Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Donald Barthelme

  Blood at dawn, a solitary figure pacing the foredeck.

  No other sail in sight. He reaches into the pocket of his blue velvet jacket trimmed with silver lace. His hand closes over three round, white objects: mothballs. In disgust, he throws them over the side. One makes one’s luck, he thinks. Reaching into another pocket, he withdraws a folded parchment tied with ribbon. Un-wrapping the little packet, he finds that it is a memo that he wrote to himself ten months earlier. “Dolphin, Captain Darbraunce, 120 tons, cargo silver, paprika, bananas, sailing Mar. 10 Havana. Be there!” Chuckling, Blood goes off to seek his mate, Oglethorpe— that laughing blond giant of a man.

  Who will be aboard this vessel which is now within cannon-shot? wonders Captain Blood. Rich people, I hope, with pretty gold and silver things aplenty.

  “Short John, where is Mr. Oglethorpe?”

  “I am not Short John, sir. I am John-of-Orkney.”

  “Sorry, John. Has Mr. Oglethorpe carried out my instructions?”

  “Yes, sir. He is forward, crouching over the bombard, lit cheroot in hand, ready to fire.”

  “Well, fire then.”

  “Fire!”

  BAM!

  “The other captain doesn’t understand what is happening to him!”

  “He’s not heaving to!”

  “He’s ignoring us!”

  “The dolt!”

  “Fire again!”

  BAM!

  “That did it!”

  “He’s turning into the wind!”

  “He’s dropped anchor!”

  “He’s lowering sail!”

  “Very well, Mr. Oglethorpe. You may prepare to board.”

  “Very well, Peter.”

  “And Jeremy—”

  “Yes, Peter?”

  “I know we’ve had rather a thin time of it these last few months.”

  “Well it hasn’t been so bad, Peter. A little slow, perhaps—”

  “Well, before we board, I’d like you to convey to the men my appreciation for their patience. Patience and, I may say, tact.”

  “We knew you’d turn up something, Peter.”

  “Just tell them for me, will you?”

  Always a wonderful moment, thinks Captain Blood. Preparing to board. Pistol in one hand, naked cutlass in the other. Dropping lightly to the deck of the engrappled vessel, backed by one’s grinning, leering, disorderly, rapacious crew who are nevertheless under the strictest buccaneer discipline. There to confront the little band of fear-crazed victims shrinking from the entirely possible carnage. Among them, several beautiful women, but one really spectacular beautiful woman who stands a bit apart from her sisters, clutching a machete with which she intends, against all reason, to—

  When Captain Blood celebrates the acquisition of a rich prize, he goes down to the galley himself and cooks tallarínes a la catalána (noodles, spare ribs, almonds, pine nuts) for all hands. The name of the captured vessel is entered in a little book along with the names of all the others he has captured in a long career. Here are some of them: the Oxford, the Luis, the Fortune, the Lambe, the Jamaica Merchant, the Betty, the Prosperous, the Endeavor, the Falcon, the Bonadventure, the Constant Thomas, the Marquesa, the Señora del Carmen, the Recovery, the María Gloriosa, the Virgin Queen, the Esmeralda, the Havana, the San Felipe, the Steadfast…

  The true buccaneer is not persuaded that God is not on his side, too—especially if, as is often the case, he turned pirate after some monstrously unjust thing was done to him, such as being press-ganged into one or another of the Royal Navies when he was merely innocently having a drink at a waterfront tavern, or having been confined to the stinking dungeons of the Inquisition just for making some idle, thoughtless, light remark. Therefore, Blood feels himself to be devout in his own way, and has endowed candles burning in churches in most of the great cities of the New World. Although not under his own name.

  Captain Blood roams ceaselessly, making daring raids. The average raid yields something like 20,000 pieces-of-eight, which is apportioned fairly among the crew, with wounded men getting more according to the gravity of their wounds. A cut ear is worth two pieces, a cut-off ear worth-ten to twelve. The scale of payments for injuries is posted in the forecastle.

  When he is on land, Blood is confused and troubled by the life of cities, where every passing stranger may, for no reason, assault him, if the stranger so chooses. And indeed, the stranger’s mere presence, multiplied many times over, is a kind of assault. Merely having to take into account all these hurrying others is a blistering occupation. This does not happen on a ship, or on a sea.

  An amusing incident: Captain Blood has overhauled a naval vessel, has caused her to drop anchor (on this particular voyage he is sailing with three other ships under his command and a total enlistment of nearly one thousand men), and is now interviewing the arrested captain in his cabin full of marmalade jars and new perukes.

  “And what may your name be, sir? If I may ask?”

  “Jones, sir.”

  “What kind of a name is that? English, I take it?”

  “No, it’s American, sir.”

  “American? What is an American?”

  “America is a new nation among the nations of the world.”

  “I’ve not heard of it. Where is it?”

  “North of here, north and west. It’s a very small nation, at present, and has only been a nation for about two years.”

  “But the name of your ship is French.”

  “Yes it is. It is named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, one of our American heroes.”

  “Bon Homme Richard? What has that to do with Benjamin or Franklin?”

  “Well it’s an allusion to an almanac Dr. Franklin published called—”

  “You weary me, sir. You are captured, American or no, so tell me—do you surrender, with all your men, fittings, cargo, and what-ever?”

  “Sir, I have not yet begun to fight.”

  “Captain, this is madness. We have you completely surrounded. Furthermore there is a great hole in your hull below the waterline where our warning shot, which was slightly miscalculated, bashed in your timbers. You are taking water at a fearsome rate. And still you wish to fight?”

  “It is the pluck of us Americans, sir. We are just that way. Our tiny nation has to be pluckier than most if it is to survive among the bigger, older nations of the world.”

  “Well, bless my soul, Jones, you are the damnedest goatsucker I ever did see. Stab me if I am not tempted to let you go scot-free, just because of your amazing pluck.”

  “No sir, I insist on fighting. As founder of the American naval tradition, I must set a good example.”

  “Jones, return to your vessel and be off.”

  “No, sir, I will fight to the last shred of canvas, for the honor of America.”

  “Jones, even in America, wherever it is, you must have encountered the word &ninny.’”

  “Oh. I see. Well then. I think we’ll be weighing anchor, Captain, with your permission.”

  “Choose your occasions, Captain. And God be with you.”

  Blood, at dawn, a solitary figure pacing the foredeck. The world of piracy is wide, and at the same time, narrow. One can be gallant all day long, and still end up with a spider monkey for a wife. And what does his mother think of him?

  The favorite dance of Captain Blood is the grave and haunting Catalonian sardana, in which the participants join hands facing each other to form a ring which gradually becomes larger, then smaller, then larger again. It is danced without smiling, for the most part. He frequently dances this with his men, in the middle of the ocean, after lunch, to the music of a single silver trumpet.

  110 West Sixty-First Street

  PAUL gave Eugenie a very large swordfish steak for her birthday. It was wrapped in red-and-white paper. The paper was soaked with swordfish juices in places but Eugenie was grateful nevertheless. He had tried. Paul and Eugenie went to a film. Their baby had just died and they were trying not to think about it. The fil
m left them slightly depressed. The child’s body had been given to the hospital for medical experimentation. “But what about life after death?” Eugenie’s mother had asked. “There isn’t any,” Eugenie said. “Are you positive?” her mother asked. “No,” Eugenie said. “How can I be positive? But that’s my opinion.”

  Eugenie said to Paul: “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.” “The hell it is,” Paul said. Eugenie cooked the swordfish steak wondering what the hospital had done to Claude. Claude had been two years old when he died. That goddamn kid! she thought. Looking around her, she could see the places where he had been—the floor, mostly. Paul thought: My swordfish-steak joke was not successful. He looked at the rather tasteless swordfish on his plate. Eugenie touched him on the shoulder.

  Paul and Eugenie went to many erotic films. But the films were not erotic. Nothing was erotic. They began looking at each other and thinking about other people. The back wall of the apartment was falling off. Contractors came to make estimates. A steel I-beam would have to be set into the wall to support the floor of the apartment above, which was sagging. The landlord did not wish to pay the four thousand dollars the work would cost. One could see daylight between the back wall and the party wall. Paul and Eugenie went to his father’s place in Connecticut for a day. Paul’s father was a will lawyer—a lawyer specializing in wills. He showed them a flyer advertising do-it-yourself wills, DO YOU HAVE A WILL? Everyone should. Save on legal fees—make your own will with Will Forms Kit. Kit has s will forms, a 6+-page book on wills, a guide to the duties of the executor, and forms for recording family assets. $1.98. Eugenie studied the third-class mail.“What are our family assets?” she asked Paul. Paul thought about the question. Paul’s sister Debbie had had a baby at fifteen, which had been put up for adoption. Then she had become a nun. Paul’s brother Steve was in the Secret Service and spent all of his time guarding the widow of a former President. “Does Debbie still believe in a life after death?” Eugenie asked suddenly. “She believes, so far as I can determine, in life now,” Paul’s father said. Eugenie remembered that Paul had told her that his father had been fond, when Debbie was a child, of beating her on her bare buttocks with a dog leash. “She believes in social action,” Paul’s bent father continued. “Probably she is right. That seems to be the trend among nuns.”

  Paul thought: Barbados. There we might recover what we have lost. I wonder if there is a charter flight through the Bar Association?

  Paul and Eugenie drove back to the city.

  “This is a lot of depressing crud that we’re going through right now,” Paul said as they reached Port Chester, N.Y. “But later it will be better.” No it won’t, Eugenie thought. “Yes it will,” Paul said.

  “You are extremely self-righteous,” Eugenie said to Paul. “That is the one thing I can’t stand in a man. Sometimes I want to scream.” “You are a slut without the courage to go out and be one,” Paul replied. “Why don’t you go to one of those bars and pick up somebody, for God’s sake?” “It wouldn’t do any good,” Eugenie said. “I know that,” Paul said. Eugenie remembered the last scene of the erotic film they had seen on her birthday, in which the girl had taken a revolver from a drawer and killed her lover with it. At the time she had thought this a poor way to end the film. Now she wished she had a revolver in a drawer. Paul was afraid of having weapons in the house. “They fire themselves,” he always said. “You don’t have anything to do with it.”

  Mason came over and talked. Paul and Mason had been in the Army together. Mason, who had wanted to be an actor, now taught speech at a junior college on Long Island. “How are you bearing up?” Mason asked, referring to the death of Claude. “Very well,” Paul said. “I am bearing up very well but she is not.” Mason looked at Eugenie. “Well, I don’t blame her,” he said. “She should be an alcoholic by now.” Eugenie, who drank very little, smiled at Mason. Paul’s jokes were as a rule better than Mason’s jokes. But Mason had compassion. His compassion is real, she thought. Only he doesn’t know how to express it.

  Mason told a long story about trivial departmental matters. Paul and Eugenie tried to look interested. Eugenie had tried to give Claude’s clothes to her friend Julia, who also had a two-year-old. But Julia had said no. “You would always be seeing them,” she said. “You should give them to a more distant friend. Don’t you have any distant friends?” Paul was promoted. He became a full partner in his law firm. “This is a big day,” he said when he came home. He was slightly drunk. “There is no such thing as a big day,” Eugenie said. “Once, I thought there was. Now I know better. I sincerely congratulate you on your promotion, which I really believe was well deserved. You are talented and you have worked very hard. Forgive me for that remark I made last month about your self-righteousness. What I said was true—I don’t retreat from that position—but a better wife would have had the tact not to mention it.” “No,” Paul said. “You were right to mention it. It is true. You should tell the truth when you know it. And you should go out and get laid if you feel like it. The veneer of politesse we cover ourselves with is not in general good for us.” “No,” Eugenie said. “Listen. I want to get pregnant again. You could do that for me. It’s probably a bad idea but I want to do it. In spite of everything.” Paul closed his eyes. “No no no no no,” he said.

  Eugenie imagined the new child. This time, a girl. A young woman, she thought, eventually. Someone I could talk to. With Claude, we made a terrible mistake. We should have had a small coffin, a grave. We were sensible. We were unnatural. Paul emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. There was some water on him still. Eugenie touched him on the shoulder. Paul and Eugenie had once taken a sauna together, in Norway. Paul had carried a glass of brandy into the sauna and the glass had become so hot that he could not pick it up. The telephone rang. It was Eugenie’s sister in California. “We are going to have another child,” Eugenie said to her sister. “Are you pregnant?” her sister asked. “Not yet,” Eugenie said. “Do you think about him?” her sister asked. “I still see him crawling around the floor,” Eugenie said. “Under the piano. He liked to screw around under the piano.”

  In the days that followed, Paul discovered a pair of gold cuff links, oval in shape, at the bottom of a drawer. Cuff links, he thought. Could I ever have worn cuff links? In the days that followed, Eugenie met Tiger. Tiger was a black artist who hated white people so much he made love only to white women. “I am colorblind, Tiger,” Eugenie said to Tiger, in bed. “I really am.” “The hell you are,” Tiger said. “You want to run a number on somebody, go ahead. But don’t jive me.” Eugenie admired Tiger’s many fine qualities. Tiger “turned her head around,” she explained to Paul. Paul tried to remain calm. His increased responsibilities were wearing out his nerve ends. He was guiding a bus line through bankruptcy. Paul asked Eugenie if she was using contraceptives. “Of course,” she said.

  “How’d it happen?” Tiger asked Eugenie, referring to the death of Claude. Eugenie told him. “That don’t make me happy,” Tiger said. “Tiger, you are an egocentric mushbrain monster,” she said. “You mean I’m a mean nigger” Tiger said. He loved to say “nigger” because it shook the white folks so. “I mean you’re an imitation wild man. You’re about as wild as a can of Campbell’s Chicken with Rice soup.” Tiger then hit her around the head a few times to persuade her of his authenticity. But she was relentless. “When you get right down to it,” she said, holding on to him and employing the dialect, “you ain’t no better than a husband.”

  Tiger fell away into the bottomless abyss of the formerly known.

  Paul smiled. He had not known it would come to this, but now that it had come to this, he was pleased. The bus line was safely parked in the great garage of Section 112 of the Bankruptcy Act. Time passed. Eugenie’s friend Julia came over for coffee and brought her three-year-old son, Peter. Peter walked around looking for his old friend Claude. Eugenie told Julia about the departure of Tiger. “He snorted coke but he would never give me a
ny,” she complained. “He said he didn’t want to get me started.” “You should be grateful,” Julia said. “You can’t afford it.” There was a lot of noise from the back room where workmen were putting in the steel I-beam, finally. Paul was promoted from bus-line bankruptcies to railroad bankruptcies. “Today is a big day,” he told Eugenie when he got home. “Yes, it is,” she said. “They gave me the Cincinnati & West Virginia. The whole thing. It’s all mine.” “That’s wonderful,” Eugenie said. “I’ll make you a drink.” Then they went to bed, he masturbating with long slow strokes, she masturbating with quick light touches, kissing each other passionately all the while.

  The Film

  THINGS have never been better, except that the child, one of the stars of our film, has just been stolen by vandals, and this will slow down the progress of the film somewhat, if not bring it to a halt. But might not this incident, which is not without its own human drama, be made part of the story line? Julie places a hand on the child’s head, in the vandal camp. “The fever has broken.” The vandals give the child a wood doll to play with, until night comes. And suddenly I blunder into a landing party from our ships— forty lieutenants all in white, all holding their swords in front of their chins, in salute. The officer in charge slams his blade into its scabbard several times, in a gesture either decisive or indecisive. Yes, he will help us catch the vandals. No, he has no particular plan. Just general principles, he says. The Art of War itself.

  The idea of the film is that it not be like other films.

  I heard a noise outside. I looked out of the window. An old woman was bent over -my garbage can, borrowing some of my garbage. They do that all over the city, old men and old women. They borrow your garbage and they never bring it back.