Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

by Helen Dewitt

  She played poker at the Vic on Edgware Road.

  She played bridge at the Young Chelsea Club. She really did.

  You have to remember that she had gone to seminars on the Philosophical Investigations. She could develop her thought on language games and interaction rituals. She could pay the rent and buy kit without schmoozing her gallerist. She had posh friends who played Flannery Two Diamonds & thought nothing of buying 5 prints.

  Getting Ready for Dinner with a Gay Friend : 2003–4

  The Role of Expressiveness in Human-Robot Interaction : 2003–4

  This was a bit mischievous. Well, it was bad. It was bad. Ivo is not on speaking terms with her, so yes, it was mischievous.

  She got a place as artist-in-residence at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. There is a big Polish population in Pittsburgh, so what she did was, she got people to make recordings of Bajki robotów in Polish, and then she got a guy at the institute to make robots that would tell the stories, and then she made a video of autistic children interacting contentedly with the robots.

  So Pittsburgh, as maybe you know, is built at the confluence of three rivers; you can take a trolley car up to the bluff overlooking the city and you get a view of the rivers and these dozens of little suspension bridges which you have to love. She ran into a girl who said someone had offered to pay her rent for a year. He wanted to take a photograph of this view as seen from the interior of an apartment in which someone was living in a completely natural way. All she had to do was move in and furnish it the way she would naturally. His idea was that she would be engaged in some kind of activity, ironing napkins or something like that. What he wanted was to juxtapose this ordinary, everyday activity with the traces of this steel town.

  Ordinary! Everyday! She could see that the girl was completely gobsmacked.

  The girl was an art student. She did not even have an iron. She did not even have paper napkins, if she had people over for a meal she would tear off paper towels. But as soon as she moved in she bought an iron and an ironing board, and she bought some cloth napkins, and if you are going to have cloth napkins maybe you need a tablecloth so she bought a matching tablecloth. And maybe she would have reverted to natural behavior, but Ivo kept saying, I just want you engaging in some ordinary, everyday activity, something like vacuuming, or dusting. So of course then she had to buy a vacuum cleaner and a dust cloth, and of course Ivo would come over to experiment with the light at different times of day so she would feel the apartment had to look presentable for the kind of person who thinks vacuuming is an everyday activity. So she became fanatical about housekeeping, she would vacuum, she would wash all the dishes and put them away, she bought a teapot and a creamer and a sugar bowl and a little tray and a glass plate for cookies.

  It was like an extreme form of this phenomenon that’s really common, which is that when you have gay friends to dinner you suddenly remember that they had hand towels and scented soap in the bathroom and you are conscious of living in squalor. Or at least, she thought it was like this phenomenon, but that was just the perception of the possessor of the mechanical eye. She had some money at this point. She rented an apartment, and she found a girl to live in it, and she said she would leave her assistant to handle the details. One of the reasons she loved gay bars, of course, is that there is this fanatical attention to detail, and they cosset you, so you become aware that you can ritualize looking after someone and that doesn’t devalue it. So she asked Ed Vittorini, who ran her favorite bar, if he would take care of this; she said she was going to want the inhabitant engaged in some ordinary, everyday activity, and he should just get her to act naturally, live naturally in the apartment. And of course, as it turned out, the end result was these two girls in an apartment with an ironing board and cloth napkins and a matching tablecloth and a tea tray and something in a clothes bag that had just been picked up from the dry cleaners and a vase of fresh flowers.

  Entourage

  He went to Krakow for no particular reason.

  He had found a flight for 5 euros; for an additional 9 euros one could take a suitcase weighing 20 kg, or 44 pounds. He packed a small suitcase with books.

  He went into a bookstore and began opening books. A sample of randomly encountered words:

  wzsyedł

  gwiezdnie

  wszystko

  zwyciężyć

  Note the frequency of the letters z, w and y. The sample is, in fact, unrepresentative; in a larger sample of Polish words the letters j and k are also common. Couple of sentences:

  Żył raz pewien wielki konstruktor-wynalazca, który nie ustając, wymyślał urządzenia niezwykłe i najdziwniejsze stwarzał aparaty.

  Żył raz pewien inżynier Kosmogonik, który rozjaśniał gwiazdy, żeby pokonać ciemność.

  He had once read a collection of Robotermärchen, robot tales, in German. A translation of some stories by Stanisław Lem. One had naturally not grasped that the word “gwiazdy,” whatever it might mean, featured in the original. One had not understood that the title of the original was Bajki Robotów.

  It was now unexpectedly necessary to purchase a small suitcase and fill it with books replete with the letters z, w, y, j and k. It was necessary to hire someone to fly with him to Berlin to accompany the suitcase. Słowosław was the applicant whose name had the best letters.

  His life was quite difficult at this time for reasons we need not discuss. It was often necessary to travel. One never knows how long one will be gone, you see. If it’s just an overnight trip one might manage with a couple of old favorites, but once, you see, he went to Bilbao and was unexpectedly kept hanging about for weeks.

  He took the precaution for a while of booking a second ticket and hiring someone to bring a second suitcase. It’s not just that it was beginning to be complicated to bring an extra bag; it’s so much easier, obviously, if the bag is accompanied by someone able to carry it for you.

  To all intents and purposes that should have been perfectly adequate for unexpected contingencies, but the fact is, one had to mull over the candidates for the second suitcase. He still needed the whole of the indispensable collection which had filled the first suitcase, but now he had Bajki Robotów to consider, not to mention others too numerous to mention.

  He would travel, at any rate, to, as it might be, Istanbul with his first suitcase under his own supervision and the second suitcase in the care of an escort, and on arrival in Istanbul would discover all sorts of books that one simply never sees. Books, you know, with a dotless i. Umlauts up the gazoo. It would be necessary, obviously, to purchase a new suitcase and hire someone locally to fly back with it.

  An American need never learn a language to communicate. One should choose a language the way one chooses a dog or a musical instrument.

  He went to Copenhagen at one point. The Danish word for island is Ø. The common run of visitors do not see the phenomenon as necessitating purchase of a suitcase and hiring of a Dane.

  He had seen ø described as a monophthongal closed mid+front rounded vowel. Reliable sources informed him that this was the sound of the vowel in British “bird” or, in the light form, the vowel of French “bleu.” His approach was to sit in a café in Copenhagen and lure one of the natives into recording Odins Ø in GarageBand on his MacBook. On a subsequent occasion he sat in a café in Oslo and lured an unsuspecting native into selecting a book from the suitcase and recording a passage.

  It’s interesting, everyone knows that Perec’s La disparition is a book in which the letter e does not appear, but Rabbit, Run is never mentioned as a companion piece in which the letter å does not appear. Ångstrom being the correct spelling of the surname of the eponymous protagonist.

  It’s better to bow to the inevitable. It’s really simpler, you know, to purchase the empty suitcase and hire its minder before one sets out. In Catalan the letter x proliferates. The word for fiction is ficc
ió. He was unable, in the event, to find a Catalan at short notice in Berlin; an ad on the Barcelona Craigslist turned up Francesc.

  Those were the early days. The days when he could make do with one additional packed suitcase plus carrier and one empty suitcase, ditto.

  He noticed at some point that one could fly EasyJet to Bilbao, 10 people, each with 20 kg of checked luggage, for £346.90. A mere £34.69 per person.

  In the later days if he had to go to Bilbao he would book one ticket for himself and 20 for the entourage.

  It would have been simpler in many ways to put the entourage up at a hostel in 12-bunk rooms but he could not bring himself to do it. He had tried it once but it had been a mistake. It had been necessary to replace the gossipy backbiting entourage with a clean new entourage.

  He would be getting on with things, minding his own business, be dragged into conversation, leave, leave a message for a member of the entourage to join him in Ürümqi.

  The books are marked with colorcoded flags. They have marginal notes.

  He buys books to remind himself to read them.

  At one point it looked as though he might have to replace a member of the entourage. Francesc was having a fit of the sulks. It was by no means clear that a Xavier or Xulio would not be a better man for the job.

  He found that the best way to go about it was to be very casual, post on Craigslist.

  With an entourage of 20, there was always the possibility that someone would have to be replaced.

  Each member of the entourage was a native speaker of the language in which books in the accompanied suitcase were written. When he wanted to know how a passage should be pronounced, when he wanted to get the sound of the words in his head, he could have a recording made in GarageBand on the spot. One can’t find this kind of thing on the Internet. So one could not have a single pinch hitter, one needed the full complement of languages accounted for in the second string. At some point he realized that he needed to hire someone to manage the entourage, to keep understudies ready.

  Ideally one would have an understudy waiting in each city. There is never any telling when a member of the entourage will simply up stakes.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing he should be doing for himself. He tried to hand it over to his lawyer. His lawyer handed it over to someone young and stupid who made careless mistakes, the work was not important enough to merit competence.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s perfectly straightforward. One simply wants a carrier to match the suitcase. When you buy a suitcase you don’t walk in off the street and pick the first thing you see, you select it for aesthetic properties superfluous to the task of transporting possessions. The name of the carrier is an aesthetic property. The language spoken by the carrier, on the other hand, must match that of the books contained in the suitcase for strictly utilitarian reasons, as he or she may be required at any time to record material from one of the books in question. It’s necessary, therefore, to recruit, in each case, a substitute who both speaks the language and bears an appropriate name.”

  The young, stupid lawyer said he was not sure he would recognize an appropriate name.

  He pointed out that a simple expedient would be to recruit replacements bearing names identical to those of the current incumbents, a solution one might have expected a graduate of Harvard Law School to work out independently.

  An inconclusive exchange of compliments ensued.

  His lawyer charged $450 an hour, $200 for the services of the halfwit. Money that would mean a lot to the sort of person who worked in the entourage. The sort of person who worked in the entourage might in fact be the best sort of person to recruit for the entourage.

  It was necessary to return to New York for reasons we need not discuss. He put an ad on Craigslist and conducted interviews at Circa Tabac, where it was permitted to smoke.

  Between interviews he talked to Siobhan behind the bar, explaining the ins and outs of the entourage. For a putative tip of $10–$25 an Irish bartender will offer quiet sympathy, not to say Gaelic charm, in a way that not only a hot shot $450-per-horam lawyer but also the hot shot’s $200-per-horam entry-level wannabes will emphatically not throw in with the billable hour.

  A woman at the bar said her husband had won a sushi restaurant in a poker game. It had been closed down for violations of fish-related hygiene issues; the proprietor had shortsightedly complied with the letter of the law, neglecting the spirit of law enforcement. She had commented. Her husband had walked out, leaving her with two small children to raise.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a sushi restaurant,” she said. “They tell me the sushi train alone is worth fifteen grand.”

  A girl at the bar, a fiery redhead, told him he should be ashamed of himself. He should do something for his fellow man.

  He was about to protest when he saw suddenly that something could be done with the sushi bar. As a child he had loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  The mother-of-two had left. He darted to the door, scanned the street to left and right, descried the wretch in the middle distance, dashed in breathless pursuit.

  Twenty children could be placed round the perimeter of the conveyor belt! Color-coded tasks could be assigned! The child would have the chance to amass points! Points would entitle the child to select a plate with a cake, cookie, chocolate, or other delight from the moving belt!

  Skipping up and down, he wears a bow tie.

  Studies have shown that a talent for delaying gratification is integral to success in our complex society. In the abovementioned studies the child is presented with a marshmallow, told it may eat at once; if it waits it may have a second marshmallow. It’s absurd. What sort of incentive is a marshmallow?

  What one wants, surely, is to encourage industry by tapping into the longing for immediate rewards. One wants to offer the child the opportunity to win one chocolate after another. One wants, perhaps, to determine which sorts of chocolate are most efficacious.

  One might install a sushi belt in every school, allowing access to only the hardest working students.

  Prancing bow-tied on the pavement he explains his vision.

  Money being no particular object he was soon in possession of the fabled sushi belt, with accompanying restaurant.

  The peerless Siobhan found him an entourage manager, in whose capable hands he left the task of recruiting 20 children.

  He had more money than he knew what to do with.

  Presently he had more children than he knew what to do with.

  Competition for a place was soon fierce.

  Being perforce an autodidact he had read Barbara Godwin’s Justice by Lottery and been entranced. It is inarguable that, in a hereditary monarchy, the position of head of state is distributed, in effect, by lottery, the lottery of birth, and that the occupant is then trained for the position, and arguable that such a system might work better for any number of occupations than the present system in which, at every stage, purely educational aims are often subsidiary to the requirement to signal ability. The lottery need not, of course, be the lottery of birth. There is likewise no need, of course, for its allocation to be final; a five-year stint, if memory serves, was the recommendation of Godwin, though one could no doubt make a case for others.

  With only 20 places to work with he did not want to wade through a flood of applications (he was sure to be flooded with applications once word of the excellence of the system got around). How much simpler simply to give a place to the first 20 children with attractive names. (Being an autodidact he had read extensively on the subject of fast and frugal heuristics as outlined by Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute.)

  The names of the first 20 hopefuls were not as interesting as the names of his entourage. Many applicants had names like Matthew and Josh. The names of the first 10 members of the entourage, just to give an idea, were Þorvarður, Øyvin, Øll
egård, Jäärda, Håkan, Ferenc, Franzyska, Knut, Xulio, Txomin. (He had agreed with the manager that the names of the entourage should remain fixed, though temperamental bearers might come and go; it was simple enough to advertise for the desired denominations.) He managed to come up with Niamdh, Cesangari, Amartya, Zygmunt, and Dzsó before retreating to a least worst selection. (A spirit of mischief, honesty compels us to confess, led him to arrange a separate session peopled entirely by bearers of the name of Josh.)

  He had all sorts of ingenious schemes. Schemes for mastering the Cyrillic alphabet. (He had been entranced to discover that the Russian for Protopope was Протопоп.) Schemes for mastering logarithms, trigonometric identities, simple differentiation. There were all sorts of exercises; upon correct completion, the child might select a cake from the traveling belt.

  Each session lasted three hours. Children had to be sent out to play.

  He had delusions of grandeur. A sushi train presumably costs less than incarceration. Might the device serve as a preventive to juvenile delinquency?

  He saw presently that one might place small tables, each seating 8, perpendicular to the belt. With a little judicious tinkering it was then possible to seat 160! Each table was supervised, you see, by a member of the entourage. It was really very light work.