Varieties of Disturbance

by Lydia Davis

  The colors of his face: his pink forehead, his bluish eyelids, his reddish-gold eyebrows. And the tiny beads of sweat standing out from the tiny pores of his skin.

  When he yawns, how the wings of his nostrils turn yellow.

  When he holds his breath and pushes down on his diaphragm, how quickly his face turns red.

  His uneven breath: how his breath changes in response to his motion, and to his curiosity.

  How his bent arms and legs, when he is asleep on his stomach, take the shape of an hourglass.

  When he lies against your chest, how he lifts his head to look around like a turtle and drops it again because it is so heavy.

  How his hands move slowly through the air like crabs or other sea creatures before closing on a toy.

  How, bottom up, folded, he looks as though he were going away, or as though he were upside down.

  Connected by a Single Nipple

  You are lying on the bed nursing him, but you are not holding on to him with your arms or hands and he is not holding on to you. He is connected to you by a single nipple.

  Disorder

  You learn that there is less order in your life now. Or if there is to be order, you must work hard at maintaining it. For instance, it is evening and you are lying on the bed with the baby half asleep beside you. You are watching Gaslight. Suddenly a thunderstorm breaks and the rain comes down hard. You remember the baby’s clothes out on the line, and you get up from the bed and run outdoors. The baby begins crying at being left so abruptly half asleep on the bed. Gaslight continues, the baby screams now, and you are out in the hard rainfall in your white bathrobe.

  Protocol

  There are so many occasions for greetings in the course of his day. Upon each waking, a greeting. Each time you enter the room, a greeting. And in each greeting there is real enthusiasm.

  Distraction

  You decide you must attend some public event, say a concert, despite the difficulty of arranging such a thing. You make elaborate preparations to leave the baby with a babysitter, taking a bag full of equipment, a folding bed, a folding stroller, and so on. Now, as the concert proceeds, you sit thinking not about the concert but only about the elaborate preparations and whether they have been adequate, and no matter how often you try to listen to the concert, you will hear only a few minutes of it before thinking again about those elaborate preparations and whether they have been adequate to the comfort of the baby and the convenience of the babysitter.

  Henri Bergson

  He demonstrates to you what you learned long ago from reading Henri Bergson—that laughter is always preceded by surprise.

  You Do Not Know When He Will Fall Asleep

  If his eyes are wide open staring at a light, it does not mean that he will not be asleep within minutes.

  If he cries with a squeaky cry and squirms with wiry strength against your chest, digging his sharp little fingernails into your shoulder, or raking your neck, or pushing his face into your shirt, it does not mean he will not relax in five minutes and grow heavy. But five minutes is a very long time when you are caring for a baby.

  What Resembles His Cry

  Listening for his cry, you mistake, for his cry, the wind, seagulls, and police sirens.

  Time

  It is not that five minutes is always a very long time when you are caring for a baby but that time passes very slowly when you are waiting for a baby to go to sleep, when you are listening to him cry alone in his bed or whimper close to your ear.

  Then time passes very quickly once the baby is asleep. The things you have to do have always taken this long to do, but before the baby was born it did not matter, because there were many such hours in the day to do these things. Now there is only one hour, and again later, on some days, one hour, and again, very late in the day, on some days, one last hour.

  Order

  You cannot think clearly or remain calm in such disorder. And so you learn to wash a dish as soon as you use it, otherwise it may not be washed for a very long time. You learn to make your bed immediately because there may be no time to do it later. And then you begin to worry regularly, if not constantly, about how to save time. You learn to prepare for the baby’s waking as soon as the baby sleeps. You learn to prepare everything hours in advance. Then your conception of time begins to change. The future collapses into the present.

  Other Days

  There are other days, despite what you have learned about saving time, and preparing ahead, when something in you relaxes, or you are simply tired. You do not mind if the house is untidy. You do not mind if you do nothing but care for the baby. You do not mind if time goes by while you lie in the hammock and read a magazine.

  Why He Smiles

  He looks at a window with serious interest. He looks at a painting and smiles. It is hard to know what that smile means. Is he pleased by the painting? Is the painting funny to him? No, soon you understand that he smiles at the painting for the same reason he smiles at you: because the painting is looking at him.

  A Problem of Balance

  A problem of balance: if he yawns, he falls over backward.

  Moving Forward

  You worry about moving forward, or about the difference between moving forward and staying in one place. You begin to notice which things have to be done over and over again in one day, and which things have to be done once every day, and which things have to be done every few days, and so on, and all these things only cause you to mark time, stay in one place, rather than move forward, or, rather, keep you from slipping backward, whereas certain other things are done only once. A job to earn money is done only once, a letter is written saying a thing only once and never again, an event is planned that will happen only once, news is received or news passed along only once, and if, in this way, something happens that will happen only once, this day is different from other days, and on this day your life seems to move forward, and it is easier to sit still holding the baby and staring at the wall knowing that on this day, at least, your life has moved forward; there has been a change, however small.

  A Small Thing With Another Thing, Even Smaller

  Asleep in his carriage, he is woken by a fly.

  Patience

  You try to understand why on some days you have no patience and on others your patience is limitless and you will stand over him for a long time where he lies on his back waving his arms, kicking his legs, or looking up at the painting on the wall. Why on some days it is limitless and on others, or at other times, late in a day when you have been patient, you cannot bear his crying and want to threaten to put him away in his bed to cry alone if he does not stop crying in your arms, and sometimes you do put him away in his bed to cry alone.

  Impatience

  You learn about patience. You discover patience. Or you discover how patience extends up to a certain point and then it ends and impatience begins. Or rather, impatience was there all along, underneath a light, surface kind of patience, and at a certain point the light kind of patience wears away and all that’s left is the impatience. Then the impatience grows.

  Paradox

  You begin to understand paradox: lying on the bed next to him, you are deeply interested, watching his face and holding his hands, and yet at the same time you are deeply bored, wishing you were somewhere else doing something else.

  Regression

  Although he is at such an early stage in his development, he regresses, when he is hungry or tired, to an earlier stage, still, of non-communication, self-absorption, and spastic motion.

  Between Human and Animal

  How he is somewhere between human and animal. While he can’t see well, while he looks blindly toward the brightest light, and can’t see you, or can’t see your features but more clearly the edge of your face, the edge of your head; and while his movements are more chaotic; and while he is more subject to the needs of his body, and can’t be distracted, by intellectual curiosity, from his hunger or loneliness or exhaustion, then he seems to you mo
re animal than human.

  How Parts of Him are Not Connected

  He does not know what his hand is doing: it curls around the iron rod of your chair and holds it fast. Then, while he is looking elsewhere, it curls around the narrow black foot of a strange frog.

  Admiration

  He is filled with such courage, goodwill, curiosity, and self-reliance that you admire him for it. But then you realize he was born with these qualities: now what do you do with your admiration?

  Responsibility

  How responsible he is, to the limits of his capacity, for his own body, for his own safety. He holds his breath when a cloth covers his face. He widens his eyes in the dark. When he loses his balance, his hands curl around whatever comes under them, and he clutches the stuff of your shirt.

  Within His Limits

  How he is curious, to the limits of his understanding; how he attempts to approach what arouses his curiosity, to the limits of his motion; how confident he is, to the limits of his knowledge; how masterful he is, to the limits of his competence; how he derives satisfaction from another face before him, to the limits of his attention; how he asserts his needs, to the limits of his force.

  Her Mother’s Mother

  1.

  There are times when she is gentle, but there are also times when she is not gentle, when she is fierce and unrelenting toward him or them all, and she knows it is the strange spirit of her mother in her then. For there were times when her mother was gentle, but there were also times when she was fierce and unrelenting toward her or them all, and she knows it was the spirit of her mother’s mother in her mother then. For her mother’s mother had been gentle sometimes, her mother said, and teased her or them all, but she had also been fierce and unrelenting, and accused her of lying, and perhaps them all.

  2.

  In the night, late at night, her mother’s mother used to weep and implore her husband, as her mother, still a girl, lay in bed listening. Her mother, when she was grown, did not weep and implore her husband in the night, or not where her daughter could hear her, as she lay in bed listening. Her mother later could not know, since she could not hear, whether her daughter, when she was grown, wept and implored her husband in the night, late at night, like her mother’s mother.

  How It is Done

  There is a description in a child’s science book of the act of love that makes it all quite clear and helps when one begins to forget. It starts with affection between a man and a woman. The blood goes to their genitals as they kiss and caress each other, this swelling creates a desire in these parts to be touched further, the man’s penis becomes larger and quite stiff and the woman’s vagina moist and slippery. The penis can now be pushed into the woman’s vagina and the parts move “comfortably and pleasantly” together until the man and woman reach orgasm, “not necessarily at the same time.” The article ends, however, with a cautionary emendation of the opening statement about affection: nowadays many people make love, it says, who do not love each other, or even have any affection for each other, and whether or not this is a good thing we do not yet know.

  Insomnia

  My body aches so—

  It must be this heavy bed pressing up against me.

  Burning Family Members

  First they burned her—that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they’re starving him. When he’s dead, they’ll burn him, too.

  Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.

  It isn’t the same “they,” of course. “They” burned her thousands of miles away from here. The “they” that are starving him here are different.

  Wait. They were supposed to starve him, but now they’re feeding him.

  They’re feeding him, against doctor’s orders?

  Yes. We had said, All right, let him die. The doctors advised it.

  He was sick?

  He wasn’t really sick.

  He wasn’t sick, but they wanted to let him die?

  He had just been sick, he had had pneumonia, and he was better.

  So he was better and that was when they decided to let him die?

  Well, he was old, and they didn’t want to treat him for pneumonia again.

  They thought it was better for him to die than get sick again?

  Yes. Then, at the rest home, they made a mistake and gave him his breakfast. They must not have had the doctor’s orders. They told us, “He’s had a good breakfast!” Just when we were prepared for him to start dying.

  All right. Now they’ve got it right. They’re not feeding him anymore.

  Things are back on schedule.

  He’ll have to die sooner or later.

  He’s taking a few days to do it.

  It wasn’t certain he would die before, when they gave him breakfast. He ate it. They said he enjoyed it! But he’s beyond eating now. He doesn’t even wake up.

  So he’s asleep?

  Well, not exactly. His eyes are open, a little. But he doesn’t see anything—his eyes don’t move. And he won’t answer if you speak to him.

  But you don’t know how long it will take.

  A few days after that, they’ll burn him.

  After what?

  After he dies.

  You’ll let them burn him.

  We’ll ask them to burn him. In fact, we’ll pay them to burn him.

  Why not burn him right away?

  Before he dies?

  No, no. Why did you say “a few days after that”?

  According to the law, we have to wait at least forty-eight hours.

  Even in the case of an innocent old accountant?

  He wasn’t so innocent. Think of the testimony he gave.

  You mean, if he dies on a Thursday, he won’t be burned until Monday.

  They take him away, once he’s dead. They keep him somewhere, and then they take him to where he’ll be burned.

  Who goes with him and keeps him company once he’s dead?

  No one, actually.

  No one goes with him?

  Well, someone will take him away, but we don’t know the person.

  You don’t know the person?

  It will be an employee.

  Probably in the middle of the night?

  Yes.

  And you probably don’t know where they’ll take him either?

  No.

  And then no one will keep him company?

  Well, he won’t be alive anymore.

  So you don’t think it matters.

  They will put him in a coffin?

  No, it’s actually a cardboard box.

  A cardboard box?

  Yes, a small one. Narrow and small. It didn’t weigh much, even with him in it.

  Was he a small man?

  No. But as he got older he got smaller. And lighter. But still, it should have been bigger than that.

  Are you sure he was in the box?

  Yes.

  Did you look?

  No.

  Why not?

  They don’t really give you an opportunity.

  So they burned something in a cardboard box that you trust was your father?

  Yes.

  How long did it take?

  Hours and hours.

  Burn the accountant! What a festival!

  We didn’t know it would be cardboard. We didn’t know it would be so small or so light.

  You were “surprised.”

  I don’t know where he has gone now that he’s dead. I wonder where he is.

  You’re asking that now? Why didn’t you ask that before?

  Well, I did. I didn’t have an answer. It’s more urgent now.

  “Urgent.”

  I wanted to think he was still nearby, I really wanted to believe that. If he was nearby, I thought he would be hovering.

  Hovering?

  I don’t see him walking. I see him floating a few feet off the ground.

  You say “I see him”—you can sit in a comfortable chair and say that you “see h
im.” Where do you think he is?

  But if he’s nearby, hovering, is he the way he used to be, or is he the way he was at the end? He used to have all his memory. Does he get it back before he returns? Or is he the way he was near the end, with a lot of his memory gone?

  What are you talking about?

  At first I used to ask him a question and he would say, “No, I don’t remember.” Then he would just shake his head if I asked. But he had a little smile on his face, as though he didn’t mind not remembering. He looked as if he thought it was interesting. He seemed to be enjoying the attention. At that time he still liked to watch things. One rainy day we sat together outside the front entrance of the home, under a sort of roof.

  Wait a minute. What are you calling “the home”?

  The old people’s home, where he lived at the end.

  That is not a home.

  He watched the sparrows hopping around on the wet asphalt. Then a boy rode by on a bicycle. Then a woman walked by with a brightly colored umbrella. He pointed to these things. The sparrows, the boy on the bicycle, the woman with the colorful umbrella in the rain.

  No, of course. You want to think he’s still hovering nearby.

  No, I don’t think he’s there anymore.

  You may as well add that he still has his memory. He would have to. If he didn’t, he would lose interest and just drift away.

  I do think he was there for three days afterward, anyway. I do think that.

  Why three?

  The Way to Perfection

  Practicing at the piano:

  My Alberti basses were not even.

  But did my movement float this morning?

  Yes!

  The Fellowship

  1.

  It is not that you are not qualified to receive the fellowship, it is that each year your application is not good enough. When at last your application is perfect, then you will receive the fellowship.