Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Donald Barthelme

  “The armadillo is the only animal other than man known to contract leprosy,” Connors said. “The slow, friendly armadillo. I picture a leper armadillo, white as snow, with a little bell around its neck, making its draggy scamper across Texas from El Paso to Big Spring. My heart breaks.”

  Edwina peered into his chest where the cracked heart bumped around in its cage of bone. “Man, you are one sentimental taxpayer.”

  Connors signaled the waiter for more drinks. “It was about 1880 that the saintly armadillo crossed the Rio Grande and entered Texas,” he said, “seeking to carry its message to that great state. Its message was, squash me on your highways. Make my nine-banded shell into beautiful lacquered baskets for your patios, decks, and mobile homes. Watch me hayfoot-strawfoot across your vast savannas enriching same with my best-quality excreta. In some parts of South America armadillos grow to almost five feet in length and are allowed to teach at the junior-college level. In Argentina—”

  “You’re crazy, baby,” Edwina said, patting him on the arm.

  “Yes,” Connors said, “would you like to go to a movie?”

  The movie was Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, a nifty item. Connors, Edwina inhabiting both the right and left sides of his brain, next interviewed a man named Stupple who had been struck by lightning in April 1970 and had in consequence joined the American Nazi Party, specifically the Horst Wessel Post #66 in Newark, which had (counting Stupple) three members. Can’t use him, thought Connors, wasting time, nevertheless faithfully inscribing in his notebook pages of viciousness having to do with the Protocols of Zion and the alleged genetic inferiority of blacks. Marvelous, don’t these guys ever come up with anything new? Connors remembered having heard the same routine, almost word for word, from an Assistant Grand Dragon of the Shreveport (La.) Klan, a man somewhat dumber than a bathtub, in 1967 at the Dew Drop Inn in Shreveport, where the ribs in red sauce were not bad. Stupple, who had slipped a Nazi armband over the left sleeve of his checked flannel shirt for the interview, which was conducted in a two-room apartment over a failing four-lane bowling alley in Newark, served Connors Danish aquavit frozen into a block of ice with a very good Japanese beer, Kirin, as a chaser. “Won’t you need a picture?” Stupple asked at length, and Connors said, evasively, “Well, you know, lots of people have been struck by lightning ”

  Telephoning Edwina from a phone booth outside the Port Authority Terminal, he learned that she was not available for dinner. “How do you feel?” he asked her, aware that the question was imprecise—he really wanted to know whether having been struck by lightning was an ongoing state or, rather, a one-time illumination—and vexed by his inability to get a handle on the story. “Tired,” she said, “Zach’s been yelling a lot, call me tomorrow, maybe we can do something….”

  Penfield, the Folks editor, had a call on Connors’s service when he got back to Lafayette Street. “How’s it coming?” Penfield asked. “I don’t understand it yet,” Connors said, “how it works. It changes people.” “What’s to understand?” said Penfield, “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, you got anybody I can use for the opening? We’ve got these terrific shots of individual bolts, I see a four-way bleed with the text reversed out of this saturated purple sky and this tiny but absolutely wonderful face looking up at the bolt—” “She’s black,” said Connors, “you’re going to have trouble with the purple, not enough contrast.” “So it’ll be subtle,” said Penfield excitedly, “rich and subtle. The bolt will give it enough snap. It’ll be nice.”

  Nice, thought Connors, what a word for being struck by lightning.

  Connors, trying to get at the core of the experience—did being struck exalt or exacerbate pre-existing tendencies, states of mind, and what was the relevance of electroshock therapy, if it was a therapy?—talked to a Trappist monk who had been struck by lightning in 1975 while working in the fields at the order’s Piffard, New York, abbey. Having been given permission by his superior to speak to Connors, the small, bald monk was positively loquacious. He told Connors that the one deprivation he had felt keenly, as a member of a monastic order, was the absence of rock music. “Why?” he asked rhetorically. “I’m too old for this music, it’s for kids, I know it, you know it, makes no sense at all. But I love it, I simply love it And after I was struck the community bought me this Sony Walkman.” Proudly he showed Connors the small device with its delicate earphones. “A special dispensation. I guess they figured I was near-to-dead, therefore it was all right to bend the Rule a bit. I simply love it. Have you heard the Cars?” Standing in a beet field with the brown-habited monk Connors felt the depth of the man’s happiness and wondered if he himself ought to rethink his attitude toward Christianity. It would not be so bad to spend one’s days pulling beets in the warm sun while listening to the Cars and then retire to one’s cell at night to read St. Augustine and catch up on Rod Stewart and the B-52S.

  “The thing is,” Connors said to Edwina that night at dinner, “I don’t understand precisely what effects the change. Is it pure fright? Gratitude at having survived?” They were sitting in an Italian restaurant called Da Silvano on Sixth near Houston, eating tortellini in a white sauce. Little Zachary, a good-looking two-year-old, sat in a high chair and accepted bits of cut-up pasta. Edwina had had a shoot that afternoon and was not in a good mood. “The same damn thing,” she said, “me and three white chicks, you’d think somebody’d turn it around just once.” She needed a Vogue cover and a fragrance campaign, she said, and then she would be sitting pretty. She had been considered for Hashish some time back but didn’t get it and there was a question in her mind as to whether her agency (Jerry Francisco) had been solidly behind her. “Come along,” said Edwina, “I want to give you a back rub, you look a tiny bit peaked.”

  Connors subsequently interviewed five more people who had been struck by lightning, uncovering some unusual cases, including a fellow dumb from birth who, upon being struck, began speaking quite admirable French; his great-grandfather, as it happened, had also been struck by lightning, blasted from the seat of a farm wagon in Brittany in 1909. In his piece Connors described the experience as “ineffable,” using a word he had loathed and despised his whole life long, spoke of lightning-as-grace, and went so far as to mention the Descent of the Dove. Penfield, without a moment’s hesitation, cut the whole paragraph, saying (correctly) that the Folks reader didn’t like “funny stuff” and pointing out that the story was running long anyway because of the extra- page given to Edwina’s opening layout, in which she wore a Mary McFadden pleated tube and looked, in Penfield’s phrase, approximately fantastic.

  The Catechist

  IN the evenings, usually, the catechist approaches.

  “Where have you been?” he asks.

  “In the park,” I say.

  “Was she there?” he says.

  “No,” I say.

  The catechist is Holding a book. He reads aloud: “The chief reason for Christ’s coming was to manifest and teach God’s love for us. Here the catechist should find the focal point of his instruction.” On the word “manifest” the catechist places the tip of his right forefinger upon the tip of his left thumb, and on the word “teach” the catechist places the tip of his right forefinger upon the tip of his left forefinger.

  Then he says: “And the others?”

  I say: “Abusing the mothers.”

  “The guards?”

  “Yes. As usual.”

  The catechist reaches into his . pocket and produces a newspaper clipping. “Have you heard the news?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  He reads aloud: “Vegetable Oil Allowed in Three Catholic Rites.”

  He pauses. He looks at me. I say nothing. He reads aloud: “Rome, March 2nd. Reuters.” He looks at me. I say nothing. “Reuters,” he repeats. “Roman Catholic sacramental anointings may in the future be performed with any vegetable oil, according to a new Vatican ruling that lifts the Church’s age-old—” He pauses. “Age-old,” he emphasizes.

 
I think: Perhaps she is at ease. Looking at her lake.

  The catechist reads: “… that lifts the Church’s age-old insistence on the use of olive oil. New paragraph. Under Catholic ritual, holy oil previously blessed by a bishop is used symbolically in the sacraments of confirmation, baptism, and the anointing of the sick, formerly extreme unction. New paragraph. Other vegetable oils are cheaper and considerably easier to obtain than olive oil in many parts of the world, Vatican observers noted.” The catechist pauses. “You’re a priest. I’m a priest,” he says. “Now I ask you.”

  I think: Perhaps she is distressed and looking at the lake does nothing to mitigate the distress.

  He says: “Consider that you are dying. The sickroom. The bed. The plucked-at sheets. The distraught loved ones. The priest approaches. Bearing the holy viaticum, the sacred oils. The administration of the Host. The last anointing. And what is it you’re given? You, the dying man? Peanut oil.”

  I think: Peanut oil.

  The catechist replaces the clipping in his pocket. He will read it to me again tomorrow. Then he says: “When you saw the guards abusing the mothers, you—”

  I say: “Wrote another letter.”

  “And you mailed the letter?”

  “As before.”

  “The same mailbox?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remembered to put a stamp—”

  “A twenty-two-cent Frilled Dogwinkle.”

  I think: When I was young they asked other questions.

  He says: “Tell me about her.”

  I say: “She has dark hair.”

  “Her husband—”

  “I don’t wish to discuss her husband.”

  The catechist reads from his book. “The candidate should be questioned as to his motives for becoming a Christian.”

  I think: My motives?

  He says: “Tell me about yourself.”

  I say: “I’m forty. I have bad eyes. An enlarged liver.”

  “That’s the alcohol,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You’re very much like your father, there.”

  “A shade more avid.”

  We have this conversation every day. No detail changes. He says: “But a man in your profession—”

  I say: “But I don’t want to discuss my profession.”

  He says: “Are you going back now? To the park?”

  “Yes. She may be waiting.”

  “I thought she was looking at the lake.”

  “When she is not looking at the lake, then she is in the park.”

  The catechist reaches into the sleeve of his black robe. He produces a manifesto. He reads me the manifesto. “All intellectual productions of the bourgeoisie are either offensive or defensive weapons against the revolution. All intellectual productions of the bourgeoisie are, objectively, obfuscating objects which are obstacles to the emancipation of the proletariat.” He replaces the manifesto in his sleeve.

  I say: “But there are levels of signification other than the economic involved.”

  The catechist opens his book. He reads: “A disappointing experience: the inadequacy of language to express thought. But let the catechist take courage.” He closes the book.

  I think: Courage.

  He says: “What do you propose to do?”

  I say: “I suggested to her that I might change my profession.”

  “Have you had an offer?”

  “A feeler.”

  “From whom?”

  “General Foods.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “A chill fell upon the conversation.”

  “But you pointed out—”

  “I pointed out that although things were loosening up it would doubtless be a long time before priests were permitted to marry.”

  The catechist looks at me.

  I think: She is waiting in the park, in the children’s playground.

  He says: “And then?”

  I say: “I heard her confession.”

  “Was it interesting?”

  “Nothing new.”

  “What were the others doing?”

  “Tormenting the mothers.”

  “You wrote another letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t tire of this activity, writing letters?”

  “One does what one can.” I think: Or does not do what one can.

  He says: “Let us discuss love.”

  I say: “I know nothing about it. Unless of course you refer to Divine love.”

  “I had in mind love as it is found in the works of Scheler, who holds that love is an aspect of phenomenological knowledge, and Carroll, who holds that ’tis love, ’tis love, that—”

  “I know nothing about it.”

  The catechist opens his book. He reads: “How to deal with the educated. Temptation and scandals to be faced by the candidate during his catechumenate.” He closes the book. There is never a day, never a day, on which we do not have this conversation. He says: “When were you ordained?”

  I say: “1960.”

  He says: “These sins, your own, the sins we have been discussing, I’m sure you won’t mind if I refer to them as sins although their magnitude, whether they are mortal or venial, I leave it to you to assess, in the secret places of your heart—”

  I say: “One sits in the confessional hearing confessions, year after year, Saturday after Saturday, at four in the afternoon, twenty-one years times fifty-two Saturdays, excluding leap year—”

  “One thousand and ninety-two Saturdays—”

  “Figuring forty-five adulteries to the average Saturday—”

  “Forty-nine thousand one hundred and forty adulteries—”

  “One wonders: Perhaps there should be a redefinition? And with some adulteries there are explanations. The man is a cabdriver. He works nights. His wife wants to go out and have a good time. She tells him that she doesn’t do anything wrong—a few drinks at the neighborhood bar, a little dancing. ‘Now, you know, Father, and I know, Father, that where there’s drinking and dancing there’s bloody well something else too. So I tell her, Father, she’ll stay out of that bar or I’ll hit her upside the head. Well, Father, she says to me you can hit me upside the head all you want but I’m still going to that bar when I want and you can hit me all day long and it won’t stop me. Now, what can I do, Father? I got to be in this cab every night of the week except Mondays and sometimes I work Mondays to make a little extra. So I hit her upside the head a few times but it don’t make any difference, she goes anyhow. So I figure, Father, she’s getting it outside the home, why not me? I’m always sorry after, Father, but what can I do? If I had a day job it would be different and now she just laughs at me and what can I do, Father?’”

  “What do you say?”

  “I advise self-control.”

  The catechist pokes about in his pockets. He pokes in his right-hand pocket for a time and then pokes in his left-hand pocket. He produces at length a tiny Old Testament, a postage-stamp Old Testament. He opens the postage-stamp Old Testament. “Miserable comforters are ye all.” He closes the postage-stamp Old Testament. “Job 16:2.” He replaces the postage-stamp Old Testament in his left-hand pocket. He pokes about in his right-hand pocket and produces a button on which the word LOVE is printed. He pins the button on my cassock, above the belt, below the collar. He says: “But you’ll go there again.”

  I say: “At eleven. The children’s playground.”

  He says: “The rain. The trees.”

  I say: “All that rot.”

  He says: “The benches damp. The seesaw abandoned.”

  I say: “All that garbage.”

  He says: “Sunday the day of rest and worship is hated by all classes of men in every country to which the Word has been carried. Hatred of Sunday in London approaches one hundred percent. Hatred of Sunday in Rio produces suicides. Hatred of Sunday in Madrid is only appeased by the ritual slaughter of large black animals, in rings. Hatred of Sunday in Munic
h is the stuff of legend. Hatred of Sunday in Sydney is considered by the knowledgeable to be hatred of Sunday at its most exquisite.”

  I think: She will press against me with her hands in the back pockets of her trousers.

  The catechist opens his book. He reads: “The apathy of the listeners. The judicious catechist copes with the difficulty.” He closes the book.

  I think: Analysis terminable and interminable. I think: Then she will leave the park looking backward over her shoulder.

  He says: “And the guards, what were they doing?”

  I say: “Abusing the mothers.”

  “You wrote a letter?”

  “Another letter.”

  “Would you say, originally, that you had a vocation? Heard a call?”

  “I heard many things. Screams. Suites for unaccompanied cello. I did not hear a call.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless I went to the clerical-equipment store and purchased a summer cassock and a winter cassock. The summer cassock has short sleeves. I purchased a black hat.”

  “And the lady’s husband?”

  “He is a psychologist. He works in the limits of sensation. He is attempting to define precisely the two limiting sensations in the sensory continuum, the upper limit and the lower limit. He is often at the lab. He is measuring vanishing points.”

  “An irony.”

  “I suppose.”

  There is no day on which this conversation is not held and no detail of this conversation which is not replicated on any particular day on which this conversation is held.

  The catechist produces from beneath his cloak a banner. He unfurls the banner and holds the unfurled banner above his head with both hands. The banner says, YOU ARE INTERRUPTED IN THE MIDST OF MORE CONGENIAL WORK? BUT THIS IS GOD’S WORK. The catechist refurls the banner. He replaces the banner under his cloak. He says: “But you’ll go there again?”