Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  And then we will be like this.

  DON'T DIE

  MY FACTS ARE NOT UNKNOWN. This notwithstanding, mine is a history which has never been without its share of detractors. But I feel, however, that we can safely say the truth must speak for itself. For example, the period of incarceration was not excessive. As an institution, it was viewed in the highest regard. Each and every member of the staff was of a generously professional caliber. I am not claiming to the contrary, or asserting in any fashion, that there might not have been the infrequent individual incorporated here and there who would not in every respect pass muster under the harsh light of what we so fondly refer to in our thoughts as our contemporary nationalistic standards. But it goes without saying, this notwithstanding, that you cannot judge yesterday's failure by today's success. To postulate the direct negation of this would be to go too far and to currently commit a travesty against the race of mankind and, of course, speech itself, splitting, or cleaving, the complaisant infinitive. Yet speak one must, and this quite obviously means me. My statement is this—more dereliction would be more than welcome. At that time, and since, even I, at my utmost, was not privy to enough information. Therefore, I can, as is understood, speak, only without the benefit of diametric contradiction, unless more is expected of me, in which event I would not be adverse to holding myself, and the other panelists in my party, in substantial abeyance, both now and otherwise. Little, or even less, will it profit us, I think, nor the generation to come after us and to cross-index us, to offer up for ourselves various personal and sundry opinions disproportionately or needlessly. Trust, we can agree, is paramount, now as never before. It is on this account, and only on this account, that knowledge of the facilities must be tolerated if not lauded. Persons to have come before my ken, which, admittedly, is and was the limited ken of the patient, deserved every consideration as one professional to another. Nevertheless, although I was not mental in my mind, nor even under suspicion by those responsible for oversight, I was cared for. My debt is great. I would mention the name, but there are legal reasons. Suffice it to say, due reference has been made in the writings of others as well as can be expected by us as well as by our detractors, both preponderantly and paradoxically. The answer is inescapable, not only for the time being, but also for the good of the community. May God protect us. We can do no more nor do no less. Meekly, mildly, and with consciousness aforethought, neither I nor my family bears them any ill will. Speaking in summation, then, as one who has spoken the truth, let us turn our attention to Nurse Jones.

  Now, if we were to turn our attention to Nurse Jones.

  Now, if you will please turn your attention to Nurse Jones.

  (A cognomen surely.)

  WHAT MY MOTHER'S FATHER WAS REALLY THE FATHER OF

  THESE ARE THE THINGS she said to me.

  MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was as strong as a horse—she said her father was as big as a horse, and also as strong as one, too.

  MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was a giant of a man, that he was a regular six-footer, that people were always shouting up at him to try to get him to look down at them and maybe to be their friend. She said people were always shouting, "Hey, Mister Six-Footer, tell us what the weather is like up there? Is it already raining? Is it or isn't it snowing?"

  MY MOTHER SAID TOTAL STRANGERS could not get over it, the tallness and the strongness of the man. My mother said complete strangers were always passing comment on it. My mother said, "Not like with some people I could name." My mother said, "With some people I could name, they go into a room, no one gives them the first courtesy of even taking any notice. You would not, with some people I could name, not even take any notice such people were in the room at all."

  MY MOTHER SAID, "Stand up. Look like you are somebody. Try to look like you are trying to amount to something. Show them who you are. Make believe you are who you say you are. Are you putting your best foot forward? Put your best foot forward. Show them you intend to be a member of the human race. My father was a member of the human race. My father was not like some people I could name—people not big, people not strong, people not even a member of even themselves."

  MY MOTHER SAID ANYONE could look and see that her father was a person of unquestionable refinement. She said, "You don't have to take my word for it." She said, "Ask anyone." She said, "Why should I all by myself have to be the whole judge and jury?" She said, "Why stand on ceremony?" She said, "You can go ahead and satisfy your curiosity any time you want." She said, "I can wait. I've got the patience. I've got more than enough patience for the both of us." She said, "Believe me, I've got enough patience for the whole country of China, not to mention his brother Siam."

  SHE SAID, "YOU NAME THE LANGUAGE, my father could talk it." She said, "Where was the man's nose?" She said, "The answer is forever in a book." She said, "There was no telling what the man might have made of himself if God had only given him a decent interval to do it in."

  MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was the Father of the Steam Engine and the Father of the Refrigerator and the Father of Certain Other Creations, but that the stinking gentiles came in and took advantage of the man's good nature and stole all of the man's blueprints from him, so that now you would not find the proof of it not anywhere in the world, not nowhere on earth was there one stinking way for you to get the proof of all of the things which my mother's father was really the father of, capital F, mind you, capital F.

  YOU KNOW WHAT MY MOTHER SAID? My mother said with just his little finger he could have broken every bone in all of their whole stinking rotten gentile bodies, but that the man was too refined of a person for him to lower himself down to their dirty stinking rotten level where somebody might catch him stooping to do it.

  SHE SAID IT BROKE her father's heart, the dirty stinking way they all stole from him, the gentiles and the government and the landlords. She said, "But you know what?" She said, "The man would not retaliate. The man would not retaliate against them for one filthy dirty stinking rotten lousy single instant."

  MY MOTHER SAID,"Listen to me, I am here to tell you, the man was a saint, and this is what it was which killed him, saintliness, pure and simple."

  SHE SAID, "TAKE ONE GUESS who you remind me of." She said, "Because he, him, this is who, ask anybody, you remind me of."

  SHE SAID, "YOU KNOW what you are?" She said, "You are too decent, you are too good, you are too sweet-natured. That's what you are."

  SHE SAID, "I AM GOING to tell you the truth—you are too good for your own good."

  MY MOTHER SAID, "A creature like you, how could it expect to fend for itself?" She said, "A person has to be a bully, a roughneck, a hoodlum, a criminal."

  SHE SAID, "I KNOW YOU, I'm no fool—wild horses could not make you get down with them on their dirty stinking rotten level—the gentiles and the government and the landlords."

  SHE SAID, "Throwbacks, this is what I call them." She said, "I call them throwbacks—and you know what else?" She said, "I am not ashamed to say so to their face!"

  SHE SAID, "DON'T THINK I don't know." She said, "I know." She said, "I promise you, I could give the whole stinking filthy rotten lousy gang of them lessons!"

  SHE SAID, "YOU WANT TO HEAR something?" She said, "Sit yourself down for two seconds and I will tell you something." She said, "I had to be made of iron." She said, "This is what I had to be made of—of iron!"

  WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLD and sick, she said that when she was a little girl in an orphanage, that they gave out bread and jam in the orphanage, that they gave it out every day at three o'clock in the orphanage, and that she always ate hers the instant they had given it out to her, but that her big sister Helen didn't, that her big sister Helen saved the bread and jam that they had given out to her, and that her big sister Helen always put her share away somewhere for later, but that later, that when it was later and that when my mother got too hungry for her to wait for supper anymore, that her big sister Helen would go get the bread and jam she had been saving for later and that e
very day she did this, that every day my mother's big sister Helen would have saved her bread and jam for herself but that she would come running with it for her—a sister, a sister!—to give it to my mother.

  WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLDER and sicker, she said that sometimes the streetcar would come banging up the hill at the same time the clock was banging three o'clock, and that she thought that if you could hear both of them going outside and inside at once, the streetcar in the street and the clock in the orphanage, that then it was a secret sign to you that said that you were going to get a visit, that said to you getting off of the streetcar here comes one or the other of them, that getting off the streetcar your mother or your father was coming to you, but that there never, not once, was either one of them coming to her, not either her mother or her father, and that then when it wasn't, that then she would remember that her mother was crazy and that her father was dead.

  MY MOTHER SAID, "This was why I had to have my big sister's bread and jam—because my mother was crazy and my father was dead."

  MY MOTHER SAID, "Mine wasn't ever any good anymore because of being eaten and soaked with tears."

  LISTEN TO ME—you know what my mother once told me when she thought she was going to pass away?

  MY MOTHER SAID her big sister wasn't really the one who was the older one—this and that their father, that the man just went away.

  SO MUCH for your brother Siam.

  THE DOG

  I WAS NEVER IN A PLACE LIKE THAT. I was an American boy when they had places like that. So everything I say is just me imagining things. Except for the names, of course. I know the names. I have a list. I have been making a list. You couldn't guess the names I already have on it. But I am not anywhere near finished yet. There is just no telling what it is going to take for me to get the list completed. Because the point of this is they only want you to hear about a handful. They only want you to hear about the same ones which they want you to hear about, which are the same ones which everybody all over the world has already heard about. Whereas there were secret ones. There were hundreds of secret ones. Even hundreds is a big understatement. Not even thousands is an exaggeration. You think thousands is an exaggeration? Because it's not! Because they had them everywhere. You couldn't guess where they had them. You would faint dead away if I told you where they had plenty of them. You would think what a liar I was if I told you, or was crazy or was worse.

  Here is one of the famous ones.

  Ravensbrück.

  You probably heard of that one. Did you hear of that one?

  I just told you—so now you heard of that one.

  Not like Oswiecim.

  Imagine having to say Oswiecim morning, noon, and night. This is probably why they didn't call it Oswiecim but called it Auschwitz, even though, hey, Auschwitz wasn't its real name.

  But take my real name.

  You know what I should do?

  I should probably have a list for it.

  WHAT IF THEY HAD A BARBER at Treblinka?

  Or at Buchenwald?

  Or at Dachau?

  I have been thinking about this. I have been thinking about what if they had to have a barber to get off all of the hair off of them for when the women came in and the girls—get off all of their hair off everywhere—because didn't they do that, didn't they take off their hair off for something, didn't they take it all off of the girls off and the women off for some us-hating purpose?

  So they must have had a person who did it. They must have had a person who cut off the hair off. It must have been a person who would be good at it and who would not get tired from doing it and who would know how to keep on doing it, to keep just cutting and cutting and not giving anybody who asked the wrong answers. Because look at how hard it would be for you to just keep doing it, you would have to be a one-hundred-percent professional—all of the girls coming in at you and taking their clothes off and all of the various and sundry women.

  So what do you think about the question of who would be the person who did it?

  You think it would be a job which they would give to what kind of a person?

  Tell me which sex at least!

  Tell me how old in years at least!

  Tell me if this person should be a person who is short or who is tall, just as far as someone reaching!

  BETWEEN 1938 AND 1944, I made regular visits in from Long Island to my father's place of business. It wasn't just my father's business. It was his business in business with his brothers. It was the business of making hats for girls and for women and then of getting places like Macy's and Gimbel's to buy them and make my father and his brothers rich. So I was telling you about between 1938 and 1944. Because I would come visit my father at my father's place of business and my father would show me around to all of his workers in all of the divisions and then my father would call up for his barber to come up for him to give me a haircut, and then a man would come up and would do it.

  Then this is what my father would say.

  "Now that they've cleaned you up, let's go out and put on the dog."

  Then my father would give the man the money and take me out to a Longchamps for lunch and then, later on, take me over to DePinna's for something new, like for new leggings or for knickers to go with my new coat.

  The money my father gave the barber, you know how he did it, gave him the money?

  He slipped it to him.

  My father slipped it to him.

  You know, slipped it, palmed it, passed it off—a way the handler works the hand.

  BIRKENAU.

  Carthage.

  Oz.

  New York.

  KNOWLEDGE

  SHE SAID, "YOU WANT ME TO KISS IT and make it well? Come sit and I will kiss it and make it well. Come let me see it and I will kiss it and make it well. Just take your hand away from it and let me just look at it. I promise you, I am just going to look at it. Oh, grow up, could looking at it make it worse? Do us both a favor and let me look. I swear, all I am going to do is to look. So is this it? Are you telling me this is it? This can't be it. Are you sure this is it? You are not really telling me this is what all of this fuss is about. Is this what all of this fuss is about? I cannot believe that this is what all of this fuss is about. You have been making such a fuss about this? Don't tell me this is what you have been making all of this fuss about. You call this something? This is not something. This is nothing. You know what this is? I want to tell you what this is. This is nothing. Does it hurt? It doesn't hurt. It couldn't hurt. Why do you say it hurts? How could you say it hurts? You really want me to believe it hurts? Is this what you are telling me, you are telling me it hurts? Because I cannot believe that this is what you are telling me, that you are really telling me that a thing like this could possibly hurt. A little thing like this could not possibly hurt. Do us both a favor and don't tell me it hurts. So when I do this, does it hurt? What makes you say it hurts? Are you certain it hurts? How could it hurt? Give me one good reason why it should hurt. I should show you something that hurts. I am going to give you some advice. You want some advice? Count your lucky stars you don't have something that hurts. You know what you are doing? Let me tell you what you are doing. I want you to sit here and hear me tell you exactly what you are doing. Because guess what. You are making something out of nothing. You want me to tell you what you are doing? Because this is what you are doing—you are making something out of nothing. So don't act like you didn't know. You know what? You're not doing yourself any good when you put on an act like as if you didn't know. I am amazed at you, always putting on an act. So how come you never figured this out for yourself? You should have figured this out for yourself. Why should you, of all persons, not be the one to figure this out for yourself? I want you to promise me something—next time promise me you will figure things out for yourself.

  "Forget it.

  "I do not need anybody to promise me anything.

  "Let me ask you something.

  "No, better not, better skip it.


  "The answer would make me sick.

  "Listen, you know what is wrong with you? Because there is something very, very, very, very, very, very wrong with you. I guarantee you, I promise you—a person's mother, a mother knows."

  BEHOLD THE INCREDIBLE REVENGE OF THE SHIFTED P.O.V.

  HOW SHALL WE SAY THE CLOCK WAS BOUGHT and paid for? For surely the seller's sticker on the thing declared a figure remarkably bolder than these youngsters could decently manage. But they were so keen, the two of them, so ungovernable in their zeal. Of what earthly pertinence was it that their purse could scarce stand up to the swollen demands of the humblest item in this shop? And the clock, oh my, as to its forbidding tariff, great heavens, this, please be clear, was certain to be seen by most shoppers as another, and much harsher, matter entirely. But what, please be, did other matters, certain or otherwise, have to do with anything when it was naught but the pressure of necessity itself that rested its infinite weight on the possessed hearts of these young people? For there the clock stood in its stony oaken case, all solemnity in its olden bearing (after all, the sticker stated "Early Nineteenth Century" no less legislatively than it stated the price) as it spoke its artful speech of sturdiness, of continuity, of permanence, offering to deliver these affiliations first and therefore, when the time was right, everything else.

  It said it could confer on them as much.

  Or so we heard it pledge its word to the new homemakers, and they heard it too.

  "Wow, that's no joke!" the boy announced with some excessive gusto, meaning to exaggerate his astonishment not just for the good fun of making fun of himself but also to suggest to the shop's proprietor—who had hovered into position—that, in fact, for these two customers, the amount would be no large sum at all.