Can't and Won't: Stories

Two Undertakers

One undertaker, taking a body north on the highway, in France, stops at a roadside restaurant for a bite of lunch. There he meets another undertaker, a colleague known to him, who has also stopped for a bite of lunch and who is taking a body south. They decide to sit at the same table and have their meal together.

This encounter of two professionals is witnessed by Roland Barthes. It is his own deceased mother who is being taken south. He watches from a separate table, where he sits with his sister. His mother, of course, lies outside in the hearse.

I Ask Mary About Her Friend, the Depressive, and His Vacation

One year, she says

“He’s away in the Badlands.”

The next year, she says

“He’s away in the Black Hills.”

The Magic of the Train

We can see by the way they look from behind, as we watch them walk away from us down the train car, past the open doors of the toilets, through the sliding doors at the end, into some other part of the train, we can tell by the backs of them, these two women, in their tight black jeans, their platform heels, their tight sweaters and jean jackets in fashionable layers, their ample, loose, long black hair, the way they stride along, that they’re in their late teens or maybe their early twenties. But when they come back the other way towards us, after a little while, from their excursion through the train to some strange and magical part of it up ahead, when they come back, still striding along, we can now see their faces, pale, haggard, with violet shadows under their eyes, sagging cheeks, odd moles here and there, laugh lines, crow’s-feet, though they are both smiling a little, gently, and we see that in the meantime, under the magical effect of the train, they have aged twenty years.

Eating Fish Alone

Eating fish is something I generally do alone. I eat fish at home only when I am by myself in the house, because of the strong smell. I am alone with sardines on white bread with mayonnaise and lettuce, I am alone with smoked salmon on buttered rye bread, or tuna fish and anchovies in a salade Niçoise, or a canned salmon salad sandwich, or sometimes salmon cakes sautéed in butter.

I usually order fish, too, when I eat out. I order it because I like it and because it is not meat, which I rarely eat, or pasta, which is usually too rich, or a vegetarian dish, which I am likely to know all too well. I bring a book with me, though often the light over the table is not very good for reading and I am too distracted to read. I try to choose a table with good light, then I order a glass of wine and take out my book. I always want my glass of wine immediately, and I am very impatient until it comes. When it comes, and I have taken my first sip, I put my book down beside my plate and consider the menu, and my plan is always to order fish.

I love fish, but many fish should not be eaten anymore, and it has become difficult to know which fish I can eat. I carry with me in my wallet a little folding list put out by the Audubon Society that advises which fish to avoid, which fish to eat with caution, and which fish to eat freely. When I eat with other people I do not take this list out of my wallet, because it is not much fun to have dinner with someone who takes a list like this out of her wallet before she orders. I simply manage without it, though usually I can remember only that I should not eat farmed salmon or wild salmon, except for wild Alaskan salmon, which is never on the menu.

But when I am alone, I take out my list. No one will imagine, from a nearby table, that this list is what I am looking at. The trouble is, most kinds of fish on the restaurant menus are not fish one can eat freely. Some fish one cannot eat at all, ever, and other fish one may eat only if they come from the right place or are caught in the right way. I don’t ask the waitress how the fish is caught, but I often ask where the fish is from. She usually does not know. This means that no one else has asked her that evening — either no one else is interested, or some are not interested and others know the answer already. If the waitress does not know the answer, she goes away to ask the chef, and then comes back with an answer, though it is usually not the one that I was hoping to hear.

I once asked a completely pointless question about halibut. I did not realize how pointless it was until the waitress had gone off to ask the chef. Pacific halibut is fine to eat, while Atlantic halibut is not. Even though I live on the Atlantic Coast, or near it, I asked her where the halibut was from, as though I had forgotten how far away the Pacific Ocean was, or as though halibut would be shipped all the way from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic just for reasons of health or good fishing practices. As it happened, the restaurant was busy and she forgot to ask the chef, and by the time she returned I had realized that I should not order the halibut and was ready to order scallops instead. Scallops, my list said, were neither to be avoided nor to be eaten freely, but to be eaten with caution. I did not know what caution might mean in a restaurant situation, except perhaps that one should ask the waitress and the chef a few more questions than usual. But since even simple questions often did not produce very good answers, I did not expect good answers to detailed questions. Besides, I knew that the waitress and the chef did not have time for detailed questions. Certainly, if scallops were offered on the menu, the waitress or chef would not tell me they were endangered or unclean and advise me not to eat them. I ordered and ate them, and they were good, though I was a little uncomfortable, wondering whether they had been collected in the wrong way or contained toxic substances.

When I eat alone, I have no one to talk to and nothing to do but eat and drink, so my bites of food and my sips of wine are a little too deliberate. I keep thinking, It’s time to take another bite, or Slow down, the food is almost gone, the meal will be over too soon. I try to read my book in order to make some time go by before I take another bite or another sip. But I can hardly understand what is on the page because I am reading so little at a time. I am also distracted by the other people in the room. I like to watch the waiters and waitresses and other customers very closely, even if they are not very interesting.

The fish on the restaurant menu are often not on my list. Turbot in champagne sauce was offered one night at a very good French restaurant near where I live, but it was not on my list. I might have had it, but I was told by the waiter that it was a very mild fish, so I thought it was probably not very tasty. Also, it came with a cheese crust on it. I said I thought the crust would be too rich. The waiter said it was a very thin crust. Even so, I decided against it. There were other fish on the menu: red snapper, which my list instructed me to avoid; Atlantic cod, which was endangered; and salmon, but not wild Alaskan salmon. I gave up on fish and ordered the restaurant’s special plate of assorted vegetables, which arrived with small portions of many different vegetables, including fennel bulbs, arranged clockwise around a beautiful golden-brown molded potato cake. The different flavors of the vegetables were unexpectedly exciting, even though so many of them were root vegetables — not only carrots and potatoes, but also sautéed radishes, turnips, and parsnips.

The restaurant was owned by a couple from France. The wife greeted the guests and oversaw the service, and the husband cooked. As I left the restaurant that night, on my way to the parking lot I passed the windows of the kitchen. It was brightly lit and I stopped to look in. The chef was alone. He was dressed in white, wearing his chef’s cap, and he was slim and active, bent over his chopping block. As far as I could see from that distance, his features were finely modeled and delicate, his expression intense. As I watched, he tipped his head back slightly and tossed a bit of food into his mouth, pausing to savor it. A younger man came in from the left carrying a tray of something, put it down, and went out again. He did not appear to have anything to do with the cooking. The chef was alone again. I had never before seen a real chef at work, and had never imagined that a chef would work alone in his kitchen. I could have watched him for a long time, but I felt it would be indiscreet to stay, and I walked away.

The last time I ate by myself, I was in a restaurant I chose because there was no alternative. I was far out in the country and it was the only one open. I thought it would not be very good. It had a loud, popular bar in the front. I ordered a beer this time, and looked at the menu. The fish special was a marlin steak. I tried to think what marlin was. I had not thought of marlin for a long time. Then I pictured the fish sailing through the air with a large fin on its back, and I was almost sure it was popular for sport fishing, but I could not imagine what it tasted like. It was not on my list, but I ordered it anyway. Since I did not know whether I should avoid it, there was a chance that it was all right. Even if it wasn’t all right, of course, I could still occasionally have a fish that I should not have.

When she brought the fish, the waitress passed along a message from the chef: he would be waiting to know how I liked it; it was such a beautiful steak, he said. I was impressed by his enthusiasm, and as I ate, I paid more careful attention than usual. The chef had time to be interested in this marlin steak, I suppose, because it was a Monday night and only one other table was occupied in the large dining room, though as I ate my meal, a few more people came in. Even the bar had only two customers, small old men in plaid flannel shirts. But with the loud television and the laughter of the barmaid, who was also the hostess and the wife of the chef, the bar was still noisy.

The marlin was good, if a little chewy. When the waitress came by to see how I liked it, I did not tell her it was chewy. I told her it was very good, and that I liked the delicacy of the herbs in the sauce. At one point in the meal, as I continued eating slowly, this time without reading, the chef emerged from the kitchen in the distance. He was a tall man with a slight stoop to his shoulders. He walked over to the bar to have a drink and say a few words to his wife and the old men, and then walked back. Before he pushed through the swinging door, he turned a moment to look across the dining room in my direction, curious, I’m sure, to know who was eating his beautiful marlin steak. I looked back at him. I would have waved, but before I thought of it he disappeared through the door.

The serving of food on my plate, the marlin steak and baked potato and vegetables, was generous, and I could not eat all of it. I ate all the vegetables, at least, tender slices of lightly sautéed zucchini with thin strips of red pepper and herbs, and asked the waitress if she would wrap up the rest for me to take home. She was worried; I had eaten only half the fish. “But you did like it?” she asked. She was young. I thought she was the daughter of the chef and the barmaid. I assured her I had. Now I was worried; the chef might not believe I had truly liked the fish, though I had. There was nothing more I could say about it, but as I paid my bill, I told the waitress I had loved the vegetables. “Most people don’t eat them,” she said matter-of-factly. I thought of the waste, and the care with which the chef prepared, over and over again, the vegetables that no one ate. At least I had eaten his vegetables, and he would know that I had liked them. But I was sorry I had not eaten all of his marlin. I could have done that.

Can’t and Won’t

I was recently denied a writing prize because, they said, I was lazy. What they meant by lazy was that I used too many contractions: for instance, I would not write out in full the words cannot and will not, but instead contracted them to can’t and won’t.

Pouchet’s Wife

story from Flaubert

Tomorrow I will be going into Rouen for a funeral. Madame Pouchet, the wife of a doctor, died the day before yesterday in the street. She was on horseback, riding with her husband; she had a stroke and fell from the horse. I’ve been told I don’t have much compassion for other people, but in this case, I am very sad. Pouchet is a good man, though completely deaf and by nature not very cheerful. He doesn’t see patients, but works in zoology. His wife was a pretty Englishwoman with a pleasant manner who helped him a good deal in his work. She made drawings for him and read his proofs; they went on trips together; she was a real companion. He loved her very much and will be devastated by his loss. Louis lives across the street from them. He happened to see the carriage that brought her home, and her son lifting her out; there was a handkerchief over her face. Just as she was being carried like that into the house, feet first, an errand boy came up. He was delivering a large bouquet of flowers she had ordered that morning. O Shakespeare!

Dinner

I am still in bed when friends of ours arrive at the house for dinner. My bed is in the kitchen. I get up to see what I can make for them. I find three or four packages of hamburger in the refrigerator, some partly used and some untouched. I think I can put all the hamburger together and make a meatloaf. This would take an hour, but nothing else occurs to me. I go back to bed for a while to think about it.

dream

The Dog

We are about to leave a place that has a large flower garden and a fountain. I look out the car window and see our dog lying on a gurney in the doorway of a sort of shed. His back is to us. He is lying still. There are two cut flowers placed on his neck, one red and one white. I look away and then back — I want to see him one last time. But the doorway of the shed is empty. In that one moment he has vanished: a moment too soon, they have wheeled him away.

dream

The Grandmother

A person has come to my house carrying a large peach tart. He has also brought with him some other people, including an old woman who complains about the gravel and is then carried into the house with great difficulty. At the table, she observes to one man, by way of conversation, that she likes his teeth. Another man keeps shouting in her face, but she is not frightened, she only looks at him balefully. Later, at home, it is discovered that while she was eating cashews from a bowl, she also ate her hearing aid. Even though she chewed on it for nearly two hours, she could not reduce it to particles small enough to swallow. At bedtime she spat it out into the hand of her caregiver and told him this nut was a bad one.

dream

The Dreadful Mucamas

They are very rigid, stubborn women from Bolivia. They resist and sabotage whenever possible.

They came with the apartment which we are subletting. They were bargains because of Adela’s low IQ. She is a scatterbrain.

In the beginning, I said to them: I’m very happy that you can stay, and I am sure that we will get along very well.

This is an example of the problems we are having. It is a typical incident that has just taken place. I needed to cut a piece of thread and could not find my six-inch scissors. I accosted Adela and told her I could not find my scissors. She protested that she had not seen them. I went with her to the kitchen and asked Luisa if she would cut my thread. She asked me why I did not simply bite it off. I said I could not thread my needle if I bit it off. I asked her please to get some scissors and cut it off — now. She told Adela to look for the scissors of la Señora Brodie, and I followed her to the study to see where they were kept. She removed them from a box. At the same time I saw a long, untidy piece of twine attached to the box and asked her why she did not trim off the frayed end of it while she had the scissors. She shouted that it was impossible. The twine might be needed to tie up the box some time. I admit that I laughed. Then I took the scissors from her and cut it off myself. Adela shrieked. Her mother appeared behind her. I laughed again and now they both shrieked. Then they were quiet.

I have told them: Please, do not make the toast until we ask for breakfast. We do not like very crisp toast the way the English do.

I have told them: Every morning, when I ring the bell, please bring us our mineral water immediately. Afterwards, make the toast and at the same time prepare fresh coffee with milk. We prefer Franja Blanca or Cinta Azul coffee from Bonafide.

I spoke pleasantly to Luisa when she came with the mineral water before breakfast. But when I reminded her about the toast, she broke into a tirade — how could I think she would ever let the toast get cold or hard? But it is almost always cold and hard.

We have told them: We prefer that you always buy Las Tres Niñas or Germa milk from Kasdorf.

Adela cannot speak without yelling. I have asked her to speak gently, and to say “Señora,” but she never does. They also speak very loudly to each other in the kitchen.

Often, before I have said three words to Adela, she yells at me: Si … si, si, si…! and leaves the room. I honestly don’t think I can stand it.

I say to Luisa: Don’t interrupt me! I say: No me interrumpe!

The problem is not that Adela does not work hard enough. But she comes to my room with a message from her mother: she tells me the meal I have asked for is impossible, and she shakes her finger back and forth, screaming at the top of her voice.

They are both, mother and daughter, such willful, brutal women. At times I think they are complete barbarians.

I have told Adela: If necessary, clean the hall, but do not use the vacuum cleaner more than twice a week.

Last week she refused point-blank to take the vacuum cleaner out of the front hall by the entrance — just when we were expecting a visit from the Rector of Patagonia.

They have such a sense of privilege and ownership.

I have asked them: First listen to what I have to say!

I took my underthings out to them to be washed. Luisa immediately said that it was too hard to wash a girdle by hand. I disagreed, but I did not argue.

Adela refuses to do any work in the morning but housecleaning.

I say to them: We are a small family. We do not have any children.

When I go to them to inquire about the tasks I have given them, I find they are usually engaged in their own occupations — washing their sweaters or telephoning.

The ironing is never done on time.

Today I reminded them both that my underthings needed to be washed. They did not respond. Finally I had to wash my slip myself.

I say to them: We have noticed that you have tried to improve, and in particular that you are doing our washing more quickly now.

I have asked Adela: Please, do not leave the dirt and the cleaning things in the hall.

I have asked her: Please, collect the trash and take it to the incinerator immediately.

Today I told Adela that I needed her there in the kitchen, but she went to her mother’s room and came back with her sweater on and went out anyway. She was buying some lettuce — for them, it turned out, not for us.

At each meal, she makes an effort to escape.

As I was passing through the dining room this morning, I tried, as usual, to chat pleasantly with Adela. Before I could say two words, however, she retorted sharply that she could not do anything else while she was setting the table.

Adela rushes out of the kitchen into the living room even when guests are present and shouts: Telephone for you in your room!

Although I have asked her to speak gently, she never does. Today she came rushing out of the kitchen into the dining room saying: Telephone, for you! and pointed at me. Later she did the same with our luncheon guest, a professor.

I say to Luisa: I would like to discuss the program for the days to come. Today I do not need more than a sandwich at noon, and fruit. But el señor would like a nutritious tea.

Tomorrow we would like a rather nourishing tea with hard-boiled eggs and sardines at six, and we will not want any other meal at home.

At least once a day, we want to eat cooked vegetables. We like salads, but we also like cooked vegetables. Sometimes we could eat both salad and cooked vegetables at the same meal.

We do not have to eat meat at lunchtime, except on special occasions. We are very fond of omelets, perhaps with cheese or tomato.

Please serve our baked potatoes immediately after taking them from the oven.

We had had nothing but fruit at the end of the meal for two weeks. I asked Luisa for a dessert. She brought me some little crepes filled with applesauce. They were nice, though quite cold. Today she gave us fruit again.

I said to her: Luisa, you cannot refer to my instructions as “capricious and illogical.”

Luisa is emotional and primitive. Her moods change rapidly. She readily feels insulted and can be violent. She has such pride.

Adela is simply wild and rough, a harebrained savage.

I say to Luisa: Our guest, Señor Flanders, has never visited the park. He would like to spend several hours there. Can you make sandwiches of cold meat for him to take with him? It is his last Sunday here.

For once, she does not protest.

When setting the dining table, Adela puts each thing down with a bang.

I say to Luisa: Please, I would like Adela to polish the candlesticks. We are going to have them on the table at night.

I ring the bell at the dining table, and a loud crash follows instantly in the kitchen.

I have told them: There should not be these kitchen noises during our cocktail and dinner hour. But they are hitting each other again and yelling.

If we ask for something during a meal, Adela comes out of the kitchen and says: There isn’t any.

It is all so very nerve-racking. I often feel worn out after just one attempt to speak to her.

Luisa, I say, I want to make sure we understand each other. You cannot play the radio in the kitchen during our dinnertime. There is also a lot of shouting in the kitchen. We are asking for some peace in the house.

We do not believe they are sincerely trying to please us.

Adela sometimes takes the bell off the dining table and does not put it back on. Then I cannot ring for her during the meal but have to call loudly from the dining room to the kitchen, or go without what I need, or get the bell myself so that I can ring it. My question is: Does she leave the bell off the table on purpose?

I instruct them ahead of time: For the party we will need tomato juice, orange juice, and Coca-Cola.

I tell her: Adela, you will be the one in charge of answering the door and taking the coats. You will show the ladies where the toilet is, if they ask you.

I ask Luisa: Do you know how to prepare empanadas in the Bolivian style?

We would like them both to wear uniforms all the time.

I say to Adela: Please, I would like you to pass among the guests frequently with plates of hors d’oeuvres that have been recently prepared.

When the plates no longer look attractive, please take them back out to the kitchen and prepare fresh ones.

I say to her: Please, Adela, I would like there always to be clean glasses on the table, and also ice and soda.

I have told her: Always leave a towel on the rack above the bidet.

I say to her: Are there enough vases? Can you show them to me? I would like to buy some flowers.

Here are more of the details of the silent warfare: I see that Adela has left a long string lying on the floor next to the bed. She has gone away with the wastebasket. I don’t know if she is testing me. Does she think I am too meek or ignorant to require her to pick it up? But she has a cold, and she isn’t very bright, and if she really did not notice the string, I don’t want to make too much of it. I finally decide to pick up the string myself.

We suffer from their rude and ruthless vengeance.

A button was missing from my husband’s shirt collar. I took the shirt to Adela. She shook her finger and said no. She said that la Señora Brodie always took everything to the dressmaker to be mended.

Even a button? I asked. Were there no buttons in the house?

She said there were no buttons in the house.

I told Luisa they could go out on Sundays, even before breakfast. She yelled at me that they did not want to go out, and asked me, Where would they go?

I said that they were welcome to go out, but that if they did not go out, we would expect them to serve us something, even if it was something simple. She said she would, in the morning, but not in the afternoon. She said that her two older daughters always came to see her on Sundays.

I spent the morning writing Luisa a long letter, but I decided not to give it to her.

In the letter I told her: I have employed many maids in my life.

I told her that I believe I am a considerate, generous, and fair employer.

I told her that when she accepts the realities of the situation, I’m sure everything will go well.

If only they would make a real change in their attitude, we would like to help them. We would pay to have Adela’s teeth repaired, for instance. She is so ashamed of her teeth.

But up to now there has been no real change in their attitude.

We also think they may have relatives living secretly with them behind the kitchen.

I am learning and practicing a sentence that I will try on Luisa, though it may sound more hopeful than I feel: Con el correr del tiempo, todo se solucionará.

But they give us such dark, Indian looks!

Reversible Story

NECESSARY EXPENDITURE

A concrete mixer has come and gone from the house next door. Mr. and Mrs. Charray are renovating their wine cellar. If they improve their cellar, they will pay less for fire insurance. At the moment, their fire insurance is very expensive. The reason for this is that they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. They have very good wine and some fine paintings, but their taste in clothes and furniture is strictly lower middle class.

EXPENDITURE NECESSARY

The Charrays’ taste in clothes and furniture is dull and strictly lower middle class. However, they do own some fine paintings, many by contemporary Canadian and American painters. They also have some good wine. In fact, they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. Because of this, their fire insurance is very expensive. But if they enlarge and otherwise improve their wine cellar, the fire insurance will be less expensive. They are doing this: a concrete mixer has just come and gone from their house, next door.

A Woman, Thirty

A woman, thirty, does not want to leave her childhood home.

Why should I leave home? These are my parents. They love me. Why should I go marry some man who will argue and shout at me?

Still, the woman likes to undress in front of the window. She wishes some man would at least look at her.

How I Know What I Like (Six Versions)

She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might like it.

She is like me. She likes the things I like. She likes this. So I might like it.

I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

I think I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

I think I like it. I show it to her. (She is like me. She likes the things I like.) She likes it. So I might really like it.

I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. (She says the other one is “just plain awful.”) She is like me. She likes the things I like. So I might really like it.

Handel

I have a problem in my marriage, which is that I simply do not like George Frideric Handel as much as my husband does. It is a real barrier between us. I am envious of one couple we know, for example, who both love Handel so much they will sometimes fly all the way to Texas just to hear a particular tenor sing a part in one of his operas. By now, they have also converted another friend of ours into a lover of Handel. I am surprised, because the last time she and I talked about music, what she loved was Hank Williams. All three of them went by train to Washington, D.C., this year to hear Giulio Cesare in Egitto. I prefer the composers of the nineteenth century and particularly Dvořák. But I’m pretty open to all sorts of music, and usually if I’m exposed to something long enough, I come to like it. But even though my husband puts on some sort of Handel vocal music almost every night if I don’t say anything to stop him, I have not come to love Handel. Fortunately, I have just found out that there is a therapist not too far from here, in Lenox, Massachusetts, who specializes in Handel-therapy, and I’m going to give her a try. (My husband does not believe in therapy and I know he would not go to a Dvořák-therapist with me even if there was one.)

The Force of the Subliminal

Rhea was here for an overnight visit and we were talking about birthdays. I had asked her when her birthday was. She told me it was April 13, but that she never received any cards or gifts on her birthday, which was just as well because she did not want to be reminded of it. I remarked that one person who never let anyone forget her birthday was our mutual friend Ellie.

Ellie was far away, in another country, where it was harder for her to remind people of her birthday. Then I thought, Why, it’s October: this is the month of Ellie’s birthday! I could not remember which day in October it was, so I went and looked it up where I had written it down in my address book. I discovered it was this very day, October 23. I told Rhea and we exclaimed over the fact that I had started talking about birthdays on Ellie’s birthday. Rhea said I must have known it all along, subliminally.

I did not tell Rhea how I had come to think of birthdays: that as I was putting napkins on the table for dinner I remembered a story she had told me, how she was once, long ago, giving dinner to a group of our friends who were rather difficult to entertain since their standards were very high where food and wine and table service were concerned; how Rhea, who in those days did not usually care much about such things as table settings, but was capable of embarrassment in the presence of certain people such as these friends, discovered first that she had no napkins of any kind in the house, then no paper towels either, then no Kleenex tissues either; and how, a few minutes into the meal, one of the guests politely asked for a napkin; how Rhea explained the problem and another guest suggested using toilet paper; and Rhea’s embarrassment as the guests did continue the meal using toilet paper; so that I was moved to want to send Rhea a set of cloth napkins for her next birthday so that she would never find herself in that situation again. But it was true that I might not have thought of Rhea’s story if I had not remembered, subliminally, that today was Ellie’s birthday.

Later, after Rhea had gone to bed, while I was washing the last of the dinner dishes, I thought about the conversation and said to myself, with a feeling of mild satisfaction, Well, this is one year that Ellie has not been able to remind me of her birthday, because she is too far away. But then I thought, Wait a minute, the fact is that I have somehow remembered Ellie’s birthday. And then I realized that because she never lets anyone forget her birthday, and because I know this so well, it was not I who had subliminally known it all along, as Rhea and I had decided, but in fact Ellie who had managed, in the end, to remind me, though not as directly as usual, and also, with her characteristic efficiency, to remind Rhea at the same time.

Her Geography: Alabama

She thinks, for a moment, that Alabama is a city in Georgia:

it is called Alabama, Georgia.

The Funeral

story from Flaubert

I went to Pouchet’s wife’s funeral yesterday. As I watched poor Pouchet, who stood there bending and swaying with grief like a stalk of grass in the wind, some fellows near me began talking about their orchards: they were comparing the girths of the young fruit trees. Then a man next to me asked me about the Middle East. He wanted to know whether there were any museums in Egypt. He asked me: “What is the condition of their public libraries?” The priest standing over the hole was speaking French, not Latin, because the service was a Protestant one. The gentleman beside me approved, then made some slighting remarks about Catholicism. Meanwhile, there was poor Pouchet standing forlornly in front of us.

Oh, we writers may think we invent too much — but reality is worse every time!

The Husband-Seekers

Flocks of women attempt to land on an island, seeking husbands from a tribe of very beautiful young men. They blow across the sea like cotton buds or seeding wild plants, and when rejected they pile up offshore in a floating bank of woolly white.

dream

In the Gallery

A woman I know, a visual artist, is trying to hang her work for a show. Her work is a single line of text pasted on the wall, with a transparent curtain suspended in front of it.

She is at the top of a ladder and cannot get down. She is facing out instead of in. The people down below tell her to turn around, but she does not know how.

When I see her again, she is down from the ladder. She is going from one person to the next, asking for help in hanging her artwork. But no one will help her. They say she is such a difficult woman.

dream

The Low Sun

I am a college girl. I tell a younger college girl, a dancer, that the sun is very low in the sky now. Its light must be filling the caves by the sea.

dream

The Landing

Just now, during these days when I am so afraid of dying, I have been through a strange experience on an airplane.

I was on my way to Chicago to take part in a conference. The emergency occurred as we were approaching the airport. This is something I have always dreaded. Each time I fly in an airplane, I try to make my peace with the world and gain some final perspective on my life. I always do this twice on the flight, once before takeoff and once before landing. But there has never before been anything worse, on any of these flights, than ordinary turbulence — although of course when the turbulence begins, I don’t know that it will be nothing more than ordinary turbulence.

This time something was wrong with the wings. Some flaps were not opening that were supposed to slow the plane down as it approached the runway, so it was going to have to land at a very high speed. There was a danger that when it landed, going at such a high speed, a tire could burst and the plane might spin and crash, or the wheels could collapse and the plane might slide on its belly and catch fire.

The announcement, from the pilot, terrified me. The terror was very physical, something like an icy bolt down my spine. With his announcement, everything had changed: we might all die within the next hour. I looked, for comfort or companionship in my fear, at the woman in the seat next to me, but she was no help, her eyes closed and her face turned away towards the window. I looked at other passengers, but each seemed absorbed in comprehending what the pilot had said. I, too, shut my eyes, and held on to the arms of my seat.

A little time passed, and then there was a clarification from the steward, who announced approximately how long we would be circling above the airport. The steward was calm. As he spoke, I kept my eyes fixed on his face. This was when I learned something I stored away to remember later, on other flights, if there were to be other flights: if I was worried, I should look at the face of the steward or stewardess and read his or her expression for a clue as to whether I should be worried or not. This steward’s face was smooth and relaxed. The emergency was not one of the worst, he added. I looked across the aisle and met the eyes of a passenger in his sixties who was also calm. He told me he had flown over nine million miles since 1981 and experienced a number of emergency situations. He did not go on to describe them.

But now the steward was doing something that only intensified my fear: still calm, but perhaps with the calm of fatalism, I now thought, fatalism produced by his long training and experience, or perhaps simply an acceptance of the end, he was instructing the people in the first row point by point what each of them was to do in case he himself became incapacitated. Watching him instruct them, in my eyes they were suddenly elevated from being mere passengers to being his assistants or deputies, and I saw him, already, reduced to helplessness, dead or paralyzed. Even if only in my imagination, the fatal crash was already imminent. At that point, I realized that anything other than routine behavior from a steward or stewardess would alarm me.

Our lives might be almost over. This required an immediate reconciliation with the idea of death, and it required an immediate decision as to the best way to leave this world. What should be my last thoughts on this earth, in this life? It was not a matter of looking for solace but for acceptance, some way of believing that it was all right to die now. First I said goodbye to certain people close to me. Then I had to have a larger thought, for the very end, and what I found to be the best thought was the thought that I was very small in this large universe. It was necessary to picture the large universe, and all the galaxies, and remember how very small I was, and then it would be all right that I should die now. Things were dying all the time, the universe was mysterious, another ice age was coming anyway, our civilization would disappear, so it was all right that I should die now.

While I was thinking this large thought, my eyes were again shut, I was clasping my hands together until they were moist, and I was bracing my feet very hard against the base of the seat in front of me. It wouldn’t help to brace my feet if we had a fatal crash. But I had to take what little action I could, I had to assert my tiny amount of control. In the midst of my fear, I still found it interesting that I thought I had to assert some control in an uncontrollable situation. Then I gave up taking any action at all and observed another interesting thing about what was happening now inside me — that as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing.

The airplane circled for a long time. Either later, or at the time, I learned that while we were circling, preparations were being made on the ground for an emergency landing. The longest runway was being cleared, because the plane would be coming in at a high speed and would therefore have to travel a long way as it slowed down. Fire engines were brought out and parked by the runway. There were several possible problems with landing at such a high speed. The wheels could give way and collapse, the plane then coasting on its belly. The friction of coasting could cause a fire, or the speed of the plane could cause it to tip forward, crushing its nose. If the plane was coasting on its belly, or if a tire burst, the pilot could lose control of the steering and the plane could veer off the runway and crash.

At last the long runway was clear and the fire engines were in place, and the pilot began the descent. We passengers could not perceive anything out of the ordinary in the way he was flying the plane during the descent, but as the moment came for landing we grew more nervous: whereas before, the possible disaster was in our near future and we were still untouched, now it was just moments away.

In a normal landing, a plane comes in quite steeply, maybe at a 30-degree angle, and it often then bumps or bounces a little on the ground as it makes contact. Moving at such a high speed, we could not safely do that, so the pilot descended in wide circles almost all the way down to the ground before he headed for the runway, approaching it so low that its path was at almost no angle to the ground. In order to have the whole length of the runway for decelerating, he touched the plane down as soon as he passed the edge of the runway, putting the wheels to the asphalt so gently that we hardly felt it: the landing was smoother than any I had experienced before. He then slowed the plane very gradually until we were taxiing at a normal speed. He had done a beautiful job of landing, and we were safe.

Now, of course, the passengers all clapped and roared, in their relief, at the same time looking at one another and gazing out the windows in some awe at the fire engines that had not been needed. As the cheering died down, the sound of talking and laughing in the cabin increased. The man across the aisle told me about other near-disasters he had experienced, such as a fire aboard his airplane. We were informed by the steward, who also became more talkative now that we were on the ground, that pilots practice this sort of landing many times in their training. It might have helped us to know this earlier, but perhaps it would not have.

I was thinking about the landing over my dinner that night, in the orderly, bustling ground-floor restaurant of my hotel. I was looking into the face of a very small fried egg, a quail egg, on my plate, and it occurred to me that if the outcome had been different, the egg would at this very moment still have been looking up at someone, but at someone else, not me. The egg would have been looking up at a different fork, or even the same fork, but in a different hand. My hand would have been somewhere else, maybe in a Chicago morgue.

I was also writing down what I could remember of the landing, while my dinner cooled. The waiter, observing my plate, said something like “Your pen is moving faster than your fork,” and then he added, as an afterthought, “which is the way it should be.” At that, I liked him better. I had not liked him before, with his lank locks of hair and his overly friendly jokes.

Meanwhile, in the background, at the hotel reception desk, a slim, cautious, gray-bearded Englishman was asked by the clerk, “What is your name?” and he answered, “Morris. M, o, r, r, i, s.”

The Language of the Telephone Company

“The trouble you reported recently

is now working properly.”

The Coachman and the Worm

story from Flaubert

A former servant of ours, a pathetic fellow, is now the driver of a hackney cab — you’ll probably remember how he married the daughter of that porter who was awarded a prestigious prize at the same time that his wife was being sentenced to penal servitude for theft, whereas he, the porter, was actually the thief. In any case, this unfortunate man, Tolet, our former servant, has, or thinks he has, a tapeworm inside him. He talks about it as though it were a living person who communicates with him and tells him what it wants, and when Tolet is talking to you, the word “he” always refers to this creature inside him. Sometimes Tolet has a sudden urge and attributes it to the tapeworm: “He wants it,” he says — and right away Tolet obeys. Lately he wanted to eat some fresh white rolls; another time he had to have some white wine, but the next day he was outraged because he wasn’t given red.

The poor man has by now lowered himself, in his own eyes, to the same level as the tapeworm; they are equals waging a fierce battle for dominance. He said to my sister-in-law recently, “That creature has it in for me; it’s a battle of wills, you see; he’s forcing me to do what he likes. But I’ll have my revenge. Only one of us will be left alive.” Well, the man is the one who will be left alive, or, rather, not for long, because, in order to kill the worm and be rid of it, he recently swallowed a bottle of vitriol and is at this very moment dying. I wonder if you can see the true depths of this story.

What a strange thing it is — the human brain!

Letter to a Marketing Manager

Dear Harvard Book Store Marketing Manager,

I recently telephoned your bookstore to inquire about the matter described below and was told that you would be the person to contact. My question concerns an unfortunate biographical mistake printed in your January 2002 newsletter.

I was startled to see, on the back page of this issue, that my recently published book was featured in the column titled “Spotlight: McLean Alumni.” Now, I am aware that McLean’s has a distinguished list of former patients and is among the most prestigious of institutions of this type in the country, but I have been inside its walls only once, and that was as a visitor. I stopped in to see a friend of mine from high school, and spent no more than, perhaps, one awkward hour with him, since our conversation was at best difficult.

Now, to be perfectly honest — in case this is the source of the misunderstanding — it is true that a member of my family was once incarcerated in McLean’s. My great-grandfather, of the same surname, was for a time a patient of the institution, but this was in the early part of the last century, and he was not a seriously disturbed individual, as far as I can tell from what my father has said and from the letters and other documentary evidence I have in my possession. He was apparently no more than generally restless, apathetic at his place of employment, occasionally inspired with plans for irrational enterprises, dissatisfied with domestic life, and visibly oppressed by his wife’s emphatically demanding and restrictive nature. Although he did indeed escape the institution once and was then forcibly returned to it, he was several months later judged to have been rehabilitated, and he was released. He thereafter lived a tranquil, if rather solitary, life apart from his family, with a single manservant, on a farm in Harwich, Massachusetts.

I offer this information in case it may be useful, though I can think of no reason why you would confuse me with him. However, no other explanation occurs to me for your mistaken identification, unless your buyers assumed on the basis of the contents of my book, its title, or my admittedly somewhat wild-eyed photograph that at some time in the past I was an inmate of McLean’s.

It is always nice to have some attention paid to one’s book, but embarrassing to be misidentified in this way. Could you please throw some light on the matter?

Yours sincerely.