Ten Drawings on Grey�Paper
There it was. One of the last warm evenings in August, a yellowed full moon stuck on the sky, and trees sparkling in the wind. Albert took a few seconds to analyse it before going into the narrow coffee shop near his house. There was little traffic in the street, but signs of some kind of life were all around. Of course. Other people.
It's true, thought Albert. I get all my best ideas from other people. So what now? The interior of the coffee shop was both bright and dim at the same time. A scattering of patrons sat and twittered over their drinks, and the woman behind the counter, who wore green tights and a knit cloth helmet, asked:
"Regular?"
"Sure."
Albert paid for the coffee and found a vacant table in the corner, where he fell to a minute examination of the coffee mug and its immediate environs. A brief glance at this man would not have revealed him to be at a loss, but such was the case. His sitting there contemptuously in the fluorescent twilight, one knee jutting out from under the table as if its owner had given it the day off, his continued inspection of the table as if the rest of the coffee shop held no interest, these things bespoke a man with friends to talk to, a life to run, a man used to having his own way. Yet Albert's practice was to wonder in complete bafflement at everything.
It's true. One gets one's best ideas from other people, but where does that leave one? These things ‑ he finally looked around the coffee shop ‑ these things, these people ... a notice board with flyers and rooms for rent. A tall man in a leather jacket sitting with a weedy man and his briefcase. A thickest man in a business suit, smiling as if challenging the world to make him stop. A frail woman full of anger, drinking her coffee as if it was medicine, glaring across the street at the bar opposite ... think about them for a minute. And soon the traffic in the road outside seems to reverse direction, the moon hurries along more conscientiously, a rare Mexican acatechili flies past the shop window, and nothing looks the same.
A� S h o r t� H i s t o r y� o f� t h e� M a n� D o w n s t a i r s
If at any time we meet, I am always confused and he is always clear. Sometimes he asks me questions, which just throw me entirely:
"Lot of rain, eh?"
He moved in suddenly, into the rooms downstairs that had the bay window and the extra room. One minute boxes and a worried trunk stood at the door. A little later he was ensconced. I heard him taking guests into his new place, his key trying the lock inexpertly at first. "Come on in. Yeah. Come in." And from inside, after the squeal and slam of the door, a silence broken by triumphant cries.
The weeks of brooding inactivity on his part are amazing. The noise of his tiny lathe on the weekends makes me pause in the hallway as the front door closes behind me. The sudden disturbances ‑ the coup d'éetat down there at three a.m., the Sunday morning revivalist meeting ‑ are only half as interesting, to me, as the subtle exchanges I sometimes catch at the end of a busy day:
"Hrm hrm wombat."
"WHAT?"
"Hrm‑hrm‑wombat!"
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
"Hrm Hrm: Wombat!!"
The week‑long sojourn of a loud, active dog makes an impression. Yet how much more impressive is the sporadic presence of another dog, one who does nothing in the nighttime.
As to his origins, I imagine him to have started out as a pile of dust in an abandoned room, becoming over the lonely years a middle‑aged man whose hair does not grow. His rancid ponytail is always the same, his jaw a grey peach. A woman comes to walk his dog, covering her face as she leaves the building, deferring to the dog's judgement as they stand at the corner. Which way do we cross? The dog knows.
Once I caught him napping. A rainy evening, and I was coming home from some caf � . There in the lock I saw he had forgotten his keys, as people do when they have been shopping. At first I thought of leaving the matter there, but I turned back and knocked on his door. Humming and padding towards the door. A pause. He opened it. We stood face to face, and he looked up inquisitively. That face, the experimental grin. He was an ex‑prison guard, a locksmith, an animal trainer, something.
"You've left your key in the lock," I said, pointing to them, no more than three inches from his face. I could have seen into his room, but I resolutely looked at the keys hanging there, willing him to do likewise.
"Ah," he said, giving up on me and glancing at the keys. "So I have."
I nodded, and he looked at me again in speculation, and again I managed not to look into his room. And there I left him, a chilled vessel with nothing in it.
More,�More
The thing about waiting for assholes is that it's very time-consuming. Assholes take much longer than anything else to turn up, yet, paradoxically, there are so many more of them. The probability is that if you are waiting, you are waiting for an asshole, and you will have a good long wait.
One positive aspect of this is that it helps you appreciate the life of the mind, which is the only kind there is. One begins to wonder:� What am I doing here? In this caf� , at this hour? Waiting? For who? Who's that? But he's an asshole.
Unavoidably you begin to study the interior of the place where you are waiting. Unavoidably, because the asshole continues to not turn up. And what a place it is! It might be a caf� , a bar, a lobby, a feeding place. You examine the people in the place, you examine each one that comes in, and yes, they too seem to be assholes, but the asshole you are waiting for keeps on not turning up. You might think, Why wait for your particular asshole when there are plenty of others to choose from? Aren't they interchangeable? Somehow, this doesn't work, perhaps because it would be too easy. And the larger question remains, never to be answered satisfactorily: am I an asshole? Waiting here for one, does that make me an asshole? Getting up to leave you think: no, I am a heartless son of a bitch, which is another matter, but I think I deserve credit for trying so hard not to be one.
J o b
"No, no, no, No!" Like this! Haven't you got eyes in your head?" Eric sprang up and stood in the middle of the floor, assumed a deferential stoop, and began padding up and down, proffering an imaginary tray right and left, smiling furtively. "Now that's how you do the Courtesy Shuffle, if you can't get that right, you're no use around here. Try again."
I did as he asked. It's difficult, though, to perform a task at which you keep failing. After a few seconds Ted saw that my heart wasn't in it and relented.
"Oh, alright� take a break. It's hard, I know. Looks easy, but when it comes down to doing it, your arms and legs are going all different ways, hard to keep the stoop and do the tray thing. I'm not saying it's easy." We sat back on the bench near the door, and Eric produced a pack of cigarettes. He gave me one and lit his own thoughtfully. "The whole thing with this place is� courtesy is what counts. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you're in the proper stance. Let me show you a few."
He got up and stood straight, one shoulder drooping, eyes half-closed. "Waiting: you've got all the time in the world. Or this." He crouched, eyes eager, as if preparing for a 50yard dash. "Where punctuality counts." He sat down and resumed his cigarette. I had to agree. Punctuality, deference ... although we were sitting there smoking, I believe we both felt the passage of each second with the infinite sense of regret that one only develops in the workplace. It was my first job, and I had never been so close to tears for such an extended period of time.
Eric put out his cigarette and said: "It's all to do with service, and that means good workmanship, professionalism. Something you can be proud of."
"Oh boy!"
T h e� F l i g h t� o f� t h e� J y b e x
For most winged creatures flight is relatively easy. For the Jybex, however, sustained and controlled flight is difficult, complex, full of contradictions. The problem does not seem to be in its wings, which are ample, or in the bird's strength, which is considerable. Taking into account its weight, shape and structure, one is forced to conclude that all the prerequisites for flight are satisfied. Theoretically it should fly. Yet it rarely does.
One might imagine that it lacked the will to fly, but observation of the bird discloses the opposite: much of its day is spent in vain attempts to get airborne. It runs back and forth across the desert floor, flapping its many‑coloured wings until it is worn out. It climbs cacti and dives headfirst into the sand. It takes running leaps from clifftops, sometimes managing a fitful glide to the patient earth, but often injuring itself fairly seriously. Oddly enough, instances of actual flight are only observed when the bird starts from a perfectly motionless attitude on the ground. The jybex seems to be unaware of this.
T h e� S e c r e t� L i f e� o f� C a r p
Every fish will tell you that the supreme problem of life, the only problem (if there is a problem), is that there is nowhere to go. And nothing to do. When you're not hiding you're looking around, this way and that: and there's nothing. You suck up tiny morsels of food which, frankly, all taste like wet cardboard, you scoot around, shake your head: nothing. And under these staggering plants? Nothing. Near this rock? Nothing. Sometimes you just hang there, gaping at it, your mouth opening and closing, unable to form any words to describe the utter lack of things.
One is at a loss. What if there were something to do? What would that be like? Would it be ... but to a fish metaphors are incomprehensible. To a fish, of course, even the word "metaphor" is itself a metaphor ... zzzzzzzzz.
When the fish bestirs himself and courses through the rocks and plants, does he ask himself: What if I had a pair of hands? Could I busy myself with some projects, make things in my spare time? Record my impressions?
What spare time? What things? What could make an impression on a fish?
Somehow the fish has no spare time and needs no things. He merely streaks through the world, here, there, shaking his head: No. No. No.D o g
In the park that lay before the music school, passersby would notice a fine dog lying with his front paws extended, always alert and impassive. Such attention did he give to the avenue some twenty yards away that his ears were never seen to flicker in response to any background noise.
People would sometimes pause to admire his faithful service, and continue their journey reconfirmed in their belief that truth and honour abide somewhere on the earth. Even at the height of winter the distinctive shape of the dog could be seen under six or seven inches of snow. He may have been treated with a coat of something to prevent rust, but one would like to think this an unnecessary precaution.
And so the dog witnessed thousands of people over the years, walking or running or brooding out of car windows. A woman leading her children down the avenue, looking back at them as if they were delightful aliens; the children looking at each other, as who should say: How far are we prepared to follow this insane lady? Will there be something to eat at the other end? Another group of children, unsupervised, bent on destruction. A man shouting at a heap of laundry on the pavement which eventually stands up to resemble his drunken buddy. A man who contrives to set fire to the bus shelter; another who comes along immediately and puts it out by poking at the flames with his foot, thereby setting fire to the sole of his shoe.
And yet the dog lies there, not even shifting his gaze to follow one person or another. He lies there and passes no judgement� or maybe he does.
G u e s t
A deer got into my room. I don't know how, I didn't notice it until I came out of the bathroom that morning. There it was, startled, looking over its shoulder at me, waiting to see if I needed to get at the bookcase, which would have forced its hand.
"Excuse me," I said, gently pulling some clothes out of the drawer under the bed. It made as if to bolt, but there was nowhere to go. If I'm careful, I thought, none of my stuff needs to get wrecked. So far only a small table had been kicked over, and a few books lay about on the floor. I retreated to the kitchen to get dressed, but I was painfully aware of the deer's embarrassed silence. The creature had got itself into a jam. Pretending I had failed to notice its predicament, which I was inclined to do, would be no help, but there didn't seem to be any other useful approach. There is something in the look of a deer, almost a critical appraisal of one's appearance and deportment, that both retains the viewer and keeps him at a good distance.
"I guess I'll be off, then," I said loudly. "I'm leaving the door open." There was no sign of anything from the room, no cough of acknowledgment, and I left for work.
At work I found myself thinking about the deer. Would it be home when I got back for lunch? If it were, would I be intruding? Would it give me a fearful, disappointed look? Or would it be getting accustomed to my coming and going, even cautiously looking forward to my arrival as a way of breaking up the day? And what would a deer have for lunch?
I got home a bit late, having picked up a few leafy green vegetables at the grocery store. The door was resolutely closed, though I had left it ajar. Inside all was quiet. "Hello," I said, to avoid startling anyone. I looked into the room. No one. The little table and the books had been restored to their places, and it rather looked as if everything had been tidied up. The only vestige of the deer that I could see was some light fur on the bookcase, where it had probably rubbed its head thoughtfully. Perhaps thinking about ... but who would presume to know what goes on in the mind of such a resplendent animal?
I n s e c t
Ugh, there's a hideous beetle whirling around inside the overhead light, whizzing up at it from stupid angles, misguiding itself toward a super whack on the neck and shoulders, then dizzily getting locked into a course of tight circuits inside the shade, more and more furious with each second. At times he wheels off with a demonstration of pure je-m'en-fichisme, and then back again with a renewed frantic buzzing.
The normal response from below: "Stop it at once! Can't you think about other people for a change!?" And already casting about for a weapon.
R a b b i t
Everyone ought to have a desk rabbit. Whenever people at work start getting demanding and temperamental, I wait for a quiet moment and then find the toy rabbit that somehow found its way into my desk years ago.
A friend came by the office once for some sort of help. I opened the drawer to get an envelope and some files out. "There's a rabbit in there," she said, obviously looking for an explanation, but I merely agreed that there was and left it at that.
I never cared for stuffed animals as a child, but this one is a great consolation to me. I sometimes wonder how he got there, or how we came to be close associates. There is an explanation, of course - because for everything there must be an explanation, a prosaic, long-winded excuse with many clauses, both conditional and concessive - but this rabbit somehow rises above all that. Hence his spot on the team.
I n� a� N u t s h e l l
This is the first sentence. That much is perfectly true. As far as anyone can tell, there doesn't seem to be any sentence preceding it, and no matter how� far back we go, that sentence is the first solid clue we have about all this.�� Everyone is understandably excited. A new undertaking! People cry out, Jim, Jim, slow down with that recipe for disaster!
"This is the first sentence" is therefore rather valuable. It doesn't seem� to wear out with repetition, though it will hardly bear too much of it, and so� it ranks as an eternal truth. But what does it mean? Will investigation of it reveal any secrets?
Of course everyone has analyzed it at one time or another. There have been fashions in interpretation over the years. It was once thought smart to say, successively, that is was a product of the historic forces of its time, that it is linguistically competent, that it doesn't really exist, and that it is actually something else. Putting it under a microscope, the amateur in his laboratory behind the house isolates several things: This; is; the; first; sentence. "If you were to remove a piece, or change the order, it would probably be more interesting", he observes, lighting his pipe triumphantly. Elsewhere, people in their cold, book-crammed rooms boil over at the thought of its predictability and know-it-all self-sufficiency, thereby generating the btu's needed to get them through the winter.
But the only way to understand anything other than the first sentence is to ignore the first sentence, and live as though the first sentence doesn't exist, or as though it were untrue.
A man falls through a hole, goes to the movies, answers "Of course" to all the important questions, runs all day, sits or lies down the rest of the time, in life so like an animal, in death so like a vegetable. Why on earth can't he do impossible things?
And now people are beginning to grow tired of that first sentence. They feel, even in their ignorance of other things, that it is no longer entirely true. So many sentences have come after it, and "This is the first sentence" is largely forgotten. One can no longer say it with the original freshness, and certainly not with any conviction that it was at one time exciting and worthy of commemoration. If there were some sort of compelling first sentence, why, then ... or perhaps the hunger is for an Ursentence, which ... or maybe if it were bigger, or if it tasted better, or were a different colour, or cut on the bias, or had an extra bedroom. But this is the last sentence.
A l l� T h a t� a n d� N o w� T h i s
If I had a complete set of World Famous Communist cards I would give it to you. I've been collecting them for years, and now I have them all except for Axelrod.
I find myself entering Lenin's study. Polished wood, everything exactly as he left it. Nothing on this desk but a tea glass and some newspapers, as if the man's occupation consisted entirely in drinking tea and reading newspapers. And there he is himself! Sitting behind his desk like a yellow turnip. Wearing a fuzzy charcoal grey suit. I still have the urge to address him as "Vladimir Ilich", but I end up touching his sleeve and saying, "Ilich, I just love that fabric on you."
I had originally wanted to put some hard questions. I wanted to call him down, accuse him, throw tea in his face, kick the room to pieces, boot him head first up and down the fine staircase leading from his study. (It will be recalled that the staircase has two bannisters, one for a normal person and one installed a little lower down for an incapacitated man, as Lenin was). Yes, all that. And now this.
Upon the death of certain old communist poet, a volume of poems and reminiscences was published. Incensed that I was not asked to contribute anything, I composed the following:
To L A.
O trusted beacon of proletarian might
And keeper of
the workers' word
Whose
Sorry, what
was
your name again?
Well, love is a succulent plant: plenty of sunlight, easy on the water. Or something.
Of course, we used to call Lenin "the man with eight noses". Pravda! I saw him in a bar once, and people said, "You know, he's known as The Man with Eight Noses". I immediately avoided looking at his nasal area, although I couldn't help noticing something decidedly odd about it. I would have said he had two noses, but there could have been more. As he approached me I nodded, and he said: "What chu lookin at?" I made a placatory gesture. He said: "What chu lookin at? Tell me." I went on looking at my beer, smiling and shrugging. He sat down next to me, jostling my beer with his own.
In no time at all he was flagging down a waitress and exclaiming: "Ow! Grob! Hawb!", or words to that effect, pointing to his beer. I could see the rest of the bar staff taking note of this, and felt that within fifteen minutes one of them would come up and say, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave, sir", a sad thing. To think that the revolution was a failure, and now this. Yes, I loved you once, perhaps love still, etc., as the poet said. But we all make mistakes. I think.
A� W a y� O u t
Suddenly it seemed as if there were a way out. Quite unexpectedly, without any particular effort being made, at a time when Pierre was devoting his energies to getting the normal work done and entertaining the conundra that people managed to keep offering him, there it was. Bof! the door exclaimed when he pushed it open. A world of cool air and trees stood beyond, with late afternoon birds fluttering in the shade of a fence and wandering calls over the grumble of a tractor from the next field. He closed the door and walked back, ever mindful of his obligations to the corporate entity that paid his tender salary.
"I think I've found a way out", he said to Phil in the cafeteria later.
"Another way out! You should collect them."
"Oh, this - "
"Yeah. You could put them in a binder."
"No, this is different. This came to me all of a sudden. It's a good one. I'm excited about it. I can see a lot of potential there, anyway. It seems farfetched, but one should always be looking for ways out."
Phil made a gentle motion as if detaining a passerby. "This is someone you should meet: Pierre. He's found a way out. But he's always looking for them. Well, I'd like to hear more about it, but I have to be getting back. You still on for this evening? I mean it's Friday and everything."
"Oh. Sure, I guess. See you then."
Pierre watched Phil leave the cafeteria, looking this way and that as he shrugged on his coat. Phil was the sort of person who had nothing but a confident eye with which to meet the world, if one were to judge from his neat and thoughtless movements, his skill in whirling a momentarily neglected cigarette back to its rightful perch and sucking the nourishment out of it. As Pierre finished his coffee, he realised that a true way out would also mean an end to such features of the day's format as his regular coffee break, lunches and bar sessions. Was anything really worth that?
Or maybe a true way out would only have to be a matter of thinking one's way out. Couldn't one, by taking thought, untangle one's instincts from the mess caused by thinking? After all, so much of the thinking that goes on is undisciplined, self-indulgent, and imposed from the outside? Supposing, more modestly, he were to hide from the demands of communicating, which is to say formulating and interpreting thought; could he then retrieve the control over his life with which he was born? Well, maybe. But not tonight. It's Friday.
P a r a g r a p h s� 7 6 3 - 7 7 0
763������������������ Coming out of his office the next night he was stopped in the dark passage by an unknown man. Wait. Wait. The man gestured, almost raising his hand. Pat knew this would be fatal. 764������ ���������� �Buddy, I wonder if I can talk to you. As he spoke several men appeared from behind columns, out of doorways. Obscurely they caught him and held him tightly. If only I had some time, he thought, I don't seem to have time to think about this. The men pummelled him for the umpteenth time. They all hammered at him with science and enthusiasm. A small man at his side took particular delight in punching his kidneys, perhaps having heard that this was a good way to beat someone up. As usual he soon lost consciousness. 765������������������ At home he said to his wife: What a day I've had. She said: Did you? and then turned up the music so that the whole room was pounding. She took a small box out of her briefcase and opened it. Inside was a pair of earplugs which she smilingly put in her ears. What a day I've had, said Pat. 766������������������ Coming out of his office the next night he was stopped in the dark passage by an unknown man. Wait. Wait. The man gestured, almost raising his hand. Pat knew this would be fatal. 767������������������ Buddy, I wonder if I can talk to you. As he spoke several men appeared from behind columns, out of doorways. Obscurely they caught him and held him tightly. If only I had some time, he thought, I don't seem to have time to think about this. The men pummelled him for the umpteenth time. They all hammered at him with science and enthusiasm. A small man at his side took particular delight in punching his kidneys, perhaps having heard that this was a good way to beat someone up. As usual he soon lost consciousness. 768������������������ At home he said to his wife: What a day I've had. She said: Did you? and then turned up the music so that the whole room was pounding. She took a small box out of her briefcase and opened it. Inside was a pair of earplugs which she smilingly put in her ears. What a day I've had, said Pat. 769������������������ Coming out of his office the next night he was stopped in the dark passage by an unknown man. Wait. Wait. The man gestured, almost raising his hand. Pat knew this would be fatal. 770������������������ Buddy, I wonder if I can talk to you. As he spoke several men appeared from behind columns, out of doorways. Obscurely they caught him and held him tightly. If only I had some time, he thought, I don't seem to have time to think about this. The men pummelled him for the umpteenth time. They all hammered at him with science and enthusiasm. A small man at his side took particular delight in punching his kidneys, perhaps having heard that this was a good way to beat someone up. As usual he soon lost consciousness.D i n n e r� D a t e
Mike approached her tan apartment building. It was on a side street, and the sun made it glow with a dismal brilliance, complemented nicely by the rich green plastic coverings of its many balconies.
Upstairs all was in readiness for his visit: the television sang, the toilet was flushing, Elizabeth let him in and returned to her telephone conversation, "Yeah," she said. "Oh. Yeah? I really wanted to, too, but - "
Mike sat down on the only piece of furniture not covered with clothes and magazines, or occupied by other people, and set the bag containing the wine at his feet. He saw Griffin and Anthony and greeted them appropriately. A third man whom he had never seen before emerged from the bathroom, depositing a magazine on the sofa; they nodded to each other, and the man headed off into the kitchen.
"Oh," said Elizabeth. "Really? Really? Oh ‑ " There were four seconds of amused silence, and then she laughed, and then laughed again, and then laughed a third time, and then a fourth. Mike reached into his jacket and took out cigarettes, but as he was fishing around for his lighter, the other two men began smiling and coughing loudly into their fists. He replaced the cigarettes.
"Well," he said to them, "So how have you guys been?"
"Fine," said one of them.
"Who's the new guy?"
"Phil."
"Ah. Kind of good-looking, eh?"
They shrugged. He was, though - good-looking in a cruel way, with his pony tail, leather jacket and rock tour t-shirt.
Since the conversation showed some signs of flagging, Mike took to fantasizing about his date. She was cute, all right, but as she stood bent over the telephone with her backside towards him, he had occasion to appreciate that her underpants would have to be at least twice as large as his own. More. Much more. But perhaps they were made of some unusually stretchy material, so that the garment when purchased -
With a tinkling laugh Elizabeth hung up. She turned immediately to Mike and said: "Oh, I don't know. I'm so depressed. I haven't managed to get a thing done all day. I've just wasted the whole day, and I put on six pounds ... It's just - people are so horrible. Sorry for going on about my problems."
And she looked at him with rekindled interest, hope, even excitement. Mike did the same.
M e m o i r
They were sitting at the feet of Virgil, whom they considered to be the ringleader of the new novelists. Often they would gather there in the room he rented around the corner from his wife's house - his wife, after all, having no desire to be encumbered with eager novelists. The discussion revolved around their novels in his smoky little sitting room.
After a silence someone asked, "What do we stand for, exactly, if anything?"
"Novels."
"No, but who are we? What are we trying to do?" Titus, the man who was asking the questions, pulled himself into a sitting position from his recumbency on the floor. "Another thing: Who are we writing novels for? Who has time to read them? And if people have time to read them, what should they be getting from them?"
Someone behind Titus spoke up to ask: "Supposing we stopped writing novels, what then?"
Virgil waved his hands and said: "No, no, orientations of any kind don't interest me. I need to know a man's principle works. I need to find ‑ "
At that moment an explosion outside made the ashtrays jump. Another sounded as if the sky had cracked open. They ran out to see people hurrying. "Come on, it's starting, it's starting!" Someone lay face down in the street.
"What is it?"
"Come on!"
A man in military uniform caught sight of them and said: "We need builders for rebuilding. We need builders,� but first of all we need some good demolitions men. What are you?"
They answered: "Novelists. What can we do?"
He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin, scanning the horizon. "Write novels," he said. They were dismissed. A fall of bricks and mortar crashed between them. As he moved off he called out to them cheerfully: "Soon the city will be a fresh wasteland, and at some time more novels will be written. There is no stopping it."
C h e a t� t o� W i n
The unreliability of everything is going to give rise to a new way of life: palimpsest reading.
People are going to need a little help with this, so probably some ultimate master will turn up, cadging drinks and cigarettes in all the usual places. He will be seen in fast food restaurants, eating chips and reading discarded newspapers. He will be seen walking past cafes, smiling and worshipping the unseen powers who leave coins on the pavement for him to find. He will talk about the One and the Many, the Big and the Little, the Up and the Down, the Mutt and the Jeff, and he will have a lot to say about this business of living as if all the vital information has been erased and covered with boring information in thick ink and a confident hand. The things you need to know will be barely discernable. This means that from now on, almost, or sooner than you think, every bark of a dog will have to mean as much as anything you may or may not hear from an authoritative news voice. Government forces may well be hammering rebel positions for the third consecutive day, but you will still want to read your horoscope; and then some complete stranger writing in to a neighbouring advice column might accidentally shed some light on your own problems, with the same benefit as you would have from your best friend or a professional therapist. Things that have nothing to do with you will do something to you. They already have. For example, whenever I stop to let someone pass, I bump into someone else, sometimes with disastrous results. On the other hand, I find it helpful, even indispensable, to disregard three quarters of what I am told, no matter how urgent or well-meaning the source. Some more statistics: Sixty percent of all apologies tendered this year were unnecessary; the remaining forty percent were construed as insulting. In ninety-five percent of romantic liaisons the wrong people were involved. Roughly four out of five identities were mistaken. Finally, if as much as half of all available merchandise were sold at its actual value, our economy would collapse irretrievably. But everyone knows all that. So what to do? Try imitating the universe. Be big, within certain limits. Be inexplicable. Be expandable. Above all, keep out of nowhere, avoid having no time, and stay as far away as possible from nothing. And give me a shout on the weekend.
G e t� W e l l� S o o n
The telephone rang, and Eric, my supervisor, said: "That'll be for me. You take it." I did. The person at the other end wanted to talk to Eric.
"Hang on," I said, "I'll see if he's here." With the caller on hold I asked Eric if he was there.
"Obviously not," he said pityingly, and left the department.
"Hello? No, he's obviously not here. Yes, alright. Goodbye."
A week later we were reviewing things, and Eric said: "By the way, it's not important - " he smiled the All clear smile - "but I did think you'd be able to tell whether I am here or not. It's, like I say, not that important."
"Well now - I am having a little trouble."
"Yes."
"For example, would you be here now, or not?"
"I'm here."
"That's, you know, what I thought. But there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rules about your being here."
"I see; you feel uncomfortable about this."
"I do. As you say, it may not be that important around here, but to be honest, it's a fundamental question in most other places."
Eric stood up and laughed, joining his hands behind his head like a man in custody, but enjoying the moment and using the gesture to put space between himself and the sublunary world of the literal minded. "Ahhh. How to Tell If Someone is There." He chewed his next thought over before saying: "The easiest thing is for you to get training from Charlene. She knows all about it. Let's schedule it tentatively for later this week. How does it sound if we put you and she together Thursdays and Fridays after lunch, around 2:00. I'll get some documentation together before then - let's see, I'll send you an email this afternoon to confirm. How does that sound?"
He bent down to make a quick note. "How does that sound?" He looked up, raising his eyebrows and enunciating more clearly: "How does that sound?" But I was no longer there.
Taking Care of Dave
It seems to have started when a group of Charlene's women friends suggested that she devote her life to taking care of Dave. He needed attention. He needed constant looking after. For a start he needed a shave. Dave was then about eight hours old and growing constantly. In a year's time he would have grown out of all recognition. And who knew what he would be like then?
It's no huge task to look after a man, really ‑ just a matter of sitting quietly in the kitchen while he sleeps, looking in every few minutes to make sure he's still breathing. Trimming his tiny fingernails. That's not a great deal to ask, is it? As if Charlene had something else to do, like climbing Everest or trading in futures. Besides, someone had to do it, and Charlene had a job and some sort of unguessable secret dream to work on, so she wasn't going anywhere, not like Dave.
Dave was in the habit of wandering off, trailing behind any woman who happened by, probably under the impression that she was his mother. He would disappear for days. On one of these occasions Charlene came to me for help. I thought, The uncharted human brain ... it's probably not empty. Who knows what might be in it, at a given moment?
But I tried to calm her down by saying: "War is Hell. Other things aren't much fun, either."
"You don't understand. Dave is special. And I am his keeper."
"Oh."
Canvassing the town I pretended that Dave was a secretive musician, whose work so excited people that they looked upon him as upon Moctezuma's gold, and importunately demanded to know his whereabouts. In the event, finding Dave was not nearly as difficult as holding on to him. When I saw him at the train station smiling at strangers I immediately called Charlene, but she just missed him.
"I'm very sorry, Charlene," I said. "He was right here when I went to make the phone call. Now there's no sign of him except this bag." She seized the bag and revealed its contents: a few of his poems. Oh yes. He wrote poems. Once we found him asleep in the shadow of a bridge, on a lonely stretch between corporations and crooked streets. We whispered to each other, "What if we were to wake him? I wonder how deep he's sleeping. What if he can hear everything we say?"
And he woke up and said: "Time to be a failure. Time enough to have wasted plenty. To spend each second on exactly nothing. And still have time to spare."
"Oh, don't hurt him," said Charlene, touching my arm.
I see Charlene in the bar night after night, soberly judging mankind and always willing to consider the advantages of disagreeing. From time to time she will have a woman friend with her, an eager novice. "He sent you flowers?" she contains her enthusiasm with a laugh. "That's nice."
A r t i f i c i a l� F l a v o u r i n g
I was understandably proud of my friendship with Dr Trezvennik: a triumph. As we limped across Main Street (I was recovering from a knee injury; Dr Trezvennik twisted his ankle every two weeks), I would see people taking thoughtful note of our animated conversation.
Once, as we were returning to the travel agency where I worked, he boomed: "Poor Pierre! You keep dreaming about foreign travel and exotic places, but you will never leave this shitty town. Can I say that, Shitty, in that context?"
"Oh yes. But why do you, er ... ?"
Dr Trezvennik frowned and said, without seeming to have given the matter any thought:� "Because shitty towns like this were made for guys like you. Haha, I am kidding."
Dr Trezvennik encouraged me, however, in my study of Italian. Foreign travel being in his view impractical, he nevertheless convinced me of the benefits of immersing myself in the language and culture of Italy. He gave me huge books stuffed with long poems. I took this to be a sign that he discerned some genuine potential in me.
"Pierre", he said, "you are wasting all your time on that - chasing women, working in the travel bureau. Maybe it's all right for some people. I think it's a shame. And this, this - woman."
"Laura?"
"Laura." Dr Trezvennik looked as if he were eating a rotten egg, but had grown accustomed to the flavour. "Can I ask one question, Are you sleeping with her?"
"No."
"Then what in Hell you are doing!?"
"I like her. Besides, there's a certain - "
"No. I am sorry, you have been rejected. She is looking for someone else, and you are a shithead." We stopped outside the travel agency and leaned on the curving rail that graced its portals. It might be assumed that I was annoyed, but I was thinking: These streets are almost worn out with all the pleasant women walking on them. And rejection? It's fun and it's safe.
W h e r e� N e a t n e s s� C o u n t s
A glaring mistake, a glaring mistake - leaving out a hamzat-al-qat in an extremely important document. The minister was so shocked that he hardly knew how to address the matter, and then his rage was uncontainable. It grew day by day. On an hourly basis. There was no end to it. He sent for the clerk responsible and rebuked him thoroughly, not once, but several times. He then had him publicly disgraced, and then flogged. A week later he decided to exile him to Oros, where he would have to spend the rest of his life among unreasonable foreigners. Thinking it over one morning, he resolved to put the whole affair behind him, and therefore sent word to have him executed.
Once the sentence had been read out to him, the prisoner was allowed to wander around Oros at will, since there was really nowhere for him to go. Also, from day to day they received ever more irritable letters from the minister outlining still more serious punishments, as if execution was nowhere near the mark. Every day the clerk would go to the Palace of Justice to find out if a date had been set, and every day they said No, go out and have a good time, we're busy right now. They even permitted themselves to joke around a little, referring to him as The Illiterate, because of the nature of his crime. The clerk dutifully lay on the beach and tried to enjoy himself, eventually becoming used to the bizarre fair-haired women who whispered barbaric syllables past his ear when he kissed them.
By now the minister's wrath had become so huge that it actually curved somewhat, and had developed a complicated relationship to time and existence itself. It became something of an enigma, and people began to study it, rather inappropriately, as if it were one more little curiosity of nature, capable of being housed in a ridiculous museum. Whatever its true nature, the clerk had to go on living in it. Life is never easy, and he sometimes worried about being forgotten, and sometimes had to wonder if it wouldn't be better to write to the minister personally, paying great attention, of course, to spelling and punctuation.
W h a t ?
Music poured over their heads recklessly, football players cavorted in silence on the television screen above the bar, and the owner could be seen across the street, watching his place fill up with drinkers.
"Fancy another drink?"
She made a face as if one of her principle cats had died, then brightened and said: "Oh. Okay! Whiskey sour?"
"Sure." He effected the transaction.
"So anyway," she continued, "I finally got hold of them and managed to get that all sorted out. Oh! Let me show you, I got these great new shoes! I'll put them on. Look."
He glanced under the table. "Great."
"Aren't they? And I've got the other pair for walking home in. The others are good, but they gave me a blister on my heel. Look." She removed a shoe and sock and twisted her foot around for him to inspect. He leaned over the table."That's awful. But - "
"Oh, did I tell you, Dick dropped over Wednesday, the loser. So I guess that's sorted out - for now. Did you notice?" She gestured to her hair, which had evidently undergone some treatment.
"Yeah, I was just going to say."
"So I'm all set. I have to pay my rent this weekend. I had to spend all my tip money on cat food, that kinda bites. I'm not smoking for the rest of the week, though. My Dad says he'll lend me the money to get these shoes I like. Did you see my tan?"
"Yes, I'm afraid I was looking down the front of your top when I was supposed to be looking at your hair."
"Well, just to compare ... " she glanced around and then discreetly revealed a section of midriff to demonstrate the uniformity of her tan. "You see?"
"H'm!"
She turned to her drink thoughtfully. "You were about to say something?"
But before he could say anything, she stuck her tongue out at someone behind him.
"What on earth did you do that for?"
"He was looking at me."
I n� P r a i s e� o f� t h e� H u n s
"I think people are overreacting", said Pat. They were standing on a street corner, getting in the way, reviewing the topics suitable for a chance encounter such as this. Initially they had agreed to meet at the caf� , without either of them intending to show up, but at the appropriate hour Pat happened to be coming out of the magazine shop just as Helen was approaching the bank. A conversation was enacted.
"Yeah, I really think so", said Helen. "I mean, they have a lot of social problems."
"Well, I mean, the Huns, of course you're right, but they don't have the technology necessary for invading us. You know."
"You're always such a bore about technology. You think it's so - " her last words were lost as a gaggle of six or seven business people passed between them safely.
"But - "
Helen made a face as if tasting a rare poison. She said: "People here shouldn't be afraid of them. They should respect them. We have a lot to learn from them."
"The Huns? A lot to learn? From the Huns? A lot to? From? Are you aware," he said, trying to find something in his newspaper, but Helen turned away as if from a slap. What a boor he was! Standing there with his newspapers and ill‑fitting suit and bad cologne and fat belly and goodness knows what other offensive attributes. He then saw that she wasn't crying, but looked as if her blood were being sucked by a boring vampire with very bad breath. "Although," he went on, "I suppose it could be, you know. No. You're right. Far be it from me to, you know, after all. Yes, everyone's overreacting. If the Huns get here, as it says, in the next couple weeks, I don't say they'll do that much."
Helen was perfectly still and alert, so he added: "From what I can see, they have a lot of important traditions. Culture, religion, everything. That's a good sign." She seemed about to nod in agreement, so Pat turned to face the direction she was facing and took a few steps to conduct her to wherever she was going. "I'm even looking forward to the whole thing. It could be positive. The Huns' visit. Right?"
He continued to hover at her side, almost preparing for flight, but Helen had given up. He gestured across the street with his newspaper and said, simply: "Go for a coffee? Before the Huns burn everything?"
O ' F l a h e r t y� :� t h e� R a m o s� I n t e r v i e w
Cineaste and poet, O'Flaherty represents what many of us have felt will be the redeeming feature of any new movement in films and visual art. It is important to remember that O'Flaherty is essentially amphisbaenic in everything he does; a habit that can be trying for the viewer of his films, to be sure, but nevertheless a stylistic innovation long associated with his work.
This conversation was recorded while O'Flaherty was visiting Le Monde du meuble.)
(Actually, it wasn't. A few days later O'Flaherty dropped by the Ramos offices, but we were still waiting for him at Le Monde du meuble, thinking about his student work Lunchmeat and trying to recall where he went from there. Then we remembered the confusion caused by some movie critic's insisting that he, O'Flaherty, had affirmed a knowledge of Polish to be essential to an understanding of his films, even the ones that are exclusively in English; in fact, it turned out that only a familiarity with the phrase "zagwarantowanie cen minimalnych na plody rolne" was required, and only for the films made after his 1960 sojourn in Italy. This sort of misrepresentation has plagued O'Flaherty for years, and explains why he is now reluctant to talk to journalists.)
(A month later the staff of Ramos, having toiled at many jobs in order to finance this interview with O'Flaherty, returned to the office to find that O'Flaherty had left a note for them in their wastebasket, which said, in effect, nothing. We had to marvel at his subversive, if maddening, use of blank space to convey the substance of our meetings so far. Here it is:
I was. You weren't.
with love,
J.
It is interesting to note that the signature is easily ten times as big as the text itself. Also the choice of words is rather odd: I was what? Here, presumably. But is that merely a trap for the unwary? Is he not suggesting that there is an ontological difference between us? Would he do a thing like that?!)
(We sometimes think it would be interesting to make films. Real films, with plenty of excitement, films that would tell stories. Like how about this for an idea: there's this guy, see, and he's going around looking for something. He seems about to ask some important question of everyone he meets, but no one stops to listen. We see him at the bank depositing some money or something. As the clerk stamps everything briskly, he tries to get his attention, but the clerk is already inviting the next client to approach. Next we see him entering a public library. At last! we think, now he can look up the information he seeks. But here again he seems to be in a quandary. Library assistants scuttle off to hidden offices every time he attempts to ask them anything. And what does he want to know, exactly? The film ends before we can find out.)
T h i s� ' n '� T h a t
Pierre was deeply interested in spiritual matters as a youth, and toyed briefly with the notion of becoming a religious maniac. After all, the life of the soul is important, and what better way to annoy the Chief Executive? It can also be a good way to meet people.
But people, he found, have a way of softening one's focus, or, to put it bluntly, messing it up entirely. Which is to say that people are fine if you are talking to them or selling them a religious tract, but they interfere with an individual's observation of the world, like so many passengers crowding around the Chief Executive of a bus and offering loads of advice.
He then dedicated himself to a life of watching television and doing little else. Someone who popped up quite a bit, though: the Chief Executive. At the end of the day there was no avoiding a little clip of him being led around somewhere, or playing with a puppy. When he wasn't shown playing with a puppy or being fed an exotic ethnic titbit, people would be discussing his doings and sayings and fantasizing about his future doings and sayings.
This began to pall. So much so that Pierre decided to write an antibiography of the Chief Executive, a vast work cataloguing all the things the Chief Executive was not, or had failed to do, or had never thought about. There would be room for everything unrelated to the Chief Executive.
His delusion was that writing this might jumpstart the process of eradicating the Chief Executive himself and undoing his knavery. The Latin alphabet cannot transcribe the insane laughter his project caused him.
However, all this is unnecessary. A simpler way to go about it is to compose any of a number of small stories in which the Chief Executive plays no part, or is referred to as something else. Such a story would be like a Swiss Army knife: when you open it there should be a tiny blade for chipping away a little bit at the frozen puddle of the reader's soul, but also some other things for doing other things.
S m i l e� o f� a� D e s p e r a t e� M a n
It was a student lounge, and people came and went as if they had good reason for doing so. They dropped in before the game or the meeting or the seminar, or they dropped in just after. They brought work with them. They were waiting for friends. They were looking for someone to discuss their thesis anxieties with. Here and there tenured professors sat around, honking about committees and drinking imported beer.
Phil was surprised to see Eric and Norma coming in together. He had already been given to understand by Norma that Eric was a possessive maniac, and by Eric that Norma was insane. Why, then, would they be meeting for lunch, as it appeared?
Norma and her new friends had shaken their heads over Eric ‑ why, the man's life was a shambles! Eric was to be found at receptions, alternately grinning and wincing. Sometimes he would duck his head sharply, as if dodging a blow. And as for Norma, you'd think people would know enough not to toy with a woman as patently crazy as she was.
Norma swam into view, looking for a free table. Was she alone, then? Had they merely run into each other at the entrance? To step along side by side, briskly, and dash off in opposite directions as soon as decency permitted? No, Eric soon followed, bearing the tray which held their lunch. He dipped his head and smiled at Phil, and then trailed after Norma, who was seeking greater and better tables upstairs.When it was time to go, Phil collected Eric and suggested they go for a drive. "We'll take my car," he said.
"Eh?" Eric smiled.
"Don't do that, you're already breaking my heart."
They drove out to the country. It was a beautiful day. Phil stopped the car and proposed they get out and stretch their legs. Once they were well away from the road, Phil popped two bullets into Eric's head.
A� B a d� U n c l e ' s� S u i t c a s e
Pierre's uncle turned up at his apartment carrying a hefty suitcase, and explained that he was going away for a few months, or perhaps for the rest of his life. Obviously there was trouble of some kind, but in his uncle's idiosyncratic version of events everything could come up trumps the very next day.
"We'll have to see. You know, Pierre, I've got an awful lot of stuff, I was wondering if I could leave this suitcase with you." He lit a cigarette and carefully slid the suitcase under Pierre's bed. Straightening up, he said: "There's just a few things in there, nothing really of any consequence. It could stay under there quietly, right? And in a few months' time, I could come by and collect it."
Well, yes, thought Pierre. In other words, Don't open it, don't look inside. "Don't worry," he said, "no one's going to mess with your things."
They talked in a desultory fashion for a minute or two, and then Pierre's uncle left. He could be heard coughing and hacking down the tiny carpeted hallway. Pierre listened for the single peal of the elevator bell and the shuffle of its doors. Within seconds he hauled the suitcase out from under the bed and opened it.
Inside he found - No! Just kidding. What kind of nephew would open a suitcase left in the faith that no one would tamper with it? Who would be that curious? And what could be hidden inside, realistically? Mob money, a cache of weapons, secret rocket plans, what? Even if his uncle were involved in anything (which is not to say that he was, directly), would he have endangered his nephew by this subterfuge? True, he had been known to become embroiled in misadventures over the years, but these were nothing more than errors of judgement, indiscretions, in a word: peccadillos.
Wasn't it more likely that the suitcase contained memorabilia? Old photographs, letters, things a person would want to keep, if at all possible. Things that would reveal the tender side of the man, that would make the browser weep with shame and understanding.Anyway, he hauled the suitcase out from under the bed and opened it. Ridiculous shirts. Useless socks. Impossible underwear.
B r o o m
Albert had not been to bed in ten years, so when he saw the grey notice on a bulletin board, he decided that a change of living space might help. The notice said "sublet 175/mo male smoker preferred." Its terseness appealed to him, and he wrote the telephone number and the name "Claire" on the back of a folder.
It was an old house, ugly but solid, with a verandah considerably bigger and more extensive than anyone would need. When he went to be interviewed by this Claire in the twilight of the verandah, he was not, of course, expecting her to say "Young man, we shall get along famously," but he was a little taken aback when she said, as soon as she saw him: "Oh� I'm sorry. You're not quite right."
Albert was silent for a moment, and then said: "Yes, I know what you mean. I'm not quite right. Things have a way of not quite suiting me. I can hardly find anything that will fit, I don't have a favourite colour, I eat whatever food is least offensive, I do whatever doesn't come too unnaturally, and as for people - people! Let me tell you about people."
"What about people?" Claire opened the door a little wider in order to come closer to him.
"The odd thing about people is that you have to know something about them in order to get along with them. A given person, you have to have formed a definite idea, not a complete one, maybe, of what that person will do and will not do. Otherwise it's like watching a movie with the sound off, and you won't understand anything until it's over, if then."
"Can you have such a definite idea about anyone?"
"No. Not at all. I mean, I can't. I don't understand people at all, and that's why I don't expect to get along with them. And neither do you, from what I can see."
Claire frowned and picked up some commercial brochures and coupons and studied them briefly before throwing them in the plastic barrel. Then she turned and motioned for Albert to come in.
"Some people try to get along with people," he continued, "and it's really impossible for the most part, but they go on trying because they've been made to think it's what you're supposed to do ‑ understand people, work with them. Sometimes people just force themselves ‑ and that's no good." Albert followed Claire into the flat. A foyer with a table, a sort of sitting room with a couch, a kitchen. Claire led the way, three feet ahead and to his right, anticipating his every step. Without looking directly at her he said: "This is very nice. I think this could be a eutectic arrangement."
Claire considered for a moment before asking, "Eutectic? What's eutectic?" And Albert felt at home and put his suitcase down.
M e n� o f� F e w� D r e a m s
Tim and Pat were good friends. They did stuff together. In the evenings they frequented a long boulevard that had most of the town's shops on it. Sometimes they drank coffee in one of the thousands of cafes on the boulevard. The odd time they might stop in for a few drinks at a bar across from the Caf� Tarea. The world was at their feet.
After his divorce Tim grew a beard. Pat toyed with the notion of growing a beard, too, since he already had a divorce, but on sober reflection he decided against it: a result, or possibly also a cause, of their friendship was that they were much alike, and the beard could act as a distinguishing feature.
There were, of course, other considerable differences: although they worked for the same firm, Tim was an accountant and Pat was something else. Sometimes they met at break or lunch and talked about movies.
One evening Pat said as they spoke on the telephone: "What to do? What to do? We should do something!"
Tim answered: "You're dreaming again. But I'll tell you what we should do right now.""What?"
"Let's go to the movies."
"Okay."
"It could be a good evening for movies, we'll probably find one. Go out to the multiplex. They have all kinds. Hey, I forgot to tell you ‑ that girl in the corner store said Hi to me."
"Incredible!"
On the way to the movies Tim explained to Pat some details of the excitement surrounding the Hypothetical Action Bank. "So you see, it's a way to get around inflation."
"Ah, finance. Yes, that's good to know. So that's where we stand, economically speaking."
As they passed the corner store Pat noticed Tim glancing in to see if the girl he knew was working. She didn't appear to be. Pat said quickly: "Imagine ‑� if everything was made of rubber.""Things would bounce ‑ and stretch." Tim frowned. "They'd tend to lose their shape."
"Yes. They'd have to be vulcanised, of course."
Tim eventually said: "Did I tell you about my uncle disappearing?"
"No."
"He did. One day at the beach. Just wandered off. Let's see, who else disappeared? My brother. Never came home from work. My dad. Going out to buy some roofing nails, last I saw of him."
"People do that, eh?"
Just as they were entering the multiplex, Pat said: "Uh, at that Summer Fest thing I saw a man on a high wire. His act was that he always fell off. People would get excited worrying that he might just succeed sometime. And that's where I met the ex‑wife!"
"Me too!"
Which of them was lying?
I d e a l�� S t u f f
"Between birth and death," said Pierre one day, as they were sitting at meat, "there are quite a few hours of activity to get through. Every life tends to accumulate its particular set of objects, so that instead of viewing a given life as a single whole, or even as a complete set of something, one ought to view it as a box of random things, having as their only common point the fact that they happened to end up in the same box. This is the only way to view life."
Phil thought this over and methodically pulled the paper wrapper off of his muffin. Was it true? If true, what were the ramifications? Was his life like that? Was Pierre's? What was Pierre's life like? He seemed like an okay guy, a bit stuffy. What did he say about his parents? What was the impression you got hearing about his childhood? Who was that girl he used to go about with? What was her name again? Were they seeing each other? Where was she these days? Did she go back to her boyfriend? What kind of guy was he? Was Pierre really homosexual? What sort of money did he have? Were large portions of his persona really a lie? Could he beat the bejeesus out of someone, if pushed to it?
Phil took a bite out of his muffin, and turned his attention to the business of removing the lid from his coffee. What did they make these muffins out of? Why did they taste like gummy sweepings? Do people like that? Why does this coffee have a very brown flavour, and no other?
"Well, what do you think?"
"Oh. I don't know, Pierre. What do you mean by all that, anyway?"
"Oh, I don't know. Just something that occurred to me." He looked into his half‑empty bag of chips, trying to extract the cellophane-wrapped sticker which he knew to have been hidden inside for him. "No, I don't know. I don't think that's true. Oh, wow. A Satan sticker."
R o o m m a t e s
Some nights are darker than others. Faint, teacoloured street lighting, at once both attractive and troubling. Shadows under the trees that look positively dirty. Horrifying, not to say displeasing. Albert sighed and went up the steps.
He came into the living room to find her naked except for the towel on her head, huddling on the floor, writing something, surrounded by other scraps of paper and clothing."Can I see?"
"H'm." She wrote energetically, as if sealing a breach in some faulty plumbing. "There! I think I've really said something, for a change!"
Albert took the sheet, unbuttoning his jacket. There were several crossed-out blocks of hopeless sentences, and then this:
I know as usual that my thoughts and actions mean nothing to you. But I have to tell you that
I have been thinking of seeing someone. I know I said all that was over for me, when I think of
how you failed to show me the smallest amount of respect
There was a final, solid little paragraph that had been roundly doodled out of legibility with neat strips of curlicues.
"That's great! That's quite a start. That's the first thing you've written that I can actually read."
Claire smiled. "Do you think it's alright? You understand what I'm trying to say?"
"Sure. But you know what you should do?" Claire leaned forward to watch over his shoulder as he inserted a period after "for me" and added "But" to the new sentence following. "There. You see?"�
Claire read the text again. "That's good! Thank you, Albert. You're a true friend. You know� "
"Yeah yeah yeah. Let's celebrate! I'll get some ice cream."
"Really?" She smiled meekly at his shoulder. "How about - "
"Anything, anything," he said. He said it again and again, and found that he always agreed with the sentiment.
T u n n e l� o f� B a b e l
Pierre's uncle called him up with more instructions. "When can you," he began, drawing the question out like a fine steel wire, "when can you have the 500 syllables ready for me to see?"
Pierre searched for something to say, looking into an ungenerous future. "Well, how about Thursday?"
"Thursday. Good! I'll come by at noon, then." Here his voice warmed up, and Pierre could imagine his boiled smile coming into action. "And Pierre? You're not going to screw me over, eh?"
"No."
"You're not going to give me the liquid sewage treatment? Throw gasoline in my face and light a match? Trash my house and burn my crops? Pour molten lead into my� "
"No, for goodness' sake!"
"Because last time - " and his uncle, without making tooo much of it, sketched the enormity of Pierre's wickedness last time: failing to meet his uncle as agreed.
The purpose of their meeting was to go over the work Pierre had been doing on their new artificial language. It had occurred to Pierre, some months ago, that such a language could be based on the simplest combinations of Latin letters. The word "and", for example, could be "i", as in Russian. From Russian he also borrowed some single-letter prepositions: "v" for "in", "k" for "towards", and so on. Having used up all the letters for the most obvious, simple words, he then constructed a syllabary of two-letter words, using all possible combinations of one of the five vowels and one of the 21 consonants. Some of these he used as syntactical particles, much as Greek letters are used in symbolic logic, or punctuation marks in a computer language. Before tackling the three-letter words, which were, for the time being, limited to consonant-vowel-consonant combinations (and he already had more words than he could invent meanings for), he began to consider the possibility of adapting an existing computer language to use this new vocabulary of his instead of the notation currently in use. There was no reason to prevent a two-letter word having assigned to it an extremely specific mathematical significance:� his word "ta", for example, could mean "such that". Let "x" and "y" equal their old algebraic selves, in short.
In addition to the fantastic concinnity of his artificial language, and its undeniable future abundance, as he explained to his uncle, a person who spoke it naturally would have no trouble ‑
Pierre's uncle called him up with more instructions. "Now, what we really should be doing, if you have the time� do you have the time? We could meet a little earlier, if you have the time. Can you have that stuff ready say around 10:30?"
"Well, I guess."
"But you're not going to foul things up again, are you? You don't plan on disappearing with a hooker before then? No Lysol for breakfast, eh? You can tell me."
W o r k
The building formed a delta in the thoroughfare, but Albert noticed that pedestrians kept avoiding the little triangle of pavement as well as the narrow street diverted by the building. It didn't look as if it led anywhere interesting.
The wedge‑shaped building housed J. O'Flaherty, Bookseller, who turned out to be a gaunt, careless maniac with chewed fingers and a prying look, as if everyone's secret were within his grasp. He interrupted his examination of Albert's curriculum vitae to indulge in a long telephone conversation:"Of course, I've already got that here, I want you to use the other one. I wouldn't ask if I could get the information here, would I? Stop wasting time."
Albert found the job at first exhilarating, but it soon became a dream of frustration as he sorted through book after book. Here was Angol‑magyar sz�tar, here Mart� n Fierro, here 20,000 Things to Do, Kleine Schriften, I, the Jury, Woods and Water, Win at Bridge, A Companion to, Elementary, History of, Proceedings, The, La, Ein, From, Le Le La La. And his contribution? Making sense of it all to produce, for example: Booklists: Offering no. 463. W. Smuts Collection.
"Here, Albert." J. O'Flaherty pointed to a plastic barrel. "Anything we don't want goes in the discard pile. Know what I call 'em? Desert island books!" And he burst into a type of laughter that was exactly like an attempt to illustrate the word "cacchinatory."
In one of the lighted passages Albert found a desk. Here he set up his "Esquimau" typewriter. This was a curious piece of equipment, a streamlined portable typewriter shiny with age. All the metal parts were either discoloured or polished by long use. Xxx. The quick browm fpx.
The stacks of books weighed down on him. The only sane thing to do seemed to be to write one of his own. One afternoon he shared this idea with J. O'Flaherty, who said: "What? You're writing a book? Among all these useless books, you want to add one more? You're willing to spend years of your life playing away at that one, when all around you there are thousands far better than yours could ever be, right here, readily available? Are you some kind of nut?"
A progress meeting: "Of course I've got that ‑ not here ‑ in my other place." He allowed the breath‑taking fatuity of keeping the book here, in the bookstore, to sink in. The he lit a match and slowly put it to his pipe, watching Albert carefully. "I've got that," he insisted, "and lots of other stuff in my other place. I'm thinking of moving it. But I need more room. This place is big. Anyone who isn't a loonie will tell you this is the biggest bookstore in town. But I've got to have more space. I'm at capacity right now." He dropped the match into the ashtray and turned his entire attention to Albert, bringing to bear his complete mastery of the world's ways since very nearly the beginnings of time. "Now to our darker purpose. You're three lists behind. Let me explain why I can't have this." He began sucking coffee from his special mug. "I need the lists to be current, because ..."
Albert was watching the fading window from his bed. He closed his eyes and let the faint sound of traffic and Claire's after‑hours kitchen clean‑up take over the evening. At last he concluded: "To live and think the way I do is to do something unusual and methodical, such as chewing tobacco or embarking on a trip up some leafy South American river. And with what results? What results? What?"
E x p e d i t i o n
The first few weeks of our trip were placid and reassuringly dull. There are lots of curious things to see in the jungle, but we seem to have missed out on so many of them - probably too busy in the tent, or getting supplies and puzzling over their poor quality.
I ought to have tried to contact my brother when we reached his part of the jungle. I'm sure he would have been very happy to see that I am now part of a successful expedition, he who encouraged me so often in the past to find an expedition and stay with it.
"You know the problem with you, he said, "you just don't have any gumption. And without a bit of initiative, stick-to-itness, and those other things I know you despise, where are you?"
And I could find nothing better to say than: "Gumption?� I have a high regard for gumption and those other things."
In a sense this is perfectly true. Sometimes a man does indeed respect most the qualities he lacks, and my case was no different. I used to be constantly amazed at the antics of my brother, who scarcely let a week pass in our youth without undertaking a new and alarming project. I tried to imagine how he felt, faced with the gaping unknowns of his latest campaigns, treading as it were in a patch of swamp that could conceal any horror of nature. How could one bear to lose sight of one's feet, if only for a moment? How could one grab a branch without some assurance that it would hold? It sometimes seemed to me that my brother was unnaturally lucky, and that his mere survival, to say nothing of his prosperity, was a mind-boggling improbability, not a feat one could hope to duplicate in this life.
And so my brother preceded me in this exploration of the jungle. I followed when I felt the way had not only been cleared but positively worn to a patina, permitting my easy arrival and secure welcome. It was my intention to enjoy the success of my brother by staying with him a few days, and at the same time attempt to convince him that I had in fact made a certain step towards independence by finding him, small as that may seem. I looked forward to seeing him after a separation of twelve years, and wondered how we would find each other. Would he have given up on me, and therefore respond by encouraging the hint of promise I now seemed to show? Would he have risen to ever greater challenges, unreported to me? Would I find him unchanged? Or - but finding him unchanged was the thing that gave my trip its purpose: Here I am. Will you take me seriously now? This is a surprisingly important point. It does presuppose, however, that he is still alive, which is highly unlikely.
I n� M u c h� t h e� S a m e �V e i n
I was invited to lunch with some friends one day, to rejoice in their balcony and plastic chairs. And we were sitting there on a sunny, windy afternoon, enjoying the view, when Pat said to his ex‑wife:
"You know, lovey ‑ Pierre, here, is a Martian." I was just overcoming the nausea caused by a man calling a woman "lovey", when Helen turned to me with an air of renewed consideration.
"Really?" she said, as if she would have liked to know what I thought about the movies, since, as a Martian, I was bound to be objective. For the rest of the afternoon I was hunted about by her curious glances. I didn't know either of them very well, and began to wonder why they had invited me.
A few days later Eric, my supervisor, was talking to me. "These are jokes," he said, "You shouldn't mind that. People here enjoy joking around, it seems. However, there are some serious matters to attend to." He began to do an impression of someone confronted by serious matters, and at that moment the telephone rang. The voice at the other end asked for Eric, but he was obviously unable to come to the apparatus. I conveyed as much to the caller, whom I pictured as a harried‑looking doctor dipping his greasy fingers into a bag of potato chips as he spoke. Bad news can always wait, I thought.
As soon as I had hung up, the telephone rang again. It was Pat. "Why don't you come over here?" he asked. "Are you busy?"
Eric was sucking his cheeks in and breathing steadily, gazing at three sheets of paper. "Yes," I said, "I am busy."
"Well. I'm bored. Come over."
I was, in fact, very busy, as one can only be at one's job. I explained this.
However, we live in one another's shadow, and so it was inevitable that Pat should call me at home that evening. As his initial conversation offerings dried up, I managed to formulate a question.
"Ah," I said, "And how is your charming ex‑wife?"
"Oh ‑ fine. How do you mean?""I mean, is she quite well?"
"To be honest," Pat said hurriedly, "she hasn't exactly been herself. Not really herself. Kind of nuts, actually, almost completely. Yes. That's right. She hasn't had two lucid moments in as many weeks. She's been writing letters to the Pope again."
"Oh? Is that ‑"
"And to the only man that ever meant anything to her, her ex. One of them. The one that was before the one before me."
"I'm sorry, Pat. I don't know what to tell you."
"No, well. It's not a straightforward matter at all. You're probably busy right now, so ‑ "
"No, not at all, I've ‑ "
"Why don't you meet me for a drink?"
"Okay."
And why not? Is there anything more agreeable for the man of no obligations than to go somewhere and have a drink with someone, even someone you barely know? Put it into perspective: when you have completed the day's working and thinking, when any more working would be unnatural, and any more thinking would just be a deleterious waste of time, what better occupation than drinking, and with whom if not strangers?
S o m e t i m e s� S o m e b o d y� S a w� N o t h i n g
He was a born again Christian; she was a part-time zombie. When they went on holiday together, it was several weeks of laconic distress in hotel rooms not designed for the purpose. He stood in front of the awkward mirror, amid awkward furnishings, combing his cheese-coloured hair; she lay back on the bed in a sleeveless top and tight black pants, smoking American cigarettes, her eyes dried out and weary. "Have something to eat?"� "Not right now."
No hotel room was big enough for the pair of them, but there was no place else in the world for them either. The bathroom, her turf, wisely avoided by him as much as possible. There was a men's room off the bar downstairs, anyway. "Let's ..."� "No. You can if you want."
You might be tempted to ask, Is something wrong? They looked around the room, or at least one of them did, seeking a solution. But there would only be a solution to the problem if there were no problem or, to be more direct, there would only be problems for them to solve if there were no problem. There are clues to a mystery if and only if there is a mystery, and how do you know that there is one?�
The television worked admirably. A debt of gratitude is owed to the shiny box. How can we ever repay you?
And so they stayed in the hotel rooms in towns where even the wind gets tired, unsure whether to stop or go on, and one holiday could follow another, unless something irreparable happened, and then only if everyone saw that it was, in fact, irreparable. That seemed to have happened sometimes. But the daily form was: Wake up. Avoid each other. Look for each other. Fight each other. Forgive each other. Annoy each other. Pardon me, one of them says, but is this an enigma? What would it be like to know something unknown? Would it be like doing something we haven't done, or undoing something we have done? Or is there any going back?
At eight o'clock: cease-fire. Put on your sunglasses and go out. Because you do have to go out, and there are far worse creatures out there than in here.
T h e� W a y� o f� a� S m a l l� M a n
Lou was an incredibly small man. Small in every way, but also literally small. Nobody in his right mind would go up and measure him, unless he wanted a painful kick in the wrist, but it would be safe to say that Lou was no more than six inches tall. How he got this way nobody knew: it's not one of the things people readily talk about. Possibly he was caught in a downpour of humming light from outer space, or perhaps he was the victim of a conspiracy, or maybe he was a symbol for mankind dwarfed by technology, some horseshit like that.
He was also small in the sense of being petty and argumentative, and this can be rather trying. But on the other hand, he could no doubt justifiably claim that people treated him differently because of his size.
One evening a waiter caught him napping at his table. "Out!" he said.
"Eh? Wha?" Lou sat up, alert, checking his watch. An hour to last call.
"Out. You were asleep." The waiter made a shooing motion. "You've had quite a bit to drink. You can finish that, but you have to leave."
"But I ain't drunk. I had me eyes closed, sure, but why shouldn't I? You tell me that, why shouldn't I?"
"You were asleep. I had to shout at you, and you still never budged."
"Why should I budge? Why shouldn't I keep me eyes closed and sit still when there's some guy shouting at me? When I have me eyes closed I'm thinking - "
"Look, all I'm saying - "
"I was deep in thought. I'm a deep thinker. Ask any of my friends." He gestured to Mike, who was sitting next to him.
The waiter considered this carefully. If the tiny man had friends, they might not insist on his being a great intellectual, but they would certainly back him up because of his size. No one can stand to see a six-inch man get pushed around. With inspiration he said: "Well, look - oh. Wait, I'll be back in a minute."
Mike watched the waiter rush off to check another table, and judged that the danger had passed. He said to Lou: "You know - I guess this kind of thing happens to you a lot."
"Damn right. The bastards."
Mike took a deep breath and said: "Did you ever think of - I don't know - did you ever think of, sort of� getting big?"
Lou sighed and titled his beer up, almost perpendicular to his face, his eyes rolling back in his head, perhaps in reflection, perhaps not. "Well," he said, "that's an idea, of course. I've thought of that, of course. It could help."
"You know - "
"Yeah. Something in it." Lou was quite fond of Mike, so he said nothing more, but he thought: "For Mike the word Impossible don't exist. He's young. He's the kind of guy thinks anything can happen. But I've been six inches tall my whole life. So I guess I know how things really stand." And it can't be denied, he was able to get two more beers before last call.
F i v e� B a g a t e l l e s
1.�������� A seagull landed in front of a shop which stood at an odd angle to a busy intersection. The lot was triangular, since a narrow street branched off of the main road here to give access to a complex of other narrow streets where no one had any business. The seagull studied the littered pavement, strolled over to the doorstep, thought better of it, and made his way back to his original landing place. Disappointed that nothing had happened, or that a certain party hadn't turned up, he broke into a little run and flew up into the air, almost without intending it.
2.�������� That reminds me of a man I saw getting out of a dented green car in front of the same shop. He was fat, and his face grinned with exertion at the sun as he prised himself out of the driver's seat. He straightened up, slammed the door, and shambled over to the entrance of the shop. He rang the buzzer. Then he hammered on the door, grinning even more forcefully as he did so. On completion of this work, he came out of the entranceway and trudged around the corner, passing out of sight. His activities on the far side of the building were hidden from me. I expected him at any moment to appear at one of the upstairs windows, laughing like a demon and setting fire to the interior. But suddenly his enormous face could be seen scowling over the backyard fence; there was nothing to do but retrace his steps. Back at the car he took a final look at the shopfront, squeezed into his car, and drove away.
3.�������� This shop resembled a wedge with a portion of the thin end removed, to reveal a dirty and dull entrance flanked by windows full of dust and empty display cases. In the upstairs windows one could just make out endless, topless ranges of books. In the evenings the raw light of a floor lamp sometimes threw the massed books into relief, irregular clifftops brooding on their own importance.
4.�������� Amazing how anything interesting is also likely to be somewhat repulsive, in some way. It is difficult to say which comes first, repulsion or attraction, or very possibly ... but of course this is a waste of time.
5.�������� Let the madness continue!
G e t t i n g� T h i n g s� D o n e
Who can talk now about anything? Who can make sense of anything, and thereby nurture an opinion? Who can use a metaphor without having to watch his back? It boils down to this: Who can trust anyone?
Pat had to claim familiarity with a computer language called Skeezix in order to win a contract. He was confident he could oversee the project, which appeared to be a bizarre word-processing software, but a considerable amount of work would have to be done by someone who could write programmes in Skeezix quickly and reliably. He therefore hired a young man whom he knew to have recently completed a programming course. They went to a bar near the office to hammer out their deal. Pat bought two whiskeys and two beers for them, but discovered that his new employee, Mike, could only drink beer, so he had to pretend that he had bought the whiskeys for himself. Hurriedly drinking the second whiskey, he found his mind wandering: with a start he realized he had been unintentionally staring at some women at the next table, who were therefore giving him dirty looks. He covered his embarrassment by digging in to the remaining beer, which he did not really care for at this hour.
Over the next few days Pat exposed the work that had to be done, and tried to show Mike how the disparate parts would all fit together. This required some explanation of the history of the whole problem confronting them: How to get from A to B and back again in one piece?
"So you see� it's like clauses and things in a natural language. But you already know that ... right?" It struck him that Mike looked fairly confident that there was no reason at all to know anything of the kind. "You - you know what I mean by a Clause - right? And these other things," he babbled, waving his arm at the marker board covered with his scribblings,"uh, you know, adjectives, conjunctions, I mean real ones. In English. Eh?"
The week following Pat tried to monitor the coding produced by Mike, but with no results. Without a better knowledge of Skeezix he wouldn't know if there were a problem until they put it to work.
He took to coming into the office and casually saying to Mike, "I saw a copy of Ulysses at that crummy bookstore, three bucks," watching to see if Mike had heard of the book. Or he would ask, "What's that bit in the New Testament, those sermons on some kinda hill or something? "Or: "You know, I don't think I know a single poem, right through." Or: "I wish I knew what these flowers are called." Or: "What the Heck do they make bread out of, anyway?" And Mike could be relied on to answer: "What? What's that?" Or worse still, "Yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh", when he in fact knew nothing whatever about it. This caused difficulties eventually.
In a fast food restaurant a few weeks later Pat heard someone in the next booth saying: "He's this guy, he's a two fisted drinker in a three-piece suit. Honest to God, when he was talking to me - we were at that new place, Slippery When Wet - and he's going, You do this and that, I'll give you whatever money, and he's sucking back these whiskeys, staring at women, and then chugging a beer. Back and forth. So no wonder the project was buried. But at least I got paid,� though."
S i x t e e n� P r o j e c t s
1.�������� I met a character outside the library, and he asked me if I would like a job helping him make "The Stupidity", his current film. I had told him I knew quite a lot about synthetic fibres, and he said: "So you know quite a lot about synthetic fibres, eh?" Of course it's nice when people come up out of the blue and offer one a job, a spacious apartment, an evening of debauchery.
2.�������� The director is stumped for reasonable dialogue to give the actors. Picture it for a minute. She has to tell him that he doesn't love her anymore (pay attention). How does she actually say it, in a natural and above all picturesque way? The director suggests: "Um, how about this, she goes, she goes� 'It's just like George Bernard Shaw says...', er...?" I walk away from the film aging quickly.
3.�������� What name for the film? What name? I suggest: Internal Affairs, Tasty Nothings, Two People Walking Toward Each Other and Unable to Decide, as They Approach, Which Way to Pass Each Other. [Unfortunately this event has no name, for if it did, that would be the best name for our film.]
4.�������� "People are in love with illusion", I say, "particularly when they watch films."� "Even their love of illusion is itself an illusion", the director replies, in the manner of one who is making an objection. And I say, "If they were at the mercy of the truth, they would love it." This is as much as we can say about any of that: lunch is over.
5.�������� No one likes the titles I propose, so I start coming up with ones I don't care for myself: Hell Valley Monkey Park, Kann nicht! Muss!, To the People of the Earth, A Wreath for Wrangel, From Which We Emerged, Kringmerk, A Suppleness of Tenderments.
6.�������� Man's inhumanity to whom?! Oh.
7.�������� I start getting ideas for scenes which do not actually appear in the film!
8.�������� A curious argument ensues: I tell the director that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh He rested, and Genesis is quite insistent on this point. And why is it so important that He have the day off?� Was He tired? Is it likely that Someone like Him would need a rest? Someone who in addition to everything else might be called indefatigable?
9.�������� "So what did he do," asks the director, "on his day off?"
10.������� "He did nothing," I explain, "and it took Him the whole day to get it done to His satisfaction. And it is only for this reason that nothing exists in the universe� or doesn't, really, if you follow."
11.������� "Nothing," says the director, checking his binder. He is on the verge of paying close attention to what I am saying.
12.������� "Of course it says nothing about what He did on the seventh day, so one can assume that he also created ambiguity, silence, doubt, ignorance, and a lot of other things for which we have no names. All that's implied."
13.������� "Anything else?"
14.������� "He also created the argumentum ex silentio, the petitio principii, the reductio ad absurdum, the lectio difficilior..."
15.������� "So he had his hands full, then. Right. Well, I need those pages by the end of the week. So...if you can't get it done, tell me now."
16.������� (In civil society a gentleman does not call attention to any "task" which remains undone, just as he would avoid mentioning debts or past indiscretions.� To enlarge on the theme, if I may: GET LOST.)
S i t� A n y w h e r e
Whose ... where were we? What's this about? Anything? No. Pierre had come home from work and was down on all fours, making his way towards the bedroom. If only I can get to the bed, he thought, I should be all right. In the flatness of my bed I need worry no longer. Close the door, cast myself back into sleep. I might even take off my shoes later, if I think about it. It's not important.
"Ah, there you are," Pierre's uncle swam out of the hall. "I've been going over this stuff, it's okay. A lot of fixing to do yet." He brandished the sheaf of papers meaningfully and tossed it onto the bulk of work already completed, which took up much of the space between the dresser and the far wall, the massive project which had started out as a lively moth in Pierre's imagination. Parts of it were already covered with dust.
"Am I ever tired. Whew."
Pierre's uncle raised his eyebrows and said, naturally: "Let's go out for a bite of supper."
The restaurant looked deserted. The section near the cash was completely empty, and the raised part behind the make‑believe garden wall boasted only a few heads. A waitress carrying a tray came up. "Sit anywhere," she said, indicating the red walls, the blurry landscapes, the big paper lanterns, even the kitchen and lavatory doors at the very back. For Pierre's uncle there was only one place to sit: as far away as possible from the entrance, in deepest carpeted obscurity.
Over their perfunctory meal Pierre studied the fretwork which separated diners from each other, and then contemplated a nearby air‑conditioning apparatus the size of a small power station. On its front, a raised industrial emblem, more reminiscent of a regimental device than a trade mark. "So I thought, why not change that around? Why not? It's not that time‑consuming. Hey. You're not eating your soup."
Later, in the imitation British pub a few blocks further down the well‑lit shopping boulevard: another round. Then back in the homemade gents to study the fantastically ugly wall above the urinals. Then another round, and "If you can get that, I'll owe you," Pierre's uncle said several times over the course of the evening.
And on a second or third visit to the war‑torn gents, Pierre thought: Why don't they fix that stall, instead of boarding it up? And the rest of this insulted room ‑ it's a lot of work, but all you would need is a bit of discipline to turn this, too, into a middling work of art.
A b s t r a c t i o n� i s� S t r i c t l y� F o r b i d d e n
The Huns arrived at the capital a whole week ago. So far it has been pretty good, no looting, etc. Mike spent most of his free time talking to people and wondering what was going on. People said:
"Just a phenomenon, like a childhood disease."
"We can live with them."
"A whole week, and nothing much has happened. I'd say it looks pretty good."
"It's just a phase," said one of Mike's acquaintances, an extremely clean individual connected to the production of films that no one ever saw. "We'll get over it," he said, and like everyone else he hoisted his briefcase and went off, smiling smiling.
People said quietly: "You have to give them credit: they're organized."
"They seem to be just like other people."
An opinion maker said: "Not nearly as ..."
People said: "Of course, if the Americans ‑ "
"Shhh!"
In Virgil's smoky sitting room the conversation turned, incredibly enough, to current events. "I think we'll have to wait and see," said Virgil, "after all, we have to do what we can do."
Titus coughed and said, as if whispering into each person's left ear: "I heard that their Chief Executive is something of an enthusiast."
"For what?"
"For novels."
A second or two of queasy silence followed. (Novels?!)
"From what I hear," said Titus, "he doesn't write them, of course, but he has models of them made to his specifications. Then he ‑ "
"What does he know about novel writing?" asked Virgil.
"Well, it's said that in his youth he was a failed novelist, disappointed. And now he sort of has big plans, he has these models made up on ping pong tables. He's fascinated by them, pores over them all night, tinkering with details, neglecting all other business. That's why ‑ "
Someone asked wearily: "What kind of novels are we looking at?"
"But!" said Virgil, finding with utmost difficulty the words to phrase the too obvious question, "But ‑ what ‑ what for?! Novels?!! What, what ‑ "
Titus looked around the room, their tired, smoky room with its wrinkled leather couch and odd kitchen chairs, and finally decided to try to calm everyone down.
"There's really no need to get upset. My way of looking at it is this: he might be unaware of it, but perhaps his whole destiny, after seizing control, is really only to provide people with a little entertainment. And that's what people want, it's what we all want, isn't it? And is that such a bad thing?"
After an interval Virgil said: "Well, of course. Of course you could be right. I'm probably overtired, and anyway, we'll have to wait and see." He collapsed on the couch and pulled a magazine over his face. "For that matter," he murmured from under his magazine, "nothing is written in stone, except the name of the deceased. Sometimes not even that." And he fell asleep face to face with a portrait of the most recent celebrated beautiful woman, a blonde with big teeth.
F a i t� A c c o m p l i
Pierre ran into Pat one Saturday afternoon.
"Well," said Pat, "what brings you here?"
"Oh ‑ just out. On Saturdays I never have much to do, so, you know, if it's good weather I come down here for a coffee."
"I see! So that's where the dog is buried."
"Would you care to go for a coffee?"
"Yeah. Where would we go?"
"How about here?" Pierre indicated the Caf 10.0pt'>� Tarea, which appeared to be relatively empty. As they went in, he noted that Pat was accompanied by a little girl of six or so, who resembled him to a startling degree. Pat grinned suddenly and turned to explain:
"I have a daughter! This is her."
"Yes. I wondered."
They sat down at a table, and Pierre asked the girl what her name was. She smiled and said something slowly, and Pat repeated it with more authority: "Teresa. And Teresa, this is Pierre."
"I have a friend called Teresa. She's a bit bigger than you, though. Goes about in a leather jacket trying to look tough. Do you like crossword puzzles, Teresa?"
"Yaah?"
"Well, that's good. You will come to no harm." Pat returned with their drinks and said, "I have her on Saturdays. We usually do something, last weekend we saw a movie. That was fun, wasn't it, eh, Teres'?"
"Yaah?"
"Where on earth did you get her?" asked Pierre.
"Oh, my ex‑wife. I mean, we had her, and then she kept her when we split up."
"That's odd."
"Well,‑" Pat looked at Teresa, who was busy taking coloured pens out of a tiny plastic purse decorated with cartoon characters ‑ "the odd thing is, it's actually quite common. And the odd thing is, I can't figure out for the life of me how either of these deals, you know, these two events, happened. You know ‑ getting her in the first instance, and then losing her."
"No explanations, eh?"
"No. This just occurred to me a while back. I decided, some things there's no point in questioning. Just go on from there. And we have fun, anyway, even though her mother keeps ‑"
"Um," said Pierre, glancing at the little girl.
"Oh, don't worry about that. She knows everything, anyway. She's smart." And Teresa smiled to herself and inexorably coloured in the roof of an extremely small bungalow, much too small for the stick figures who stood on either side of it.
O b s t i n a c y
My friend dwells too much on garbage. I see her musing over excess bags and abandoned things, not, indeed, getting her hands dirty, but looking at the decorated, windblown thingery with a fond eye and noting the details. A doorless fridge speaks to her, and so do all things broken and dusty. We could be walking up the street and she will say, Look at that, stopping in wonderment before a cardboard box full of discarded magazines, as if incredulous that people will throw away useless things. We pass a sofa on the pavement, she pictures it in her room, I long to see it consumed in flames or somehow disposed of.
A little while later I am making us some coffee. I have two coffee machines, one seems to work and the other probably does not. In actuality I prefer not to use either of them, since pouring boiling water over coffee is not difficult enough to warrant the use of machinery.
"Find a seat," I say, "just move those boxes."
She looks around the room with satisfaction. "You have a lot of things in here, lots of boxes."
"Yes, there's lots. There used to be more. When I first moved in, there was no place to sit down because of all the stuff. I could hardly get into the room, and had to sleep underneath all kinds of things. For the first week I had no idea where the cat was."
"And now you've thinned things out a bit."
"Yes, and now hardly a day goes by that I don't throw something out. It's a lifelong process. Sometimes I throw things away before I've even had a chance to look at them. Things turn up in the mail and I toss them in the barrel without the slightest regret. I've been known to buy a thing and throw it away the same day. And it's the same with everything. Sometimes I'm talking to someone, and it occurs to me that I will soon have no use for them. And if you look at it properly, there's nothing necessary about anything. Here's your coffee."
"Thanks ... do you have any milk?"
"No, I threw it away."
"Oh." She looks at her coffee and appears to be massaging the roof of her mouth with her tongue. Then she brightens and says: "Hey, wait! I knew this would come in handy," and produces two plastic tublets of cream from an inner pocket.
D j i b o u t i
Pierre often stayed awake at night considering the ramifications of words. His work at the travel bureau was never very taxing. Evenings out tended to be predictable, particularly toward the end of winter. Answering the telephone itself could easily lead to danger, so he spent the hours from six to nine in various caf�s, drinking coffee and jotting down words that interested him. When he was certain that it was too late for anyone to call, he would go home and look the words up in dictionaries, etymologize them, or simply bask in their significance. This was, for Pierre, the best part of the day. He threw himself into it, heart, soul and fingers. "Cabotage", for example, the navigation of a coastline by sailing from one cape to the next. "T � ratologie." "Cicisbeo." "Kerseymere."� They do furnish a life.
Not all of them were exotic, however. Far from it. A word such as "gauge", for example, more than repays any time spent on studying it, sounding it, trying it out. A workhorse of a word can be unfathomable at times, like an old friend who, when you think of it, has had a whole life which is not your own, and which is therefore quite unknowable, yet a careful examination of such a life would be the closest one can get to knowing anything worth knowing. This is why one constantly turns to an intimate for a fresh crack at the unknowable, even if very little has resulted from it in the past.
In lieu of an actual person to talk to, Pierre turned to his words. These, having the property of embodying anything that could be said, compensated for their fleshless nature by becoming almost limitless in his imagination. When dealing with words, one finds that nothing is irrevocable or irreversible. There is a reason why a word means something, but nobody could have predicted that, or dictated it, and a word never has to mean anything. It has been suggested before, but what is to stop a word's being used to mean something special that the user himself defines? For Pierre the word "Djibouti" had come to mean "You might be right, but I'm afraid I don't want to talk about that anymore, sorry." He often used it in this sense on the telephone:"I just want to know what you meant by that."
"Oh, nothing, really."
"No, you said you were busy. Waiting for that little bitch to call?"
"Djibouti."
And so in life Pierre managed to escape things, and things managed to escape him. It is impossible to say more. Or maybe someone could say: Things are the way they seem; they are just not the way they are. Or maybe that's not even a very good wrong answer.
The symbolists had every right to submerge a vision of life in symbols!
T a u t o o u s i a
Phil said, pointing to a cellar caf � , "I've never been in there. Let's go in."
"Neither have I," said Pierre, leading the way down the clumsy ten steps or so, "I've never been here at all. Funny, I must have walked past it many times." Inside they found a well-lit, polished bohemia with long tables and stools ready to topple over at a moment's notice. When they had bought their coffees and secured window seats, Pierre said:
"Actually, I've a confession to make. I've been here before. Last week."
"No kidding? You lying son of a bitch. Hey, that looks like Mike out there� it is! If he comes in, I'm going to get that money out of him one way or another. Hold him under the espresso maker and fire steam into his ear until ..."
"Never mind that. The important thing is, can one act as though one has never been here before, even if one has been here just last week? Supposing we had agreed, you and I, that today we're only going to do things we've never done before. Can I not erase my initial visit? Can I act as if I am here, now, for the first time?"
"Can you act like a sensible human being at any time?!"
"It can be argued - "
"Anything can be argued. People do it all the time. Is not is too is not."
"Look, a lot depends on this. If I can erase something that happened, then I can have a new life. This is extraordinarily important, and people would like to know: is a completely fresh start possible? Or am I stuck with what has been? This is a good opportunity to experiment, because it's such a minor event, my having been here before or not. You see?"
Phil swigged his coffee defensively. "I suppose it would depend on what you did here last time. If you ran out without paying, or beat up the other customers, or hit on the staff - then I don't see how you could erase thaat. They'd say, That guy, oh, he was here, all right."
"That's an extreme case. As a matter of fact, I did none of those things."
"H'm. No. Didn't have any fun, so you lie about being here at all. Makes sense."
Pierre shook his head and looked out the window. It was an unusually warm day, a sort of holiday from winter, and most people were dressed for spring. Of course a few people had gone too far and were wearing shorts, while others were contentedly trotting along in parkas with the hood up. Pierre said: "You know, Phil, I'm enjoying this new experience. I'm learning to let go. If only you could share my feeling of liberation."
"Mike is someone who would be well-advised to liberate himself. Start over in a new place, with a new identity, as if he hadn't borrowed ‑"
"Fffffpt!!!"
"What?"
Pierre held out the cup he had just tried to drink from: instead of coffee it was full of tiny pebbles of different kinds.
"Did you order that? Pebbles? Some new European thing?"
"Of course not! I bought a coffee, just like you."
"Well, let that be a lesson to you: Don't mess with that stuff. And now just enjoy your pebbles."
A� F a m i l i a r� C h o r e
From the pavement you would think the place was full of happy revellers, so insistent were the boiling rhythms and chatter. So much entertainment appeared to be generated inside that it gusted out through the low windows from time to time, making no lasting impression, however, on the rest of the night.
One had to admit it was crowded. Students, amateur musicians, puzzled drinkers. Women with short haircuts laughed toothily. Ex‑athletes guffawed and tugged at their must‑read t‑shirts. Pierre sat among them, taking notes a little sadly, since the ultimate source of merriment was hard to discover.
Phil came in wearing a leather jacket and a curious rust‑coloured shirt. He was hailed by a complete stranger. No, one of his good friends, Pierre, as it quickly emerged. Phil signalled his intention of joining him and swam upstream to the bar.
After several minutes of waving his upper torso about he wrested a commitment from one of the staff to sell him a beer. The exchange itself took less than five seconds. He easily found a path to Pierre's table, and there he sat down and gave a hollow groan.
"You know," he said, "I've been to a whole bunch of places tonight. Everywhere it's the same. People stop you from saying anything. Babble babble babble, they say. Let's go to this other place. Meet me later. Sorry I didn't meet you. I'm bored, they say, like they've come up with something clever. You don't get a chance to say anything." He swallowed a third of his beer hungrily and looked around, squeaking in his leather jacket. Pierre noticed that the rust colour of his shirt was uneven, becoming almost black near the belt. Just inside the jacket he could discern a gash in the shirt, where the blood was bright red.
"Phil. You're bleeding. Phil. You've got a serious injury."
"Huh? Yeah, yeah. Look at those guys. The guy with the purple fringe? He's the drummer for That's Enough."
"What happened to you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Staggering out of some place, somebody ...some, uh ..." He took another swig of his beer and turned around in his seat to gaze at the other side of the room. "Man. I'm in so much pain. Wow. So nice to feel something for a change. I never thought anything could hurt so much. You know, it's almost a relief after all this. A real terrible wound, it takes me back."
"Phil. Stay put. I'll be back in a second."
"Yeah ‑ ooh ‑ I'm just enjoying it. Wow." He sat awkwardly in his chair and looked down to see that his hip and thigh were also getting quietly soaked with blood. "Wow."
Near the washrooms Pierre found a pay phone. As he waited for an answer he tried to imagine what could have happened to Phil. But in a bar like this no one can begin to understand the true nature of a wound, or the hiding place of joy, or anything.
I n ‑ F l i g h t� I n s t r u c t i o n s
A complete lack of faith is necessary for anyone who wants to float. How else to explain the ease with which a person can step into the air as confidently as he mounts a flight of steps, particularly a broad one in front of a museum housing one's favourite works of art?
Things had been getting out of hand, so when Pierre walked out of his second floor window he was acting in the grip of a middleweight despair: what to do about people and things? Is there anything to be done, any instructions? How to approach the problem of turning up at work day after day, when there ought to be so many other things to do? How to go on listening to his dear uncle's voice, evening after evening, or even the sound of his breathing? His laboured exhalation, to be exact, appropriate to someone bench‑pressing prodigious weights, when he was in fact sitting with his feet up, doing nothing at all. (But there was no question that the man had every right to breathe). What to do about this Laura, who .... But there was no point in objecting. That would be cruel and petty, and everything she did was like an absent‑minded caress. But...
In almost every delight there seems to be something bogus, but people nevertheless find delight somewhere. And who will grudge them this, their wild, spontaneous holidays?
And so Pierre floated rather suddenly into the back of a pickup truck parked beneath his window. He lay there on a plastic sheet and watched the snow fall out of the sky. His ankle hurt. There was the usual lumber to be found in the back of every pickup truck, making it difficult to get any sleep. Climbing out of the truck would have been too much to bear, as it would mean starting over. After a time somebody staggered out of one of the buildings in the courtyard and heaved himself into the cab of the truck. The engine sprang into action. Where to?
For a man of faith, on the other hand, every moment is an experiment. Being born is the first one, and it usually seems to be a mistake. Never mind. That's a sort of freebie. Besides.
They were on their way.
Q u i c k� G u i d e� t o� R e a n i m a t i n g� t h e� D e a d
I used to see Phil often at the photocopier in the library, so it was hardly surprising for me to think I had caught a glimpse of him there. I almost looked away, but there he was. No mistake. It was Phil. It really was.
"Phil? I thought ‑ everyone thought you were dead."
Phil laughed sheepishly. "Oh. Yeah. Officially, I guess. But I've been so busy."
I watched him make a few copies and then said: "So how have you been, anyway?"
"Busy busy busy. I mean who has time for this stuff?" Leaning forward confidentially, Phil launched into a heated defence of his traditional practice, and a vigorous scouting of the ineffectual remedies to non‑problems which his opponents had lately put forward. His exposition of the matter was fairly passionate for a dead man, I thought. As he spoke I became aware of a third person standing near us, as if waiting to use the photocopier. It was Charlene, looking in disbelief at Phil.
"Oh Phil, you're back!" She looked to me for confirmation.
I said: "Yes, he is - just for a while. He's got loose ends too tie up."
"Committee stuff. I'm going to be busy for a while yet."
"So how long are you here for?"
"It's hard to say. Another month or so."
"I was going to say, if you're going to be around, there's a barbecue two weeks from now, not next Saturday but the next one."
Phil monitored the action of the photocopier closely and said, "Well ... I'm awfully busy."
"Oh, please."
"Yes, Phil," I said, "You know. Otherwise ..."
Phil nodded. "I know, I know. I'll really try to make it."
A few days later Mike was saying, "I wonder how that works. One minute he's dead, and you know, I kind of missed him. It was odd not seeing him around. In fact, I thought I saw him a few times. I kept catching myself thinking, Is that Phil going into the bar? And I'd remember he was dead."
"Yes, me too."
"And now there he is."
"Yes. Anyway, he's very busy. He has to get all this done, it's very important."
Mike sucked on a pen for a bit. "Are you going to this barbecue? I don't know if I should. We were never, like, close. But now ‑ "
"Oh, come anyway. I'm sure he's forgotten all that. The money and that."
"You think? Because ... "
When I saw Phil at the barbecue, he seemed to have a gleam in his eye. "Phil!" I said, "how's everything?"
"Not bad. Busy, though. Busy busy busy." He grinned and sipped his drink through a straw. "Guess what? I'm sort of staying on."
"No! Really? That's the best news, Phil."
He laughed happily and nodded. "Well, you know. Lots to do. Things are going well, for a change. Hey! I thought I saw Mike in the driveway. I'll put a scare into him later on." We stood around and smiled. It's very strange, though. I can never stop smiling at the strangeness of things.
T w o� F a c e s� o f� F e l i x� D z e r z h i n s k y
At his new job in the towering bookstore Albert found a box containing two biographies of Felix Dzerzhinsky. "Well, well," he thought, dusting off the two books, "We meet again." The old rascal in his bolshevik leather coat, chief executive of an all-too extraordinary committee. His ... oh, why go� on about it now? Curiously enough, each book had a slightly different portrait of its subject on the cover, but comparison suggested that they both derived from the same source. On the one book his thinning hair was blown back smoothly, the glassy eyes fixed on some unseen prey, the tripartite tuftery of his moustache and minibeard all shipshape and pointing in three directions, ready for active duty. The hammer of the counterrevolutionaries! To be fair, perhaps he was pointing not at hidden enemies to be liquidated but towards the new dawn, the path of progressive peoples everywhere, the way forward, ho-hum. What time was it? Half an hour before lunch. Albert put the book on his desk and turned his attention to the other one.
The portrait on this slimmer and cheaper volume was a pen and ink effort, very much an amateur job. Dzerzhinsky's cap appeared large and misshapen, his facial hair looked exactly like two wet dogs, the eyes were unfocused and expressive of a desire to get sober and straighten things out with the woman some day. Perhaps - if we all made an extra effort...
Another twenty minutes to lunch time. Albert placed the two books side by side. Which portrait was better? The romantic or the incompetent? Which was naive, and which sentimental? He sat looking at them for a while, picturing the old statue that used to point at imaginary villains near the entrance to the department store on the other side of the square. Whoops. Time for lunch.
Albert tossed the books into the discard barrel, since no one would buy this sort of thing now (and they were too big to go down the toilet.)
T o� C o n f o u n d� t h e� W i s e
After a night of perfectly ordinary sleep, Pierre woke up to discover that he could no longer talk sense. His cosy room looked normal. The chair with his wallet and keys was untouched. He felt average and his thoughts were clear, but he was unable to say anything which was not gibberish.
He got dressed and went down to his neighbour's apartment. She was a doctor and therefore might be able to help.
When she opened the door Pierre noted that she was about to leave for work. He said to her urgently: "U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare."
"I'm sorry?"
"Quite a few were released in the early '60s. Confession is a whole‑hearted acknowledgement of all our sins, errors and faults. Collected works in six volumes."
"What?" She frowned and looked at him closely.
"It Pays To Increase Your Word Power. Hey, Rock! Watch me pull a rabbit outa muh hat! F10 back to previous screen."
"Pierre ‑ I'm just on my way to work. Anything wrong?"
"Not at all. Many corporations reported a similar decline in the final quarter." By now Pierre was trying hard to make himself understood, but his neighbour had joined him in the hallway and was thoughtfully locking her door. He wanted to ask if he could come to the clinic with her, but she was on the point of leaving, and would be considerably alarmed if he followed her without explanation. Perhaps if he kept his utterances short.
"Microfiche," he said. "I like your hat." That wasn't quite right. She smiled and went out the front door. Still, his last words had almost made sense, in fact he was quite proud of the "I like your hat", which sounded so much like something a person might well say (although she wore no hat). Since there was no point in trying to call in sick, he decided to go to work.
Here things went smoothly for the most part. He was able to avoid talking to people by rushing about as if he had lots to do. Eventually there was a snag: Eric came to him for advice about some file.
"Pierre, would you happen to know whose initials these might be? I need to find out who had it last." Pierre tried to look competent. Eric set the file before him and pointed at the mystery. Of course he recognised the initials immediately but was unsure whether to risk trying to pronounce even something as simple as a familiar name. He examined the mark as though it were an Egyptian cartouche.
"Don't know it?" asked Eric.
"Mm," he answered, shaking his head.
"Well, okay then. Thanks anyway. I guess I'll have to do a little sleuthing." Something needed to be said by way of closure, so Pierre cleared his throat and mumbled:
"It seems to be made of molten rock. Try your phaser on it."
"Ha, ha. Right."
After work Pierre stopped for a drink at "The Filter", a nearby tavern. He had no trouble ordering a drink here since the staff knew him. The bartender looked up and asked: "Draft?", and was already positioning a glass. So who needed exactitude? And to the woman who sat down next to him he explained: "I shall first discuss the genesis of the project and the importance of education in transmitting culture‑bound discourse norms. O let me be your teddy bear."
B e w a r e� o f� F i c t i o n
Albert came back to the apartment after a day of trying to get as much work done as possible since the boss was away. Claire ran into the hall to meet him, scented and painted and perfect, with a glow of joy that could eventually lead to tears. She smiled and said, "I was thinking of inviting Trog over for supper."
"How do you mean?"
"I'm inviting him over. So, if it's no bother - do you have something to do? So we could be alone for a while?"
"Oh, well ... oh, I guess I can find someplace to go." After a moment of wearily resuming his jacket and confirming that its pockets contained all the necessities, Albert said: "But this Trog - he's a fictional character. Whom you've invented."
"But he's real, really. I mean, to me he's real. More real than you are."
"No. He may be more exciting than me, and nicer, and so on, but I do insist that in reality I am actually real. I actually exist and have my being and, you know, go around drinking coffee and sort of - other people can touch me and testify to my real, three-dimensional life, independently of what you or I may think. I can do things unbeknownst to you, such as wash the dishes when you're out and eat your stuff out of the fridge. Trog only exists - "
"Yeah, yeah, in my mind and heart. I'm a retard, I know."
"I didn't..."
"What?"
"Nothing. So okay. You want me to stay out while you entertain Trog."
"If it's no trouble? I'm really sorry. I don't think anything will happen between Trog and I. I almost hope not. But I have to find out. Do you understand? Oooh, I really don't want to do this. It'll probably be like last time. He's such a loser, sometimes." And she quickly put on her green sweater.
"That's pretty, Claire."
"Do you think so? Anyway, what do you think: I've got those penne, I don't really have anything to put on it. There's those carrots and stuff."
"Why not just make alfredo? With penne you don't want big chunks of stuff."
"There's no cream."
"I'll get some."
"Could you? And could you - what else do you put in?"
"Well, there's nutmeg there. I guess I should pick up some parmesan."
Luckily it wasn't raining, but it wasn't too warm out either. He went to the corner store and bought the cream and a small bag of parmesan cheese. In the apartment once more he put the purchases on the kitchen table and announced:
"There! I've put the stuff on the table in here!" She stopped moving furniture in the next room to dash out wearing her black skirt and best shoes.
"How do I look?"
"Great. I'll be off, then."
"Thank you, Albert. Thanks." She waved helplessly. "Goodbye. And thanks."
When he got back to the apartment after five hours of parks, caf�s and libraries it was quiet. The place was dark, but from under Claire's door came a faint light, and also, equally faint, the sound of stifled weeping. Albert thought: "Son of a bitch, even if he's only a fictional character." What to do, meantime? He sighed and set off for the corner store to get her some ice cream.
A t� t h e� C i n e m a
"Can we sit closer up? I can't see."
I used to think that movies were the whipped cream on the decaf espresso of everyday life, until I realised they were a lesson in humility. When we watch a film, we are invited vicariously to control something. The person who has made the film controls it, and we tend to identify with that person because we, too, are behind the camera. If there is a scene in which a man is being questioned by a voice off‑camera, we always identify with the interrogator rather than the man, because the man is an object such as we might observe in real life.
"How much did that popcorn cost?"
You do not, normally, share the experience of one whom you are observing. In any encounter you observe not yourself but everything else.
"I hope those galoots aren't going to sit near us. Dammit!"
The same is true of a narrative. If a character in a story relates an event, the reader feels that the character controls it. If, however, the character is described in the event, then the reader distances himself from that character, observes him, feels that he is less in command of the event and has less in common with him.
"Want some? It's really good."
Sacred things are never described, their names are not pronounced, their images forbidden. They cannot be observed, much less controlled by us. But doesn't this imply that we might identify closely with them? And are we part of them, in that case?
"What time is it supposed to start?"
The excitement of political life. Powerful figures are passionately loved by the powerless, and vice versa. But who controls whom? Who can identify with either? Which spends more time observing the other? It's a folie lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"WP CyrillicA"'>" deux, twenty‑four hours a day. A romantic spectacle. A relationship that won't work and can't stop. By the way, thanks for coming out to the movies with me.
"Shh. It's starting."
A n a l y s i s� o f� P a r a l y s i s
"You can tell a lot about a man by the things he hates," said Dr Trezvennik. We were sitting in his laboratory, actually his bachelor apartment on East Street, watching his cat. The cat watched us from time to time, periodically losing interest and looking at the floor in front of his paws and sighing, and then suddenly coming to attention if either of us moved or spoke. "For example, I know many people who hate cats. So I think, H'm, he hates cats. What can be going on in the soul of such a man? Maybe people who hate cats secretly love them, and vice versa, which comes to the same thing."
"Oh."
"Well - it is a fact too often ignored, that all the known artificial sweeteners have been discovered by an accident. In the process of doing some other serious work, researchers have time and again found themselves confronted with a wholly unlooked-for and terribly sweet byproduct of their labours. What is the explanation of this mystery, if it is a mystery? Is it the case that artificial sweeteners are potentially lurking behind every laboratory experiment? Is it probable that almost every chemical process in the universe occurs by grace of the participation or abstention of forces far sweeter than we can imagine? For it must be pointed out that the substances which have so far intruded into unrelated experimentation are between fifty and two hundred times as sweet as sugar."
(Dr Trezvennik then told me the singular story of two chemists who were getting to know each other in the library one evening. The first one looked harried and worn out because he had been trying to develop a new sweetener but kept running into "stumblestones": at a certain point in the process, the solution would turn wild colours and start to give off a rank odour. Wicked black filaments would form over the work area and stick to anything they touched, making a tiresome mess, and some of the night staff went into convulsions. His new acquaintance looked aghast: for years he had been having the opposite problem, since his every attempt to devise a new kind of nerve gas ended in tears of frustration and the inevitable sweet precipitate, which could only be used in coffee or cakes, "as if the world needed another one," he added bitterly.)
"And your point, of course?"
"It's obvious," said Dr Trezvennik, "all the people I know who hate cats seem to attract them. That's axiomatic. But the type of people who surround themselves with cats ‑ they secretly hate them."�
I feel it's important to say at least one thing in any given conversation, no matter how stupid. "And so," I said, "hating cats is the same as loving them. In the big picture." And Dr Trezvennik yawned affirmatively and said:
"In other words everyone loves cats, and, as far as we can tell, the world is full of sweetness."
T h e� B a l k a n� Q u e s t i o n
An American salesman was staying at the hotel. In the bar one evening he showed Mike something interesting from his case of samples. "The wind-up barber, a valet in your suitcase," he explained. It was a wooden, pin‑shaped individual with a painted face, white jacket and shiny black trousers, and a wondrous spring motor inside. When wound up it could perform numerous feats of coiffure, from the old short back‑and‑sides to fairly elaborate perfections of hair. The great advantage, it should be said at the outset, was not its creativity or personality but the speed and neatness with which it could perform its set tasks.
Needless to say, the wind‑up barber had found eager purchasers in a certain type of household ‑ commuters, recluses, but also people on the lookout for anything new.
The salesman said: "I demonstrated one in a small town in southern Europe. Fifty people stood around watching, dogs, everything, and nobody knew any English. So I gave the demonstration. I sat back, let my little friend here do all the work. It combed my hair out, expertly cut and shaped it, shaved me, rubbed lotion on, it made me look like a million bucks. I just had to sit there and look at one of those men's magazines. Anyway, at the end of it the people were amazed. I got out of the chair, the wind‑up barber brushed me down, and their jaws dropped as though I had just stepped out of the pages of Uomo moda or whatever. I didn't have to say a word to make the sales. That's how it was for the whole of southern Europe.
"Coincidentally, this was a time of political ferment of some kind in the region. I don't know, apparently there were some big things at stake between national groupings, nobody's fault, I guess. And somehow, the wind‑up barbers got involved. I think they were in a sensitive position, their complicated origin, all that. That's what I would attribute their involvement to. Soon they were on street-corners handing out leaflets with political slogans and outlines of their beliefs, you know, 'Support the historic struggle.' They were always commemorating important dates. They aligned themselves for a while with one of the political parties, or a faction of it, and then broke with them. They even started getting intellectual ... you know? Anyway, their whole thing became devalued. Haircuts are interesting, and what people do with their hair does say something about them, about society, and of course back then I didn't know there was such a thing as a political haircut, but in the long run what the wind‑up barbers did was not art. Not really. Kinda cute, though, eh?" He stroked the shiny black head. Mike had a closer look.
"What are those holes in its face?" he asked.
"Huh? Oh, gunshot wounds."
F r i d a y� E v e n i n g s
"Only one thing worse than not having a degree in psychology," Pierre murmured a little sadly, "and that's not having a girlfriend." With a certain amount of resolve he began to head out for the evening's adventure. Before quitting the apartment, though, he took a look in the kitchen mirror. There didn't seem to be anyone there, so he opened the door with anticipation, for who knew what sort of women the floodlit boulevard of thundering taverns would conceal? Or there might be interesting people, or dull people, who would inevitably lead him to another source of women, or at least to another bar to meet other people, who, in turn, would lead him to another source of women. Or at least ‑ but fervid preanalysis should only go so far. Meanwhile, he went down the stairs and reflected on the quiet desperation of his neighbours. Although it was Friday evening, there was little noise in the building other than the general televised whimpering familiar from so many evenings at home, but no doubt they all knew what they were doing, and their lives were in enviable order. Perhaps, as they heard him pass, they were even paraphrasing the poet and saying to themselves: "The lonely man, what could he be seeking in the storm? As if peace were to be found in a tempest!" But as he stepped over the threshold his hand flew to his pocket. Oh no. The keys were upstairs, and the door had closed with a self‑satisfied click. What now? The only thing to do was to try getting back into the apartment right away, by climbing up the fire escape around the side.
Here he had to stand on the railing and lean across an alarming emptiness to reach his kitchen window. The window failed to cooperate at first, unused to the strange manoeuvre, but finally it allowed itself to be pried open some eight inches. Now. A foreshortened leap and his head and shoulders were in, his chest painfully creased by the aluminium sill. It was like wrestling on a high wire. His feet searched the void until one of them found help in the form of a two by four nailed uselessly to the building. A big effort, and he was caught on something exactly halfway through the window. There was no going forward or back. A perfect fit. And at that moment the telephone rang, not once, but six times, and then the answering machine picked up.
"Oh. Hi. It's me," said a splintered voice. "I guess you're out. I thought you'd be by, but we're leaving now. I don't know where we'll be."
There were a few more calls later, with a remarkably similar burden, and on the whole it turned out to be an interesting evening. Passersby could enjoy the sight of a man stuck in an upstairs window, stirring the air with his legs, resting only to listen to his messages.
M o n k e y b e a s t
There are no Godzillas any more. Irate, wild‑eyed creatures who come to destroy the cities of men and mess with their minds. Instead, ‑
"Preeeebt!"
"Hello?"
"Can I speak to Pierre, please?"
"No, he's not here."
"Oh? Oh. Do you have any idea when he'll be back?"
"Not a clue, dear." It was, in fact, Pierre who spoke. He crouched on the floor next to the telephone and tried to think of expressions and phrases he would never use. He had already thought to pitch his voice a trifle higher than normal, and had fomented a more genial, plain‑speaking sound for the vowels and diphthongs.
"So you have no idea when he'll be back."
"Nope! I can give him a message if you like." There was a pause at the other end, and then the caller asked softly:
"Who is this, anyway?"
"Monkeybeast!"
"What? I'm sorry?"
"Monkeybeast. I've been staying with Pierre for, like, a week. Til I can get my own place. He's a stand‑up kinda guy, Pierre. Any message?"
"Can you tell him that Laura called?"
"Sure!"
An hour later the telephone rang again.
"Hello, Pierre?"
"'Fraid not, dear. It's Monkeybeast again. I'll tell him you called when� he gets in. It's Laura, right?"
The next morning Laura turned up at Pierre's door. "Where were you?" she hissed, "I was trying to call you last night!" Then she added cautiously: "Is Monkeybeast there?"
"No, he leaves for work at eight. Come in for a bit."
"Who is he? Why do you have him staying with you? Because I can't stand him, he's, he sounds ‑ " and she shook her head in disgust. When they were in the kitchen she fixed her gaze on the empties lined up near the garbage. "Oh: I see. Making good use of your time. That's nice."
"Oh, that ‑ those are Monkeybeast's. Drinks a fair amount."
"So you're drinking buddies, is that it? Sit here all night drinking your faces off. Quite an improvement over hanging out with me."
"No, no. Monkeybeast ... he's a bit of a liquor pig. But you can't blame him, he's a lonely man, really."
"Yeah. Wonder why." Suddenly she came up with her next move. "I'm going. I'm too angry to talk." She strode back to the door and opened it.
Pierre said: "Laura, do try and understand, Monkeybeast ‑"
"No. Shut up."
And Pierre spent the morning thinking about the further strengths and frailties of Monkeybeast.
K u r z
Someone stole my briefcase again. I was commissioned by the Orchestra to go and do some business at the Hall of Culture, and on the way down there I got lost. I spent a few hours in the labyrinth of the downtown area trying to get from A to B and always ending up at the train station, which beckoned me to renounce everything and set off for another city altogether. But business is business, so I looked around the station for a while. Finally I decided to have a nap on one of the benches.
I was dimly aware of some people talking behind me - the benches are placed back to back - but I had no suspicion that my perfunctory dream of being robbed as I slept was actually taking place in reality. Reality, I thought, would surely discourage such a proceeding. I was almost laughing at this idea and at my own naivet � , when I woke up to discover that my briefcase had, in fact, been stolen. I was shocked, or something. Well, you're meant to be shocked, I believe, if someone steals your briefcase as you sleep. I somehow managed to put together just enough indignation to run out to the main doors with every intention of pursuing the thieves to their foul den, but once outside I could make no decision about where to go. Who were the thieves? What did they look like? Where had they gone?
And my next problem was that I could not really remember what was in the briefcase. Was it something I needed very badly? Probably, since I kept it in my briefcase, but I could not claim to be suffering for the lack of it just then. So in an odd way I was just as well off without it. No doubt the briefcase alone was worth having, and its loss might be deplored, but at the moment I had no real use for a briefcase, having nothing to put in it. So in a sense I came out ahead once again! Especially since I couldn't find the Hall of Culture and didn't know what I was supposed to be doing there.
N o s t a l g i a
A man with a moustache and little else on his face sat reinventing his homeland from a corner table in the caf � . He watched the passersby vehemently, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. Then he shook the newspaper into shape and began reading it, but, as it was in an almost incomprehensible language, he soon set it free on the table in front of him. He relapsed into his vacant supervision of the crowded street, where a determined throng inched past, youths pummelled each other and shouted, a small man stepped along humming to himself, and motor vehicles crept back and forth respectfully.
However, the man's tranquillity became perfect as he deleted the scene before him and brooded over past friendships. So many things I could have done. So many things I could do now, but it's too late. So many wounds I had� and they were good ones, good wounds, not like the ones you get now. What was the thing that ruined it all? How did it change? Where is the barrier separating me from everything important? Why did I come here? Who are these people? What do all these events signify? Who are they trying to deceive? As a matter of fact, to the realist the past happened only fifteen minutes ago. It only takes fifteen minutes for a thing to be completely forgotten, and everything that has ever happened might as well have happened just over fifteen minutes ago. As a matter of historical record, Alexander the Great and Napoleon are roughly contemporaneous. (It might be helpful to bear in mind that one is a tad earlier than the other, of course). An odd consequence of this perspective: people who are aware of it appear to be somewhat out of step with their times, just as anyone who has been anywhere no longer seems to belong anywhere. The late afternoon traffic reintruded, as always, and he decided to return to his room.
"An unprofitable day!" he sighed, "An unprofitable day! Perhaps tomorrow."
N o t h i n g :� a� L i f e
The American salesman was already in the bar when Mike showed up. His response time was a little slow. "Mike!" he said, "Bonsoir. Assieds‑toi."
"Hi. I was looking for ..."
The salesman wearily searched the room and said: "You're looking for that young lady, but I don't see her here. Nope! No sign of her. Can I offer you this barstool?"
"Thanks."
"Probably, she's probably off with some ‑ rich guy who knows how to make a woman feel special. Forget about that. The flesh is weak, so don't let it behind the wheel." As usual, there was nothing to say for the first few minutes, and the salesman continued to whistle softly, but at the end of that time he asked Mike: "Have you had much experience with explosions?"
"No, not really. A good idea to avoid them, I would think."
"That's just where you're wrong, my young friend. Just where you're wrong." He looked at Mike with an unclouded but almost empty pair of eyes. "I was once in the service of His Royal Highness the F 10.0pt'>� rst. F � lang=EN-GB rst means Prince. He was a prince. Nowadays, of course, people like that ‑ counts, princes, what have you ‑ are all in business. He was a good businessman, not wildly successful, but fairly well‑off. He enjoyed outdoor events. Hosting them, I mean. I never saw a man look with such pleasure on a festive tent. A marquee, a table loaded with little cakes ‑ things like that were enough to send him into silent rapture. I was doing a little surveying for him out on the grounds, and one day he comes up to me and says: 'Well, and what do you think of our little preparations here, sir.' I told him that they lacked absolutely nothing, as far as I could see, but I figured I ought to add something constructive, so I mentioned the idea of having fireworks. 'Fireworks!'he exclaimed. His crafty blue eyes scanned the horizon like he was looking for strays. The next day he pokes his head into my little office and tells me that fireworks would be an extravagance, but 'perhaps an explosion or two....' I said I would look into it. That very evening I set off a sharp blast round the back of the castle just as dinner was under way. Everyone gave a start, but they all recovered and the whole affair was enlivened. The effect on people is quite noticeable. They think it might be the end of the world, and then they realise it isn't, but life is fresher and sweeter and they're willing to take risks and make commitments. A little later, the same thing. And from then on, whenever things looked dull, the prince would give me the nod and I'd set off a charge. Many fruitful liaisons and business deals were effected in this way."
At that moment Laura came into the bar looking for Mike, her face completely expressionless as she caught sight of him. The salesman leaned closer and whispered: "That's where this comes in." He carefully extracted from an inner pocket a small case containing what appeared to be a neat block of modelling clay. "I've got more upstairs. Know what it is? Semtex. And you're going to need it."
T a k e� A c t i o n
Claire was busy again, running around the apartment with a mop, a look of stern disillusionment on her face. Her hair was pulled back, her sweatshirt moist, her face shone with exertion. Albert sat on his couch and thought:
If I could write a story for you, I would write the story of your fulfilment. I would write a story that would be the longed‑for telephone call. Preeeebt! Hello? It's him, apologizing for standing you up. My story would be the good news. If I could write a story for you (if I could write, that is) my story would be the perfect roommate, the folded twenty dollar bill found in a pocket, the unexpected admiration from a reluctant source, the approach of a cat, the start of the show. If I could write (if I could write, that is) my story would be the story of the misplaced purse retrieved intact, of a living man pulled from the ruins, of a speedy taxi in a downpour. And here we get into alchemy, because my story would also be the careless acceptance of someone who says "Oh well. Why not?" And why not, indeed? Because the story could be that good.
"Shit. Shit. Shit." This from Claire in the next room. Crash. Albert improved his posture and thought:
Supposing I could write this story? There is no doubt it will be the story of two free breaths for the asthmatic, it will have plot, characters, depth, reasonable grammar and phrasing, and finally, it will have a dental plan, nice boobs, and a separate entrance.
"Jesus!"
And what if you were to read this story? Not just look at it and decipher the script, and then go on to the next thing, but read it. Give to it the attention you would give to a mysterious physical sensation. What is it? What is that feeling? What's happened to my arm? My story will be like that, not something you need specialised knowledge to appreciate. It will be as simple as a pigeon, and as pure as a memory. Strangely enough, in this it will more closely resemble your anger than your ‑
"Are you just going to sit there?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Help me!"
"I am."
Claire stood in the hallway, lost and puffing. Albert was alarmed for a moment when she appeared to be wiping away a tear, but it turned out to be some hair. "Could you," she said, "maybe, do the kitchen? Just a little sweep around?"
"Sure."
In Albert's opinion the whole place was unpleasantly clean, but he jumped to his feet and walked into the kitchen, a man with a mission. And about time.
W i n n i n g� a� L o s i n g� B a t t l e
Pierre was in an expansive mood. He said to Phil, in order to stop him glaring at the other customers in the bar:
"Were you ever walking down the street when a sudden piece of ice ended up falling from a branch to the top of your head? Or perhaps, while waiting to go up to bat, a foul tip bounded directly for your forehead, like a dog joyfully embracing his master? Or you are sitting in a busy fast food restaurant and a lady comes up to your table and says, Avez‑vous une cigarette, s'il vous pla�t? And for a moment you hear, Have you any idea how to get out of this place? Then you hand her a cigarette and tell her to get lost."
"H'm."
"Or perhaps you've been waiting for someone whom you like, checking the face of each person that comes in. You see someone vaguely resembling her, and the crazy thought sneaks through your head, It's not her, but she would do, and as you think this, gazing at her face, you detect that she is gazing back at you with a similar look of near‑recognition. For a split second there is something odd going on. I think it is the non‑noise of parallel universes rubbing against each other for warmth. Or perhaps you are in love, and each of you exclaims to the other: You're the only man/woman for me! From the moment I saw you, etc."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"The obvious question is, was this meant for me? Has this event been lying in potentia all this time, until the right person came to meet it? But I contend it's absurd to think that some force is directing the piece of ice at your head, or that anything is really in store for you."
"I don't know. I have a few things coming to me. Or else."
"It's one more species of illusion. And so people complain about their lives, hardly aware that most of their problems don't really exist. No, I'll get it. You paid last time." Pierre picked up the check and climbed out of the booth. Before heading for the bar he said: "Some things seem to follow naturally, but it could be that everything is a gigantic coincidence, even things you don't know about. Anything that can happen does happen, and everything that does happen is an egregious coincidence."
"Yeah, unrelated coincidences."
As he waited at the cash register, a slim girl appeared briefly at his elbow to pick up a drink. She turned to Pierre and said: "No, actually, there are no coincidences." And before he had time to think "The woman of my dreams!" she had slipped away. A few minutes later he was to discover that his bank account was frozen and he had a massive headache.
I n� I d l e� M o m e n t s
And what to do about the world crisis? At what stage is it? What can we do to help? Sorry, that comes at the end. It should be: And finally, what can we do to help?
Virgil had a few moments to himself one evening before the usual congress of novelists, and he beguiled the time by listening to a radio broadcast that left him in anxiety. Wave after wave of indignation came from the speaker's truculent voice, and no strength against the coming slaughter suggested itself. His little room almost shrank from the possibilities of the near future, and the whole thing only seemed sadder when the real punishment, the proposition that the near future was only the beginning, began to make itself felt in his mind. What to do? He looked around his sitting room and ran a mental inventory of the things to be found there ‑ the books, the magazines, the orphaned crockery and utensils. Though broken and irretrievably dirty, his couch and chairs meant something to him. To say nothing of the many boxes of great and small things he had retained. And the shirts and things. What if he had to leave? Would anyone be able to help?
Virgil got up from the floor and turned the lights on. That was a start. Next, he cleaned the kitchen and disposed of the used teabags that were in the sink. A moment's rest, and he then threw himself into the vacuuming of the sitting room, leaving no corner unsucked. Books and papers were tidied up along the way as the need arose.
At this point he took another break and considered further. If one could be ready to pack the essentials at a moment's notice, that would be good. The one bookcase contained books that could easily be stored for a time, the other needed but a cautious weeding to ensure that only indispensable things remained. Then tomorrow, at daybreak, there would be the laundry to be tackled.
As the first of his novelist friends began to turn up, there was the usual tumult in the hallway, and Virgil began to feel much better. The flap of coats and boots drew near and he eased himself into an attitude of revery. The door burst open.
"Ha, ha! Virgil! We brought some wine!"
"Titus got paid, we had a few drinks on the way."
Virgil got up and smiled. "Come in and ... sit down. Sorry for the mess. Although I have just vacuumed."
"Yes, obviously", said Titus, blowing a piece of fluff from his upturned palm.
"Ha, ha!"
Yes, they were a good crew if they weren't drinking too much. Yet sometimes Virgil wondered: What if, among them ...?
No, no, no. Experience, and not just idealism, had taught him to leave the unthinkable until last. And finally, what can we do?
T o� T a k e� t h e� R o a d
Quick! The greatest illusion of all is at hand. No time to lose. And Phil took off, scattering pigeons, barrelling up the road. Park railings whipped past, the world itself was in a great hurry to go somewhere in the opposite direction. Made it! Just as the doors leading to the ferry were about to panic and close. Quick, upstairs. One seat left, next to a man with a briefcase and a red tie. What was in the briefcase? Sandwiches, crime thriller? No time. The ferry was snorting into the dock. No time for escalators, either, out to the square, up the hill, along one featureless street and down another to the Hall.
"Good," said the conductor, "you're the first one here, you can be first violin." Phil took a small violin from his pocket. He immediately began playing Saint‑Sa � ns' Concerto for ‑
But wait. Back up a bit. Those scattered pigeons, what did they sound like? As if? The noise of flapping wings, isn't it the noise made by the souls of lost children? Phil began to play a concerto for lost children. It was a lugubrious work, and he made his violin sound like an oboe, a continuo, a drum.
And now he altered the tempo. Vivace, but not cheerful, more like an attempt to get something said once and for all, something no one wants to hear. Who is not an orphan, at last? Orphans, who are you? And who am I, if not the Orpheus of the Orphans!
It used to amaze Phil that animals do not grieve for their dead parents, but he eventually realized that in the animal kingdom one lives truly, and every animal is aware of the loneliness of life, and is equipped to come to terms with it. An animal goes to its death with no sense of injustice. But children ‑ every child is a lost child, and one could say, as Phil tried to, that getting lost is what people call growing up. It is not the same as coming to terms with this life, since it is an unsportsmanlike compromise, like everything else.
Naturally the conductor halted proceedings to suggest that Phil take his concerto elsewhere. And naturally Phil took the road.
C a r n i v a l
Not many people know this, but Camille Saint-Sa � ns badly needed a vacation after a busy period at the 10.0pt'>� cole normale. His students clamoured, "Don't forget to bring us back something! A fugue, perhaps." M. Saint-Sa 10.0pt'>� ns chuckled and waved goodbye from the departing train.
A few days later he was strolling along the Boulevard des anglais in Nice and it occurred to him: "I really should get the students something, as they've worked so very hard. Let's see - " And he stepped into a gift shop.
"I was looking for a gift," he said to the woman behind the counter, "what would you suggest for, oh, fifty piano students?"
The woman thought for a moment. "How old are they? Cologne is always good. Or some cigarettes."
M. Saint-Sa � ns said: "You seem to be terribly concerned about it. Why don't I leave you here to worry the problem to death and come back later, when you've recovered your equanimity?" Of course, he already knew what he would bring the students. Nothing less than "Le carnival des animaux" would do. "Ain't nothing too good for those guys," he thought, roughing out the first piece. He continued to work on it in the lounge car of the train, finally producing 14 short pieces, each full of musical gags and references.
And what a surprise for the students! They chortled and hugged themselves with glee as they looked over the score. "Oh, sir," they cried, "It's frightfully wizard of you!" "Yes, and look at this: 'Fossils', to be played allegro ridicolo ‑ that's ever so funny, sir." They all fell to playing the various pieces as if there were no tomorrow. M. Saint-Sa � ns smiled indulgently. Then he clapped his hands for silence.
"There's one thing, though," he said, "This is just a sort of amusement. I don't want any of it published, or even performed in public." The students howled in protest, but he was adamant.
"But sir," said little Alfred, his favourite, "What about no. 13 - 'The Swan?' Of all the pieces it's the most beautiful." And he wiped away a tear. The others all consulted their scores. It was true: unlike the rest of the suite, "The Swan" was pure grace. Saint-Sa�ns relented. "All right, then. 'The Swan' can be played outside of this class. But that's it."
And up until his death no complete score of "Carnival" was published, nor was the suite performed in its entirety. He did, however, allow No.13, "The Swan", to be played, because it is so beautiful. And it is also the only thing of his that people play now.�
L a s t� C a l l
There are quite a few things to be found under the table. It's often not a bad idea to check down there before you leave, as many of them are probably yours. Let's dive under and investigate!
H'm, a friend or two. Better let them be, a nap never hurt anyone. And this, an irregular heap of books. Interesting, but who's in any shape to read them, and to what purpose? Leave it. Oh, here's a find: another beer, still half full. Discreetly take a few swigs, sit up with your back against the wall in the faint light that leaks in under the table, even as rain penetrates the canopy of a great tree.
Actually, life under the table mightn't be all bad. You hardly ever meet people you wouldn't care to meet, you observe many things, and the supreme bonus is no one can get at you. It would be hard to launch an assault on someone entrenched within this sturdy furniture, which is all stoutly fastened to the wall and floor.
Resting up a little, I can't help thinking it a pity that she had to leave. And in such a temper, and merciless into the bargain. Where do people go when they leave you? To an afterlife of some kind? To their reward? Could it be that they simply cease to exist? Or perhaps they go to an underworld just like this one, dull and rancid with nonevents and random things. Down here under the table we view life as an almost empty file folder, of which one might say: There's nothing in here, and if there were anything in here, it would be in here. Yet people go on looking into file folders hoping to find something. Enough of that. Back to work.
And now these shoes. She's forgotten her shoes. That's what comes of continually taking them off and putting other ones on under the table. I warned her about that. These are the ones she ‑ wait, there's someone in them. Quick, topside!
"Oh, there you are. I thought you'd gone."
I� F i n d� I t
Looking around for clues, I found quite a large one. It was on the floor, actually growing out of the floor, almost tetrahedronal, occupying an immeasurable space. On close inspection its features were irrational, and I had no way of focussing on it or getting it into the right perspective. I viewed it from my couch, I viewed it from a standing position in the corner, from scant millimetres off the floor, and from the prospect I normally command while changing the light bulb. There was no way around it. There was no way through it. There was no overlooking it. The cat was no help, either ‑ lying there asleep on my clean laundry as if nothing unusual had happened. I decided to go outside and look around for opinions.
There was a woman at the bus stop wearing a Hallowe'en mask on top of her head, apparently on her way home from some alcoholic insanity downtown. We started a conversation and naturally adjourned to the nearest bar that was still open. She told me about her father and the problems she was having with her boyfriend. Afterwards we walked around the neighbourhood and she told me about her job and the problems she was having with her boyfriend. We came to my door, and I said:
"This is where I live. Come on in, just for a minute. I've got something I want to show you."
"Oooh, it's getting late, I don't know. I have to get up tomorrow."Well, who doesn't? But when I wake up, I shall have something irrational in my floor to contend with.
A week later I lured a friend into my room with the promise of some extra wine. We were sitting there talking about television, and I finally had to say: "Notice anything different about the place?"
My friend looked around. "New curtains? Extra layer of dust? I don't know."
"What's the matter with you, can't you see it there?" I pointed to the floor wildly.
"Oh, that. Well. No, I can't see it."
"Explain!!"
"You're a man of faith and I'm not. It's that simple. I only believe in what I can see and get my hands on. Any more wine?"
R e m o r s e
Just before heading up to his hotel room, the American salesman caught sight of Mike in the depths of the bar and sailed over to him. He sat down without warning, although he may have assumed that his ponderous approach through several yards of occupied tables was warning enough, and, safely seated, he began to tell Mike something important, a thing that had obviously vexed him for some time.
"Lots of people love dolphins, and can't stop being concerned with their fate and charmed by their ways," he said. "I often used to wonder why, until it was explained to me that dolphins are very intelligent, and therefore rather admirable. But is that true? I was in business with a dolphin, and found him to be wholly unreliable. Also, I suspect that he had only an approximate idea of the nature of our business. I would be talking to him about something important, and he would look at me as if familiar with the matter, almost patronizingly so; and then suddenly he'd leap into the water and chase passenger ships for miles and miles, the genius. And what for? The pleasure of hobnobbing with a bunch of smiling strangers? Call that smart? I don't mean to generalize, of course, and I should emphasize that this was the only dolphin I have ever known very well, but he was possibly the most incapable individual I have ever met. He couldn't do anything. Couldn't make coffee. Couldn't work out percentages. Kept locking himself out of the building. And that's a pain. When it happens every blessed day. You would hardly credit it, but he couldn't even take a phone call reliably, he'd just squawk into the receiver, and I don't know what anyone made of it. Squawk squawk. Like that. Squawk squawk. Now you know, the insurance business is a business that calls for trust between company and consumer. The client has to know that you have his interests at heart."
Here he signalled for closer attention on Mike's part.
"Now. You know something? In our culture people are reluctant to point the finger, make a complaint against a representative of a firm, cause a man trouble in his job. They would sooner just take their business elsewhere. I just hate playing the heavy, and many people will testify to that, but my best guess was that Jerry was costing us not a few clients with his cavalier attitude, I mean, sure, he was bringing in business, but in the end I had to let him go, just had to. And I just hated having to do that. You know?"
G e t t i n g� t h e� M o s t� o u t� o f� Y o u r� H e a d
Mike was somehow involved with film making. He would be seen crossing the boulevard with a briefcase at the end of his arm during what are normally business hours. If it was a sunny spring afternoon and Pierre was having coffee in some caf � , he would rarely fail to see Mike pass by on his way to or from a meeting about his project. On weekends, when coffee breaks can expand indefinitely, or even take up the whole day, there he was, a briefcase in one hand, wandering up the street, probably brooding over his latest meeting. His gait betrayed a dilatory impulse that combined with the possession of a briefcase to show that he was neither at work nor at play, but chiefly engaged in a mixture of the two. Presumably it was when things were going well that Pierre saw him smiling and blinking sleepily in the sunlight, as if life were an old but undeniably charming little joke. If, on the other hand, he came into the caf � and sat at a back table and appeared to be trying to get some work done, then Pierre gathered things were not as good. He hesitated to approach him at times like these, or at any time, to tell the truth, but curiosity about the film business tempted him. Who was he working for? What sort of film were they making? Above all, was it a real film, that people would see, or was it one of those mystery projects one hears so much about? What if it were supremely fascinating, an odd black and white journey through inexplicably allusive backgrounds, with sad and compelling dialogue, and a spare yet intriguing argument?
Mike went up to the counter for a refill, dully searching his broken jeans for coins.
I should tell him about my idea, thought Pierre. My diachronic vision of a man who discovers that his initial, youthful alienation from the world� which we establish early on� is being overcome by a warm familiarity with society, but of the wrong kind! We see him talking to a new friend outside a busy playground. They part, having agreed to a later rendezvous. But we then see the friend at home, sitting as still as a corpse. We find that everyone with whom he has dealings is entirely different when not in his company. An important undertaking at work is revealed to be not at all as important as he has been led to believe, while a minor misunderstanding seems to result in great losses and even a foul murder. That afternoon our hero is startled to find an ugly, bloodied hammer wrapped in newspaper in his briefcase, and realises that he is not just a suspect, but the only reasonable suspect. He now must undo and re-analyse his relations with almost every� -
It was Mike, standing right in front of him. "Can I bum a smoke?" His hand fluttered before his mouth by way of elucidation.
"Oh. Go ahead." This seemed to be his chance. "So you're doing some work, I guess?"
"That? Oh - that's my r�su� . I've been applying for jobs everywhere. Ever since that stupid film thing folded."
A r t� &� L e t t e r s
This will in all probability be my last work for the Society. I am very tired now, and quite drunk much of the time. It therefore behooves me to survey the efforts made under the aegis of our Society to produce this work.
Many hands have laboured together to assemble what gives every appearance of being a treasure hoard of inestimable value, the first fruits of our unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Many useful suggestions from many different sources have been incorporated herein, to create a warm congeries of learned studiousness. I must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the exquisite scholarship of my colleagues in the Society for their help in scaling the intractable, knobbly face of science. I am also under obligation to the polite and courteous staff of the Society for their understanding and compassion.
As I look upon my desk I note that two of my remaining teeth have fallen there, yellowed with age and worn down by hard‑to‑chew esculent mat�riel, on my green blotter. I am also unable to stem a trickle of drool from the left corner of my mouth. Whether this is the result of twenty years' unflagging toil for the Society on my part, or mere incapacity, I hardly venture to say. I must point out that the liquid has accumulated in a large puddle near my elbow, for which I am exceedingly grateful.
This is very odd. I must have been asleep. I can now hardly get up from this chair nor, indeed, remain sitting upright for very much longer.
I would appear to have spilled a quantity of beer on my clothing, and also on this, the work of our Society. Oh my.
B a b y
I heard a baby crying the other day. So much despair, and at such an early age! I happened to be in the same room as the baby, and had, in fact, been put in charge of her for the afternoon. I was startled at anyone's taking things so hard, but then I recalled that she was only a baby, with very little experience to draw on and few consolations other than some brightly coloured pieces of plastic. "Really," I said, addressing the baby, "you'll just have to get used to all this. It doesn't get any better. The sooner you accept your predicament, the easier it will be. There is really no point in complaining." She ignored my advice, however, and continued to look at me reproachfully, shaking her head and howling, as if this whole arrangement was a betrayal and I myself, of all people, a shocking disappointment. "Take it easy," I said. "It's not so good, but you'll have to make your peace with it. Sorry. But - you know."
Some of my friends dropped over for a while. They looked at the baby with certain misgivings, as if the presence of the baby and her manifest dissatisfaction disturbed them; but I noticed as we talked that the baby seemed a bit more relaxed. She even managed to get some sleep.
When she woke up a few hours later she was in a foul temper, as if enraged to find herself back in this dump. Luckily her mother came in shortly.
"There there, what's the matter?" she said. "What's the matter, hmm? What's the matter? Hmmm, Teresa? There there, it's all right, Mommie is here. What's the matter? Hmm?" Then she spent the next five minutes or so variously fussing the child and trying to improve her demeanour. I smiled and decided to say nothing for the time being.
I wondered, later, if it was my place to say anything at all. I felt that the child's mother was convinced of my ineptitude in looking out for children, a prejudice that was fortified by her friends, who, I suspected, thought that my rightful place was in some tavern or gaming house; or, at the very most, out in the back yard assembling something out of lumber. For a wild moment I thought of the benefits of taking the baby out to a tavern, or perhaps to my own office, so that she could see for herself the truth of what I had said. But that is of course ridiculous. People don't care to have babies around those places, because they don't want them to know anything. The shame of it would hobble them� and mess up their game plan. That evening, however, as we were surveying the child in her crib, I did speak up.
"You're doing the child no favours," I said. "You are trying to persuade her that life is not harsh, that one is not perfectly alone, that friends do not betray one, that hanging out here is quite a lot of fun, really. You should not do that. You are deceiving her. She will not thank you for it."
"Just shut up," whispered the child's mother.
E n t e r t a i n m e n t
One evening as they sat watching many dull television shows, Claire asked Albert if he had a girlfriend. This is often taken to be a sign of interest, but her manner of putting the question cancelled any such misapprehension.
"So, you have some girlfriend?" she asked, looking at him as if her question had been: Are you on any medication? Albert said:
"Oh. No. I don't, I ... no."
And Claire briefly opened her eyes wide and said, "Why, I'd have thought a fella like you must have plenty a sweethearts!" Then she relapsed into her semi‑doze and flipped through ten or fifteen channels as quickly as possible. Albert felt that the best thing would be to say no more, but the morsel proved to good to leave alone. When he had recovered his composure, he asked:
"And you? Is there someone?"
After some moments of watching a popular band, Claire made a face and said, "Boyfriends! My friend Charlene, who you met, hair like that, sort of ‑"
"Yes, I remember."
"She's always hyperventilating about her boyfriend Dave. Dave this, Dave that, Dave Dave Dave. She runs around after him, wipes his nose, does his laundry, it makes me vomit. I could fill up this whole apartment with vomit just thinking about it."
"Don't do that. Let's concentrate on our programme ‑ oh, look: Basil Rathbone, that must be ‑ oh. Wait, can we watch ‑ oh. Oh, the news. You know, there's been a ‑ "
"Men are all completely useless anyway." Claire flipped back to some old nightclub singer in a lilac dinner jacket who looked as if he were just beginning to suffer from a violent, boring toothache that he had had many times before. "I guess I told you about Trog," said Claire quietly.
"Oh yes."
"Yeah, I told you about him. He plays the flute? He's very gentle and sweet, but very difficult at times."
"How so?"
"Well, he's crazily sensitive about things. I think a lot of that's because of his parents, particularly his father. He font-family:"WP TypographicSymbols"'>= s been through a lot. And that girlfriend of his messed things up. Playing mind games."
"Yes, people do that," said Albert. "I sometimes think almost everyone does that as soon as they have anything to do with another person. They don't at any other time."
"That's interesting."
"So the idea would be to deal with people as if they were not another person. You could do that if you got to know the person really well. You'd have to make sure you weren't indulging in any mind games to do that, though."
"That's not a bad idea." Claire flipped back to the popular band, who were being interviewed in a warehouse. "I know Trog pretty well, but ... "
"Claire, you did tell me that this Trog is a fictional character that you invented. That is true, right?"
"Yeh." Claire attentively watched the band being interviewed inside a big recording studio.
"Well, you know. You belong in a story, too: 'Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was inconsolable.' That sort of thing."
Claire's face was wonderfully expressionless, but it had quickly acquired a noticeable pink tinge. Albert got up to check on the kitchen situation.
D r a m a
(In their less guarded moments, Pat and Helen like to engage in amateur theatricals for the amusement of their friends. The parts are interchangeable.)
Pat: Impossible!
Helen: Of course. But nevertheless.
Pat: But I thought you said -
Helen: Yes. But still. You know.
Pat: He said that?
Helen: Oh yes. He said many bad things. And some bad words, also.
Pat: Bad words? And how was his grammar?
Helen: Not the best. Unimaginative.
Pat: You know, I sometimes think you've been sent here to antagonize me. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I quite like it, in moderation. But it's you I worry about. Is this a profitable use of your time? I think it diminishes a person, somewhat, to devote their life to this.
Helen: I don't know what you're talking about.
Pat: There you go again. You sit there - that is what you're doing, isn't it? Sitting there? It's hard to tell with you. You could be standing or crouching defensively or lying prone. Or perhaps you are entering or exiting this minimalist stage. Or doubling with another character. I never know where I am with you, or vice versa.
Helen: I don't know what you are talking about.
Pat: Yes. Anyway, there you are, somehow, and you say nothing of the plans I have worked on. It is my crowning achievement, our crowning achievement.
Helen: I don't know what you are talking about. Maybe someone else...
Pat: Someone else! Yes, that's perfect. Someone else. That would just suit you, wouldn't it? That's almost your favourite expression.
Helen: I don't know what you're talking about.
Pat: And you don't seem to care. I suppose you are selling the house? And the other things?
Helen: I don't know what you are talking about.
Pat: I thought so. And your friend is dying; that's sad, and you are, I assume, getting on with your life. Putting the pieces back together. Or you will, once this is over. You think. It may interest you to know that I am writing a play about all this. Oh yes. This is it, in fact. And you've forgotten all your lines, how convenient. The lines I have worked day and night composing and showing to other people for their dramaturgical advice.
Helen: I don't know what you are talking about.
Pat: And my play, our play will be nominated for awards, and workshopped, and presented at festivals. Finally it will be published in a cheap format, and I warn you: Changes to the script are expressly forbidden without the prior written permission of the author.
Helen: I don't know what you are talking about.
C a r e e r s
It had to happen. When Albert approached the bookshop one morning he saw that the side door, which was normally sealed, had been propped open, and the pavement nearby had sprouted stacks of moist books and boxes of books. O'Flaherty stood there chewing his fingernails. "My mother," he said, gesturing to the event. "She does this sort of thing. Goes about dressed like a man, sets fire to any business I might have. What kind of mother would do that?"
Albert asked after a moment, "Have you spoken to her?"
"I've never met her." O'Flaherty turned to survey his ruined business. Of course, much of the merchandise was trash, but there had been a few nice things: incunabula, editiones principes and the like, uncommon and possibly unique. "It doesn't matter that much. I'm insured." He pulled at his lapels fruitlessly.
"So," Albert said, but he could find no more to say. The fire had been reported and dealt with in the early hours. Damage to the building was unimportant, although costly repairs would be needed. A few shelves of antiquarian books near the front desk, where the fire seemed to have started, had been completely consumed in the blaze; most of the other books were soaked and ruined.
"I've been here since five this morning. The ones I've taken out, these here, are comparatively salvageable." He patted a stained box of paperbacks.
"So," Albert said, "Why don't we grab a coffee or something?"
"Coffee?" O'Flaherty looked as if he had been insulted by the offer of a huge monetary gift. "Coffee?" He considered the appropriateness of Albert's plan, frowning and pulling at some of the hair he grew on his face. "Well, I suppose ... we could do that."
Even at the coffee shop there didn't seem to be much to say. Albert thought about all those books. The itineraries and exciting stories, the how‑tos and what‑to‑dos, the effusions, the reluctant confessions, the propaganda, the experiments, the so many years of whatnot.
"So," Albert said, "Your mother. Why would any mother do this sort of thing?"
"I don't know. Oh, my mother was like no other."
"That sort of rhymes."
"Yes. So good of you to notice." O'Flaherty contemplated his employee as if seeing him for the first time; of course, until now they had never seen each other elsewhere than in the bookshop. "Albert the Hardworking," he said. "Albert the Gentleman. No unkind thought ever crosses your mind, does it, Albert?"
"Well..."
"H'm. No. Maybe I should get into some other kind of business. It makes you flat, working with books." He sipped his coffee and nodded appreciatively. He kept looking down at the table, his head slightly averted. Then he said: "What I really want for my birthday is a squeegee."
C l o s e� C a l l
By way of variation Dr Trezvennik came over to my place for a coffee one evening. After the usual sort of topics had been ventilated ‑ the history of torpedoes, Eastern European cinema, hobbies of the Scythians, etc. ‑ he asked a question which disturbed me, rather:
"What do you think it would be like if cats could talk?" We naturally looked at my own cat, who was lying on her side no more than a yard away from us, her eyes closed, forepaws tucked in, her head inclined drowsily. I am very fond of the cat and we get along well without speaking. Sometimes, however, I discern in her eyes a kind of emotional complexity which, taken all at once, would be irrefragable. Dr Trezvennik said: "Of course, kittens are being born and christened every hour, every day, there would have to be millions of them. But this particular cat lives with you and sees your whole life; things you wouldn't disclose to another. And if she could talk?"
It was as if Dr Trezvennik read my thoughts. He pointed an ugly but well‑groomed forefinger at me and said:
"The onslaught of her love in verbal form would be confusing and upsetting for you. Her resentment at your frequent absences. Her lack of focus when you are not here. Your silence and impatience when you are here. Your obvious preference to attend to guests such as me, in general, which she bears so gracefully."
"Do you think so?"
"Look at you now, for example ‑ your posture, you are withholding yourself from her."
"No, I'm ‑ "
"Next: your irascibility, displays of over-sensitivity which remains unacknowledged by you, your lack of response, your sarcasm, your ‑ " and here Dr Trezvennik came up with an rich and variegated hoard of attributes usually thought to denote some species of unfriendliness, and I could only sit there in awe at his command of the language, though perhaps he was quoting some encyclopaedia article on Autism, Emotional, or something like that.
When he paused for breath I said, "You talk as if I were a monster!"
"You are! You are a monster of restraint! You have turned your soul into a labyrinth, and your heart lies concealed at the centre, just like Minotaur! And so you have insoluble problems with everyone, always."
"Well ‑ jeepers."
"Look at you! You are doing it again!" said Dr Trezvennik.
"What? What!?"
"Why do you not kick me from your house after I have said all this? You are angry, you are angry, but you will do nothing."
"Well, I'm not best pleased, perhaps, but ‑ "
At that moment the cat ventured to jump into my lap. She stood there for a moment, appreciating the situation, and then she settled down as if in full possession. Cats have a fine sense of what's appropriate, I find.
A n� A t y p i c a l� C o n v e r s a t i o n
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Let me explain," said the American salesman, turning to Mike with unwonted animation. "I was travelling incognito through Europe one summer. I should explain that I was suffering from the delusion that I was some great man who might be recognized and inconvenienced by admiring crowds. (Perhaps I should make it clear that I am not, in fact, famous).
"At that time I was never even sure of the cause of this fame of mine. Could it be my books? It really seemed as if nobody read them properly. My songs? Yet the people who liked them never seemed to have really listened to them. My paintings? But the people who bought them were rich and insensitive. Besides, that sort of fame was merely a result of the attention I was already getting. Could it be my personality, or something I had done? But what could I have done? The most I could say was that it would have to be a mixture of everything, (including my work on bilingual issues in an Occitan community), some unusual combination of which was able to fire the separate enthusiasms of an enormously varied population.
"Then something happened. I couldn't even remember the titles of my books any more, or the words to my songs, the subjects of my paintings, the reasons for my appearances. I would be going through a notebook and find some idea and be unable to recall if I had used it already. Had I done that already? I didn't know. Have I said that already? What have I done? And this fame ... ?
"As for fame, I dreamed of it in my youth, and now here I was riding to work in a limousine, sometimes protected by special agents. You know, the transition from being a nobody to enjoying instant recognition is a change not so much in sensation as in attitude, and one which you can hardly gauge at the time. I used to have the routine bother of going out for a pack of smokes, for example; now it was the task of engaging someone to go for me, patiently explaining what brand to buy, what to do with the cigarettes if I should be called away to another room in the meantime, et cetera. I felt I couldn't go out alone, and yet what if I did? What could happen?
"Well, once there was a man who looked just like me in the crowd. I paused and talked to him warily, startled by the similarity. Honestly, he looked just like me. Exactly. Within moments someone swam through the crowd, shouted 'I have avenged my father!', and emptied a gun into the other man. I was whisked away, back into a sort of obscurity. Where you see me now."
He turned back to his drink with a broad smile, and Mike tried looking at himself in the mirror that was behind the bar. The salesman wheeled around and quickly added: "But that was back when I was delusional, as I said. So none of this is true."
Mike hesitated and said, "Sorry, I have to ask this, but ‑ are you a salesman at all, then?"
"But of course I am. Haven't you been listening?"
A n� E n q u i r y
Creepy people are taking over the town. One man, for example, dines on the souls of his enemies. That is correct. Having slain one, he goes into a restaurant and orders his enemy's soul, fried and served to him with shoestring potatoes and a salad. Why the salad? Well, that particular restaurant, his favourite, is big on salads. A salad comes with every entr � e, so who would refuse? The salads available change from week to week, but the old standbys are always there ‑ spinach, Greek, Caesar, as well as the mysterious "chef's salad". They're easy to make and cheap. It's just fodder arranged on a plate and drizzled with oil and, if you'd care for it, some freshly ground pepper. The owners of the restaurant travel a bit, but more importantly, they like to read fashion magazines.
(If this man were convinced that his enemies all had vegetable gardens, it seems likely he would command a salad made from greens stolen from his enemies' gardens, but since he cannot be under this impression, and probably hasn't the time to discover which of his enemies does, indeed, have a garden, he no doubt regards the question as idle. But this is only speculation.)
(A curious thing about salads is that almost anything can be a salad. Broken pencils and bits of plastic, if presented on a plate and drizzled with oil, become a salad. A salad is anything broken up and presented on a plate and drizzled with oil. But perhaps I am generalizing.)
(I once ate a salad at this particular restaurant. I was with a critical woman and she was hungry. I am never hungry, but I would have done almost anything to have gone on talking to her, she was that harsh a judge of things, so I asked for the Greek salad. The waiter brought me a bowl of busted raw vegetables with black olives and pieces of dry feta cheese, and I asked him, as he hovered there with the pepper grinder:
"That guy ‑ you know who I mean, the man who dines on his enemies' souls?"
"Ohhh yeah."
"Does he ‑ "
"He's in here every Sunday for brunch."
"Yes ‑"
"You'd think he'd have run out of enemies by now, but ‑ "
"My friend and I have a bet on this: does he ever order your Yummy Dessert?" I tried to sound casual, but I had an olive speared on my fork for emphasis and the critical woman held a noodle between her lips as if it were a whistle that she was going to blow any minute, and we both stared at him intently.
The waiter caressed his bleached hair and said: "Yummy Dessert? No. Never. He never eats desserts."
"You're right again, it's uncanny," I said, and the woman ate her noodle.
(But this is just a personal reminiscence, and none of it helps.)
T h e� F r u i t s� o f� E x p l o s i o n
"This week we're doing the explosions," said the director as we sat eating our multicoloured salads, "so we won't be needing any dialogue. But that'll give you time to get through a few more pages, get caught up.""Explosions?" I asked.
"Yeah, we're doing them all together, naturally, but they mostly come at the end of things anyway. The car blows up, the apartment blows up, the guy's hotel room blows up, and then at the end ‑"
"Why does everything have to blow up?"
" ‑ that's the big one, we have to do it over several times. The camera moves back to appreciate the size of the explosion. A long shot as it blows up again, then from even further back, then from further back still, at a slightly different angle. Why does everything have to blow up? Well ‑ an explosion gives a sense of closure to things. When something blows up you say: Well, that's done; on to the next thing. An explosion is something you can't argue with."
I sat there mutely for a moment, trying to recall when I had last witnessed a genuine explosion in real life. I've heard them, occasionally ‑ loud, resonant booms from somewhere, and I always expect to hear firetrucks racing to the scene, but nothing ever happens and nobody else seems to care. It is, I think, not, I think, unreasonable to suppose that explosions are infrequent in normal life. But my opinion, insofar as I may be said to have one, is neither here nor there. The director said:
"I appreciate all the work you've done, I really do, it's good, great, dialogue. Dialogue. Things people say. I'm no good at it. But explosions are something else. I'm not saying they're more important, but I've used them a lot, and believe me, they work. They really do. But dialogue is necessary too. You can't have a film without dialogue."
"No," I hastened to say, "I didn't mean to seem, you know. And the story does call for explosions."
"Yeah. Almost cries out for explosions. I'm glad you see it that way." He poured even more creamy dressing on his salad, presumably to stretch it out. I had noticed that he was on some kind of diet, and terribly hungry for things that contained no fat. "Actually, a film like this ‑ without explosions you've almost got no story."
P a y� A t t e n t i o n
"When your brain is on fire you get a whole different view of things. Anything that made sense before is now revealed to be paltry drivel, and whatever used to seem banal positively shines forth with new significance," said Pierre, a trifle unnecessarily. They were sitting in the slightly cheaper of the two coffee shops they often visited. This one had an ugly mural on the back wall and some smaller, uglier paintings up front. The mural was simply a mess that the artist himself had quickly tired of, but the little paintings were bright spots of tedium.
Albert cautiously ignored his friend and went on reading the free weekend tabloid that appeared in abundant stacks in every coffee shop in town as a way of promulgating local entertainment events. The best part of this publication, in his view, was the advice column at the back. A place for bizarre, no doubt fictional characters to write in complaining that their circus wasn't working. Nearby there were some unfunny cartoons that came close to offering real diversion, and usually a few reviews of things Albert had no intention of seeing, hearing, looking at, going to, visiting, or considering any further. Most puzzling of all, however, was the actual body of the paper. The main article always described some controversy of some kind with boxed quotations and little photographs of the people involved. He asked Pierre:
"Did you read this? What's all this about, Pierre? This zoning stuff."
This is probably a good time to review the last few chapters, thought Pierre. Did I really feel that way? When I pushed that guy into a puddle, how angry was I, really? What did I mean by the incident in the hallway?
"What stuff?"
How could I have laughed at something so flat and stale? How could you mistake someone's bedroom for the Alhambra, anyway? How ‑
"Where they talk here about downtown development. Does this mean they're thinking of changing the zones? That could be a serious step."
And what was that? There it is again! Don't miss it this time! I am in full pursuit, a monster of observation. I am discarding things very quickly in the hunt for clues - forget about that, and that, follow every lead only so far, or ... "What? I beg your pardon, Albert. What did you say?"
"Am I to understand that there will be some rezoning in town? Is that what you got from this? Because I read these things and don't quite seem to grasp anything. I get confused because of the captions."
"Yes. That's it exactly."
"Oh."
"They're going to rezone everything. Everything."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Everything. And they're going to rezone your apartment first off, Albert. They're going to make you run a business there. You'll have to sell drinks or have a coffee shop in your kitchen, or else they'll make you leave."
Albert smiled a little uncertainly and asked, "Can they do that?"
"'Can they do that', he asks ‑ they can rezone that chair right out from under you. They could rush in here and rezone the pants off of you. 'Here, you. Out of those pants', they'd say. And they'd build something else in them."
"Pierre! Now I know you are joking. That's funny."
Pierre left the building for twenty minutes or so. When he came back he found Albert still sitting at the same table and said: "I'm going to get another coffee, would you care for one?"
I n d i g o� C h a m a e l e o n
Back to our movie. When not consuming the souls of his enemies, Indigo Chamaeleon uses drugs to avoid detection. Just as the amateur sleuth reads of this in his journal (having broken into his apartment and pried open his briefcase), the observant shadow framing his pose moves in. What will happen? Is our hero going to be the next victim? No, but anyway, what made him think he could match wits with this maniac, why would you go anywhere near his apartment, and if you did, why not steal the briefcase and peruse its contents in the security of the caf � around the corner? And why this curiosity about the details of his crimes? It's enough to know how bad he is.
"What are you doing here?" Whew. The shadow we saw earlier is that of the amateur sleuth's woman friend. Interestingly enough, they are both alumni of the same theatre school in real life, but they don't get along, apparently.
"I saw the door was open. I knew you'd come here. Now let's - "�
"Look, honey," says the hero, turning again to the journal and frowning, "He's much sicker than we thought. His murders make a kind of sense, in his own mind. Let me show you "
"Great. Let's get out of here before he comes back."
"No, let me read you something. Where is it now? I had it a minute ago."
"We'll read it on the bus. Let's go."
"No, no, you don't understand! None of you understand! You're all ‑ "
He's not a very good actor. The dialogue isn't the greatest, true, but I think a good reading would have had a note of resignation in it. The woman then sighs and goes to the bathroom, leaving the hero to continue studying and taking notes. A little later she comes out of the bathroom and says:
"He has a nice bathroom. I'll say that for him."
"H'm."
"Lots of guys I know are a bit careless that way. You should get a potpourri for your bathroom like he has."
The hero looks up and says: "Actually, I noticed when I broke in - he's got a nice apartment. I wonder what he pays?"
"Yeah. I've no idea."
"Feel like something to eat? There's pizza in the fridge."
"No. You can if you want. Hey, does he have cable?"
"Yeah, but I was thinking we could rent a movie."
"Might as well. What do you want to see?"
All this suspense. I can't take much more of it.
L a n g u a g e ,� T r u t h� a n d� A b s u r d i t y
I am afraid our film is not just a fantasy; it is so stupid as to be unbelievable, and this will make it enormously attractive. It is not just unreal, or an assault on reality, but a denial of reality. People watching it will say, So nothing is real, and I don't have to go to work tomorrow. They will be like a passenger in an airplane who looks out the window at the earth sinking below and says: So gravity counts for very little, I see. And to think I am compounding the outrage by furnishing realistic dialogue! Lending plausibility to this nonsense! The director, who is also financing the whole project with the riches fineless of several credit cards, came to me and complained that the characters didn't seem to want to follow the plot and had begun to speak their lines reluctantly, walking around like zombies.
This was a problem, he explained, because he had very definite ideas about how he wanted the actors to appear, and he did not want people to think that the fantastic things happening in the film could only happen to zombies. "Even a handpuppet," he said, "can be made to look more compelling than these guys, but I cannot put my hand inside them and waggle them about in a lively fashion; I need to put better lines in their mouths. That's how you can help."
"Me? Help?"
He engaged me to work on the dialogue of the first few scenes. Two weeks later we met again.
"We've walked through your first rewrite," he said. "It seems to work. And� aren't you having anything to eat?"
"Oh no - a coffee is all I have for lunch, usually."
"And the most important thing, in a way� they seem to like your lines. They haven't had trouble with them, haven't had to have them explained, and what's‑her‑name is actually trying to act for a change. Gone beyond her repertoire of pouts."
"Really?" I could hardly credit it.
"Yeah - she's really reaching for something. And I know it's because of your lines. So - keep up the good work. They have cold cuts and stuff; sure you're not hungry?"
I have to admit I was gratified at this praise. At last, I had done something. And yet ...
And yet it's obvious that the more closely something mimics reality, the greater the illusion. Reality is not a thing you can creep up on by degrees. It keeps dashing off ever more irretrievably as you approach. And so in trying to add vraisemblance I have perpetrated a falsehood, possibly even created one of an order that did not exist before.
But maybe that's only my opinion. Maybe my dialogue is unrealistic and not the way people talk at all. Maybe the actors are only acting. Maybe I don't know what is going and am living in a dream world, and the director, in his practical wisdom, grasped at once that I was just the sort of unrealistic person to come up with what he needed. If that is so, then I am all right, and I can spend the money with a good conscience. When I get it.
L i f e� G a m e s
Albert woke up one morning in a sandbox, worrying about the reader of modern poetry and the future of human life. "Mallarm � is said to have considered a poem to be a mystery to which the reader must find a key," he thought. "The only way to find a key to Mallarm� would surely be to devote one's life to an exhaustive study of everything relating to Mallarm�, the minutiae of his period, the complete history of the French language ... and would this sort of approach be useful for discovering the key to my waking up in a sandbox?"
A little later in the day he found himself talking to a short, dynamic man in a sidewalk caf�. "Of course," the man was saying, "you get all your best ideas from other people, but what are other people? I used to be a brain surgeon before I started designing Life Games for the movies. Actually tinkering with someone's brain is interesting, but there is only so much you can do. My life then was nothing but insensate misery, a shambles, a piece of crap. I had failed in every possible way, and to go on living, I thought, was to offer a piece of insolence to God, who, I felt, must have been heartily bored with me." He sighed and stirred his drink as three young men in baseball caps slouched past shouting at each other. "Life Games changed all that. When I started out it was a guest in the land of the living, but advances in computer technology put it firmly on its feet. And it was then that I devised the most common problemata."
"Which are?"
"Stumblestones, and their solutions, to be encountered in the fully developed Life Game. For example, poor communication, bad manners and so forth. The guiding principle was that most people's problems are more insidious than those of a computer game, so why not design some to suit? And the next step was just begging to be taken: the programme should be designed to let the user design the programme. Life is much more like a game, and has greater entertainment value, I reasoned, if you make up the rules as you play. Well, everyone does it. All you need are a few guidelines, which I call topoi, which is to say, familiar points in reality for someone completely absorbed in a game. Pain is a good example. And then I found that any of my Life Games could be selected and used in almost any movie being made. So I have a complete listing, and directors can purchase them as needed. Everything is compatible, and there's at least one for every foreseeable situation in any movie."
"So, describe one," said Albert.
"Sleeping God is pretty popular, if you want something with a spiritual tie‑in that at the same time won't turn people away. I had a few ideas about the hollowness of fruition I wanted to work out, so it's basically you and a god who's only partly there. It works. Then Party Pooper: I used to get so drunk and out of control that people kept throwing me out of places or locking me out or whatever. Some others? Share the Pain, Spare Some Change Chief?, Sorry I Acted Like a Jerk, and (something of a novelty item) United Nations Steering Committee on the Homeless.
"Yes," said Albert, "I think I recognize some of those. You know, you've cleared something up for me, I think. And what of the future, if I may ask?"
"Future?" asked the man, frowning. "What future?"
M e t e o r o l o g i c a l� O b s e r v a t i o n s
"Oh, you shouldn't worry about that," said Phil. I was sitting in the Caf � Tarea waiting for someone to turn up, but people who were not her kept turning up instead. And here was my friend Phil, joining me because I was alone at a prominent table. The swish of conversation went whispering about. "Don't worry about that," said Phil, "it probably slipped her mind."
"Don't worry? Well, hang it all, old man, I do. I think I'll give her a call right now, in fact."
"Suit yourself."
I went back to the payphone, which was near the lavatories, a good place for it. I filled my trembling hand with telephone receiver. On her answering machine a rough male voice, probably that of a rommmate, said: "You're wasting your time, but if you want to leave a message: boop boop boop. Eeeeep!"
"No luck, then?" asked Phil.
"Depends how you look at it. Perhaps I'm better off this way, and it was an extraordinary piece of luck, in fact ‑ " but Phil put up his hand as a barrier.
"No," he said. "That won't work."
I began to brood, which can be dangerous, but in this caf � it quickly became impossible. Phil had begun to read out extracts from some editorial that he found absurd, something about people's conversations never being real exchanges at all, since inevitably one person is talking to himself and the other person is simply observing the speaker talk to himself, or something. I wasn't really listening. At the same time there was a conversation behind me that seemed to be increasing in volume from phrase to phrase:
"Deep down it's bad," someone was saying, "but the surface is wonderful. Amazing." I could hear only one side of this conversation. The first voice, after a pause, readdressed its theme:
"But one starts out with that knowledge, and sees it confirmed a hundred times in the most insignificant ways. The grin. The snort. The hysterical scene with a bread knife."
Then he said: "Of course one would be disturbed if people were really as good as they pretend to be. Of course!"
Then: "Organisation is everything! But only in life."
Then: "As long as a man is reasonably sober once in every twenty‑four hour period ‑ then I think you have nothing to complain about."
I turned around to see what the man looked like. As I did so, he glanced at me but went on speaking: "That would be in the movie," he said reassuringly, "if I had the money. If I had a camera. If I had any gumption. Actually, I don't really know what I would do. I mean, I wouldn't want to do anything, really." And he guiltily sipped his coffee. He was a thin man, small, with very thick horn-rimmed glasses. Hard to say if he was crazy or not, but he was sitting by himself and his remarks were addressed to an empty space.
N e w� W o r k
I was going to undertake a new thing at work in addition to my normal tasks. This new thing was to have considerable significance. It absolutely had to be done, and when it was done its ramifications would be felt everywhere. It would affect any other work done in the future, but it would take just over a month to complete. In fact, it was necessary that the thing be completed in that time, otherwise the possibility of future work would be called into question.
I was excited, almost exhilarated, but I couldn't quite make out what this project was, even though it had engendered ample documentation, and we had enjoyed four or five meetings about the subject. What it was, I suppose� the actual things that would have to be done by me - well, our language is rather poor in terms to describe it, and anyway, that's all a bit of a bore. (I have to confess that I can't really distinguish between a "goal" and an "objective".)However, it gets more interesting: As my four principle bosses contended with one another, I relaxed in a big conference chair, swivelling back and forth almost imperceptibly, as now boss A., now boss B. made a point. I began to feel like a group therapist, letting everyone talk things out, limiting myself to an amused nod whenever I thought healthy progress was being made. Of course, these people could very well be deeply disturbed, unhappy, dangerous to themselves and others; in our line of business it would go unnoticed. They have a habit, bosses do, of free‑associating without ever really straying from a given theme. One word borrows another until a kind of marvellous thingamajig takes place. It was all very entertaining, but at length I found it rather hard to follow. Every explanation seemed to complicate matters. I started out assuming I had the gist of the thing, but I began to feel more and more like a fraud as time went by. It slowly dawned on me that our whole organization itself might be too complicated to discuss, let alone the things we are meant to be doing. Put very baldly, we are inconceivable. There is no explaining us, even with meticulous flow charts, and it is hard to imagine that anyone could have purposely designed us to be as we are. Paths of decision and indecision course up and down the whole structure, double back, race along quicker than thought. Contradictory and disparate orders may often share the same node for the length of time it takes for something almost to happen. And in all of this a man could be lost, cast ashore in a deserted department, and no one would know how to reach him. What if that happened to me! They might stop paying my salary, and I should then be hungry all the time and have to beg for change in the corridors. And that would be no more than I deserve, because I am a cheat and phony, acting as if I know what's going on. It's hard to believe I'm still here. Are my bosses excessively kind, I wonder, or only naive?
In the light of this it seems stupid to ask the boss, "Excuse me, this is all very interesting, but what is it you want me to do?" But I should ask that someday.
O l m a k
The verb olmak requires some attention, even discussion, if that were possible. It means "to become", but since the verb "to be" is defective (the only such verb in the language), the tenses and moods which are wanting are supplied by olmak. For example:
Elma olma � Don't be an apple
Yok oldum � I have ceased to exist
Olan olm 10.0pt;font-family:"WP MultinationalB Roman"'>2 yacak � What is will not be
Olmakta olmu 10.0pt;font-family:"WP MultinationalA Roman"'>� musunuz? � Were you alleged to have been being?
Also note the use of the aorist olur, which can mean "okay".
This seems to take care of the problem. However, the fact remains that in every language the verb "to be" is irregular in some way. This suggests that when it comes to being, we humans are, were, or have been a little unsure of ourselves. We seem unable to face the thing squarely. We have allowed several disparate roots to do the work of one. We have indulged ourselves by emphasizing one aspect of being at the expense of others, as our mood dictates. In our smiling human way we have sought relief in these alternatives, and are even proud of our ability to do so, but we have also fudged the issue to an alarming degree. Yet even more frightening: the verb � lmek means "to die".
It took me quite a while to get used to this. I sometimes still wake up in the middle of the night, feeling very lonely and afraid, almost ready to weep at the tenuous difference in sound which distinguishes these two words.
8N e o l o g y
"Come in, come in, yeah. I wanted to talk to you." Eric, my supervisor, retreated to the fastness of his desk. I closed the door behind me and sat in the visitor's chair. "I'm going to make a record of this meeting," he said, picking up a file folder containing goodness knew what. "Now this latest effort of yours, 'The verb olmak requires some attention,' ... h'mmm ... 'even discussion' ... yes. It's the required length, but� it's not a palindrome, is it?"
"No."
"It's not even close. Not even close. And this other thing, yesterday - it was a palindrome, all right, but it didn't make any sense! Just a bunch of letters that read the same backwards and forwards!"
"Oh."
There was a silence as Eric rested his forehead on his fists and squinted into the middle distance. "What I need to know, is� why do you go on producing this humbug? It looks like you're not even trying. And do you intend to go on producing humbug?"
"Well, it's difficult. And then, sometimes, experimentation - "
"I know it's difficult. That's why we pay you. If it weren't difficult, just anyone could make them up off the top of their head. But it's a hard task that requires great skill and labour, I know. Sure. Constantly spelling words backwards, looking for all possibilities, you know - broken up syllables rearranged. And when we come up with one, it's a cause for celebration. You're familiar with the Department's position paper and the policies that have been extruded in it: we want palindromes that will make the world tremble. Foreigners will sit up and take notice at last, saying, If they can come up with this!" After a moment he got up and came around to sit on the edge of his desk, looking inquisitively at me. Finally he said: "Oh well. Don't worry about it. But try and think of everything we've fought for: The Movement. The Benefits. Progress. Better Homes, Nicer Attitudes, Cleanliness, Healthy Thoughts, New Things, Tolerance, Attendance, Accessibility. There are so many things we have to be grateful for, aren't there? And think of the future: we'll have to struggle even harder, meet the challenge, deny ourselves things, tighten our belts - things are tough all over. We'll all have to make sacrifices." My supervisor fell silent when he realised I was crying. I don't think either of us knew why. I stopped after a few minutes, though, and then I said:
"Anyway - the thing is - did you ever notice how it's all the same? Forwards, backwards, backwards, forwards. You know? Sometimes I worry a little bit. Sometimes I think it would be good to have a definite direction. And then, almost at the same time, I think maybe this idea of direction is superfluous."
"I think what you need is a vacation," said Eric energetically.
"Aha."
H e a d r o o m
Pat was a corpulent man of business who looked as though he had never frowned in his life and would be hard put to do so, even if the part called for it. Whenever he opened his jacket or wallet in search of something, he invariably brought out other things that could well turn out to exercise an equal, if not greater, claim on his attention. He was looking for one of his cards to give to Pierre, whom he had just met in a bar.
"Oh. Look. Might interest you." He handed Pierre a card which belonged to an agent for a security firm, and went on hunting for one of his own. "They specialize in safes," he said.
"I see."
Suddenly Pat stopped and said: "When I was young I used to fantasize� well, maybe not the right word� imagine that a big safe might fall out of a window right onto my head, just like in the cartoons!"
"Everyone worries about that," said Pierre. "Cartoons have a lot to answer for."
"Oh?" said Pat, "I think in this case, as in others, cartoons are just reflecting some universal anxiety. As soon as you saw a big steel safe, I mean, even if you'd never seen the cartoons, you'd naturally wonder what it would be like if it fell on your head. It seems to me, anyway."
"That could be. The massiveness of it. Things just suggest themselves."
"Yes. Or we make them do that. You know. Thinking about it." He gestured around his head as if a palpable force were being generated within. "Anyway, when I thought of this safe falling on my head, I used to imagine that just at the moment of impact� just as it was nudging my head from above, hardly noticeable for the first few nanoseconds� at that moment, I thought, I might get some incredible insight into the nature of the universe." He looked at Pierre for some reaction.
"H'm!"
"I thought, probably God would say to Himself, Well, his head's about to be crushed - wouldn't hurt to impart a few secrets."
"Except it would hurt enormously."
"Yeah, yeah, eventually. I seem to have misplaced my cards. Oh well. And so the same thing with drinking and whatnot. People drink and smoke drugs or whatever because they're excited about finding out something." He put his wallet back in his pocket.
"Do you think so?" asked Pierre.
Pat looked blankly at the jungle of plastic plants suspended from the ceiling, the extravagant lamps, the forgotten Christmas decorations, and said: "Everyone thinks you drink to have a wild time; but I've known really capable, intelligent people, hard workers. In order to discover something, you have to work really hard at it. And we'd go out, and I noticed� the ones that drink seem as if they're trying to do the same thing without working at it. The same sort of zeal and excitement to discover something."
"Research, eh?"
"Yes," said Pat. "Research made easy, and less painful than half a ton of steel falling on your head. But it's only the other kind of research that actually works. In the business world, at least."
Pierre watched him tilt his beer up and suck at it briefly. It was not clear to him exactly how Pat felt about anything he had said, and Pierre felt this to be a good thing.
P u c a
In an access of tenderness, Laura asked Pierre to look after her cat while she was away. "Come over after work," she said, "I'll show you where everything is. And you can meet him!"
"That'll be interesting," said Pierre. "We can get to know each other a bit."
Laura lived in a puzzling flat in a building that had obviously been converted from something else, a school or some other noble institute. The central stairway was much wider than necessary ‑ an imposing, almost monumental ascent to what proved to be comparatively humble, low-ceilinged apartments. Her kitchenette and bedroom were on slightly different levels, and Pierre was at first bewildered to see a pair of windows where he would have expected a further doorway, and vice versa, as if he had been spun around blindfolded before being led in.
"Look!" said Laura, "He's right here. Puca! Puca! Puca, meet Pierre." An amiable‑looking grey cat came out from somewhere, stretching his hind legs and yawning. He checked Pierre's boots without seeming to come to any surmise about him, and quickly followed Laura into the kitchen.
Pierre looked around the room. White walls, big laminated photographs of well‑known people, various African and Oriental knickknacks. A fairly clean wall‑to‑wall carpet. An annoying mobile. A big, black article of furniture housing a television, video player and kindred equipment. Pierre turned his attention to the lone bookcase. He recognised that some of the books, notably those on social and political themes, had belonged to a professor of Laura's circle. For obscure personal reasons, Pierre had once almost convinced their former owner that popular beliefs about DNA were misconceptions, and that, as a matter of scientific fact, DNA, as such, did not exist. It was startling to see the man's moral and spiritual universe crumble about him, if only temporarily.
"Pierre? I'll show you where his stuff is."
Laura spent a good fifteen minutes discussing the location of Puca's foods and medications. She explained exactly how much of each thing he was to be given, and when, and why this had to be so. To clarify all this she had made a small graph, which was attached to the refrigerator by magnets. This required only a cursory exegesis on her part.
"I think that's fairly straightforward," said Pierre eventually. "I think I can manage.""Are you sure? Because it's very important. The welfare of a living creature will be in your hands, and I don't know what I'd do if ‑ "
"Don't worry. I have a cat of my own, remember. And she has no complaints."
"No, it's just ‑ I feel bad about going away at all."
"It's only two days. You can phone any time, if you're worried. Now, the only thing is: I will need the key to get in."
"Oh yes. That's right. I have to give you the key to get in, don't I?"
"Yes."
"I'll have to give you the key."
"Yes ‑ if I'm to get in to feed the cat."
"Yes. Yes."
Pierre tried looking into her eyes to see what might be going on inside her. It appeared to be a kind of moderate despair, like that of a traveller who has discovered that his phrasebook is of little use.
S i l e n t i u m
"And of course," I was saying, "it's probably more comfortable that way and it looks much much better. And it goes very well with the shoes." But I was running out of things to talk about. I could already see that the final scraps of conversation were about to come through with that strained yet loud and desperate noise which accompanies any supply being used up, to be followed by a hollow "H'm! Well now", or even useless attempts at small talk, such as "Anyway ‑ what else have you been up to?" I even looked around the room for ideas, but we had discussed the d�cor of the caf� often enough, and the other customers were so familiar as to be absorbed into their surroundings. Perhaps there was someone out on the street who would excite comment, walking along in eccentric clothing or doing something objectionable, or maybe I would catch a glimpse of someone I knew and be able to recall (or make up) a funny story involving that person. But the few people who passed were wholly unremarkable, almost like architect's representations of the human figures who might frequent a hypothetical building project. In fact, as I looked at these people I could hardly imagine what business they would have out there, or where they might belong. It was as if they had merely been summoned to populate the boulevard for a while. It was hardly any of my business, but after a few minutes the sight of them made me uneasy. They sauntered back and forth palely in the late afternoon light, without direction, sometimes the very same people in the very same pose. They all seemed alike, yet there was no mistaking the nondescript woman in the business suit and the thin, bearded student, who passed the doorway in conversation at least four times, and always acting as though they had only a dim idea of what people really do in the course of a conversation. What if they were zombies? I have seen many films in which the population of a whole town becomes unthinking goons or the lackeys of some willful aliens. This seemed to be the case here. I decided to stop looking out the window and try to come up with something to say based on my recent ordeal.
"Real life," I might have said, "is just about bearable if you don't have time to watch it. The spectacle of real life can only be endured if you are busy taking part in it, and the busier the better. A film that was much like real life would be unwatchable� boring, tasteless, plotless, unfunny, an insult to the intelligence." This, however, sounded so much like a rant that I decided against it.
As my friend reopened her bag to put things away and take other things out, I asked myself: Is it such a misfortune to run out of things to say? It could mean that something real has been said for once. Or that an important matter has been laid to rest for the time being. Or that something has at last been done satisfactorily, if none too well, so that no more needs to be done today.
"Are we finished here?" I asked.
In answer she hastily put one bag, the temporary plastic bag containing recent purchases, into the main bag. Then she stood up and said, "They're shooting a film outside, the one I was telling you about, if you're interested. Remember, I was telling you?"
"I wondered about that. I wondered why everyone looked so odd outside. They're all actors, I suppose?"
"Yeah. Do you mind if we sneak out the back way?""Oh. Okay."
"It's just ‑ you should see them in the canteen. You know. Eating." She shook her head and upper torso to dispel the recollection and we left.
A� M a t t e r� o f� T a s t e
The other morning I saw a great slug on the pavement, as big as that! And I immediately thought, I should tell people about this. The first person I meet, I'll say: I saw a slug as big as that! Then I thought, Wait. People mightn't find that very interesting. They will want to hear more, and there isn't any more. And I don't want to make anything up, saying, for example, that the slug proved to have special powers, or was wearing a t‑shirt and stretch pants, or that it was someone I knew who had been reincarnated.
A little later I met Dr Trezvennik and, running out of things to say, I sketched in the problem.
He remained silent and frowned for a few moments. Then he asked: "What does a slug know? What is its special knowledge?"I considered his question carefully as we negotiated the big, awkward crossroad a little way up from the hospital. This crossroad is the junction of two wide streets and a couple of lesser roads, the whole area pitched just beneath the crest of a hill. Pedestrians and motorists have plenty of time to themselves here. I'm afraid the oddness of his question left me with no choice but to inquire: "What are you talking about?"
"Well, every creature has its special knowledge about human life. They can know a host of other things, also, but about our life each species knows something of its own. And the slug ‑ "
"Can we go back a bit? What ‑ I mean, can you give some examples?"
"I can. The cat, for example, knows the hopelessness of things. The dog knows the hidden side of life and how to accept it. The horse knows that human emotions are feeble but constant. The pigeon knows that people are inclined to be parsimonious, but always worth a try. The deer knows about loneliness, and would like to help out, but knows that no help is possible. Now, the slug is a rather rebarbative creature, and I don't know much about him. What would you say is his special knowledge?"
"I've no idea," I said, but I desperately wanted to come up with an answer before Dr Trezvennik discarded the topic, so I stopped in my tracks to buy time. Dr Trezvennik also stopped and looked at me. I said: "The slug understands the value of technology. That is the special knowledge of the slug." We resumed our course and I elaborated. "Shapeless, insignificant. Hardly an animal at all. So difficult to imagine it would have a thought in its head, if it has a head. The sort of being that could certainly use an awful lot of technology and would be in the best position to appreciate it."
At length Dr Trezvennik said: "That could be. But about the big slug you saw: if you want to tell people about it."
"Yes?"
"You should point out to them that as big as it was, it would seem even bigger if you put it in your mouth." And so we had met our burden of coming up with two good observations about slugs.
R a i n
"I was reading a story," said Albert as they were walking away from the coffee shop in an unexpected summer downpour, "and it was just like this! Two guys, walking away from a coffee shop in an unexpected summer downpour."
"What's that?" asked Pierre.
"A story within a story within a story I was reading."
A bus roared by, and then another. Traffic in general seemed to slow down, confronted with the rain, a new circumstance. Pedestrians either scrambled for shelter or bumped into each other sadly, while here and there a startling umbrella made its appearance.
"So what was the story about� oh. Sorry."
"Sorry. Not looking where I was going. It was about these two guys caught in the rain as they left a coffee shop." They had to wait for a hesitant bus to move out of the way before they could cross the road. "Pedestrians either scrambled for shelter or bumped into each other sadly, while here and there a startling umbrella made its appearance."
"What?"
"In this story I read that I've been telling you about."
"Oh yes. These two guys caught in the rain. I hate getting wet like this."
"Yes. Anyway, they keep bumping into each other� sorry� the way people do when they're hurrying along in the rain, like ping-pong balls. On the way one� of them starts telling the other about a story he just read, which happens to be about two guys walking away from a coffee shop in an unexpected summer downpour. A bus roared by, and then another." Albert brushed some of the water off of his jacket in a useless attempt to stop it soaking through. "Traffic in general seemed to slow down, confronted with the rain, a new circumstance."
"What traffic?" asked Pierre.
"In the story I've been telling you."
"What?" Pierre was concerned about crossing the next street as quickly as possible, watching the lights and the traffic like a man about to steal something.
"They had to wait for a hesitant bus," said Albert, "to move out of the way before they could cross the road."
"Did they now? Just imagine that."
"Yes. And Albert brushed some of the water off his jacket in a useless attempt to stop it soaking through!"
Pierre turned suddenly and said: "Stop. Wait. I've read a story just like this before."
"No, you haven't; you've read something similar, probably, but - "
"No, no, it's the same idea. The very same."
"No, you can't have."
"Yes, I have."
"No. How does it end, then?"
"They get into a big argument. The guy who's listening to the story claims to have read a story just like it before. 'No you haven't,' the other guy says, 'you've read something similar, probably, but -� '"
"Oh no," said Albert triumphantly, "that's not how it ends at all."
A� C o m m u n i q u e r
Phil liked watching television. He enjoyed the antics of the many characters who inhabited this colourful utopia of his, the vampires, the thin girls, the people in noisy punchups. At such times as he was engaged by these visions, the windows of his apartment flickered a blue signal to the world that he was home.
Albert saw the blue signal one night as he was walking past the building. "Phil must be in," he thought. "That solitary captive of the threshold. I haven't seen him in such a while, maybe he'd like to come out." He entered the building and buzzed.
When Phil opened the door to him upstairs he looked grey and subdued. "Ah," he said. "There you are. Come in, come in. Sorry for the, sorry for the ..." He removed an empty pretzel bag from the coffee table and put it on the floor. He appeared to be thinking about doing something with the loaded ashtray, but nothing constructive suggested itself. "Man," he muttered, "I'm baked."
"It is a bit hot in here," said Albert, "I thought you might want to go for a drink or something."
Phil lowered himself into an armchair in front of the television and said: "Yeah. We could do that."
"Of course, if you're ... what's on? Anything?"
By way of reply Phil flipped through several channels: Wrestling. A hospital drama. An old orange and red musical. World War Two footage of aircraft strafing something. Golfers. Two men in matching orange blazers chuckling. A businessman with indigestion. Many statesmen standing on a lawn. A big steaming hamburger oozing sauce. Figure skating. A happy family eating desserts. A teenage girl screaming. A car exploding. Then the chart showing what was on all the channels. They watched this in silence for some twenty minutes, and Phil became slightly agitated. Finally he asked:
"What's that, 'À communiquer'? I think I've seen it before."
"Actually, it means 'To be announced'. They don't know what's on yet."
Phil turned back to the musical, which they watched attentively but without sound. A great age passed.
When it was almost over Phil restored the sound and turned to a pair of men in matching blue blazers discussing football. Albert awoke with a start.
"Goodness, look at the time," he said. "Almost twelve. I guess I'd better be off." He stood up and put on his coat.
Phil said nothing, but the television was saying "more completed passes than he's had all season!" And eventually Phil said: "Yeah, you too. Have a good day, man."
T o x i c� C o n s t i t u e n t s� ( A v e r a g e )
I woke up one morning at work to find myself attending a meeting. At the best of times it is difficult to get much sleep while at work, so I was by no means put out when my slumbers were disturbed by the strangely insistent voice of Eric, my supervisor. He was presumably finishing some very funny anecdote:
"And the long and short of it was," he said, "we managed to outlunch the man!" This was met with joyful, raucous laughter from all sides, prolonged and exuberant, as if everyone had just returned from a month's sojourn in a monastery where no frivolity was allowed. As the laughter finally turned into coughs and pleasurable sighs, Eric said: "Anyhoo, enough about that. We're really here to listen to Allan. Allan?"
A balding man with a ginger beard stood up and moved toward a graph mounted on a tripod, smiling indulgently as he did so. I decided to listen carefully.
"First let me thank you for opportunity to briefly outline project," he said. "Eric. Amanda. Now. If you look at graph, you'll see� here� this represents number of employees in management caste, and here� support staff caste. Formula, which we speak to in handout, pages one to sixteen, calls for dividing up whole unit in this way. And you see here how ten criteria, hammered out on pages twenty-two to twenty-eight, are evaluated. Now. Point of whole exercise is to reinforce pattern of job descriptions to fit formula, which you see here." What I could see was a bright dot of scarlet somewhere in the dusk of a cedar wood, and at first I thought it must be some fantastically poisonous mushroom, or maybe just a plastic shell casing. But I found, among the dusty ribs and detritus of trees and vain attempts at undergrowth, that it was a tiny rarity of a halfopened flower. I sat down nearby to admire and possibly encourage it in the face of these trunks, needles and cold fungi, the very least one can do. I woke up just as our speaker was saying: "It's pretty self-explanatory. And I suppose, best thing for me to do is ask staff if they would have any questions."
"Well," said Eric, "thank you Allan. I'm sure there's lots for us to mull over in the coming months. Any comments?" As I expected, he turned to me with the polite expression he uses when about to break open a fresh budget of reproaches. "Do you have a question?" he asked.
"Not a question, really," I said, "it's a small thing, and I'm not sure how relevant it is to anything, but I notice you seem to have dispensed with the word 'the'. I can't quite see why that would be, or what effect it will have on us in the coming months."
Eric turned to our speaker as if I stank of cheap whiskey and said: "Well, our friend here, I'm afraid - "
"No," said Allan, "That's quite all right." He looked at me squarely and said: "The the the, the the the the the the, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the: The the the the the the the the the the the (the the the the the) the the the the 'the the the' the the the the the the the the the. Now do you get it?" Our speaker looked at Eric for acknowledgement of his efficiency, and Eric beamed with pride.
Later on I wondered whether it was better to go around and apologize, or to say nothing in hopes that the whole thing would blow over.
I n v i s i b l e
Dr Trezvennik invited me out for a walk one bright afternoon, as a practical part of his injunction against wasting time in caf�s. We ascended a green hill that rose out of a series of playgrounds and segued into a park. It was early Spring and the ground was still wet, but a softness in the air made one almost want to sit down anyway. In weather like this it is impossible not to see things with new eyes. I looked back to see that we had come a long way, and the street that led to all the caf�s wandered uphill and lost itself in remote, shiny traffic.
Dr Trezvennik said: "The world is like a big train station. Lots of people are waiting to get on a train. Sometimes people miss each other, who are supposed to meet each other. Sometimes they can lose their baggage. Do you say 'luggage' or 'baggage'?"
"Well, if you can bag it, it's baggage. But if you have to lug it, it's luggage."
Dr Trezvennik looked at me and said: "We are close to something interesting. Let's go there." I followed him through the park to a modern apartment building, which we entered by a green basement door at the back. Here we went down a corridor past utility rooms and the odd basement apartment until we reached a door just beyond the elevators. "A friend of mine," said Dr Trezvennik, opening the door with several keys, "He keeps in here an art gallery of his own works. You'll see. Just..." He felt for a light switch and motioned me in.
Despite the overhead pipes and the uncompromising cement floor which give an industrial feel to any basement apartment, this place was a delight. It was newly painted and free of clutter, and from the entrance I was intrigued by the several rows of framed pictures I could already see on every wall. These proved to be exceedingly meticulous pen and ink drawings of shapes and objects against atmospheric backgrounds, which might have been either overcast skies or indifferently-lit interiors. I turned to reexamine the first series of these on the wall nearest the door. Here was a man's face, seemingly hewn from stone with a fussy attention to detail that argued against the man's vacant expression. Here was a vessel, possibly a teapot, crammed into a very small room replete with other lumber. Here was a blob of some kind, suspended before an evening sky. Here was a small steam locomotive, viewed from above, entering a biscuit box in the middle of a desert.
"They're odd," I said, "but odder still, he exhibits them in a basement."
"They're not odd," said Dr Trezvennik, "they're very accurate drawings of irretrievably lost things, interspersed with things that might have been. It's very sad and instructive. And it seems to me� that this is the nicest place for exhibiting them." And here Dr Trezvennik gave in to one of his rare, helpless, generous smiles.
T h e� W o r k s
He had just written the words "I should compare God to" when he died of a stroke, and everyone was rather curious about this. Hardly anyone read his books any more, and he had become wonderfully neglected, and now this tantalizing fragment. What was he going to compare God to? All of a sudden it became very important. Forget about the things he wrote, what was he about to say? What was this thing he left unsaid? That blank space was the most interesting thing he had come up with.
I, too, was intrigued. As a student I had pretended to read him, even though the very mention of his name used to plunge me into a kind of hypnosis, and when I found the time to skim through the odd book of his it made me think of an old man taking his mind out and looking at it. I was an indifferent student, however. Once on the way to a lecture I was walking in the gutter because my friends were taking up the available space, and we felt for some reason that we had to walk abreast. I stopped, scooped up an armload of wet leaves and said: "I'm going to write my thesis on this." But in fact I wrote nothing.
A few years later there was an article about him in the newspaper. It rekindled my interest, and that very week I discovered, in a dark bookstore, a stained but complete set of his Erzerum Trilogy. Since I had given up on studying I began to read the books in earnest. That evening I finished the first volume and made a good start on the second, planning to take it with me to work and everywhere else. Within a few days I was back at the bookstore, asking the old maniac who ran it if he had any more. He laughed haughtily, jabbered about his acquisitions and so on, and finally produced the travel books (Visitor to the Tagus and Cretan Days). He also had on hand a dull collection of essays from his political period. "Oh ‑ I don't really need that," I said, but he insisted: "No, no, no, no, take it, it's a freebie." I did manage to read the political essays eventually, and they were pretty dull. I was in the midst of the most tedious of them one lunch time when a friend came by and sat down. We started talking about things to do on the weekend, since we were both often at a loose end. My friend said:
"I see they've made a film of some novel, The Wafer, it's supposed ‑ "
"The Wafer! Not by ______?!"
"Yeah, yeah, that's the guy, or some name like that ‑ ______, or ______, maybe. Why, do you know him?"
"Almost entirely!"
This was true. I was becoming familiar with his world. When I finally saw the movie based on The Wafer, I had to walk out after twenty minutes, because the committee that put it together had discarded the writer's world and replaced it with a normal one, and this is very frustrating for the reader.
A month later I heard that he had died. Suddenly I thought: He left something out, or never got around to it. I've read everything he has written, and now I'm lost. I imagined him on his deathbed shortly after the stroke, his hand quivering at his side. Supposing I had been there? I should have put a pen in his hand and slid a manila envelope underneath it to see what the next words would be.
Y o u� a n d� Y o u
Supposing everything you did were to be photographed constantly through some natural process. You clean your teeth, and photographs of you doing so turn up everywhere. You prepare for sleep, and the next morning thousands of shots of you sleeping litter the streets outside. And the same for everything you do, at all times, no matter what. These photographs would accumulate in the gutters and have to be swept up every day like so many dead leaves. That could be a job for someone, sweeping up mounds of photographs of you in all your states and shoveling them into the back of a truck to be taken away.
As a matter of fact, just walking around town is almost the same thing: it's as if one were distributing millions of photographs of oneself walking around town. I imagine you would get used to it after a while, taking the hardened professional's view. Anyway, who are you? I've seen you around. We've all seen you around. We may be unaware of it, but we have. Most of us, to be honest, have hardly given you a second glance, so don't get excited.
What would be exciting is if someone bent down, selected the best pictures of you from the gutter, and said: "Oh yes, this has something. Yes, this is really, really good. This ‑ and, uh ‑ this one. We'll run them in our next issue, it's just the look we're after." That would be exciting.What would be scary is if someone was actually interested in all your pictures, going down to the dump and collecting every extant photograph of you in order to paper his pathetic walls with them. That would be scary.
Fortunately, the chances of either of these things happening are very, very slim.P a r t i e s
People who wear glasses should never cry, thought Mike. It's that much more pathetic. "Look," he said to the American salesman, who was discreetly blowing his nose into a cocktail napkin, "how about a drink?"
"Fine, fine. Sorry about this."
"Don't worry," said Mike, signalling to the waitress.
"Ahem. You know, it's partly the weather. No offense, but winters up here can be a bit depressing." He put his glasses back on.
"I'm with you there," said Mike. "And on top of that, the holiday season. I always get bummed out. And it gets worse." From where they were sitting he could see the top of the miniature mountain range of dirty ice that was heaped up on the pavement outside. Fitful showers of rain could just be detected in the immediate glare of any bright lights in the street.
After they had tried their drinks, the American salesman said: "I was thinking about something very pleasant, actually. I used to know this man who was a diplomat, and giving parties was one of the things he did. But at each party he gave, without exception, someone would die. And they were wonderful parties, you'd meet all sorts of interesting people. Artists, scientists, generals, ladies and gentlemen of accomplishment and refinement. Very cultured affairs. As I say, somebody would always die. He tried to give fewer parties, but that didn't seem to make any difference. And oddly enough, they were no less popular for that. No one ever refused an invite, I believe I am correct in saying. I always went. I was of two minds about going, of course, because on the one hand I didn't want to be the person who died, and on the other hand there is an undeniable fascination at work here. Who's going to get it? You'd be sipping your drink and wondering, looking around. I used to stand there with sweaty palms. And each time, without fail� I mean, one man drank himself to death right there, at the one party, which is odd. Someone was run over in the big, circular driveway. Someone fell downstairs and broke his neck. Then there were strokes and any number of heart attacks. Somebody shot someone, I think that sort of thing happened only once. The fellow said, 'I shot him because he was always grumbling.' They were the best of friends, apparently. Then a young man committed suicide in one of the upstairs rooms, which almost didn't count. They found a note saying 'All I have left is my sense of humour, and I'm taking that with me.' And of course there was never more than one death to a party, because things would pretty much wind down after someone had died. Although sometimes a bunch of us would go to some after-hours place later. You know, to have a sort of post-mortem. Heh-heh. Yeah, you'd meet wonderful, absolutely wonderful people there. I met the most beautiful woman I have ever seen there, a kind, graceful woman with a gentle heart."
He grew reminiscent for a moment, and Mike decided to look around the bar in order to leave him to his nostalgia briefly. There didn't appear to be anyone interesting in the bar, nor, given the lateness of the hour, was anyone likely to turn up. When he returned the American salesman said:
"Yes, interesting people. Those were the days. Anyway, I won't bore you with - "
"Wait a minute. What about this woman?"
"Mike, I knew I could rely on you. That woman. There has never been a woman like her before or since. Unfortunately, I never got to know her very well, didn't even catch her name. Kind of missed out there. Having too much fun at those damn parties, I guess.
F o r� a� N e w� V e g e t a b l e
What was wanted was something containing significant amounts of potassium, niacin, and the vitamin b complex; something that would grow in the earth from seed and come to maturity within a reasonable time; and finally -� a desirable but by no means indispensable quality - something that would be pleasant to eat. This last thing was sort of negotiable, up to a point.
A great deal was said about root systems, much of it rather tedious. Apparently this is very important, the design team having been told that steps should be taken to avoid another carrot-potato fiasco. The root itself would therefore be fibrous; not, indeed, uneatable, but unlikely to be mistaken as a useful part of the plant.
What should it look like? Is that important? I think it is. Probably it shouldn't be repulsive, because people are going to eat it. With any luck. And then ...
I have to stop here and reminisce about earlier attempts to come up with a new vegetable.
I recall in particular an experimental sort of ballon d'essai which turned out to have many of the nutritional qualities planned. It was in fact dubbed "Ballon d'Essai", in honour of the team's Francophone colleagues. It was a small knob, rather like an onion, except it grew above ground. The taste was a little overpowering, and one could comfortably eat it only after it had been soaked overnight, boiled for three hours, julienned and deep fried. And even then it needed a lot of ketchup.
"Why not," I can hear someone ask, "merely use some popular vegetable as a template? That would be easier."
People sometimes forget that we are not in the business of coming up with a new version of some existing vegetable. That is not what we are in the business of doing. There is no point in producing an alternative carrot for people who are just a little tired of the carrots they have been getting. We are also not in the business of improving an existing vegetable, or variety thereof. That is an entirely different field of research, and, if I may say so, a comparatively frivolous one. (Sorry if I seem a little peevish, but I have had to explain this many times.)
A continual problem: moisture. There always seems to be too much or too little. This proved disastrous when we were working with a thin-skinned prototype. Things looked very bad for a while. At one point the chief came in and asked sharply: "Doesn't anyone here know anything about suction and orifices?" I stood up and said:
"Sir, for several years I concentrated on suction and orifices, to the exclusion of all else." He looked at me with renewed admiration. When things aren't working out everybody gets a little edgy, and several members of the team have already walked away from the project or had to be replaced. After every outburst the chief would try to smooth things over, realising that he is dealing with a volatile, unpredictable but undoubtedly talented group of technicians. At such times he talks amusingly of spongy masses. This reveals him to be an idealist of the first order.
At home I make drawings of impossible, airy plants� very beautiful, as I think, but quite impractical. I have to admit that this is my main fascination, even though it is hardly a contribution that we can use. We have been through so much and seen so many failures that it seems ridiculous to give up now.
E x i l e
My apartment has never been very big. A space may seem big or small, depending on what's in it, or what you do there, and looking at the two rooms I can't conceive of anything you would want to add. There is exactly enough room for me to pace around in an L-shaped loop, taking roughly fourteen steps, starting in the kitchenette near the door, making a hard right immediately after the threshold of the sitting-room, and turning around just short of the table next to the windows for the return trip. During this diversion the sitting-room feels particularly adequate, as if designed expressly for pacing around in an L-shaped loop. It looks considerably larger if viewed from the threshold, when one can only surmise the extent of the wall on the far side: a tantalizing illusion of possibly infinite space.
As fond as I am of my cat, I have to admit that her presence there reduces the available space somewhat. Of course she could say the same of me. I say it of myself. Many an evening I choose to spend in caf � s or wherever, if only because my being at home makes the place feel crowded. In fact when I am not at home the apartment is for all intents and purposes no smaller than the palace at Versailles.
One can only guess at the things that might happen at my place when I am out. It could be (could be, hypothetically) the scene of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, or the Diet of Worms. It could be the place where M. I. Kalinin (1875-1946) lived and worked. It could be the place where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep. It could be the place where the fishermen gather.
That's one of the reasons I'm not at home much. The excitement!
S p a c e
How about this for a story: A space traveller, rocketing out to a distant galaxy for pure interest's sake, and not out of some perverse desire to please people or discover something, found himself getting way off course. There were odd shapes out there and things that no one had ever seen before. He was getting so far away now that it was no longer funny. And then, oddly enough, he managed to find a planet not unlike Earth, in fact very much like it. Safely landed in some forested area, he made his way to the nearest town. This too looked quite a bit like his hometown; with inspiration he decided to get on a bus which would, in theory, (in theory, mind) take him past the building analogous to his own back on Earth.
The busride took a little longer than usual, but otherwise its route seemed to be the same. And there it was! An apartment building exactly like his own. A bird flew by, dipping in front of his windows. One of the last warm evenings in August. He hurried up the steps and tried the key - well, no, you could hardly expect it to fit, that would be silly - but it did! No mistake. Imagine that, you travel a kazillion miles through space to find a lock that happens to fit your key. What are the odds? He went into the apartment. No one there. Everything just as he had left it. At that moment the telephone rang. He answered it.
A voice said, "Where have you been? It's just impossible to get hold of you!"
The End