Still Life With Woodpecker Still Life With Woodpecker
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They made love at all hours and in every corner of the house. Sometimes Chuck had to step over them to get to the TV.
But having acquired a taste for solitude, each of them spent days separate and alone, Leigh-Cheri in the attic, Bernard in the pantry. Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.
Naturally, it rained a lot. The famous Seattle rain. If love was going to stay, it better be prepared to get its feet wet.
Leigh-Cheri took up easel painting. Still lifes. She wasn’t bad. Bernard carried around wooden matches. “Everybody needs a hobby,” he explained.
Once, to the east, above the mountains, a strange glow science-fictioned across the sky. There were flashing lights of every color but one. When Bernard and Leigh-Cheri were certain that the thing had passed, they told each other that they were proud to be redheads. That they would be ready when the showdown came.
With her share of Max’s winnings, Leigh-Cheri purchased powerful hearing aids. Hers was pink, Bernard’s was black. Each hearing aid was about the size of a Camel pack. They were made from plastic and tended to squeak. They were adorable.
Even with aids, their hearing was only partially restored. Still, they were convinced that they could hear the chipmunk at the center of the earth. They could tell that the chipmunk was running smoothly now. Its wheel spun easy and free.
EPILOGUE
WELL, we made it through the night. I have to hand it to the Remington SL3, it hung in there in spite of what must have been, for a typewriter of its class, exceedingly primitive conditions.
I’ll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I’d rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dog shit. But the Remington, although too pseudosophisticated for my taste, is an object, after all, and wasn’t the possibility of a breakthrough in relations between animate and inanimate objects one of the subjects of this book?
Yes, this is the book that revealed the purpose of the moon. And while it may not have disclosed exactly what happened to the golden ball, it stated plainly why the question needed to be raised.
Objecthood was by no means our only major theme. There was, for example, the matter of the evolution of the individual, how evolving is not accomplished for a person by nature or society but is the central dimension of a personal drama to which nature and society are but spectators. Wasn’t it made clear that civilization is not an end in itself but a theater or gymnasium in which the evolving individual finds facilities for practice? And when it comes to themes, how about the—but wait a minute. Hold on. I’ve been trapped. This is the very kind of analytical, after-the-fact goose gunk the Remington SL3 cut its teeth on. No wonder it’s still yammering away, despite a lack of fuel, despite the red enamel house paint that’s run down into its guts. Enough already. I’m going to pull its plu
ug
gggg
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOM ROBBINS has been called “a vital natural resource” by The Portland Oregonian, “one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world” by the Financial Times of London, and “the most dangerous writer in the world today” by Fernanda Pivano of Italy’s Corriere della Sera. A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived in and around Seattle since 1962.
STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam trade paperback edition / August 1980
Bantam trade paperback reissue / May 2003
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1980 by Tom Robbins
Book designed by Lurelle Cheverle
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eISBN: 978-0-553-89794-4
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