The shapeless lump of stuff sprawled on the floor smoothed itself out. The pants got up on their verticals, on their legs: live they must.
The gray flannel now strode with purpose, choosing straight lines: entrance—street—the opening shutters of morning shops. By one of these, the pants slowed their step. A cleaning woman, bare elbows abustle, was raising a great cloud of dust with the blows of her bristle brush. The pants strode into the cloud (it was just their color) and entered the shop unnoticed. The shop was still nearly empty, but peering out from under the counters were curled-up, still sleepy piles of pants: gray or black or striped—all with two legs. Their flat, neatly ironed seats and generous cuffs expressed contentment and the strangeness of any sort of sansculottism.* The former Comrade Pant had found his lost “s,” at last, among his own kind, in that manyleggedness of heaped-up pants. It wasn’t even lunchtime before ex-Pant had been set out on the counter by an absentminded shop assistant, palpated, held up to the light, tried on, and exchanged for a cash receipt. And so began . . . But that—as some writers like to end—is another story and (I might add) for a pen of a different nib.
1931
1. Rump. (Latin)
MY MATCH WITH THE KING OF GIANTS
(An unpublished fragment from “Gulliver’s Travels”)
THAT THE facts I shall now relate were omitted I impute solely to a feeling of weariness. Twenty hours of sleep excised this brief but edifying event from the lines of my manuscript. I remembered it only the other day. And my pen shall not have dipped into my inkpot a hundred times before my story is finished.
In those days I dwelt, as you well know, in a land of giants. If you recall that before that a violent storm at sea had borne me away to the Lilliputians, then you may easily imagine the utter strangeness of my sensations. I had not yet disaccustomed myself to the sight of people down about my ankles, and now here, in order to converse with my neighbors, I had to throw my head back as if I were standing before the spire of St. James’s.
The king of the land of giants was a great lover of the game of chess. Upon chancing to learn that I too was expert at this game, he invited me to play a match with him. It would have been awkward to refuse. The master of royal diversions delivered me by hand—on his palm—to the plateau of a table on which the match was to take place. I found myself before a vast board of black and white squares, an expanse nearly equal to that of a golf course. From behind the double colonnade of black chessmen, I barely descried the king’s gigantic red beard. At first I wanted to ask why I had been made to play Black, but then I remembered that no one must laugh in the presence of the king until the king has laughed, that no one must put on their hat until the king has put on his hat, and that, therefore, no one must make their move until the king has made his.
Seated between my queen and bishop (standing up to my full height and even on tiptoe, I could only just touch my queen’s lacquered neck), I began to wait for White’s first move.
“E2—e4!”
Splendid. Passing swiftly between pieces, I hastened toward my pawn on the e-file. What was there to think about? But along the way I slipped, grazing with my left foot the pawn on d7. At that same instant a terrifying fillip of the royal fingers knocked me off my feet.
“What’s touched is moved!” thundered the king’s voice from above his bristling beard.
Thus I was obliged, despite my design, to move my d7-pawn. Or rather, to move with my d-pawn. I attempted to push it to the next field, but that accursed pawn would not budge. Evidently, all the chessmen from the king-giant’s box were filled with lead, just as they are in England. Only by gripping that round black stirrup-stone* with both hands did I manage to shift it to the next square. Having completed my move, I retired to the center of the board and sat down, wiping the sweat from my brow. While White thought.
As the match proceeded I turned into a carrier of heavy loads. The king merely flicked his chessmen with the nail of a forefinger and chuckled into his red beard, overwhelming me with gusts of breath that reeked of alcohol. My body was aching from exertion by the time we reached the middle game. I sacrificed a pawn, but gained by an exchange: a rook for a knight. My wanderings from move to move were becoming harder and harder. Once, I don’t remember on which move, I had to carry my bishop across four whole squares. That behemoth crushed my shoulders—and afterwards, sitting by the square on which I had set it down, I could not soon recover my breath and thus exceeded the time permitted for my next move. But a still more onerous plight befell me with my right-hand bishop. My adversary, in an unfortunate move, advanced his pawn on the c-file without troubling about its defense. I had to wrestle my unwieldy black bishop to that square, capture the white pawn and then remove it myself to the box into which dead chessmen were tossed. This forced the king of giants to think. I sat at the edge—by the verge, I should say—of the thinning forest of black and white chessmen, listening to his ominous snuffling. It was pleasant to rest after such hard physical work. The gigantic clock, clanging like the bell in the Tower, struck off the seconds. By degrees my mind was clearing, plotting ever subtler variations of play. Suddenly I heard a heavy double thump: “Must have castled,” flashed through my mind, and, raising mine eyes, I saw that I was not mistaken. According to my design, to the king’s castling short, I must respond in kind, but long, toward the a-file.
Had my partner not given me a respite, I don’t know that I would have had the strength to execute this complicated operation. First I heaved my black lacquered king onto my back, but my knees promptly buckled under the weight of my burden. Then I threw his wooden majesty down on the ground and began to roll him, as workers will roll a log, toward the edge of the board. The rook I managed more easily. When I had done castling, I set off for the center of the board between whites and blacks and calmly, hands in pockets, with the air of a detached onlooker, began to study the situation.
White was a pawn ahead. But an attack was in my hands. In the literal sense of the word, since advancing my chessmen against the king’s king required both hands, and a foot to boot. Handling my one remaining knight was especially inconvenient. That wooden horse, as we all know, jumps over chessmen, its own and its rival’s. I had to carry my knight with great care through the ranks of my opponent, trying not to hit them. But I soon learned to do this cleanly. As follows: placing my right shoulder under the horse’s throat, I seized its left ear with my left hand, its right with my right, and, bent over, carried my burden fairly quickly to the requisite square. I may say with pride that my horse, though it had but one leg, never stumbled. Owing to its zigzag jumps, I managed to discompose the white ranks. Their wooden king, whom I held in almost perpetual check, started to fuss and fidget, stepping from square to square, while the living king hunched lower over the board; his hot breath blasted me from above, while his forehead resembled a field that had been plowed by several invisible plows, leaving deep furrows.
Searching for a solution, he touched his gigantic fingers now to one, now to another of his pieces, not knowing how to respond. I made bold to shout: “What’s touched is moved!” But his majesty—with a wave of his hand—brushed my words aside. Indeed my voice—as compared with the roar of his own—must have sounded no louder than the buzzing of a fly.
“No matter,” thought I, “however much you fumble your queen and bishop, my side has won!”
The decisive moment was approaching. The king’s fingers now hid in his beard like a pitchfork in an enormous pile of red hay, now drummed on the edge of the table (not an apt description—their drumming sooner recalled wooden mallets pounding in posts), now rubbed against each other. At last White made its move. It was the very move whereof I had dreamed. “Mate!” cried I, making off with all speed for my pawn nearest the whites’ devastated front. I raced toward its round head as a player races for the ball so as to hurl it into the opposing formation. Black and white squares flickered past underfoot. Here it was. I seized the pawn’s neck with both hands, raised it over
the chess field . . .
Suddenly something terrible happened: a long shadow flickered overhead, then I felt a dull but powerful underground (or rather, undertable) shock. The chessmen bounced up and fell prone; some went tumbling across the field of play. In my fright I unclenched my hands and released that heavy stirrup-stone of a pawn, which fell on my right foot. From the pain I fainted away—that is why I cannot relate what happened in the first minutes after this catastrophe . . .
•
I also cannot reckon exactly how long I lay unconscious. When I finally opened my eyes, they saw nothing. I was surrounded by pitch-darkness and a complete hush. “Perhaps I perished in the earthquake, fell into a crater—together with the chessmen, the chess table, the king and his entire kingdom?! But then how is it that I can think? The man who supposes himself dead is alive. Cogito ergo sum, as my father’s friend Descartes wrote.” I waggled my hands, first one, then the other: no mischief done. I straightened my leg: it came up against something flat and seemingly wooden. I stretched my hand out to one side. It promptly struck against a wall. Continuing to slide my palm along the wall in the direction of my head, I encountered a corner. Raising myself up on the opposite elbow, I edged my whole body closer to the corner—at that same moment my head bumped against a third wall. “A coffin. They have buried me alive,” flashed through my mind. I had not the courage to reach my hand out to the fourth wall. I lay for a long time, hearing only the hammering of my heart.
“However,” logic reminded me, “if your heart is beating, then your lungs are breathing, and if that is so, then they can only be breathing air. Therefore, this coffin must contain a certain quantity of air. How much exactly? A quantity directly proportionate to the volume of the coffin. The coffin’s volume is reckoned by multiplying its length (about equal, in this case, to the length of your body) by its height, its size that is, expressed in whichever units of measure . . . Hmm, the distance from the bottom of the coffin to its lid . . .” Logic took my hand and raised it up: there was no lid. I began to act more boldly. Grappling the darkness—now with both hands—I chanced upon a round and slippery object slightly larger than a human head. This sphere protruded from something recalling a life ring; lower down was a slick chiseled neck, and lower still . . . But I had already guessed. Despite the darkness. It was a pawn. The very same pawn with which I had delivered the final blow to my antagonist. I rejoiced in it as in a living person. More—as in a friend and confederate. Ours was a common grave, and yet . . . I jumped to my frisky feet only to fall back down, groaning: a cruel pain in my instep called for movements more circumspect. I now distinctly remembered the last second before my fainting spell: the black pawn freed from my embraces, its traitorous—alas!—blow and . . . My friendly feelings toward it somewhat abated.
But then where on earth was I? Gingerly dragging my injured foot, I crawled toward the lower wall of what at first I had thought was a coffin. Strangely, the wall had disappeared. In its place I discovered a bumpy and hirsute disk, the flat bottom of a slippery wooden body of accreted circles, round hollows, and bulges. Now there was no doubt that at the moment of regaining consciousness, my feet had run up against the foot of a chess queen. Clambering over that lady’s wooden belly, I bumped into a triangular wedge: “Ah! A knight’s ear!” Now I quickly got the lay of the land, although, as it turned out a second later, I had not yet considered all the dangers hidden therein. I had only to give the horse’s lower lip a slight tug—and around me I heard a chirring, a whirring, then a clattering cascade of cumbrous objects. It was as if I, standing by a stack of logs, had touched the outermost one—and set the whole mass in motion.
Now I knew where I was: in the box where they kept the chessmen. How could I have ended up here? In this wooden prison with its heavy roof lowered? Not one of my conjectures could settle these questions.
I determined to seek the answer and my deliverance from without. For a start, I pounded at length on the chess-box wall with my fists, knees, and foot. Then I listened: silence. After a short rest, I began using a pawn as battering ram, but all to no purpose. Exhausted, I descended to the box’s lower depths and waited patiently for someone to remember me and open the roof. Hours passed in silence and darkness. Without noticing, I fell asleep.
Hunger woke me. At first I felt blind fury, I banged on that accursed wall with my fists and head, shouting as loud as I could: “Open this box! I am Dr. Gulliver! I am wounded, release me! Help!” But my strength was dwindling. After rage came despondency, and then indifference. I became inert and resigned to my fate, almost like a dead chessman.
I do not remember how much more time rushed by overhead. Finally, when I had banished hope and huddled in a corner, I heard a distant rumble, then a racket of voices nearby. My dungeon shuddered and pitched like the hold of a ship in a storm. A second later—as if the deck over the hold had been torn away—I was deluged by a shower of bright daylight. “Ah, so here he is!” came the king’s deafening voice. A dozen giant gullets reverberated with merry laughter. To preserve my eardrums, I had to press my palms to my ears.
Once I had refreshed myself after the chessboard imbroglio and been entrusted to the care of the royal physician, who treated my injured foot and prescribed bed rest, it was not difficult to ascertain—by means of inquiries—the order of those events that had escaped my memory.
What I had taken for an earthquake had simply been a blow of the king’s fist to the table. To be sure, he who loses always feels affronted. And if he is not accustomed to such affronts, then . . .
My game with his majesty had dragged on until late into the night. A sleepy servant, come to sweep the chessmen back into their box and return it to its proper place, had whisked from the board—along with the pawns and pieces—myself. The servant must be forgiven, for at the time I was in a profound swoon and differed little in size and stillness from my wooden neighbors.
What happened next requires no explanation. If the king, my thanks to him, had not wished to take his revenge, the chess box might have become my tomb.
•
When I had recovered my health and strength, his majesty and I played one more match. This time I was spared the need to be the carrier of my own chessmen. I merely called out the letters and numbers, and the chessmen were moved by a chamber lackey.
This second match I lost: out of politeness.
1933
THE SLIGHTLY-SLIGHTLIES
1
I WORK—it will soon be seven years—for a forensic examiner, in the department of handwriting analysis. The work requires assiduity and a sharp sophisticated eye. Piles upon piles of paper: what I cannot finish at the office, I must take home. I work mostly on counterfeit wills, fraudulent promissory notes, and endless forged signatures. I take a man’s name: measure the angle of the strokes, the spacing and roundness of the letters, the slants of the lines, then deduce an average, compare the pressure applied, the figuration of flourishes. I separate and investigate what is hidden in the tiny ink dots, in the letters’ dips and rises—the lie.
More often than not I must work with a magnifying glass: under its transparency the truth almost always swells up into a semblance. The name is false: therefore its bearer is false. The man is a fake: then his life too is invented.
From weariness, strings of hazy dots float before my eyes, while the shapes of things waver. Yes, ours is difficult work, painstaking and, perhaps, superfluous: need one measure the angles of letters, is it worth counting ink dots when one already knows: they are all false-faces, pseudo-thinking and mock-talking. Impersonators. “What are you making?” Why not “what are you faking?” People fake love, thought, words; they fake what they make, their ideology, themselves. All their “stances” rest on a sham. And as for their marital sham, or rather shame: add one letter to that word, a small inconspicuousness to the meaning, give that sham-shame a good shake, and you will find such . . .
I do not like my silly room papered with blue lotuses, or my narrow body buttone
d into its coat, or myself hidden from myself: were I to start pulling apart my “I” dot by dot, like the ones in my briefcase, then . . . But I mustn’t.
I used to try to lose myself in my work—until my brain ached, until my eyes bleared: so as not to think. Now I can’t even do that. Not after what happened—suddenly and unexpectedly.
It was a Sunday. I woke somewhat later than usual. To a morning shot through with clarity. Frosty stars on the panes. By the door, on the brown floorboards, yellow blinks of light. From the street, the rasp of a barrel organ. Everything was as the day before, to the last glint and speck, and at the same time, everything was as if for the first time: the same parallels of cracks between floorboards; the same briefcase, books on the table, the same worn armchair and wardrobe, everything where it was—everything except that THESAME: THESAME had vanished—and everything with patinas of fresh meaning was slightly shifted, scarcely deflected, and strangely new.
But my time is valuable: a promissory note, one white corner poking out of my briefcase, waited. At the bottom was a signature. The night before I had spent the entire evening poring over its letters: to all appearances—the angles, the pressure, the curve of the flourish—everything was genuine; in reality, I sensed, everything was false, forged. Those letters had tormented me the whole evening, eluding my analysis. My work that morning got off to a better start: the last letter was missing its paper sheen: an erasure. Aha. And also: on the scroll-like flourish, there was a small dullish speck. So then. I took the magnifying glass and brought lens and eye up to the line: directly opposite my eye, under the glass camber, stood a tiny little man the size (given the magnification) of a dust mote: the little man betrayed not the least fright, his proud head was raised up to the glass dome, while his scarcely visible hand politely saluted in the direction of my eye. Evidently, this creature the size of a dust mote wished to tell me something: I put the glass aside and, bending my head down to the table, covered the stranger with a cautious ear: at first I vaguely sensed something rustling and pottering about in my auricle, grasping at the little hairs, then the rustling became intelligible. And I heard:
Unwitting Street Page 2
