Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  Who hasn't himself been through it?

  One's belted down into the last seat one's ever going to ever get oneself belted into—while meanwhile the big lunk keeps wallowing the fnock around, no clarification from the fnocking cockpit forthcoming!

  So it's no wonder, isn't it?

  That you'll talk just to hear yourself talk?

  As one of the men on the plane in the story did.

  Or did in the story on the plane.

  LIKE THIS:

  "Would you believe it if I told you I travel with the dead? No, really, it is actually a business, I am with a firm that operates in this business, for when you sometimes have to have somebody with it if there is a casket which is in transit, either because it is a statute that you have to, either because it is probably a state or federal statute that you have to, or because of the airlines themselves enacting it, a regulation which they themselves have deemed enacted, somebody, a ticketed passsenger, traveling with the dead."

  Oh, you could look to me to be talking my head off just as frantically as he is if it were I who was strapped in up there next to the fellow we just sat here and heard—what with nothing by way of a word still to come from the people in charge of the circling and still no hint of the first descent to earth.

  But I'm down here writing—and going for my third.

  Whereas up there in that, up in that airplane, the man next to the man just listens.

  Or appears to do.

  Not that the fellow talking would anyhow not keep talking because he's so scared.

  THIS IS SOME MORE of what, sentence by sentence, the scared man says and then says.

  "You have to be bondable."

  "What if it's really the wheels?"

  "You think what they're doing is just killing the fuel for to keep the conflagration only to a minimum?"

  HEY, I KNOW HOW the fnocker feels.

  They should really have to tell you. Even when it's just routine, I think they should have to keep issuing updates to you and, you know, reassurances, regularly wising you up as to the fact that you are not just going around and around for no roundabout reason at all or, Great Christ Almighty, around when it should be round.

  So what's the story?

  Go ahead and try for four?

  My pal Denis just took off for Ireland, whereas Nietzsche couldn't sit tight, his flight wouldn't stay put, after Basel.

  THE TRAITOR

  THEY LOOKED TO ME TO BE TIBETAN or Mongolian or—I don't know, I just want to say it—Burmese. Oh, but this is inexcusable. This is embarrassing. Really, there's not a blessed thing I know about national types like these, about what they're supposed to look like or what you'd call them if you knew. I mean, maybe this couple had actually looked to me mostly like they came from Thailand, but I didn't know how to say it, so I right away gave up on the likelihood because I could see ahead, see the situation of the adjective coming, and knew it would have me stumped frontwards, backwards, sidewards, knew it would have me whipped hands down. Thailander? Thailander can't be right. At least I would not bank on my ever having heard anyone say it—say Thailander. Great day, you'd know it if you'd ever heard anyone say it. But neither can I imagine what you might alternatively say, unless it's Thailandian, which, now that I have actually said it, sounds to me excessively improbable and possibly, to Thailandians, insulting.

  You may as well know I once got into some absolutely hopeless trouble over a thing like this—from referring to a certain person by this name rather than by that name. Or it may have been the other way around. Frankly, it was not all that long ago, this misunderstanding. It remains to be proved, in fact, which, if either, were the case—that I misunderstood or was misunderstood. Not that the couple on the subway represented the opportunity for the same sort of confusion. Oh, no, theirs was a confusion of an entirely different sort. I mean, you could see that they were not the kind of people to care a fig for how anyone anywhere might elect to propose a category for them. Or do I mean something simpler and can't say it? But I am a man of action, you see, and not, as you will also see, of words. Although I doubtlessly know more about words than would most persons operating along the lines of the job title I carry with me, me with the Euher and the Thompson to carry it out.

  Dropped a stitch back there. Had meant to say that these two—that the man and the woman—that what they looked to me like was as if they had reached what is sometimes called "a higher state."

  To be absolutely candid with you, I just don't know how I got us into this Thailandian thing. Actually, the more I let thought attack the question, the more I am willing to favor the notion that they, the couple, were very likely Siberian, by which I mean the man and woman who were sitting across from me on the subway last week. Ah, but I forget, I forget—so bundled up against the cold they were, not on your life could they really have been Siberian. Unless, of course, I am making the mistake of believing where you come from has something visibly to do with how you react to what the temperature is where you go to. On the other hand, who is to say one hasn't come to us from Siberian parentage but was nonetheless native to somewhere where one might have grown up warm?

  Except they didn't look that way. Not to me, at least. To me, they looked like people who had got used to getting on in measureless abominableness and then had got unused to it. You know what they looked to me like? They looked to me like chumps who were sitting on a subway freezing in New York.

  Siberia.

  I take it back.

  What could I conceivably know about Siberia?

  Didn't I say they were sitting right across from me? Because it was actually at a little angle from me that they were sitting—since these were the days when the end of a car on the Lexington line had these two two-seater affairs that were not exactly opposite each other but were sort of, you know, jogged off from each other at a little slant. Anyhow, the picture I'm trying to get painted is it's them on one side and it's me on the other side, whereas as for the rest of the car—believe it or not, because I don't have to tell you, it's not every day it's empty, empty, empty, not one other—hey!—dead soul riding the knife.

  Not leastways on this here particular snag of it—and ain't this the darnedest?

  Well, face it, we tighten it down, it gets tightened down. But can you beat it? From when they get on at Eighty-sixth Street to when she gets off without him at Forty-second, there is nobody but nobody aboard but I and they—aboard, that is.

  Or is it them and me?

  Now this is the whole point of my telling you all of this in the first place, which is that they, the couple, didn't. I mean, get off the train in each other's company. And not only this, but this other this—which is that he, the Siberian fellow, he tricked her into it—actually faked her out, by hook and by crook gets her off onto the platform and then cuts back into the car without her.

  But, damn, with me in it, right?

  No, I'm not doing this anywhere near the way I should be. I'm talking and I'm talking—but you do not know what in tarnation that's going on, and couldn't possibly, could you?

  I am starting again.

  Here is the whole thing from the start of it again.

  I said they got on at Eighty-sixth?

  No, no, it is I who gets on at Eighty-sixth.

  This is my practice—get on where I have to get on—the Lexington line, the Broadway line, here, there, wherever they send me, everywhere in the city. But what should instantly give me away to you the morning I am reporting to you on is that it is swept clean of people, the car that I get aboard on—except for them, of course—if they, the couple, were in fact already on it—the Siberians, the Thailanders, the Mongolians—you know, the whatever—huddled together in one of the two-seater affairs down at, or up at, one end of the car—a man and a woman—this is guesswork, of course—who I am guessing must be in their seventies at least—just little disks of faces to guess from, that's how hooded they are with scarves and caps, these weird foreign-seeming wrappings. So it is not
just the eyes which gives you the Asian notion, not just the bones around the eyes, but also the bandaged effect that gets imparted to the head when these people are looking to get cranked up with some ceremony or something, or seek protection from the loosey-goosey elements. As in the elemental.

  No, that's off.

  Does not make any sense, neither.

  Oh, Lord, I am really getting out of my depth with this. It's just you turn on the TV and what do you see but Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, whole columns of them shoulder-to-shoulder, kids, these legions of kids, brats always up in fucking arms over this or that, their noggins all done up with this ad hoc crap on them, the whole street chuggyjammed with them doing this slow goofy sort of creepy Bangkokian conga-like line.

  So this is probably why I almost thought that, actually. Namely, almost thought they might both be Cong or Jap or Viet like, except he was such a tall bugger, six-three, if I am any judge, whereas as she was a good one, too—old woman, I mean—every inch of her as tall as she had to be, and maybe then some on top of that. Not that I ever was standing when either of them was. Not that any of what I am saying to you is anything but a guess. But you couldn't have thought about it anymore than I was thinking about it, even saying to myself, "Make up your mind, guy," meaning I should make up my mind what kind of height I was involved with because I already knew I might have to later on get written some writing about it—a report, at least—and now look, this is just what I am doing, isn't it?—sitting here and getting like debriefed. But so what if she wasn't, and if he wasn't, either? I mean, even if the both of them put together weren't enough to make up even a Maltese dwarf, does this mean it don't count?

  Or, okay, doesn't.

  IT IS NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION, the truth.

  Wasn't there something somewhere in my reading, something I read somewhere where there is this region of the Orient where the people are positively tremendous?

  But maybe I didn't read it. Maybe it was in a movie when it was raining and the whole school had to stay inside and couldn't have recess. You know, the climate and the crops and the trade routes of somewhere, setting aside the enormous size of certain of its citizens. Or maybe we were doing a class project on cotton, and it was maybe the year of the adjective, wasn't it? Which reminds me to tell you I am not dumb. I promise you, I am more than competent in speaking to the distinction between that which is merely morphologically adjectival and that which is instead, or which is as well, chiefly syntactically thus.

  Unless you forgot.

  I mean, about back there where I was giving the appearance of being flummoxed as to what you transmute Thailand to when you want to say, "I think they both were . . ."

  Wait.

  When you say, "The man was Mongolian," you replicate the form but not the function exhibited in "The man was a Mongolian."

  But I imagine you have gone and forgotten all this. Ah, God, one offers speculations and, once offered, forgets one's own offerings, or speculations. Takes a position and, betaken'd, betrays it.

  Man.

  My, my—man.

  Sorry.

  Really.

  Been farting around for altogether too long now. You've got me dead to rights—just another two-fisted action type knocking his three-rounder brains out to come across as a powerhouse of thought.

  Meant transform, not transmute.

  IT'S SO HARD.

  You shouldn't have to know anything to do something. I mean, it doesn't seem fair, does it? But isn't this how the setup is: know-how, smarts, skilled labor?—fellows like me, nothing unwitting, nothing nonpredictable? Ah, it's all such a lousy deal, start off with things which couldn't be simpler, and before you know it, what?

  The answer is you're beating your way upstream against great torrents of shit, complexities you never had the gray matter to create. Thought you were just doing arithmetic, yes? Whereas, Jesus, if you're not Boltzmann, you might as well give up, keep tropical fish, go sign on with the Pentagon instead.

  I saw them.

  The car was empty.

  I tell you, it was the coldest of damnable days! It was New York and there was an icicle up my ass—and them, they—they looked so warm together—they looked like Eskimos together, the dopes, they looked so toughly snuggly with each other, so hardened from, so hardened by, events.

  No assumings.

  Fact.

  Because you realize I am sitting in the seat that is almost exactly facing theirs? The whole car to choose from, check—but let us not forget the noun to know me by—why I was there then, why I am here now.

  You'd look at me and see a fellow who does not look to you like anything—a big man in a big coat.

  Lots of room in it for everything.

  Oh, you bet, they could have been Aleutians.

  They had to be something.

  Did they not have things? He had in his pocket these folded-up papers and he kept getting them out and scribbling shit on them—not words, of course, but numerals, I think, or symbols from applications we keep warning these people they have no effing business messing with. Integrations, disequilibriums—things, didn't I say things? But, all right, this is not my sphere, and wouldn't I be the first to admit it?

  On the other hand, just don't think I couldn't see the skunk acting as if he were up to something big—reaching for some elusive result, putting on like some fucking Taiwani or something, like some Taiwanese whizbang, like some trafficker in new methodologies feeling his way heurism by heurism?

  You got a beef with it, pal—heurism?

  Oh, you know, you know—so absorbed he seemed, so thoroughly insulated, so isolated—I don't know—so innoculated from things, the old broad meanwhile nattering away at him, all jabber-jabber without letup or surcease—get napkins, get ketchup, aren't we all out of mayo? Or so I was made to make a theorization— because who could fucking hear? And even if I could have, wouldn't it've been in Singaporese?

  Or what is it, Singapo?

  Oh, yes—Wu, Dr. Wu, this is who is at the bottom of all of this, big shot sitting over there working out cosmological models in exponents of ten, this Mrs. Wu of his going on at him and on at him, get this, Wen Lung, get that, Wen Lung, him looking at her like he's not listening to the lyrics but only to the tune—all out of eggs, all out of bread, don't forget eggs, don't forget bread!

  I'll tell you the truth. It wasn't that many minutes between the time I got on and he got her to get off, but it was enough of them for me to make all of this up. You know, Dirac, Besso, Lorentz, and good old Wen Lung Wu, the stinking turncoat humping it on down to the U.N. with whatever he's got going on down there in the language of Hwei.

  And doesn't Wennie know it?

  Can't old Wennie see?

  Can't anybody put two and two together and tell it's three more pages to the end? Hey, who can't figure it that somewhere between here and Forty-second . . . except how do you get out of this, declaratively or interrogatively? Well, it was all imperative the instant the loose-coated hooligan had got himself all aboard, confederates having cleared away all prior jussivities, confederates having closed off all escape, confederates having screwed down the hatches, having prepared all preparable matters, spot-cleaned the setting for the pointshooter, made way for the ace eraser. So what, then, is left for it but for to put the best face on it and for them to huddle in some version of an Asian-ish cuddle? Or vice versa. The scoundrels!

  Ah, Christ, I hear her say, "Clorox, get Clorox, don't forget, make a note," and him, he writes OQ2=t2x2-y2yz2 and thinks, "Good-bye, my love—good-bye!"

  BUT AS I ALREADY TOLD YOU, the old fraud faked her out at Forty-second. I mean, if he had meant to get rid of her, then this is just what he did—got her off without him, got her good and off and well out of harm's you-know-what without him.

  Oh, the old sly-sides!

  I tell you, these people with their eyes, they are not for one instant to be trusted. Why, the rascal, he leapt up with a great start as we drew into the station—fairly leapt, or le
aped, I say—as if to say, "Good heavens, Mrs. Wu, your hubby appears to have been incalculably distracted, preoccupied beyond all fathoming—mercy sakes, dear lady, darned near made us miss our station—let us hasten, sweet helpmeet, let us take ourselves away."

  Oh, the dickens, the dirty dickens!

  But see it as I, your patriot, saw it—the old reprobate flinging himself at the doors and she, the poor dear, staggering after—so completely bewildered, taken so completely unawares—plunging blindly after, bad on her ancient feet, blisters rupturing I don't doubt, corns, spurs, calluses, great horny bunions—totally but totally disoriented, not to mention so helplessly overcome by such an absolute riot of agonies—but nevertheless making her way just well enough, gaining on her hubby just gainingly enough, while he, the devilish four-flusher, he executes the adroitest of pivots—and all with such gallantry, with the very sheerest of chivalries, as in "Ladies first, ladies first—my very dearest lady of the realm."

  Well, you know what I say?

  I say he said, "Radies first," okay?

  Her safe from me on the platform, him unsafe with me on the train, the whole shebang still of no more than just the two of us moving again, hellbent for Thirty-third.

  BUT TO BE ABSOLUTELY EVENHANDED, I'll say this for him—which is this—the scamp actually winked at me once the doors had shut her away from me and off we went again, off, off, clattering clangingly along again on our deadly underworld way.

  By thunder, the knave, see him sitting back down in the same seat when he lets me have it—nicks his eye at me, like gunfire, just this once—pow! Then screws out his folded-up papers, this little stubby nub of a pencil of his, making, for my money, a great faking show of the thing, the filthy fucking Chink.

  Oh, let's not beat around the bush, the yig was Writing Secret Stuff—isn't it high time everybody quits all this shit and says what he thinks he means?

  But here's the thing—which was he, doing what he did?—villainous traitor or villainous savior?

  Because you can see how it could go either way, answer either claim.