Authors: Donald Barthelme
“IT is marvelous,” Snow White said to herself. “When the water falls on my tender
back. The white meat there. Give me the needle spray. First the hot, and then the
cold. A thousand tiny points of perturbation. More perturbation! And who is it with
me, here in the shower? It is Clem. The approach is Clem’s, and the technique, or
lack of it, is Clem, Clem, Clem. And Hubert waits outside, on the other side of the
shower curtain, and Henry in the hall, before the closed door, and Edward is sitting
downstairs, in front of the television, waiting. But what of Bill? Why is it that
Bill, the leader, has not tapped at my shower-stall door, in recent weeks? Probably
because of his new reluctance to be touched. That must be it. Clem you are down-right
anti-erotic, in those blue jeans and chaps! Artificial insemination would be more
interesting. And why are there no in-flight movies in shower stalls, as there are
in commercial aircraft? Why can’t I watch Ignace Paderewski in
Moonlight Sonata
, through a fine mist? That was a picture. And he was president of Poland, too. That
must have been interesting. Everything in life is interesting except Clem’s idea of
sexual congress, his Western confusion between the concept, ‘pleasure,’ and the concept,
‘increasing the size of the herd.’ But the water on my back is interesting. It is
more than interesting. Marvelous is the word for it.”
THERE were some straw flowers there. Decor. And somebody had said something we hadn’t
heard, but Dan was very excited. “I praise fruit and hold flowers in disdain,” Apollinaire
said, and we contrasted that with what LaGuardia had said. Then Bill said something:
“Torch in the face.” He was very drunk. Other people said other things. I smoked an
Old Gold cigarette. It is always better when everybody is calm, but calm does not
come every day. Lamps are calm. The Secretary of State is calm. Each day just goes
so fast, begins and ends. The poignant part came when Edward began to say what everybody
already knew about him. “After I read the book, I—” “Don’t say that Edward,” Kevin
said. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret later.” Bill put a big black bandage over
Edward’s mouth, and Clem took off all his clothes. I smoked an Old Gold cigarette,
the same one I had been smoking before. There was still some of it left because I
had put it down without finishing it. Alicia showed us her pornographic pastry. Some
things aren’t poignant at all and that pornographic pastry is one of them. Bill was
trying to keep the tiredness off his face. I wanted to get out of this talk and look
at the window. But Bill had something else to say, and he wasn’t going to leave until
he had said it, I could see that. “Well it is a pleasure to please her, when human
ingenuity can manage it,
but the whole thing is just trembling on the edge of monotony, after several years.
And yet . . . I am fond of her. Yes, I am. For when sexual pleasure is had, it makes
you fond, in a strange way, of the other one, the one with whom you are having it.”
SNOW WHITE was cleaning. “Book lice do not bite people,” she said to herself. She
sprayed the books with a five-percent solution of DDT. Then she dusted them with the
dusting brush of the vacuum cleaner. She did not bang the books together, for that
injures the bindings. Then she oiled the bindings with neat’s-foot oil, applying the
oil with the palm of her hand and with her fingers. Then she mended some torn pages
using strips cut from rice paper. She ironed some rumpled pages with a warm iron.
Fresh molds were wiped off the bindings with a clean soft cloth slightly dampened
with sherry. Then she hung a bag containing paradichlorobenzene in the book case,
to inhibit mildew. Then Snow White cleaned the gas range. She removed the pans beneath
the burners and grates and washed them thoroughly in hot suds. Then she rinsed them
in clear water and dried them with paper towels. Using washing soda and a stiff brush,
she cleaned the burners, paying particular attention to the gas orifices, through
which the gas flows. She cleaned out the ports with a hairpin, rinsed them thoroughly
and dried them with paper towels. Then she returned the drip tray, the burners and
grates to their proper positions and lit each burner to make sure it was working.
Then she washed the inside of the broiler compartment with a cloth wrung out in
warm suds, with just a bit of ammonia to help cut the grease. Then she rinsed the
broiler compartment with a cloth wrung out in clear water and dried it with paper
towels. The pan and rack of the broiler were done in the same way. Then Snow White
cleaned the oven using steel wool on the tough spots. Then she rinsed the inside of
the oven with a cloth wrung out in clear water and dried it with paper towels. Then,
“piano care.”
WHAT SNOW WHITE REMEMBERS:
THE HUNTSMAN
THE FOREST
THE STEAMING KNIFE
“I WAS fair once,” Jane said. “I was the fairest of them all. Men came from miles
around simply to be in my power. But those days are gone. Those better days. Now I
cultivate my malice. It is a cultivated malice, not the pale natural malice we knew,
when the world was young. I grow more witchlike as the hazy days imperceptibly meld
into one another, and the musky months sink into memory as into a slough, sump, or
slime. But I have my malice. I have that. I have even invented new varieties of malice,
that men have not seen before now. Were it not for the fact that I am the sleepie
of Hogo de Bergerac, I would be
total malice
. But I am redeemed by this hopeless love, which places me along the human continuum,
still. Even Hogo is, I think, chiefly enamored of my malice, that artful, richly formed
and softly poisonous network of growths. He luxuriates in the pain potential I am
surrounded by. I think I will just sit here on this porch swing, now, swinging gently
in the moist morning, and remember ‘better days.’ Then a cup of Chinese-restaurant
tea at 10 a.m. Then, back into the swing for more ‘better days.’ Yes, that would be
a pleasant way to spend the forenoon.”
AT the horror show Hubert put his hand in Snow White’s lap. A shy and tentative gesture.
She let it lay there. It was warm there; that is where the vulva is. And we had brought
a thermos of glittering Gibsons, to make us happy insofar as possible. Hubert remembered
the Trout Amandine he had had the day the ball was sticking to Kevin’s leg. It had
been extremely tasty, that trout. And Hubert remembered the conversation in which
he had said that God was cruel, and someone else had said vague, and they had pulled
the horse off the road, and then they had seen a Polish picture. But this picture
was better than that one, allowing for the fact that we had experienced that one in
translation, and not in the naked Polish. Snow White is agitated. She is worried about
something called her “reputation.” What will people think, why have we allowed her
to become a public scandal, we must not be seen in public
en famille
, no one believes that she is simply a housekeeper, etc. etc. These concerns are ludicrous.
No one cares. When she is informed that our establishment has excited no special interest
in the neighborhood, she is bitterly disappointed. She sulks in her room, reading
Teilhard de Chardin and thinking. “My suffering is authentic enough but it has a kind
of low-grade concrete-block quality. The seven of them only add up to the equivalent
of about two
real men
, as we know them from the films and from our childhood, when there were giants on
the earth. It is possible of course that there are no more
real men
here, on this ball of half-truths, the earth. That would be a disappointment. One
would have to content oneself with the subtle falsity of color films of unhappy love
affairs, made in France, with a Mozart score. That would be difficult.”
Miseries and complaints of Snow White:
“I am tired of being just a horsewife!”
DEAR MR. QUISTGAARD:
Although you do not know me my name is Jane. I have seized your name from the telephone
book in an attempt to enmesh you in my concerns. We suffer today I believe from a
lack of connection with each other. That is common knowledge, so common in fact, that
it may not even be true. It may be that we are overconnected, for all I know. However
I am acting on the first assumption, that we are underconnected, and thus have flung
you these lines, which you may grasp or let fall as you will. But I feel that if you
neglect them, you will suffer for it. That is merely my private opinion. No police
power supports it. I have no means of punishing you, Mr. Quistgaard, for not listening,
for having a closed heart. There is no punishment for that, in our society. Not yet.
But to the point. You and I, Mr. Quistgaard, are not in the same universe of discourse.
You may not have been aware of it previously, but the fact of the matter is, that
we are not. We exist in different universes of discourse. Now it may have appeared
to you, prior to your receipt of this letter, that the universe of discourse in which
you existed, and puttered about, was in all ways adequate and satisfactory. It may
never have crossed your mind to think that other universes of discourse
distinct from your own existed, with people in them, discoursing. You may have, in
a commonsense way, regarded your own u. of d. as a plenum, filled to the brim with
discourse. You may have felt that what already existed was a sufficiency. People like
you often do. That is certainly one way of regarding it, if fat self-satisfied complacency
is your aim. But I say unto you, Mr. Quistgaard, that even a plenum can leak. Even
a plenum,
cher maître
, can be penetrated. New things can rush into your plenum displacing old things, things
that were formerly there. No man’s plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl
of God’s will. Consider then your situation
now
. You are sitting there in your house on Neat Street, with your fine dog, doubtless,
and your handsome wife and tall brown sons, conceivably, and who knows with your gun-colored
Plymouth Fury in the driveway, and opinions passing back and forth, about whether
the Grange should build a new meeting hall or not, whether the children should become
Thomists or not, whether the pump needs more cup grease or not. A comfortable American
scene.
But I, Jane Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, am in possession of your telephone number, Mr.
Quistgaard
. Think what that means. It means that at any moment I can pierce your plenum with
a single telephone call, simply by dialing 989-7777. You are correct, Mr. Quistgaard,
in seeing this as a threatening situation. The moment I inject discourse from my u.
of d. into your u. of d., the yourness of yours is diluted. The more I inject, the
more you dilute. Soon you will be presiding over an empty plenum, or rather, since
that is a contradiction in terms, over a former plenum, in terms of yourness. You
are, essentially, in my power. I suggest an unlisted number.
Yours faithfully,
J
ANE
PAUL: A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY
“IS there someplace I can put this?” Paul asked indicating the large parcel he held
in his arms. “It is a new thing I just finished today, still a little wet I’m afraid.”
He wiped his hands which were covered with emulsions on his trousers. “I’ll just lean
it up against your wall for a moment.” Paul leaned the new thing up against our wall
for a moment. The new thing, a dirty great banality in white, poor-white and off-white,
leaned up against the wall. “Interesting,” we said. “It’s poor,” Snow White said.
“Poor, poor.” “Yes,” Paul said, “one of my poorer things I think.” “Not so poor of
course as yesterday’s, poorer on the other hand than some,” she said. “Yes,” Paul
said, “it has some of the qualities of poorness.” “Especially poor in the lower left-hand
corner,” she said. “Yes,” Paul said, “I would go so far as to hurl it into the marketplace.”
“They’re getting poorer,” she said. “Poorer and poorer,” Paul said with satisfaction,
“descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever
been.” “I find it extremely interesting as a social phenomenon,” Snow White said,
“to note that during the height of what is variously called, abstract expressionism,
action painting and so forth, when most artists were grouped together in a school,
you have persisted in an image alone. That, I find—and I think it has been described
as hard-edge painting,
is an apt description, although it leaves out a lot, but I find it very interesting
that in the last few years there is a tremendous new surge of work being done in the
hard-edge image. I don’t know if you want to comment on that, but I find it extremely
interesting that you, who have always been sure of yourself and your image, were one
of the earliest, almost founders of that school, if you can even call it a school.”
“I have always been sure of myself and my image,” Paul said. “Sublimely poor,” she
murmured. “Wall-paper,” he said. They kissed. We trudged to bed then singing the to-bed
song heigh-ho. She was lying there in her black vinyl pajamas. “He is certainly a
well-integrated personality, Paul,” she said. “Yes,” we said. “He makes contact, you
must grant him that.” “Yes,” we said. “A beautiful human being.” “Carrying the mace
is a bit much, perhaps,” we said. “We are fortunate to have him in our country,” she
concluded.
THEN we went over to Paul’s place and took the typewriter. Then the problem was to
find somebody to sell it to. It was a fine Olivetti 22, that typewriter, and the typewriter
girls put it under their skirts. Then George wanted to write something on it while
it was under their skirts. I think he just wanted to get under there, because he likes
Amelia’s legs. He is always looking at them and patting them and thrusting his hand
between them. “What are you going to write under there, George?” “I thought perhaps
some automatic writing, because one can’t see so well under here with the light being
strangled by the thick wool, and I touch-type well enough, but I can’t see to think,
so I thought that . . .” “Well we can’t sell this typewriter if you’re typing on it
under Amelia’s legs, so come out of there. And bring the carbon paper too because
the carbon paper makes black smudges on Amelia’s legs and she doesn’t want that. Not
now.” We all had our hands on the typewriter when it emerged because it had been in
that pure grotto, Paul’s place, and tomorrow we are going to go there again and take
the elevator cage this time, so that he can’t come down into the street any more,
with his pretensions.