Authors: Donald Barthelme
HENRY had unlocked the locks on the bar and we were all drinking. It was time for
a situation report, we felt. “She still sits there in the window, dangling down her
long black hair black as ebony. The crowds have thinned somewhat. Our letters have
been returned unopened. The shower-curtain initiative has not produced notable results.
She is, I would say, aware of it, but has not reacted either positively or negatively.
We have asked an expert in to assess it as to timbre, pitch, mood and key. He should
be here tomorrow. To make sure we have got the
right sort
of shower curtain. We have returned the red towels to Bloomingdale’s.” At this point
everybody looked at Dan, who vomited. “Bill’s yellow crêpe-paper pajamas have been
taken away from him and burned. He ruined that night for all of us, you know that.”
At this point everybody looked at Bill, who was absent. He was tending the vats. “Bill’s
new brown monkscloth pajamas, made for him by Paul, should be here next month. The
grade of pork ears we are using in the Baby Ding Sam Dew is not capable of meeting
U.S. Govt. standards, or indeed, any standards. Our man in Hong Kong assures us however
that the next shipment will be superior. Sales nationwide are brisk, brisk, brisk.
Texas Instruments is down four points. Control Data is up four points. The pound is
weakening. The cow is calving. The cactus wants watering.
The new building is abuilding with leases covering 45 percent of the rentable space
already in hand. The weather tomorrow, fair and warmer.”
“HELLO? Is this Hogo de Bergerac?” “Yes this is Hogo de Bergerac.” “Well this is the
Internal Revenue Service, Baltimore Office, Broat. We have your letter here in which
you offer to inform on Bill, Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem and Dan for 17 percent
of the monies collected. We deeply appreciate your getting in touch with us but I
must tell you that we pay only eight percent.” “
Eight percent!
” “Yes I’m sorry I know that’s low as these things go around the world and in previous
years we have paid more, but it’s standard now and if we paid you 17 percent all the
other informers would demand the same. You can imagine.” “
Eight percent!
” “Yes, well, but of course there’s patriotism involved too isn’t there.” “
Eight percent!
That’s damned little for doing such a vile and dishonorable thing, damned little.”
“Yes I know but what is the nature of your information? You’re aware of course that
it’s not enough just to allege. You have to be able to provide supportive evidence
or at least sufficient material to lead to a strong case and ultimately conviction
and/or collection.” “Eight percent!” “I might also point out that it is your duty
as an American citizen to come forward with this information if you have it.” “Eight
percent, eight percent.” “Did you hear me? I said it was your duty as an American—”
“I am not an American citizen. I am under Panamanian registry.
So just forget my duty as an American citizen. Eight percent. No, I don’t think I’m
talking to you any more. There would be some pleasure in doing the thing just for
the pure vileness of it, but there is more pleasure in spitting on your eight percent.
Goodbye, Baltimore. Eight percent. Goodnight, Baltimore, and bad cess to you.”
STANDING in the rotten bathroom, we regarded the new shower curtain. It had two colors,
a red and a yellow. The red the red of red cabbage, the yellow the yellow of yellow
beans. It had two figures, a kind of schematic peahen, a kind of schematic vase. These
repeated, in the manner of wallpaper. There were eight of us standing there in the
rotten bathroom, including the visitor. The visitor who had said that it was the best-looking
shower curtain in town. Ho ho. That was a chiller. We had known that it was adequate.
We had known that it was nice. We had even known that it was “splendid” more or less.
That was the idea, that it be “splendid.” But we had not known that it was the best-looking
shower curtain in town. That we had not known. We looked at the shower curtain with
new eyes, or rather, saw it in a new light, the light of the esthetician’s remark.
The visitor was an esthetician, a professor of esthetics. Even those of us by no means
a minority who considered esthetics the least ballsy of the several areas of inquiry
subsumed under the term, philosophical thought, were affected by the esthetician’s
remark. First because it had as subject something that was ours, there in the rotten
bathroom, on little silver rings, and second because the speaker was a professor of
esthetics, even if there is nothing in it, esthetics, as is likely. As we stood there
shoulder to
shoulder in the rotten bathroom, the eight of us, a sort of hunger arose, to know
if it was true, what he had said. Felt I daresay by all of us, including the esthetician.
He must be curious sometimes to know if it is true, what he is saying. We swayed,
momentarily, there in the rotten bathroom, in the grip of the hunger. A thousand problems
flashed through our mind. How could we determine if it was true, what he had said?
Our city, the arena of the proposition, is not large but on the other hand not small,
in excess of a hundred thousand souls swelter here awaiting the Last Day and God’s
mercy. A census of shower curtains was possible but to conduct it we would be forced
to neglect the vats and that is something we have sworn never to do, neglect the vats.
And to conduct it we would be forced to leave the buildings unwashed, and that is
something else we have sworn never to do, leave the buildings unwashed. And granting
we managed to gain access to the rotten bathrooms of all hundred thousand souls who
swelter here, by what standards were the hundred thousand shower curtains hanging
there, on little silver rings, to be assessed? A shower-curtain scale could be constructed
with the aid of the professor of esthetics, or with the aid of shower-curtain critics
recruited from the curtaining journals, if there are such critics and such journals,
I do not
doubt it. But even with these preliminary accomplishments, empanelment of shower-curtain
critics, from far and near, census of shower-curtain-hanging homes, the quarter-finals,
the semi-finals, the finals, we would not be out of the woods yet. For would the decision,
broadcast over all media, published throughout the land, not be taken as diddled,
in view of the fact that the Olympiad was staged by us, backers of the no doubt winning
shower curtain? There was another solution: destruction of the esthetician, who had
made the original remark. This thought sighed amongst us, seven heads turned as one
to regard the eighth, that of the esthetician, sweating in his velvet collar, there
in the rotten bathroom. But destruction of the esthetician, however attractive from
a human point of view, would not also ensure destruction of his detritus, his remark.
The remark would remain in memory, in our memories. We would then be forced to wipe
ourselves out also, a step which we would hesitate to take waiting as we are for the
Last Day and God’s mercy. And how could we be sure after all that he had not made
the same remark to someone else, someone not of our circle, some stranger unknown
to us? Known to him but unknown to us? And that the remark would not remain unwiped
in the brain of this stranger? And how could we be sure that this
stranger was not, even as we were standing there, in the rotten bathroom, relaying
the remark to some other, even less reputable stranger? And that this second stranger
did not have friends, all of an even filthier repute than himself, to whom he intended
babbling the remark, at the first opportunity? And that we might not expect a quorum
of undesirables, sitting in the cathouse square, to be rubbing and smearing this piece
of intelligence with their ruin before six p.m. by the cathouse clock, this very day?
We trembled, there in the rotten bathroom, thinking these thoughts.
“I ADMIRE you, Hogo. I admire the way you are what you are, rocklike in your immutability.
I also admire the way you use these Pontiac convertible seats for chairs in your house.
But mine is uncomfortable. Only because I am glued into it with several pounds of
epoxy glue. Oh I know I laughed when you brushed it onto my hips on Wednesday, saying
it was honey and I was honey-hipped. I laughed then. But I am not laughing now. Now
it has hardened, like your heart toward me, Hogo.” “It was honey-colored I said. No
more than that. It is because I want you near me Jane for some strange reason I don’t
even understand myself. It must be atavistic. It must be some dark reason of the blood
which the conscious mind does not understand. That is the stinking truth, God’s Body
but I wish it were not.” “Stop it Hogo stop it lest I forget who is the glued party
here. Stop it and get me some hot water.” The ape-fingers of Jane’s familiars penetrated
the chain-link-fence walls of Hogo’s house. Looking through the walls, past the apes,
one could see Jane and Hogo, having a talk. “Hogo this house is an architectural masterpiece
in a certain sense.” “What sense is that.” “In the sense that you get a sense of ‘chain’
from these chain-like-fence walls that is entirely appropriate to your enterprise.
I mean the enterprise of being a bad fellow. And to make the
ceiling of General Motors advertising was a brilliant stroke. When one bears in mind
that General Motors is Pontiac, and Pontiac is your middle name.” “He was an Indian
chief Jane, hero of a famous conspiracy, the conspiracy that bears his name in fact.”
“I know that Hogo. Every schoolboy knows that, and many schoolgirls too, thanks to
the democratization of education in our country. How fitting that your ceiling should
be named for a . . .” “I thought it fitting.” “What is to become of us, Hogo. Of you
and me.” “Nothing is to become of us Jane. Our becoming is done. We are what we are.
Now it is just a question of rocking along with things as they are until we are dead.”
“You don’t paint a very bright picture Hogo.” “It’s not my picture Jane. I didn’t
think up this picture that we are confronted with. The original brushwork was not
mine. I absolutely separate myself from this picture. I operate within the frame it
is true, but the picture—” “How old are you Hogo.” “Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant
age to be.” “You don’t mind then. That you are not young.” “It has its buggy aspects
as what does not?” “You don’t mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death.”
“No, Jane.”
HUBERT complains that the electric wastebasket has been overheating. I haven’t noticed
it but that’s what Hubert says and Hubert is rarely wrong about things that don’t
matter. The electric wastebasket is a security item. Papers dropped into it are destroyed
instantly. How the electric wastebasket accomplishes this is not known. An intimidation
followed by a demoralization eventuating in a disintegration, one assumes. It is not
emptied. There are not even ashes. It functions with a quiet hum digesting whatever
we do not wish to fall into the hands of the enemi. The record of Bill’s trial when
he is tried will go into the electric wastebasket. When we considered the destruction
of the esthetician we had in mind the electric wastebasket. First dismemberment, then
the electric wastebasket. That there are in the world electric wastebaskets is encouraging.
Kevin spoke to Hubert. “There is not enough seriousness in what we do,” Kevin said.
“Everyone wanders around having his own individual perceptions. These, like balls
of different colors and shapes and sizes, roll around on the green billiard table
of consciousness . . .” Kevin stopped and began again. “Where is the figure in the
carpet? Or is it just . . . carpet?” he asked. “Where is—” “You’re talking a lot of
buffalo hump, you know that,” Hubert said. Hubert walked away. Kevin stood there.
“That encounter did not go well.
Perhaps I said the wrong thing?” Kevin blushed furiously at the thought that he might
have said the wrong thing. Red blushes sat upon his neck. “What could I have done,
to make it ‘go’? What is this gift that others have, that I do not have, that chokes
The Other with love, at the very sight of one?” Kevin’s pre-encounter happiness leaked
away. He had been happy before the encounter, but after it, he was not. “My God but
we are fragile.”
SNOW WHITE hung her hair again out of the window. It was longer now. It was about
four feet long. She had just washed it too with golden Prell. She was experiencing
a degree of anger at male domination of the physical world. “Oh if I could just get
my hands on the man who dubbed those electrical connections male and female! He thought
he was so worldly. And if I could just get my hands on the man who called that piece
of pipe a nipple! He thought he was so urbane. But that didn’t prevent them from making
a hash of the buffalo problem you’ll notice. Where have the buffalo gone? You can
go for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and hundreds of miles
without seeing a single one! And that didn’t prevent them from letting the railroads
grab all the best land! And that didn’t prevent them from letting alienation seep
in everywhere and cover everything like a big gray electric blanket that doesn’t work,
after you have pushed the off-on switch to the ‘on’ position! So don’t come around
and accuse me of not being serious. Women may not be serious, but at least they’re
not a damned fool!” Snow White took her head out of the window, and pulled in her
long black hair which had been dangling down. “No one has come to climb up. That says
it all. This time is the wrong time for me. I am in the wrong time. There is something
wrong with all those people standing there, gaping and gawking. And with all those
who did not come and at least
try
to climb up. To fill the role. And with the very world itself, for not being able
to supply a prince. For not being able to at least be civilized enough to supply the
correct ending to the story.”
SNOW WHITE
had another glass of healthy orange juice. “From now on I deny myself to them. These
delights. I maintain an esthetic distance. No more do I trip girlishly to their bed
in the night, or after lunch, or in the misty mid-morning. Not that I ever did. It
was always my whim which governed those gregarious encounters summed up so well by
Livy in the phrase,
vae victis
. I congratulate myself on that score at least. And no more will I chop their onions,
boil their fettucini, or marinate their flank steak. No more will I trudge about the
house pursuing stain. No more will I fold their lingerie in neat bundles and stuff
it away in the highboy. I am not even going to speak to them, now, except through
third parties, or if I have something special to announce—a new nuance of my mood,
a new vagary, a new extravagant caprice. I don’t know what such a policy will win
me. I am not even sure I wish to implement it. It seems small and mean-spirited. I
have conflicting ideas. But the main theme that runs through my brain is that what
is, is insufficient. Where did that sulky notion come from? From the rental library,
doubtless. Perhaps the seven men should have left me in the forest. To perish
there, when all the roots and berries and rabbits and robins had been exhausted. If
I had perished then, I would not be thinking now. It is true that there is a future
in which I shall inevitably perish. There is that. Thinking terminates. One shall
not always be leaning on one’s elbow in the bed at a quarter to four in the morning,
wondering if the Japanese are happier than their piglike Western contemporaries. Another
orange juice, with a little vodka in it this time.”