He switches channels and gets Dolly Parton singing, by coincidence, “House of the Rising Sun.”
At some point during each summer she’ll say: “Why did you and my mother split up?”
“It was your fault,” he answers. “Yours. You made too much noise, as a kid, I couldn’t work.” His ex-wife had once told Katie this as an explanation for the divorce, and he’ll repeat it until its untruth is marble, a monument.
His ex-wife is otherwise very sensible, and thrifty, too.
Why do I live this way? Best I can do.
Walking down West Broadway on a Saturday afternoon. Barking art caged in the high white galleries, don’t go inside or it’ll get you, leap into your lap and cover your face with kisses. Some goes to the other extreme, snarls and shows its brilliant teeth. O art I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me. Citizens parading, plump-faced and bone-faced, lightly clad. A young black boy toting a Board of Education trombone case. A fellow with oddly cut hair the color of marigolds and a roll of roofing felt over his shoulder.
Bishop in the crowd, thirty dollars in his pocket in case he has to buy a pal a drink.
Into a gallery because it must be done. The artist’s hung twenty EVERLAST heavy bags in rows of four, you’re invited to have a bash. People are giving the bags every kind of trouble. Bishop, unable to resist, bangs one with his fabled left, and hurts his hand.
Bloody artists.
Out on the street again, he is bumped into by a man, then another man, then a woman. And here’s Harry in lemon pants with his Britisher friend, Malcolm.
“Harry, Malcolm.”
“Professor,” Harry says ironically (he is a professor, Bishop is not).
Harry’s got not much hair and has lost weight since he split with Tom. Malcolm is the single most cheerful individual Bishop has ever met.
Harry’s university has just hired a new president who’s thirty-two. Harry can’t get over it.
“Thirty-two! I mean I don’t think the board’s got both oars in the water.”
Standing behind Malcolm is a beautiful young woman.
“This is Christie,” Malcolm says. “We’ve just given her lunch. We’ve just eaten all the dim sum in the world.”
Bishop is immediately seized by a desire to cook for Christie—either his Eight-Bean Soup or his Crash Cassoulet.
She’s telling him something about her windows.
“I don’t care but why under my windows?”
She’s wearing a purple shirt and is deeply tanned with black hair—looks like an Indian, in fact, the one who sells Mazola on TV.
Harry is still talking about the new president. “I mean he did his dissertation on bathing trends.”
“Well maybe he knows where the big bucks are.”
There’s some leftover duck in the refrigerator he can use for the cassoulet.
“Well,” he says to Christie, “are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she says, “I am.”
“We just ate,” Harry says. “You can’t be hungry. You can’t possibly be hungry.”
“Hungry hungry hungry,” she says, taking Bishop’s arm, which is, can you believe it, sticking out.
Putting slices of duck in bean water while Christie watches The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, on the kitchen TV. At the same time Hank Williams, Jr., is singing on the FM.
“I like a place where I can take my shoes off,” she says, as Errol Flynn throws a whole dead deer on the banquet table.
Bishop, chopping parsley, is taking quick glances at her to see what she looks like with a glass of wine in her hand. Some people look good with white wine, some don’t.
He makes a mental note to buy some Mazola—a case, maybe.
“Here’s sixty seconds on fenders,” says the radio.
“Do you live with anybody?” Christie asks.
“My daughter is here sometimes. Summers and Christmas.” A little tarragon into the bean water. “How about you?”
“There’s this guy.”
But there had to be. Bishop chops steadfastly with his Three Sheep brand Chinese chopper, made in gray Fushan.
“He’s an artist.”
As who is not? “What kind of an artist?”
“A painter. He’s in Seattle. He needs rain.”
He throws handfuls of sliced onions into the water, then a can of tomato paste.
“How long does this take?” Christie asks. “I’m not rushing you. I’m just curious.”
“Another hour.”
“Then I’ll have a little vodka. Straight. Ice. If you don’t mind.” Bishop loves women who drink.
Maybe she smokes!
“Actually I can’t stand artists,” she says.
“Like who in particular?”
“Like that woman who puts chewing gum on her stomach—”
“She doesn’t do that anymore. And the chewing gum was not poorly placed.”
“And that other one who cuts off parts of himself, whittles on himself, that fries my ass.”
“It’s supposed to.”
“Yeah,” she says, shaking the ice in her glass. “I’m reacting like a bozo.”
She gets up and walks over to the counter and takes a Lark from his pack.
Very happily, Bishop begins to talk. He tells her that the night before he had smelled smoke, had gotten up and checked the apartment, knowing that a pier was on fire over by the river and suspecting it was that. He had turned on the TV to get the all-news channel and while dialing had encountered the opening credits of a Richard Widmark cop film called Brock’s Last Case which he had then sat down and watched, his faithful Scotch at his side, until five o’clock in the morning. Richard Widmark was one of his favorite actors in the whole world, he told her, because of the way in which Richard Widmark was able to convey, what was the word, resilience. You could knock Richard Widmark down, he said, you could even knock Richard Widmark down repeatedly, but you had better bear in mind while knocking Richard Widmark down that Richard Widmark was pretty damn sure going to bounce back up and batter your conk—
“Redford is the one I like,” she says.
Bishop can understand this. He nods seriously.
“The thing I like about Redford is,” she says, and for ten minutes she tells him about Robert Redford.
He tastes the cassoulet with a long spoon. More salt.
It appears that she is also mighty fond of Clint Eastwood.
Bishop has the sense that the conversation has strayed, like a bad cow, from the proper path.
“Old Clint Eastwood,” he says, shaking his head admiringly. “We’re ready.”
He dishes up the cassoulet and fetches hot bread from the oven.
“Tastes like real cassoulet,” she says.
“That’s the ox-tail soup mix.” Why is he serving her cassoulet in summer? It’s hot.
He’s opened a bottle of Robert Mondavi table red.
“Very good,” she says. “I mean I’m surprised. Really.”
“Maybe could have had more tomato.”
“No, really.” She tears off a fistful of French bread. “Men are quite odd. I saw this guy at the farmer’s market on Union Square this morning? He was standing in front of a table full of greens and radishes and corn and this and that, behind a bunch of other people, and he was staring at this farmer-girl who was wearing cutoffs and a tank top and every time she leaned over to grab a cabbage or whatnot he was getting a shot of her breasts, which were, to be fair, quite pretty—I mean how much fun can that be?”
“Moderate amount of fun. Some fun. Not much fun. What can I say?”
“And that plug I live with.”
“What about him?”
“He gave me a book once.”
“What was it?”
“Book about how to fix home appliances. The dishwasher was broken. Then he bought me a screwdriver. This really nice screwdriver.”
“Well.”
“I fixed the damned dishwasher. Took me two da
ys.”
“Would you like to go to bed now?”
“No,” Christie says, “not yet.”
Not yet! Very happily, Bishop pours more wine.
Now he’s sweating, little chills at intervals. He gets a sheet from the bedroom and sits in the kitchen with the sheet draped around him, guru-style. He can hear Katie turning restlessly on the couch.
He admires the way she organizes her life—that is, the way she gets done what she wants done. A little wangling, a little nagging, a little let’s-go-take-a-look and Bishop has sprung for a new pair of boots, handsome ankle-height black diablo numbers that she’ll wear with black ski pants….
Well, he doesn’t give her many presents.
Could he bear a Scotch? He thinks not.
He remembers a dream in which he dreamed that his nose was as dark and red as a Bing cherry. As would be appropriate.
“Daddy?”
Still wearing the yellow sheet, he gets up and goes into the other room.
“I can’t sleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Talk to me.”
Bishop sits again on the edge of the couch. How large she is!
He gives her his Art History lecture.
“Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, that’s a little tricky, .Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass on the Grass and shit, his colors were browns and greens. Then you get Bonnard, he did all the interiors and shit, amazing light, and then you get Van Guk, he’s the one with the car and shit, and Say-zanne, he’s the one with the apples and shit, you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures, you get my man Mondrian, he’s the one with the rectangles and shit, his colors were red yellow and blue, you get Moholy-Nagy, he did all the plastic thingummies and shit, you get Mar-cel Duchamp, he’s the devil in human form….”
She’s asleep.
Bishop goes back into the kitchen and makes himself a drink.
It’s five-thirty. Faint light in the big windows.
Christie’s in Seattle, and plans to stay.
Looking out of the windows in the early morning he can sometimes see the two old ladies who live in the apartment whose garden backs up to his building having breakfast by candlelight. He can never figure out whether they are terminally romantic or whether, rather, they’re trying to save electricity.
The Wound
HE sits up again. He makes a wild grab for his mother’s hair. The hair of his mother! But she neatly avoids him. The cook enters with the roast beef. The mother of the torero tastes the sauce, which is presented separately, in a silver dish. She makes a face. The torero, ignoring the roast beef, takes the silver dish from his mother and sips from it, meanwhile maintaining intense eye contact with his mistress. The torero’s mistress hands the camera to the torero’s mother and reaches for the silver dish. “What is all this nonsense with the dish?” asks the famous aficionado who is sitting by the bedside. The torero offers the aficionado a slice of beef, carved from the roast with a sword, of which there are perhaps a dozen on the bed. “These fellows with their swords, they think they’re so fine,” says one of the imbéciles to another, quietly. The second imbécil says, “We would all think ourselves fine if we could. But we can’t. Something prevents us.”
The torero looks with irritation in the direction of the imbéciles. His mistress takes the 8-mm movie camera from his mother and begins to film something outside the window. The torero has been gored in the foot. He is, in addition, surrounded by imbéciles, idiotas, and bobos. He shifts uncomfortably in his bed. Several swords fall to the floor. A telegram is delivered. The mistress of the torero puts down the camera and removes her shirt. The mother of the torero looks angrily at the imbéciles. The famous aficionado reads the telegram aloud. The telegram suggests the torero is a clown and a cucaracha for allowing himself to be gored in the foot, thus both insulting the noble profession of which he is such a poor representative and irrevocably ruining the telegram sender’s Sunday afternoon, and that, furthermore, the telegram sender is even now on his way to the Church of Our Lady of the Several Sorrows to pray against the torero, whose future, he cordially hopes, is a thing of the past. The torero’s head flops forward into the cupped hands of an adjacent bobo.
The mother of the torero turns on the television set, where the goring of the foot of the torero is being shown first at normal speed, then in exquisite slow motion. The torero’s head remains in the cupped hands of the bobo. “My foot!” he shouts. Someone turns off the television. The beautiful breasts of the torero’s mistress are appreciated by the aficionado, who is also an aficionado of breasts. The imbéciles and idiotas are afraid to look. So they do not. One idiota says to another idiota, “I would greatly like some of that roast beef.” “But it has not been offered to us,” his companion replies, “because we are so insignificant.” “But no one else is eating it,” the first says. “It simply sits there, on the plate.” They regard the attractive roast of beef.
The torero’s mother picks up the movie camera that his mistress has relinquished and begins filming the torero’s foot, playing with the zoom lens. The torero, head still in the hands of the bobo, reaches into a drawer in the bedside table and removes from a box there a Cuban cigar of the first quality. Two bobos and an imbécil rush to light it for him, bumping into each other in the process. “Lysol,” says the mother of the torero. “I forgot the application of the Lysol.” She puts down the camera and looks around for the Lysol bottle. But the cook has taken it away. The mother of the torero leaves the room, in search of the Lysol bottle. He, the torero, lifts his head and follows her exit. More pain?
His mother reenters the room carrying a bottle of Lysol. The torero places his bandaged foot under a pillow, and both hands, fingers spread wide, on top of the pillow. His mother unscrews the top of the bottle of Lysol. The Bishop of Valencia enters with attendants. The Bishop is a heavy man with his head cocked permanently to the left—the result of years of hearing confessions in a confessional whose right-hand box was said to be inhabited by vipers. The torero’s mistress hastily puts on her shirt. The imbéciles and idiotas retire into the walls. The Bishop extends his hand. The torero kisses the Bishop’s ring. The famous aficionado does likewise. The Bishop asks if he may inspect the wound. The torero takes his foot out from under the pillow. The torero’s mother unwraps the bandage. There is the foot, swollen almost twice normal size. In the center of the foot, the wound, surrounded by angry flesh. The Bishop shakes his head, closes his eyes, raises his head (on the diagonal), and murmurs a short prayer. Then he opens his eyes and looks about him for a chair. An idiota rushes forward with a chair. The Bishop seats himself by the bedside. The torero offers the Bishop some cold roast beef. The Bishop begins to talk about his psychoanalysis: “I am a different man now,” the Bishop says. “Gloomier, duller, more fearful. In the name of the Holy Ghost, you would not believe what I see under the bed, in the middle of the night.” The Bishop laughs heartily. The torero joins him. The torero’s mistress is filming the Bishop. “I was happier with my whiskey,” the Bishop says, laughing even harder. The laughter of the Bishop threatens the chair he is sitting in. One bobo says to another bobo, “The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.” “It is because we are no good,” the second bobo says. “It is because we are nothings.”
The torero opens a bottle of Chivas Regal. He offers a shot to the Bishop, who graciously accepts, and then pours one for himself. The torero’s mother edges toward the bottle of Chivas Regal. The torero’s mistress films his mother’s surreptitious approach. The Bishop and the torero discuss whiskey and psychoanalysis. The torero’s mother has a hand on the neck of the bottle. The torero makes a sudden wild grab for her hair. The hair of his mother! He misses and she scuttles off into a corner of the room, clutching the bottle. The torero picks a killing sword, an estoque,
from the half-dozen still on the bed. The Queen of the Gypsies enters.
The Queen hurries to the torero, little tufts of dried grass falling from her robes as she crosses the room. “Unwrap the wound!” she cries. “The wound, the wound, the wound!” The torero recoils. The Bishop sits severely. His attendants stir and whisper. The torero’s mother takes a swig from the Chivas Regal bottle. The famous aficionado crosses himself. The torero’s mistress looks down through her half-open blouse at her breasts. The torero quickly reaches into the drawer of the bedside table and removes the cigar box. He takes from the cigar box the ears and tail of a bull he killed, with excellence and emotion, long ago. He spreads them out on the bedcovers, offering them to the Queen. The cars resemble bloody wallets, the tail the hair of some long-dead saint, robbed from a reliquary. “No,” the Queen says. She grasps the torero’s foot and begins to unwrap the bandages. The torero grimaces but submits. The Queen withdraws from her belt a sharp knife. The torero’s mistress picks up a violin and begins to play an air by Valdéz. The Queen whacks off a huge portion of roast beef, which she stuffs into her mouth while bent over the wound—gazing deeply into it, savoring it. Everyone shrinks—the torero, his mother, his mistress, the Bishop, the aficionado, the imbéciles, idiotas, and bobos. An ecstasy of shrinking. The Queen says, “I want this wound. This one. It is mine. Come, pick him up.” Everyone present takes a handful of the torero and lifts him high above their heads (he is screaming). But the doorway is suddenly blocked by the figure of an immense black bull. The bull begins to ring, like a telephone.
Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) Page 12
