?

  BLOOMSBURY: Not a lot. But quite a number.

  WOMAN: Is it fun?

  BLOOMSBURY: Not fun. But better than nothing.

  WOMAN: Do you have affairs?

  BLOOMSBURY: Not affairs. But sometimes a little flutter.

  WOMAN: Well, I have feelings, too.

  BLOOMSBURY (grave): I think it’s very possible. A great big girl like you.

  WOMAN (naïve): I . . . am . . . your . . . fan. The fan of your announcement and of you, Bloomsbury. Can I sleep here in the studio? Under the piano?

  BLOOMSBURY: Won’t you be cold, under the piano?

  WOMAN: I will warm myself in the light and heat of your personality. Your magnetism. Your memories.

  BLOOMSBURY: Ice . . . ice cubes . . .

  (Music: “Jingle Bells” or equivalent)

  BLOOMSBURY (broadcasting): I remember the quarrel about the ice cubes. That was one worth . . . remembering. You had posted on the notice board the subject “Refrigeration,” and I worried about it all day long, and wondered. Clever minx! I recalled at length that I had complained, once, because the ice cubes were not frozen. But were in fact unfrozen! watery! useless! I had said that there weren’t enough ice cubes, whereas you had said there were more than enough.

  MARTHA (hauteur): More than enough ice cubes!

  BLOOMSBURY: You said that I was a fool, an imbecile, a stupid!, that the machine in your kitchen, which you had procured and caused to be placed there, was without doubt and on immaculate authority the most accomplished machine of its kind known to those who knew about machines of its kind, that among its attributes was the attribute of conceiving, containing, and at the moment of need whelping a fine number of ice cubes, so that no matter how grave the demand, how vast the occasion, how indifferent or even hostile the climate, how inept or even treacherous the operator, how brief or even nonexistent the lapse between genesis and parturition, between the wish and the fact, ice cubes in multiples of sufficient would present themselves. (Pause) Well (pause) I said, (pause) perhaps. (Long pause) Oh! How you boggled at that word perhaps. How you sweated, old girl, and cursed. Your chest heaved, if I may say so, and your eyes (pause) your eyes! (pause) grew dark.

  MARTHA (rage): We will, by damn, count the by damn ice cubes!

  BLOOMSBURY (with satisfaction): But you reckoned wrong. You were never a reckoner. You took the ice cubes from the trays and placed them in a bowl. You reckoned that there were in the bowl one hundred and forty-four ice cubes, taking each cube from the tray and placing it in the bowl, meanwhile bearing in mind the total obtainable by simple multiplication of the spaces in the trays. Thus having it, in this as in other matters, both ways! However, you failed, on this as on other occasions, to consider the imponderables. In this instance the fact that I, unobserved by you, had put three of the cubes into my drink! (Zest) Which I then drank! (Additional zest) And that one had missed the bowl entirely and fallen into the sink! And melted there! And that two more, driven to a frenzy of excitement by the proximity of your person, had trickled away (pause) into drops of dirty water (pause) on the countertop. (Pause) Suicide. (Pause) For love. (Briskly) These events precluded sadly enough the number of ice cubes in the bowl from adding to a number corresponding to the number of spaces in the trays. Meaning, not enough. Proving, that there is no justice. (Pause) What a defeat for you! What a victory for me! It was my first victory, I fear I went quite out of my head. I dragged you to the floor, among the ice cubes, which you had flung there, in pique and chagrin, and forced you (pause) with results that I considered then, and consider now, to have been “first-rate.” I thought I detected in you (pause), I thought I detected in you . . .

  MARTHA: Bang the Bicycle Gul, if you want enthusiasm.

  (Music: “A Bicycle Built for Two” or equivalent)

  BLOOMSBURY: Ah Daisy where do you be goin’?

  DAISY: Ta grandmather’s, bein’ it please yer lardship.

  BLOOMSBURY: An’ what a fine young soft young warm young thing ya have there Daisy on yer bicycle seat.

  DAISY: Ooo yer lardship ye’ve an evil head on yer, I’ll bet yer sez that t’all us guls.

  BLOOMSBUR
Y: Naw Daisy and the truth of the matter is, there’s nivver a gul come down my street wi’ such a fine one as yers.

  DAISY: Yer a bold one yer worship and that’s Gawd’s bloody truth.

  BLOOMSBURY: Lemme just feel of her a trifle Daisy, there’s a good gul.

  DAISY: Ooo Mishtar Bloomsbury, I likes a bit o’ fun as good as the next un but me husbing’s watchin’ from the porch wi’ ’is Spotter Scope.

  BLOOMSBURY: Pother Daisy it won’t be leavin’ any marks, we’ll just slither behind this tree.

  DAISY: Ring me bicycle bell yer lardship he’ll think I’m after sellin’ me Good Humors.

  BLOOMSBURY: That I will Daisy I’ll give ’er a ring like she nivver had before.

  (Music: Wagner’s Tristan or equivalent rises and then fades)

  BLOOMSBURY (tender): Have ye heard the news Daisy, that Martha me wife has left me in a yareplane? On the bloody Champagne Flight?

  DAISY: O yer wonderfulness, wot a cheeky lot to be pullin’ the plug on a lovely man like yourself.

  BLOOMSBURY: Well that’s how the cock curls, Daisy, there’s naught left of her but a bottle of Breck in the boodwar.

  DAISY: She was a bitch that she was to be committin’ this act of lèse majesty against the sovereign person of yer mightiness.

  BLOOMSBURY: She locked herself i’ th’ john Daisy toward the last, an’ wouldn’t come out not even for Flag Day.

  DAISY (righteous): Incredible Mishtar Bloomsbury to think that such as that coexist wi’ us good guls side by side in the Twentieth Century.

  BLOOMSBURY: An’ no more lovey-kindness than a stick, an’ no more gratitude than a glass of Milky Magnesia.

  DAISY: What bought her clothes at the Salvation Army by th’ look of her, on th’ Whirling Credit Plan.

  BLOOMSBURY: I fingerprinted her fingerpaintings so she said, and wallowed in sex what is more.

  DAISY: Coo! Mishtar Bloomsbury, me husbing Jack brings the telly right into th’ bed with ’im, it’s bumpin’ me back all night long.

  BLOOMSBURY: I’ th’ bed?

  DAISY: I’ th’ bed.

  BLOOMSBURY (sentimental): It’s been a weary long time, Daisy, since love ’as touched my hart.

  DAISY: Ooo yer elegance, there’s not a young gul i’ th’ Western Hemisphere as could withstand the grandeur of such a swell person as you.