Category: microfiction

“The Sausage Cellar,” a very short fiction by Henri Michaux

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“The Sausage Cellar”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by David Ball

from Life in the Folds

I love to knead.

I get hold of a field marshal and grind him up so fine that he loses half his senses, he loses his nose that he thought really had flair and even his hand that he can’t raise to his cap any more even if a whole army saluted him.

Yes, through a series of grindings, I reduce him, I reduce him—a sausage unable to do anything from now on.

And I don’t limit myself to field marshals. In my cellar I have lots of sausages that were once important people supposedly out of my reach.

But my infallible instinct for jubilation triumphed over these obstacles.

If they act up after that, it’s really no fault of mine. They could not have been mixed and ground any more than they were. I’ve been told that some of them are still moving about. It’s printed in the papers. Is this real? How could it be? They’re rolled up. The rest is the tail end of a phenomenon, the kind that one might encounter in nature, a sort of mystery comparable to reflections and exhalations whose importance should not be exaggerated. No, absolutely not.

In my cellar they lie, in deep silence.

Read “The Marker,” a very short story by Robert Coover

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“The Marker”

by

Robert Coover

One of “Seven Exemplary Fictions” from Pricksongs and Descants 

Of the seven people (Jason, his wife, the police officer, and the officer’s four assistants), only Jason and his wife are in the room. Jason is sitting in an armchair with a book in his hand, a book he has doubtless been reading, although now he is watching his wife get ready for bed. About Jason: he is tall and masculine, about 35, with strong calloused hands and a sensitive nose; he is deeply in love with his wife. And she: she is beautiful, affectionate, and has a direct and charming manner of speaking, if we were to hear her speak. She seems always at ease.

Nude now, she moves lightly about the room, folding a sweater into a drawer, hanging up Jason’s jacket which he had tossed on the bed, picking up a comb from the floor where it had fallen from the chest of drawers. She moves neither pretentiously nor shyly. Whatever meaning there might be in her motion exists within the motion itself and not in her deliberations.

At last, she folds back the blankets of the bed (which is across the room from Jason), fluffs her short blonde hair, crawls onto the fresh sheets on her hands and knees, pokes gently at the pillows, then rolls down on her back, hands under her head, gazing across the room at Jason. She watches him, with the same apparent delight in least motions, as he again picks up his book, finds his place in it, and inserts a marker. He stands, returns her gaze for almost a minute without smiling, and then does smile, at the same time placing his book on the table. He removes his clothes, hooking his trousers over the back of the armchair and tossing the other things on the seat cushion. Before extinguishing the light behind his chair, he glances across the room at his wife once more, her tanned body gay and relaxed, a rhythm of soft lines on the large white canvas of the bed. She smiles, in subtle recognition perhaps of the pleasure he finds in her. He snaps out the light.

In the darkness, Jason pauses a moment in front of the armchair. The image of his wife, as he has just seen her, fades slowly (as when, lying on a beach, one looks at the reflection of the sun on the curving back of the sea, then shuts tight his eyes, letting the image of the reflected sun lose its brilliance, turn green, then evaporate slowly into the limbo of uncertain associations), gradually becoming transformed from that of her nude body crackling the freshness of the laundered sheets to that of Beauty, indistinct and untextured, as though still emerging from some profound ochre mist, but though without definition, an abstract Beauty that contains somehow his wife’s ravaging smile and musical eyes. Jason, still facing the bed, walks steadily toward it, his right hand in front of him to feel for it in the dark. When he has reached the spot where he expects the bed, he is startled not to find it. He retraces his steps, and stumbles into… what? the chest of drawers! Reoriented now by the chest of drawers, he sets out again and, after some distance, touches a wall. He starts to call out to his wife, but hears her laugh suddenly: she is up to some kind of joke, he says to himself with a half-smile. He walks boldly toward the laugh, only to-find himself—quite by surprise—back at the armchair! He fumbles for the lamp and snaps the switch, but the light does not turn on. He snaps the switch several times, but the lamp definitely does not work. She has pulled the plug, he says to himself, but without really believing it, since he could not imagine any reason she would have for doing so. Once again, he positions himself in front of the armchair and crosses the room toward the bed. This time, however, he does not walk confidently, and although almost expecting something of the sort, is no less alarmed when he arrives at, not the bed, but a door. He gropes along the wall, past a radiator and a wastebasket, until he reaches a corner. He starts out along the second wall, working methodically now, but does not take more than five steps when he hears his wife’s gentle laugh right in his ear. He turns around and finds the bed… just behind him!

Although in the strange search he has lost his appetite for the love act, he quickly regains it at the sound of her happy laugh and the feel, in the dark, of her cool thighs. In fact, the experience, the anxiety of it and its riddles, seems to have created a new urgency, an almost brutal wish to swallow, for a moment, reason and its inadequacies, and to let passion, noble or not, have its hungry way. He is surprised to find her dry, but the entry itself is relaxed and gives way to his determined penetration. In a moment of alarm, he wonders if this is really his wife, but since there is no alternate possibility, he rejects his misgivings as absurd. He leans down over her to kiss her, and as he does so, notices a strange and disagreeable odor.

At this moment, the lights come on and the police officer and his four assistants burst into the room. “Really!” cries the police officer, pulling up short. “This is quite disgusting!”

Jason looks down and finds that it is indeed his wife beneath him, but that she is rotting. Her eyes are open, but glazed over, staring up at him, without meaning, but bulging as though in terror of him. The flesh on her face is yellowish and drawn back toward her ears. Her mouth is open in a strangely cruel smile and Jason can see that her gums have dried and pulled back from her teeth. Her lips are black and her blonde hair, now long and tangled, is splayed out over the pillow like a urinal mop spread out to dry. There is a fuzzy stuff like mold around the nipples of her shrunken breasts. Jason tries desperately to get free from her body, but finds to his deepest horror that he is stuck! “This woman has been dead for three weeks,” says the officer in genuine revulsion.

Jason strikes wildly against the thighs in his effort to free himself, jolts one leg off the bed so that it dangles there, disjointed and swinging, the long yellow toenails scratching on the wooden floor. The four assistants seize Jason and wrench him forcibly away from the corpse of his dead wife. The body follows him punishingly in movement for a moment, as a sheet of paper will follow a comb after the comb has been run through hair; then, freed by its own weight, it falls back in a pile on the badly soiled sheets. The four men carry Jason to the table where his book still lies with its marker in it. They hold him up against the table and the police officer, without ceremony, pulls Jason’s genitals out flat on the tabletop and pounds them to a pulp with the butt of his gun.

He leaves Jason writhing on the floor and turns to march out, along with his four assistants. At the door he hesitates, then turns back to Jason. A flicker of compassion crosses his face.

“You understand, of course,” he says, “that I am not, in the strictest sense, a traditionalist. I mean to say that I do not recognize tradition qua tradition as sanctified in its own sake. On the other hand, I do not join hands with those who find inherent in tradition some malignant evil, and who therefore deem it of terrible necessity that all custom be rooted out at all costs. I am personally convinced, if you will permit me, that there is a middle road, whereon we recognize that innovations find their best soil in traditions, which are justified in their own turn by the innovations which created them. I believe, then, that law and custom are essential, but that it is one’s constant task to review and revise them. In spite of that, however, some things still make me puke!” He turns, flushed, to his four assistants. “Now get rid of that fucking corpse!” he screams.

After wiping his pink brow with a handkerchief, he puts it to his nose and turns his back on the bed as the men drag away, by the feet, the unhinged body of Jason’s wife. The officer notices the book on the table, the book Jason has been reading, and walks over to pick it up. There is a slight spattering of blood on it. He flips through it hastily with one hand, the other still holding the hand kerchief to his nose, and although his face wears an expression of mild curiosity, it is difficult to know if it is sincere. The marker falls to the floor beside Jason. The officer replaces the book on the table and walks out of the room.

“The marker!” Jason gasps desperately, but the police officer does not hear him, nor does he want to.

“Vladimir,” a very short story by Robert Walser

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“Vladimir”

by

Robert Walser

translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

We shall call him Vladimir, since it is a rare name and in point of fact he was unique. Those to whom he appeared foolish tried to win a glance, a word from him, which he rarely gave. In inferior clothes he behaved more sanguinely than in elegant ones, and was basically a good person who merely made the mistake of falsely attributing and affixing to himself faults which he did not have. He was hard primarily on himself. Isn’t that inexcusable?

Once he lived with a married couple and was impossible to drive away. “It is time that you left us alone,” was intimated to him; he seemed hardly able to imagine it, saw the woman smiling and the man turn pale. He was chivalry itself. Serving always gave him a lofty notion of the bliss of existence. He could not see pretty women burdened with small boxes, packages, and so on, without springing forth and expressing the wish to be helpful, at which he first always fought back the slightest fear of intruding.

From whence did Vladimir descend? Well, certainly from none other than his parents. It seems peculiar that he admits when down on his luck to having often been happy, when successful to having been morose, and that he says the driving force of his existence is his industriousness. No one ever saw such a satisfied and at the same time dissatisfied man. No one was quicker and in the very next instant more irresolute.

Once a girl promised to meet him at such and such a time and then kept him waiting. This came as a surprise to him. Another asserted, “It befits you to be swindled. Do you not have a peculiar predilection for jokes which border on disregard?”

“You are mistaken,” is all he answered.

He never bore a person a grudge, because “I, too, have often played unfairly with people.”

At the ladies’ cafe he was amused by the mimicry and expressions of the customers. By the way, he was no friend of too many diversions, as much as he valued them by way of exception. He thought about everything only to forget it in an instant, was a good reckoner because he did not permit his feelings to have power over his mind.

The women thought little of him, but not without always becoming interested in him again. They called him timid, but he likewise them. They played with and feared him.

To one lady, who flaunted her wealth before him in perhaps too clever a manner, he was most courteous, as one is when one feels for that person nothing. He found uncultured girls inspired by their need for instruction and on the other hand also such who have read everything and now wished to be almost ignorant. For injustices suffered he never avenged himself and perhaps avenged himself sufficiently in just this way. Those who did not treat him as he had wished, he let go, dropped; that is to say, he accustomed himself to not thinking about many unpleasant things. That’s how he protected his soul from confusion, his thoughts from unhealthy hardness.

Music put him in a tender mood, as it does most people. If he saw himself favoured by a girl, it seemed as if she wished to hold him down, and he kept clear of her. He was as suspicious as a southerner, of himself as well as others; frequently jealous but never for long, because his self-respect quickly freed him from the persecution of envy, envy which to him seemed hardly awakened, unfounded, and of no substance.

Once he lost a friend, and said to himself, “He’s losing as much as I.” He worshipped a woman until she made one error, and it was no longer possible for him to pine for her. A rash remark from her had the result that he laughed at her, and he was happy about it. Feeling sorry for her, he no longer needed to be sorry for himself.

He stayed young and used his strength for the acquiring and exercise of attention to people who most needed not to be glanced over insensitively, the feeble and the aged. Do we speak too highly of him?

Sometimes he carries on like a gad-about-town, visits so-called vulgar dives. There are people around who rebuke him for it, but who would themselves gladly be mirthful, which their spheres so seldom allow. He has had imitators, but the original remains himself. Imitation, by the way, is quite natural.

Copies can also be appealing, but only from the original can great value come.

“I Had Raised Dust,” a short vision from Daniil Kharms

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“I Had Raised Dust”

by

Daniil Kharms

translated by

Neil Cornwell

I had raised dust. Children were running after, me, tearing their clothing. Old men and old women fell from roofs. I whistled, I roared, my teeth chattered and I clattered like an iron bar. Lacerated children raced after me and, falling behind, broke their thin legs in their awful haste. Old men and old women were skipping around me. I rushed on! Filthy, rachitic children, looking like toadstools, got tangled under my feet. Running was hard going. I kept remembering things and once I even almost fell into the soft mush of old men and women floundering on the ground. I jumped, snapped a few heads off toadstools and trod on the belly of a thin old woman, who at this emitted a loud crunch and softly muttered – They’ve worn me out. – Not looking back, I ran on further. Now under my feet was a clean and smooth pavement. Occasional streetlamps lit my way. I ran up to the bath-house. The welcoming bath-house flickered in front of me and the cosy but stifling bath-house steam was already in my nostrils, ears and mouth. Without undressing, I ran straight through the changing-room, then past the taps, the tubs and the planks, to the shelf. A hot white cloud surrounds me, I hear a weak but insistent sound. I seem to be lying down.

And at this point, a mighty relaxation stopped my heart.

“Parents and Children,” a very short story by Alberto Savinio

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“Parents and Children”

by

Alberto Savinio

translated by Richard Pevear

Today, at the table, my daughter complained to her mother and me about the antipathy that we, her parents, show towards her friends of both sexes, and had shown to her little playmates when she was still a child. She added: “I make a point of not inviting my friends to the house, knowing so well how badly you’ll treat them.”

I was about to deny it, but I didn’t. My daughter’s words had enlightened me. They had clarified a feeling in me that until now had been obscure. And what they clarified most of all was the analogy that suddenly appeared to me between this feeling of mine and an identical feeling which for some time I had recognized in my daughter: the antipathy she has for my and her mother’s friends.

We’re at the table, as a family, united in love, and behind that veil, we are mute enemies on a silent battlefield.

The reasons for this war are the same: the will to affirm yourself, the will to deny your neighbor and, if possible, to annihilate him. Whoever it may be. Even your own father, even your own child. And if the will to annihilate your own father or your own child rarely reveals itself, that is not because it isn’t there but because it is overlaid by another will: that of affirming yourself through your own father or your own child and, beyond that, through relatives, friends, through all those who are or whom we believe are part of ourselves, an extension of ourselves, a development of our own possibilities.

At the table, my daughter’s words had revealed this usually hidden and silent will at one stroke.

Nobody spoke. We all felt the pricking of conscience under our seats.

Which of us is entirely alone? Each of us has a maniple, or a cohort, or even an army of persons by means of which he reinforces himself, extends himself, expands himself. The force of association is that much greater in the young, the more recent is the discovery in themselves of this force, its usefulness, its possibilities.

Hence that most strict, most active, most fanatical jealousy that unites my children to their friends (parts of themselves), and to their teachers, and to all that constitutes their “personal” world; hence the jealousy, though more loose, that unites me to my friends—I who also know how to fight alone; I who also know not to fight; I who am also aware of the vanity of fighting.

There are four of us at the table: a family; and behind each of us a little army is drawn up—invisible.

Rarely does the presence of this militia manifest itself; rarely does this militia have occasion to manifest itself. So complex, so various, so different, so contrary are the feelings in the heart of a single family: that mess.

But any reason at all, and the most unexpected at that, can spark a clash or even a most cruel battle. And the invisible troops go into action.

The most indirect of combats. The armies, here more than elsewhere, are passive—and indifferent—instruments. But this most indirect of combats, fought by invisible armies, is in truth the most direct of combats, fought between the most visible adversaries: husband and wife, parents and children.

The combat between parents and children is more bitter, because the children bring to it an enormous load of personal interests, a whole future of them; and the parents for their part have to defend themselves, defend the field against the threat of dispossession, against the “humiliating” danger of substitution.

And if the war between parents and children almost never ends in a fatal way, that is because at a certain point, when the battle is about to get rough, the parents and children separate; the children abandon the parents and go their own way; they understand the uselessness, the absurdity of combat with adversaries with whom, at bottom, they have nothing in common.

The battle between parents and children—the not always silent battle between parents and children—though ended not by the victory of one of the parties, but by a peaceful abandoning of the field, has its epinicium in a closer, more profound, more passionate union of the parents.

If silver anniversaries and golden anniversaries are celebrated, with even greater reason we should celebrate the new and more solemn anniversary once the children, having become adult, having left their training period behind, having become conscious of the need for a different strategy, abandon the parents and set out on their own way, towards the only true and fruitful battles, which are those that are fought between people of the same generation.

Because matrimony, that poetic song of generation (if the pun be permitted), is a pact bound with sacred ties between a man and a woman of the same generation, against other generations, against other people, all of them, including their own children. Once the children leave, the
union between husband and wife is purified of its practical reason (procreation); it withdraws into its own pure reason; it enters into the condition of poetry.

One point remained obscure to me. Why this antipathy of mine for my daughter’s friends, little men and women whom I do not know and have almost never seen; why this antipathy of my daughter’s for her mother’s friends and mine, men and women whom my daughter rarely sees, and with whom she has no common affections, feelings, tastes, interests?

I understood.

Friends, in this case, are a way of playing off the cushions (a term from billiards).

The empire of the good, in spite of so many transmutations of values, and though the reasons that first established that empire have weakened greatly and are becoming more and more confused—the empire of the good still has so much force, so much authority, that it does not allow a son to say, or even think, “I dislike my father,” nor a father to say, or even think, “I dislike my son.” But there is antipathy between fathers and sons. And even hatred. All the more antipathy, all the more hatred, insofar as the conditions for antipathy and hatred are much more frequent between those who love each other and who are united not only by love but by a common life, by common means, by a common affection for people and things, by common habits. Antipathy and hatred do not exclude sympathy and love, just as sympathy and love do not exclude antipathy and hatred. On the contrary. A strange cohabitation, but cohabitation all the same. And they either alternate, or one gains the upper hand over the other, or one hides the other—hides behind the other, as most often happens, despite the will to the good that we put into it, that we know we should put into it, that we feel a duty to put into it—that we sense the convenience of putting into it. And there is antipathy and hatred—there is “even” antipathy and hatred—of children for parents and parents for children behind love, behind great love, behind the greatest love; but since this antipathy and hatred cannot be given directly and openly to those it is destined for, the antipathy and hatred go, by an automatic transfer, and unbeknownst to the interested parties, to those who represent the “continuation” of the children, the continuation of the parents: to the friends of the children, to the friends of the parents.

The deepest ground of the drama of passion.

“Knocking,” a very short story by Robert Walser

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“Knocking”

by

Robert Walser

translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

I am completely beat, this head hurts me.

Yesterday, the day before yesterday, the day before the day before yesterday, my landlady knocked.

“May I know why you are knocking?” I asked her.

This timid question was turned down with the response: “You are pretentious.”

Subtle questions are perceived as impertinent.

One should always make a lot of noise.

Knocking is a true pleasure, listening to it less so. Knockers don’t hear their knocking; i.e., they hear it, but it doesn’t disturb them. Each thump has something agreeable for the originator. I know that from my own experience. One believes oneself brave when making a racket.

There’s that knocking again.

Apparently it’s a rug being worked on. I envy all those who, thrashing, exercise harmlessly.

An instructor once took several students over his knee and spanked them thoroughly, to impress upon them that bars exist only for adults. I also was among the group beneficially beaten.

Anyone who wants to hang a picture on the wall must first pound in a nail. To this end, one must knock.

“Your knocking disturbs me.”

“That doesn’t concern me.”

“Good, then I shall compliantly see to the removal of this irritation.”

“It won’t hurt you.”

A polite conversation, don’t you agree?

Knocking, knocking! I’d like to stop up my ears.

Also, I once dusted as a servant the Persian carpets for the household of a count. The sound of it echoed through the magnificent landscape.

Clothes, mattresses, etc., are beaten.

So a modern city is full of knocking. Anyone who worries over something inevitable seems a simpleton.

“Go ahead, knock as much as you like.”

“Is that meant ironically?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Crates, Cynic” — Marcel Schwob

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“Crates, Cynic”

by

Marcel Schwob

translated by Lorimer Hammond

from Imaginary Lives

Born at Thebes, he was a disciple of Diogenes and he also knew Alexander. From his father, a wealthy man named Ascondas, he inherited two hundred talents. Then one day, while attending a tragedy by Euripides, he beheld a vision. He saw Telephy, King of Mysia, dressed in beggar’s rags with a basket in his hand. So Crates stood up on his feet there in the theatre, declaring he would give the two hundred talents of his inheritance to all who wanted the money. Henceforth, he said, the garb of King Telephy would suffice him. Shaking with laughter, the Thebans troop before his house where they found him laughing even louder than they. After throwing all his money and furniture out of the windows he took up a plain cloak and leather sack and went away.

He went to Athens. In that city he spent his days walking the streets and his nights crouching against dirty walls. He put the doctrines of Diogenes into practice, all except the barrel. Crates thought even the barrel a superfluous dwelling. For a man, he contended, is neither a snail nor a Bernardine hermit.

He lived stark naked in the filth of the streets, filling his sack with dry crusts, rancid olives, and fish bones. He called the sack his city, a city without parasites or courtesans, he said, but a fine storehouse of thyme, garlic, figs, and bread for its king. So Crates carried his kingdom on his back and it fed him.

Though he never took part in public affairs, he never criticized them. He launched no insults nor did he approve this trait in Diogenes. Diogenes would call out, “Men, come to me!”, then rap them with his cane when they came, saying, “I called for men, not excrements!”

Crates was kind to men. He reproached them with nothing. Sores and wounds he knew, and his greatest regret was that his body were not supple like a dog’s so that he might lick them. He also deplored the necessity of nourishing himself with food and drink, for man, he thought, should be sufficient unto himself, asking no aid from the world. At any rate, he never hunted for water to wash in, being content to scratch himself against the walls after seeing how the asses did it. He seldom spoke of gods or questioned them. What difference did it make, said he, if there were gods or none, knowing as he did how little they could do for him. At first he reproached these divinities with having turned men’s faces toward heaven, thus depriving them of the faculties enjoyed by animals on all fours. Since these gods have decided that we must eat to live, thought Crates, they might better have turned our faces to the earth where food is, instead of twisting them up in the air to graze on the stars.

Life was not kind to Crates. His eyes grew bleary, exposed as they continually were to the acrid dusts of Attica, and an unknown skin plague covered his body with sores. While he scratched himself with his uncut nails he observed the twofold profit, as he called it, of wearing down these nails to their proper length while relieving his itch at the same time. He let his hair grow in a neglected mat on his head to protect him from the rain and sun.

When Alexander came to see him he flung no sharp gibes at the conqueror whom he considered merely as one with the spectators, acknowledging no difference between king and crowd. Crates no longer formed opinions about the great. Only men interested him, men and the problems of living his life as simply as possible. Diogenes with his chiding made Crates laugh no less than the pretensions of moral reformers. Holding himself infinitely above such sordid cares, he transcribed the maxim from the Delphian temple to read, “See Thyself”, and the idea of any knowledge whatsoever he thought absurd. He studied his bodily necessities, nothing more, striving always to reduce them to their simplest terms. Dog-like, Diogenes snapped at life, but Crates lived as the dogs lived.

He had a disciple named Metrocles, a wealthy young man from Marona. Hipparchia, sister of Metrocles, fell in love with Crates. Beautiful and aristocratic as she was, she was certainly the smitten one for she sought the cynic out. It seemed impossible but it was true, and nothing could turn her from him, neither his filthiness, nor his poverty, nor the horror of his public life. He warned her how he lived in the streets like a dog, scrambling for bones in the stench of gutters. He warned her further. If she came to him, he said, nothing of their life together should be hidden. He would want her publicly whenever desire prompted, as the dogs do among dogs. Hipparchia heard all. She declared she would end her own life if her parents interfered, so they let her go. She left the village of Marona with her hair unbound, a single ragged garment covering her nakedness. From that day she lived with Crates and dressed as he dressed. It has been said that she bore him one child, and that the child was named Pasicles, though nothing authentic can be found of that incident.

Hipparchia was kind to the poor. Compassionate, she soothed the sick with her hands, cleansing their bloody wounds without repugnance. To her men became as sheep are to sheep or dogs to dogs. When nights were cold she and Crates slept close to other poor folk, sharing the warmth of their bodies. From the beasts they learned the wordless kindnesses of beasts. When men approached they held no
preferences… they were men and that sufficed.

We know nothing more of Crates’ wife; we are not told when she died or how. Metrocles, her brother, admired the cynic and imitated him, but Metrocles lacked tranquillity. Troubled continually by a flatulency he could not control, he resolved upon suicide. Learning of his ailment Crates went to him after first eating a quantity of lupine. When Metrocles confessed himself no longer able to support the disgrace of his infirmity, the cynic showed his disciple how all men are submitted by nature to the same evil. Upbraiding him because he had dared to be ashamed of others, Crates led Metrocles away and they lived long together in the streets of Athens, Hipparchia undoubtedly beside them. They talked little but were ashamed of nothing. When they lapped water from a puddle with the dogs the dogs respected them. They must have fought together over scraps of food, though the biographers fail to mention it. Crates died old, we know. We know he ended his days squatting among bales of goods in a shed belonging to a shopkeeper from Pirus, and that he finally refused to move from that spot even to pick up scraps of meat. We know he was found there one day starved to death.

“A Man Who Writes” — Russell Edson

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“A Man Who Writes”

by

Russell Edson

A man had written head on his forehead, and hand on each hand, and foot on each foot.

His father said, stop stop stop, because the redundancy is like having two sons, which is two sons too many, as in the first instance which is one son too many.

The man said, may I write father on father?

Yes, said father, because one father is tired of bearing it all alone.

Mother said, I’m leaving if all these people come to dinner.

But the man wrote dinner all over the dinner.

When dinner was over father said to his son, will you write belch on my belch?

The man said, I will write God bless everyone on God.

“Paolo Ucello, Painter” — Marcel Schwob

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“Paolo Ucello, Painter”

by

Marcel Schwob

from Imaginary Lives

translated by Lorimer Hammond

His real name was Paolo di Dono, but the Florentines called him Uccelli or Paul of the Birds because of the many bird figures and painted beasts in his house, for he was too poor to feed live animals or to obtain those strange species he did not know.

At Padua he was said to have executed a fresco of the four elements, with an image of a chameleon representing the air. He had never seen one, so he made it a sort of pot bellied camel with a gaping snout (while the chameleon, explains Vasari, resembles a small dry lizard and the camel is a great humped beast). Uccello was not concerned with the reality of things but in their multiplicity and the infinity of their lines. He made fields blue, cities red, and cavaliers in black armour on ebony horses with blazing mouths, the lances of the riders radiating toward every quarter of the heavens. He had a fancy for drawing the mazocchio, a headdress made of wooden hoops so covered that th
e cloth fell down in pleats all about the wearer’s face. Uccello drew pointed ones and square ones and others in pyramids and cones, following every intricacy of their perspectives so studiously as to find a world of combinations in their folds. The sculptor Donatello used to say to him: “Ah, Paolo, you leave the substance for the shadow.”

The Bird continued his patient work, assembling circles, dividing angles, examining all creatures under all their aspects. From his friend Giovanni Manetti, the mathematician, he learned of the problems of Euclid, then shut himself up to cover panels and parchments with points and curves. Aided by Filippo Brunelleschi, he perpetually employed himself at the study of architecture, but he had no intention to build. He wanted only to know the directions of lines from foundation to cornice, the convergences of parallels together with their intersections, the manner in which vaulting turns upon its keys and the perspective of ceiling beams as they appear to unite at the ends of long rooms. He drew all beasts, all their movements and all the gestures of men, reducing these things to simple lines.

Then like an alchemist who mixes ores and metals in his furnace, watching their fusion in hope of finding the secret of gold, Uccello would throw all his forms into a crucible, mix them, mingle them and melt them, striving to transmute them into one ideal form containing all. That was why Paolo Uccello lived like an alchemist at the back of his little house. He believed he might find the knowledge to merge all lines into a single aspect; he wanted to see the universe as it should be reflected in the eye of God, all figures springing from one complex centre. Near him lived Ghiberti, della Robbia, Brunelleschi and Donatello, each one proud and a master of his art. They railed at poor Uccello for his folly of perspectives, with his house full of cobwebs empty of provisions. But Uccello was prouder than they. At each new combination of lines he imagined he had discovered the way. It was not imitation he sought, but the sovereign power to create all things, and his strange drawings of pleated hats were to him more revealing than magnificent marble figures by the great Donatello.

That was how The Bird lived: like a hermit, with his musing head wrapped in his cape, noting neither what he ate nor what he drank.

One day along a meadow, near a ring of old stones deep in the grass, he saw a laughing girl with a garland on her head. She wore a thin dress held to her hips by a pale ribbon and her movements were supple as the reeds she gathered. Her name was Selvaggia. She smiled at Uccello. Noting the flexion of her smile when she looked at him, he saw the little lines of her lashes, the patterned circles of the iris, the curve of her lids and all the minute interlacements of her hair. Considering the garland across her forehead, he described it to himself in a multitude of geometric postures, but Selvaggia knew nothing of all that, for she was only thirteen.

She took Uccello by the hand and he loved her. She was the daughter of a Florentine dyer, her mother was dead and another woman had come to her father’s house and had beaten her. Uccello took her home with him. Selvaggia used to kneel all day by the wall whereon Uccello traced his universal forms.

She never understood why he preferred to regard those straight and arched lines instead of the tender face she raised to him. At night, when Manetti or Brunelleschi came to work with Uccello, she would sleep at the foot of the scaffolding, in the circle of shadow beyond the lamplight. In the morning she arose before him, rejoicing because she was surrounded by painted birds and coloured beasts.

Uccello drew her lips, her eyes, her hair, her hands; he recorded all the attitudes of her body but he never made her portrait as did other painters when they loved a woman. For The Bird had no pleasure imitating individuals. He never dwelt in the one place – he tried to soar over all places in his flight.

So Selvaggia’s forms were tossed into his crucible along with the movements of beasts, the lines of plants and stones, rays of light, billowings of clouds above the earth and the rippling of sea waves.

Without thought for the girl, he lived in eternal meditation upon his crucible of forms.

There came a time when nothing remained to eat in Uccello’s house. Selvaggia did not speak of this to Donatello or the others; she kept her silence and died. Uccello drew the stiffening lines of her body, the union of her thin little hands, her closed eyes. He no more realized she was dead than he had ever realized she was alive. But he threw these new forms among all the others he had gathered.

The Bird grew old. His pictures were no longer understood by men, who recognized in them neither earth nor plant nor animal, seeing only a confusion of curves. For many years he had been working on his supreme masterpiece which he hid from all eyes. It was to embrace all his research and all the images he had ever conceived. The subject was Saint Thomas, incredulous, tempting the wrath of Christ. Uccello completed this work when he was eighty. Calling Donatello to his house he uncovered it piously before him and Donatello said: “Oh, Paolo, cover your picture!” Though The Bird questioned him, the great sculptor would say no more, then Uccello knew he had accomplished a miracle. But Donatello had seen only a mass of lines.

A few years later they found Paolo Uccello dead in his bed, worn out with age. His face was covered with wrinkles, his eyes fixed on some mysterious revelation. Tight in his rigid hand he clutched a little parchment disc on which a network of lines ran from the centre to the circumference and returned from the circumference to the centre.

“Burke and Hare, Assassins” — Marcel Schwob

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“Burke and Hare, Assassins”

by

Marcel Schwob

from Imaginary Lives

translated by Lorimer Hammond

Mr. William Burke rose from the meanest obscurity to eternal renown. Born in Ireland, he started life as a shoemaker, later practicing his trade for several years in Edinburgh where he made the acquaintance of Mr. Hare, on whom he had the greatest influence. In the collaboration of Messrs. Burke and Hare the inventive and analytic powers belonged, no doubt, to Mr. Burke, but their two names remain inseparable in art, as inseparable as the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. Together they lived, together they worked, and they were finally taken together. Mr. Hare never protested against the popular favour particularly attached to the person of Mr. Burke. Disinterestedness so complete seldom has its recompense. It was Mr. Burke who bequeathed his name to the special process that brought the two collaborators into fame. The monosyllable “Burke” will live long on the lips of men, while even now Hare’s personality seems to have disappeared into that oblivion which spreads unjustly over obscure labours.

Into his work Mr. Burke brought the faerie fancy of the green island where he was born. His soul was evidently steeped in old tales and folklore, and there was something like a far away, musty odour of the Arabian Nights in all he did. Like a caliph pacing a nocturnal garden in Baghdad, he desired mysterious adventures, curious for the glamour of strange people and unknown things.

Like a huge black slave armed with a heavy scimitar, he found for his voluptuousness no more fitting conclusion than the death of others, but his Anglo-Saxon originality led him to succeed in drawing the most practical ends from his fanciful Celtic prowlings. When his artistic joy is sated what does the black slave do with his headless carcasses? With barbarity entirely Arab, he slices them into quarters and salts them down in the cellar. What good does he get from that? Nothing. Mr. Burke was infinitely superior.

Somehow Mr. Hare served him as a sort of Dinarzade. It seemed as if the inventive powers of Mr. Burke were especially excited by the presence of his friend. The broad illusion of their dream permitted them to lodge their most pompous visions in a garret. Mr. Hare had a small chamber on the sixth floor of a tall house filled very full of Edinburghers. A sofa, a large desk and several toilet utensils were undoubtedly all the furnishings, including a bottle of whisky with three glasses on a little table. It was Mr. Burke’s rule to invite some passerby at nightfall, but he never received more than one at a time and never twice the same. He would walk through the streets examining all faces that piqued his curiosity. Frequently he chose at random, addressing the stranger with as much politeness as one could ask of a Haroun al Raschid.

The stranger would then stumble up six flights of stairs to Mr. Hare’s garret where they gave him the sofa and offered him Scotch whisky to drink. Then Mr. Burke would ask him about the most surprising incidents of his life. He was an insatiable listener, was Mr. Burke. The stranger’s recital was always interrupted before daybreak by Mr. Hare, whose manner of interrupting was invariably the same and very impressive. He had a habit of passing behind the sofa and putting his hands over the speaker’s mouth while Mr. Burke would suddenly sit down on the gentleman’s chest at the same moment. The two of them would remain thus, motionless, imagining the conclusion they never heard. In this manner Messrs. Burke and Hare terminated a large number of histories the world has never learned. When the tale was definitely stopped with the suffocation of the teller, they would explore the mystery, stripping the unknown man, admiring his jewelry, counting his money, reading his letters. Certain items of correspondence were often not without interest. Then they would lay the corpse away to cool in Mr. Hare’s big desk.

And now Mr. Burke would demonstrate the practical force of his genius. To waste none of the adventure’s pleasure, he held that the body should be fresh but not warm.

In the first years of the nineteenth century medical students had a passion for anatomy, though religious prejudices made it difficult for them to secure subjects for dissection. Mr. Burke’s clear mind had taken note of this scientific dilemma. No one knows how he first established an alliance with that venerable and learned practitioner, Dr. Knox, of the faculty of Edinburgh. Perhaps Mr. Burke had followed his public lectures in spite of the fact that his imagination inclined rather to artistic things. It is certain, however, that he promised to aid Dr. Knox as best he could, and that Dr. Knox agreed to pay him for his pains. The scale of prices varied, declining from the choice corpses of young men to the less desirable remains of the aged. The latter interested Dr. Knox only moderately and Mr. Burke held the same opinion, for old men, he claimed, always had less imagination. Dr. Knox came to be known among his colleagues for his splendid knowledge of anatomy. This dilettante life, led so enjoyably by Messrs. Burke and Hare, brought them to what was certainly the classic period of their career.

For the power of Mr. Burke’s genius soon led him beyond rules and regulations of a tragedy in which he had always a story to listen to and a confidence to keep. Alone he progressed (it is useless to consider the influence of Mr. Hare) towards a sort of romanticism. No longer satisfied with the setting provided by Mr. Hare’s garret, he invented a procedure to make use of the nocturnal fogs.

Numerous imitators have somewhat sullied the originality of his manner, but here is the veritable tradition of the master.

Mr. Burke’s fertile imagination had grown weary of tales eternally reverting to human experiences. The result never equaled his expectation. So he came at last to value only the actual aspect of death… for him unfailingly varied.

He concentrated his drama in the dénouement. The quality of the actors no longer mattered; he trained them at random, and his only property of the theatre was a canvas mask filled with pitch. Mask in hand, he would walk out on foggy nights accompanied by Mr. Hare. Approaching the first individual who chanced to pass, he would walk a few steps in front, then turn and place the mask quickly and firmly over the subject’s face. Immediately Messrs. Burke and Hare would grasp the arms of their actor, one on each side. The mask full of pitch presented simply a genial instrument for stifling cries and strangling. It was tragic. The fog muffled the gestures of the rôle and softened them. Some of the actors seemed to mimic drunken men. This short scene over, Messrs. Burke and Hare would take a cab in which they would disrobe their guest, Mr. Hare caring for the costumes while Mr. Burke delivered the cadaver fresh and clean to Dr. Knox.

Unlike most biographers it is here I leave Messrs. Burke and Hare, at the peak of their glory.

Why destroy such an artistic effect by requiring them to languish along to the end of their lives, revealing their defects and their deceptions? We need only remember them, mask in hand, walking abroad on foggy nights. For their end was sordid like so many others. One of them, it appears, was hanged and Dr. Knox was forced to quit Edinburgh.

Mr. Burke left no other works.

“The Story to End All Stories” — Philip K. Dick

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“The Story to End All Stories”

by

Philip K. Dick

In a hydrogen war ravaged society the nubile young women go down to a futuristic zoo and have sexual intercourse with various deformed and non-human life forms in the cages. In this particular account a woman who has been patched together out of the damaged bodies of several women has intercourse with an alien female, there in the cage, and later on the woman, by means of futuristic science, conceives. The infant is born, and she and the female in the cage fight over it to see who gets it. The human young woman wins, and promptly eats the offspring, hair, teeth, toes and all. Just after she has finished she discovers that the offspring is God.

“On the Job,” a very short story by Diane Williams

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“On the Job”

by

Diane Williams

He looked like a man whose leader has failed him time after time, as he asked the seller awkward questions—not hostile. He was looking for a better belt buckle.

The seller said, You ought to buy yourself something beautiful! Why not this?

He paid for the buckle, which he felt was brighter and stronger than he was. His sense of sight and smell were diminishing.

He could only crudely draw something on his life and just fill it in—say a horse.

“Can I see that?” he said, “What is that?”

It was a baby porringer.

At the close of the day, the seller counted her money, went to the bank—the next step. She hates to push items she doesn’t approve of, especially in this small town, five days a week, where everything she says contains the mystery of health and salvation that preserves her customers from hurt or peril.

That much was settled, as the customer entered his home, approached his wife, and considered his chances. Hadn’t his wife been daily smacked across the mouth with lipstick and cut above the eyes with mascara?

She had an enormous bosom that anyone could feel leaping forward to afford pleasure. She was gabbing and her husband—the customer—was like a whole horse who’d fallen out of its stall—a horse that could not ever get out of its neck-high stall on its own, but then his front legs—their whole length—went over the top edge of the gate, and the customer made a suitable adjustment to get his equilibrium well outside of the stall.

“It’s so cute,” he said to his wife, “when you saw me, how excited you got.”

His wife liked him so much and she had a sweet face and the customer thought he was being perfectly insincere.

He went on talking—it was a mixed type of thing—he was lonely and he was trying to get his sheer delight out of the way.

“Two for the Road” — John Ashbery

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“Two for the Road”

by

John Ashbery

Did you want it plain or frosted? (Plain vanilla or busted?)

I bet you’ve been writing again. She reached under her skirt. Why don’t you let a person see it? Naw, it’s no good. Just some chilblains that got lodged in my fingertips. Who said so? I’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, if you’ll stop covering it with your hand.

For Pete’s sake-

We had forgotten that it was noon, the hour when the ravens emerge from the door beside the huge clock face and march around it, then back inside to the showers. Oh, where were you going to say let’s perform it?

I thought it was evident from my liquor finish steel.

Oh right, you can certainly have your cocktail, it’s my shake, my fair shake. Dust-colored hydrangeas fell out of the pitcher onto the patio.

Darned if someone doesn’t like it this way and always knows it’s going to happen like this when it does. But let me read to you from my peaceful new story:

“Then the cinnamon tigers arose and there was peace for maybe a quarter of a century. But you know how things always turn out. The dust bowl slid in through the French doors. Maria? it said. Would you mind just coming over here and standing for a moment. Take my place. It’ll only be for a minute. I must go see how the lemmings are doing. And that is how she soiled herself and brought eternal night upon our shy little country.”

“Two Old-Timers” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“Two Old-Timers”

by

F. Scott Fitzgerald

PHIL MACEDON, once the Star of Stars, and Pat Hobby, script writer, had collided out on Sunset near the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was five in the morning and there was liquor in the air as they argued and Sergeant Gaspar took them around to the station house. Pat Hobby, a man of forty-nine, showed fight, apparently because Phil Macedon failed to acknowledge that they were old acquaintances.

He accidentally bumped Sergeant Gaspar who was so provoked that he put him in a little barred room while they waited for the Captain to arrive.

Chronologically Phil Macedon belonged between Eugene O’Brien and Robert Taylor. He was still a handsome man in his early fifties and he had saved enough from his great days for a hacienda in the San Fernando Valley; there he rested as full of honors, as rollicksome and with the same purposes in life as Man o’ War.

With Pat Hobby life had dealt otherwise. After twenty-one years in the industry, script and publicity, the accident found him driving a 1935 car which had lately become the property of the Acme Loan Co. And once, back in 1928, he had reached a point of getting bids for a private swimming pool.

He glowered from his confinement, still resenting Macedon’s failure to acknowledge that they had ever met before.

“I suppose you don’t remember Coleman,” he said sarcastically. “Or Connie Talmadge or Bill Corker or Allan Dwan.”

Macedon lit a cigarette with the sort of timing in which the silent screen has never been surpassed, and offered one to Sergeant Gaspar.

“Couldn’t I come in tomorrow?” he asked. “I have a horse to exercise—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Macedon,” said the cop— sincerely for the actor was an old favorite of his, “The Captain is due here any minute. After that we won’t be holding you.”

“It’s just a formality,” said Pat, from his cell.

“Yeah, it’s just a—” Sergeant Gaspar glared at Pat, “It may not be any formality for you. Did you ever hear of the sobriety test?”

Macedon flicked his cigarette out the door and lit another.

“Suppose I come back in a couple of hours,” he suggested.

“No,” regretted Sergeant Gaspar. “And since I have to detain you, Mr. Macedon, I want to take the opportunity to tell you what you meant to me once. It was that picture you made, The Final Push, it meant a lot to every man who was in the war.”

“Oh, yes,” said Macedon, smiling.

“I used to try to tell my wife about the

war—how it was, with the shells and the machine guns—I was in there seven months with the 26th New England—but she never understood. She’d point her finger at me and say ‘Boom! you’re dead,’ and so I’d laugh and stop trying to make her understand.”

“Hey, can I get out of here?” demanded Pat.

“You shut up!” said Gaspar fiercely. “You probably wasn’t in the war.”

“I was in the Motion Picture Home Guard,” said Pat, “I had bad eyes.”

“Listen to him,” said Gaspar disgustedly, “That’s what all them slackers say. Well, the war was something. And after my wife saw that picture of yours I never had to explain to her. She knew. She always spoke different about it after that—never just pointed her finger at me and said ‘Boom!’ I’ll never forget the part where you was in that shell hole. That was so real it made my hands sweat.”

“Thanks,” said Macedon graciously. He lit another cigarette, “You see, I was in the war myself and I knew how it was. I knew how it felt.”

“Yes sir,” said Gaspar appreciatively, “Well, I’m glad of the opportunity to tell you what you did for me. You—you explained the war to my wife.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Pat Hobby suddenly, “That war picture Bill Corker did in 1925?”

“There he goes again,” said Gaspar. “Sure

—The Birth of a Nation. Now you pipe down till the Captain comes.”

“Phil Macedon knew me then all right,” said Pat resentfully, “I even watched him work on it one day.”

“I just don’t happen to remember you, old man,” said Macedon politely, “I can’t help that.”

“You remember the day Bill Corker shot that shell hole sequence don’t you? Your first day on the picture?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“When will the Captain be here?” Macedon asked.

“Any minute now, Mr. Macedon.”

“Well, I remember,” said Pat, “—because I was there when he had that shell hole dug. He was out there on the back lot at nine o’clock in the morning with a gang of hunkies to dig the hole and four cameras. He called you up from a field telephone and told you to go to the costumer and get into a soldier suit. Now you remember?”

“I don’t load my mind with details, old man.”

“You called up that they didn’t have one to fit you and Corker told you to shut up and get into one anyhow. When you got out to the back lot you were sore as hell because your suit didn’t fit.”

Macedon smiled charmingly.

“You have a most remarkable memory. Are you sure you have the right picture and the right actor?” he asked.

“Am I !” said Pat grimly, “I can see you right now. Only you didn’t have much time to complain about the uniform because that wasn’t Corker’s plan. He always thought you were the toughest ham in Hollywood to get anything natural out of—and he had a scheme. He was going to get the heart of the picture shot by noon—before you even knew you were acting. He turned you around and shoved you down into that shell hole on your fanny, and yelled ‘Camera.’ ”

“That’s a lie,” said Phil Macedón, “I got down.”

“Then why did you start yelling?” demanded Pat. “I can still hear you: ‘Hey, what’s the idea!

Is this some ………….. gag? You

get me out of here or I’ll walk out on you!’

“—and all the time you were trying to claw your way up the side of that pit, so damn mad you couldn’t see. You’d almost get up and then you’d slide back and lie

there with your face working—till finally you began to bawl and all this time Bill had four cameras on you. After about twenty minutes you gave up and just lay there, heaving. Bill took a hundred feet of that and then he had a couple of prop men pull you out.”

The police Captain had arrived in the squad car. He stood in the doorway against the first grey of dawn.

“What you got here, Sergeant? A drunk?”

Sergeant Gaspar walked over to the cell, unlocked it and beckoned Pat to come out. Pat blinked a moment—then his eyes fell on Phil Macedón and he shook his finger at him.

“So you see I do know you,” he said. “Bill Corker cut that piece of film and titled it so you were supposed to be a doughboy whose pal had just been killed. You wanted to climb out and get at the Germans in revenge, but the shells bursting all around and the concussions kept knocking you back in.”

“What’s it about?” demanded the Captain.

“I want to prove I know this guy,” said Pat, “Bill said the best moment in the picture was when Phil was yelling ‘I’ve already broken my first finger nail!’ Bill titled it ‘Ten Huns will go to hell to shine your shoes!”

“You’ve got here ‘collision with alcohol,’ ” said the Captain looking at the blotter, “Let’s take these guys down to the hospital and give them the test.”

“Look here now,” said the actor, with his flashing smile, “My name’s Phil Macedón.”

The Captain was a political appointee and very young. He remembered the name and the face but he was not especially impressed because Hollywood was full of has-beens.

They all got into the squad car at the door.

After the test Macedón was held

at the station house until friends could arrange bail. Pat Hobby was discharged but his car would not run, so Sergeant Gaspar offered to drive him home.

“Where do you live?” he asked as they started off.

“I don’t live anywhere tonight,” said Pat. “That’s why I was driving around. When a friend of mine wakes up I’ll touch him for a couple of bucks and go to a hotel.” “Well now,” said Sergeant Gaspar, “I got a couple of bucks that ain’t working.”

The great mansions of Beverly Hills slid by and Pat waved his hand at them in salute.

“In the good old days,” he said, “I used to be able to drop into some of those houses day or night. And Sunday mornings—”

“Is that all true you said in the station,” Gaspar asked, “—about how they put him in the hole?” “Sure, it is,” said Pat. “That guy needn’t have been so upstage. He’s just an old timer like me.”

“On the Beach,” a very short story by Stephen Dixon

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“On the Beach”

by

Stephen Dixon

Eva, Olivia and Eric are on a beach trying to drag a rowboat into the water. “This thing will never budge,” Eric says. “My father could make it budge,” Eva says. “Here she goes again,” Olivia says. “No, let her, what?” Eric says. “My father was so strong he could lift it on his back and carry it into the water. He’d need both arms and it’d be heavy but he could do it.” “I’m sure he could. Or push, even, or at least drag it into the water by himself, but I can’t, honey. I’m simply not as strong as your father was.” “As my father is. My father’s very strong.” “As he is then. As you say. I’ve heard of his physical exploits—how strong he was, I’m saying.” “She knows what exploits are,” Olivia says. “You don’t have to teach it to either of us. I know the word and I’ve told her the word.” “I didn’t realize that. For you see, I didn’t know that word till I was twice your age, maybe three times. How old are you? I’m only kidding. I know how old. I even know how old both of you are put together. A hundred six, right. No. But good for you—both of you for knowing so many big impressive words. Like ‘impressive.’ You know that word too, right?” “Right.” “Sure, just as my father knows all those words and more,” Eva says. “He knows words that haven’t even been born yet. Like kakaba. Like oolemagoog.” “He does? He knows those? Wow. Very impressive. Anyway, I’d hoped we got past that subject. I said that to myself. But if we didn’t, some men are just stronger than others. That’s a fact. I’d be the last to deny it. You both know what ‘deny’ means, I know. And some men are smarter than others. And kinder and nicer than others and have more hair and so on. But I bet no man has more than two arms. Anyone want to bet?” “My father’s stronger, nicer, kinder than others and much much more than that,” Eva says. “He’s taller than most others. And handsome. Much more than any others. His photos say so. Others say so.” “Well that’s a good thing for a man to be,” Eric says. “For an older woman to be too,” Olivia says. “That’s what Mother says.” “Good. She knows. She’s smart. Me, I was never considered handsome. That should come as no surprise to you two, as it doesn’t to your mother. Not handsome even when I was a young man, an older woman, a small piggy, or even now as a fairly not-so-young-maybe-even-old hog. Most of that was supposed to be funny. Why aren’t you laughing?” “Because it wasn’t funny and we’re talking about someone else now, right, Olivia?” “I don’t know,” Eva says. “Daddy. All that he is.” “Okay,” Eric says, “I’ll bite. Meaning, well, just that I’m all pointy ears and curly tail uncoiled and extended snout—I want to know. What else was he? Is he. Sorry. But tell me.” “Funny,” Eva says. “He’s more funny than anyone alive. Sometimes people died laughing at things he said. But really, with big holes in their chests and all their bones broken and blood.” “Yes, that’s true,” Olivia says, “the streets covered with broken laughed-out dead bodies, for funniest is what he is and always was. And liveliest too. A real live wire, our father. You’re excellent, Eric—honestly, this is not to go stroke-stroke to you. And lively and smart, but not at all handsome, and kind and wonderful in some ways and we love you, we truly do, even if what Eva said and how she acted just now, but you’re not livelier than our dad. No sir. Our real dad was live-ly! Oh boy was he. A real live wire. He was also so sad. We shouldn’t leave that out if we want to be fair. A real sad wire. ‘Mr. Sad Wire’ we should’ve called him, right, Eva? If you could have talked then. For you couldn’t even say three words in a row that made sense. No sentence-sense I used to say about her then, Eric.” “I could so say sad wire.” “Hey, stop a moment, for where are we?” Eric says. “Was? Is? Which one is he?” “Is,” Eva says. “Daddy’s definitely an ‘is.’ And sometimes when I hear from him, like I did just yesterday, I say ‘Daddy Live Wire, Daddy Sad Wire, how dost your farting grow?’ Because that’s what he also does best—just ask Olivia.” “That’s right, she’s a true bird, we have to be fair,” Olivia says. “He was probably the world’s greatest most productive farter for more years in a row than anybody and still is.” “Is for sure,” Eva says. “The whole world knows of him. He’s been in newspapers, on TV. People have died from it everywhere, and not happy laughing deaths. In planes and parks. Hundreds of dead bodies in your way sometimes. Flat on the ground, piled ten deep sometimes, black tongues hanging out, their own hands around their necks. Vultures in trees all around but refusing to pick at them the smell’s so bad. And much worse. I won’t even go into it more. Like whole cities dying, dogs and cats too—not a single breathing thing left alive. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Rats always survive. But ‘Killer Dad’s been at it again,’ I always say to Olivia when we see this, and that time we walked through that ghost city. It doesn’t hurt us because we got natural, natural…what is it again we got, Olivia?” “Impunity. Immunity. Ingenuity. That’s us. We never even smell it when we’re in the midst of it but we can see when we see all this that it can only be he who did it.” “You girls are really funny today,” Eric says. “Inherited from him, no doubt.” “Oh no we didn’t,” Olivia says. “He inherited it from us, didn’t you know? Something strange happened in life when we were born. But everything he’s best at he got from us, or almost. We’re sad live wires or lively dad wires or just mad love wires. That’s because we brought up our father and are still doing it yet. Now that’s a real switch, isn’t it, Eva, bringing up your own dad? How’d we do it?” “I’m not sure, but that’s for sure what we’re doing. We didn’t want to, we had our own lives to bring up, but we had no choice, right, Olivia?” “No, why?” “No, you.” “He was left on our doorstep, right? Came in a shoe box with a note glued to it saying…what?” “It said ‘Feeling blue? Nothing in life’s true? Cat’s got your goo? So do something different in your loo today. Bring up your own dad. But don’t leave him in a shoe box for squirrels to build their nests in on top of him. Take him out, brush him off, give him a good cleaning. Treat him as good as you would your best pair of party shoes.’ Wasn’t that what it said, Olivia?” “Or was it a hat box he came in? ‘Put him on your bean against the sun, sleet and rain and your brain will seem much keener.’ No, that wasn’t it. ‘Treat him as gently as you would your own mentally…’ I forget everything it said. But we did. And I know it was some kind of box.” “A suggestion box. A lunch box. ‘What’s inside is nutritious and suspicious. Open hungrily and with care.’ And when we’ve brought him up all the way, Eric, I’m afraid the sad news is you’ll have to move out. Because he’ll be moving back in, all grown up then. Because no bigamists allowed in our family, right, Olivia?” “Right, Eva.” “So?” “So maybe in yours, Eric, it’s allowed, but not in ours. Family honor. Horses’ code. New York telephone directory. We’re very sorry. Unbreakable rule. But let’s stop, Eva. I’ve spun out and so have you. And we’re not being nice to Eric who’s been so nice to us. Renting this boat. Helping us push it into the water. Doing most of the work. Probably getting a heart attack from it. Dying for us just so we can have some summer fun.” “Hey, don’t worry about me, kids. Let it out. Have it out. Thrash it to me. Money and abuse are no object. Listen, I know how you’re both feeling, but you have to know I also of course wish he had never died.” “He never did, how can you say that?” Eva says. “Whatever. And easy as it is for me to say this after the fact and much as I would have missed if he had lived—I’ll be straightforward with you—I didn’t know him but have heard so many wonderful things about him that I only wish I had.” “Had what?” Olivia says. “That he can’t be replaced. By me. I know that. Never deluded myself otherwise. And that I wish I’d known him.” “So, it can be arranged,” Eva says, “can’t it, Olivia?” “Let’s stop—really. We’re spoiling our day and being extra extra lousy to Eric.” “Okay, he’s dead, heave-ho, hi-heave, what d’ya say, Joe, bury the problem? For what I want most now is to get out there to fish, splash and row.” “Well,” Eric says, “it seems we’ll have to wait for a couple of strapping guys to come along and help us or come back when the tide comes in. Anyone think to bring that card with the tide times?” “Daddy will come help,” Eva says. “Sometimes it only takes one and he’s the one. So hey, hi, daddy of mine, come and pull our boat into the water. You’ll see. I’ve wished. Daddy come now,” and she sits down hard in the sand, puts her thumb in her mouth and sucks it while she twiddles her hair in back and looks off distantly. “Eva, get up, get up quickly, you hear me?” Olivia says. “You’re scaring the shit out of us.”

“The Boat,” a very short story by Robert Walser

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“The Boat”

by

Robert Walser

translated by Tom Whalen

I think I’ve written this scene before, but I’ll write it once again. In a boat, midway upon the lake, sit a man and woman. High above in the dark sky stands the moon. The night is still and warm, just right for this dreamy love adventure. Is the man in the boat an abductor? Is the woman the happy, enchanted victim? This we don’t know; we see only how they both kiss each other. The dark mountain lies like a giant on the glistening water. On the shore lies a castle or country house with a lighted window. No noise, no sound. Everything is wrapped in a black, sweet silence. The stars tremble high above in the sky and also upward from far below out of the sky which lies on the surface of the water. The water is the friend of the moon, it has pulled it down to itself, and now they kiss, the water and the moon, like boyfriend and girlfriend. The beautiful moon has sunk into the water like a daring young prince into a flood of peril. He is reflected in the water like a beautiful affectionate soul reflected in another love-thirsty soul. It’s marvelous how the moon resembles the lover drowned in pleasure, and how the water resembles the happy mistress hugging and embracing her kingly love. In the boat, the man and woman are completely still. A long kiss holds them captive. The oars lie lazily on the water. Are they happy, will they be happy, the two here in the boat, the two who kiss one another, the two upon whom the moon shines, the two who are in love?

Read “Report on Heaven and Hell,” a very short story by Silvina Ocampo

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“Report on Heaven and Hell”

by

Silvina Ocampo

translation by Edith Grossman

Heaven and Hell, like the great auction galleries, have heaps of objects accumulated in their passageways, objects that will not surprise anyone because they are the same things usually found in the galleries of this world. But it is not enough to speak only of objects; there are also cities, towns, gardens, mountains, valleys, suns, moons, winds, seas, stars, reflections, temperatures, tastes, perfumes, sounds, for Eternity provides us with every kind of sensation and spectacle.

If it seems to you that the wind roars like a tiger and if in the glance of the heavenly dove you see the eyes of a hyena, if the well-dressed man who crosses the street is wearing shameless tatters, if the prize-winning rose offered to you is a faded rag as drab as a sparrow, if your wife’s face is dulled, raw, and angry-your eyes, and not God, have made them that way.

When you die the demons and the angels (they are equally intent and know that you are sleeping halfway between this world and some other one) will come to your bed in disguise and, stroking your head, will permit you to select the things you preferred during your lifetime. At first, in a kind of sample display, they will show you nutural objects. If they show you the sun, the moon, or the stars, you will see them in a painted crystal ball and you will think that the crystal sphere is the world; if they show you the sea or the mountains, you will see them in a stone and you will think that the stone is the sea and the mountains; if they show you a horse it will be a miniature, but you will think that the horse is real. The angels and the demons will distract your spirit with pictures of flowers, shining fruits, and candies; making you think that you are still a child, they will sit you in a kind of sedan chair, called the queen’s chair or the chair af gold, and they will carry you, their hands intertwined, down those corridors to the center of your life where your preferences dwell.

Be careful. If you select more things from Hell than from Heaven, you may go to Heaven; on the other hand, if you select more things from Heaven than from Hell, you run the risk of going to Hell since your love for celestial things will imply mere greed.

The laws of Heaven and Hell are capricious. Whether you go to one place or the other depends on the most insignificant detail. I know of people who have gone to Hell because of a broken key or a wicker cage and of others who have gone to Heaven because of a sheet of newspaper or a cup of milk.