Category: microfiction

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

Biblioklept1 Comment

“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

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“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

Biblioklept1 Comment

“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

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“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

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“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

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“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

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“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.

“Conscience,” very short tale by Italo Calvino

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“Conscience”

by

Italo Calvino

translated by Tim Parks

Came a war and a guy called Luigi asked if he could go, as a volunteer.

Everyone was full of praise. Luigi went to the place where they were handing out the rifles, took one and said: ‘Now I’m going to go and kill a guy called Alberto.’

They asked him who Alberto was.

‘An enemy,’ he answered, ‘an enemy of mine.’

They explained to him that he was supposed to be killing enemies of a certain type, not whoever he felt like.

‘So?’ said Luigi. ‘You think I’m dumb? This Alberto is precisely that type, one of them. When I heard you were going to war against that lot, I thought: I’ll go too, that way I can kill Alberto. That’s why I came. I know that Alberto: he’s a crook. He betrayed me, for next to nothing he made me make a fool of myself with a woman. It’s an old story. If you don’t believe me, I’ll tell you the whole thing.’

They said fine, it was okay.

‘Right then,’ said Luigi, ‘tell me where Alberto is and I’ll go there and I’ll fight.’

They said they didn’t know.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Luigi said. ‘I’ll find someone to tell me. Sooner or later I’ll catch up with him.’

They said he couldn’t do that, he had to go and fight where they sent him, and kill whoever happened to be there. They didn’t know anything about this Alberto.

‘You see,’ Luigi insisted, ‘I really will have to tell you the story. Because that guy is a real crook and you’re doing the right thing going to fight against him.’

But the others didn’t want to know.

Luigi couldn’t see reason: ‘Sorry, it may be all the same to you if I kill one enemy or another, but I’d be upset if I killed someone who had nothing to do with Alberto.’

The others lost their patience. One of them gave him a good talking to and explained what war was all about and how you couldn’t go and kill the particular enemy you wanted to.

Luigi shrugged. ‘If that’s how it is,’ he said, ‘you can count me out.’

‘You’re in and you’re staying in,’ they shouted.

‘Forward march, one-two, one-two!’ And they sent him off to war.

Luigi wasn’t happy. He’d kill people, offhand, just to see if he might get Alberto, or one of his family. They gave him a medal for every enemy he killed, but he wasn’t happy. ‘If I don’t kill Alberto,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have killed a load of people for nothing.’ And he felt bad.

Meantime they were giving him one medal after another, silver, gold, everything.

Luigi thought: ‘Kill some today, kill some tomorrow, there’ll be less of them, that crook’s turn is bound to come.’

But the enemy surrendered before Luigi could find Alberto. He felt bad he’d killed so many people for nothing, and since they were at peace now he put all his medals in a bag and went around enemy country giving them away to the wives and children of the dead.

Going around like this, he ran into Alberto.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘better late than never,’ and he killed him.

That was when they arrested him, tried him for murder and hanged him. At the trial he said over and over that he had done it to settle his conscience, but nobody listened to him.

“Football,” a very short story by Richard Brautigan

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“Football”

by

Richard Brautigan

The confidence that he got by being selected all-state in football lasted him all of his life. He was killed in an automobile accident when he was twenty-two. He was buried on a rainy afternoon.

Halfway through the burial service the minister forgot what he was talking about. Everybody stood there at the grave waiting for him to remember.

Then he remembered.

“This young man,” he said. “Played football.”

“Frog in Prague” — Stephen Dixon

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“Frog in Prague”

by

Stephen Dixon

They stand still. “And Kafka?” Howard says.

“Kafka is not buried here.”

“No? Because I thought—what I mean is the lady at my hotel’s tourist information desk—the Intercontinental over there—and also the one who sold me the ticket now, both told me—”

The man’s shaking his head, looks at him straight-faced. It’s up to you, his look says, if you’re going to give me anything for this tour. I won’t ask. I won’t embarrass you if you don’t give me a crown. But I’m not going to stand here all day waiting for it.

“Here, I want to give you something for all this.” He looks in his wallet. Smallest is a fifty note. Even if he got three-to-one on the black market, it’s still too much. He feels the change in his pocket. Only small coins. This guy’s done this routine with plenty of people, that’s for sure, and he’d really like not to give him anything.

“Come, come,” the man said.

“You understand?” Howard said. “For Kafka’s grave. Just as I told the lady at the ticket window, I’m sure the other parts of this ticket for the Old Synagogue and the Jewish Museum are all very interesting—maybe I’ll take advantage of it some other time—but what I really came to see—”

“Yes, come, come. I work here too. I will show you.”

Howard followed him up a stone path past hundreds of gravestones on both sides, sometimes four or five or he didn’t know how many of them pressed up or leaning against one another. The man stopped, Howard did and looked around for Kafka’s grave, though he knew one of these couldn’t be it. “You see,” the man said, “the governor at the time—it was the fourteenth century and by now there were twelve thousand people buried here. He said no when the Jewish elders of Prague asked to expand the cemetery. So what did the Jews do? They built down and up, not outwards, not away. They kept inside the original lines of the cemetery permitted them. Twelve times they built down and up till they had twelve of what do you call them in English, plateaus? Places?” and he moved his hand up in levels.

“Levels?”

“Yes, that would be right. Twelve of them and then the ground stopped and they also couldn’t go any higher up without being the city’s highest cemetery hill, so they couldn’t make any levels anymore.”

“So that accounts for these gravestones being, well, the way they are. All on top of one another, pressed togetherlike. Below ground there’s actually twelve coffins or their equivalents, one on top of—”

“Yes, yes, that’s so.” He walked on about fifty feet, stopped. “Another governor wouldn’t let the Jews in this country take the names of son-of anymore. Son of Isaac, Son of Abraham. They had to take, perhaps out of punishment, but history is not clear on this, the names of animals or things from the earth and so on.” He pointed to the stone relief of a lion at the top of one gravestone. “Lion, you see.” To a bunch of grapes on another stone: “Wine, this one. And others, if we took the time to look, all around, but of that historical era.”

“So that’s why the name Kafka is that of a bird if I’m not mistaken. Jackdaw, I understand it means in Czech. The Kafka family, years back, must have taken it or were given it, right? Which?”

“Yes, Kafka. Kafka.” Howard didn’t think by the man’s expression he understood. “Come, please.” They moved on another hundred feet or so, stopped. “See these two hands on the monument? That is the stone of one who could give blessings—a Cohen. No animal there, but his sign. Next to it,” pointing to another gravestone, “is a jaw.”

“A jaw?” The stone relief of this one was of a pitcher. “Jar, do you mean?”

“Yes. Jaw, jaw. That is a Levi, one who brings the holy water to wash the hands of a Cohen. That they are side by side is only a coincidence. On the next monument you see more berries but of a different kind than wine. Fertility.”

“Does that mean a woman’s buried here? Or maybe a farmer?”

“Yes. Come, come.” They went past many stones and sarcophagi. All of them seemed to be hundreds of years old and were crumbling in places. Most of the names and dates on them couldn’t be read. The newer section of the cemetery, where Kafka had to be buried, had to be in an area one couldn’t see from here. He remembered the photograph of the gravestone of Kafka and his parents. Kafka’s name on top—he was the first to go—his father’s and mother’s below his. It was in a recent biography of him he’d read, or at least read the last half of, not really being interested in the genealogical and formative parts of an artist’s life, before he left for Europe. The stone was upright, though the photo could have been taken many years ago, and close to several upright stones but not touching them. The names and dates on it, and also the lines in Hebrew under Kafka’s name, could be read clearly. It looked no different from any gravestone in an ordinary relatively old crowded Jewish cemetery. The one a couple of miles past the Queens side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge where some of his own family were buried.

The man walked, Howard followed him. “Here is the monument of Mordecai Maisel. It is much larger than the others because he was a very rich important man. More money than even the king, he had. The king would borrow from him when he needed it for public matters. Later, after he paid it back, he would say to him ‘Mordecai, what can I give you in return for this great favor?’ Mordecai would always say ‘Give not to me but to my people,’ and that did help to make life better in Prague for the Jews of that time. He was a good wealthy man, Mordecai Maisel. Come, come.”

They stopped at another sarcophagus. Hundreds of little stones had been placed on the ledges and little folded-up pieces of paper pushed into the crevices of it. “Here is Rabbi Low. As you see, people still put notes inside his monument asking for special favors from him.”

“Why, he was a mystic?”

“You don’t know of the famous Rabbi Löw?”

“No. I mean, his name does sound familiar, but I’m afraid my interest is mostly literature. Kafka. I’ve seen several of his residences in this neighborhood. Where he worked for so many years near the railroad station, and also that very little house on Golden Lane, I think it’s translated as, across the river near the castle. A couple of places where Rilke lived too.”

“So, literature, what else am I talking of here? The Golem. A world famous play. Well? Rabbi Low. Of the sixteenth century. He started it. He’s known all over.”

“I’ve certainly heard of the play. It was performed in New York City—in a theater in Central Park—last summer. I didn’t know it was Rabbi Low who started the legend.”

“Yes, he, he. The originator. Others may say other rabbis might have, but it was only Rabbi Low, nobody else. Then he knocked the Golem to pieces when it went crazy on him. Come, come.”

They went on. The man showed him the grave of the only Jewish woman in medieval Prague who had been permitted to marry nobil
ity. “Her husband buried here too?” Howard said. “No, of course not. It was out-of-religion. The permission she got to marry was from our elders. He’s somewhere else.” The stone of one of the mayors of the Jewish ghetto in seventeenth-century Prague. The stone of a well-known iron craftsman whose name the man had to repeat several times before Howard gave up trying to make it out but nodded he had finally understood. Then they came to the entrance again. After the man said Kafka wasn’t buried here and Howard said he wanted to give him something for all this, he finally gives him the fifty note, the man pockets it and Howard asks if he might know where Kafka is buried.

“Oh, in Strašnice cemetery. The Jewish part of it, nothing separate anymore. It isn’t far from here. You take a tube. Fifteen minutes and you are there,” and he skims one hand off the other to show how a train goes straight out to it. “It’s in walking distance from the station. On a nice day unlike today the walk is a simple and pleasant one. And once you have reached it you ask at the gate to see Kafka’s grave and someone there will show you around.”

Read “Whatever He Sees, He Sees Soft,” a very short story by Julio Cortázar

Biblioklept2 Comments

“Whatever He Sees, He Sees Soft”

by

Julio Cortázar

translated by Robert Coover and Pilar Coover

I know a great softener, a fellow who, whatever he sees, he sees soft, softens it merely by seeing it, not by looking at it for he doesn’t look, he only sees, he goes around seeing things and all of them are terribly soft, which makes him happy because he doesn’t like hard things at all.

There was a time when no doubt he saw things hard, being then still able to look, for he who looks sees twice: he sees what he’s seeing and at the same time it is what he sees, or at least it could be, or would like to be, or would not like to be, all exceedingly philosophical and existential means of locating oneself and locating the world. But one day when he was about twenty years old, he began to stop looking, this fellow, because in point of fact he had very soft skin, and the last few times he’d wanted to look straight out at the world, the sight had torn his skin in two or three places, and naturally my friend said. Hey baby, this won’t do! Whereupon one morning he’d started just seeing instead, very carefully, only that, nothing but seeing-and from then on, of course, whatever he saw, he saw soft, softened it simply by seeing it, and he was happy because he couldn’t abide hard things at all.

“Trivializing vision” is what a professor from Bahía Blanca called it, a surprisingly felicitous expression coming as it did from Bahía Blanca, but my friend paid it no heed, and not only that, but when he saw the professor, he naturally saw him as remarkably soft, and so invited him home for cocktails, introduced him to his sister and aunt, the whole event transpiring in an atmosphere of great softness.

It bothers me a little, I must say, because whenever my friend sees me, I feel like I’m going completely soft, and even though I know it’s got nothing to do with me, but rather with the image of me my friend has, as the professor from Bahía Blanca would say, just the same it bothers me, because nobody likes to be seen as some kind of semolina pudding, and so get invited to the movies to watch cowboys or get talked to for hours about how lovely the carpets are in the Embassy of Madagascar.

What’s to be done with my friend? Nothing, of course, At all events, see him but never look at him: how, I ask, could we look at him without, horribly, risking utter dissolution? He who sees only must be seen only: a wise and melancholy moral which goes, I am afraid, beyond the laws of optics.

“Nail Soup (A Depression Recipe)” — M.F. Beal

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“Nail Soup (A Depression Recipe)” by M. F. Beal

Go up to a house which is pretty untidy and look around the back door until you find a nail. Then knock, and when the lady of the house comes take off your hat and ask her could she spare the ingredients for a nail soup. When she asks how you make that, show her the nail and tell her you take a nail and some water and ask her what else she’s got around. Usually she’ll be shamed enough to give you at least an onion and some potatoes.

To finish the soup: Go down to where everybody’s hanging out, and while you wait for your nail soup to cook, read in the newspaper about how they’re shoveling day-old chicks into the local dump, or pouring fresh cow’s milk down the sewer. When you get to the bottom of the pot, take a good long look at the nail and decide what to do with it.

Read “A Sudden Story,” a very short tale by Robert Coover

Biblioklept1 Comment
“A Sudden Story” by Robert Coover
Once upon a time, suddenly, while it still could, the story began. For the hero, setting forth, there was of course nothing sudden about it, neither about the setting forth, which he’d spent his entire lifetime anticipating, nor about any conceivable endings, which seemed, like the horizon, to be always somewhere else. For the dragon, however, who was stupid, everything was sudden. He was suddenly hungry and then he was suddenly eating something. Always, it was like the first time. Then, all of a sudden, he’d remember having eaten something like that before: a certain familiar sourness… And, just as suddenly, he’d forger. The hero, coming suddenly upon the dragon (he’d been trekking for years through enchanted forests, endless deserts, cities carbonized by dragonbreath, for him “suddenly” was not exactly the word), found himself envying, as he drew his sword (a possible ending had just loomed up before him, as though the horizon had, with the desperate illusion of suddenness, tipped), the dragon’s tenseless freedom. Freedom? the dragon might have asked, had he not been so stupid, chewing over meanwhile the sudden familiar sourness (a memory… ?) on his breath. From what? (Forgotten.)

Robert Coover reads “The Fall Guy’s Faith”

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“The Fall Guy’s Faith”

by

Robert Coover

Falling from favor, or grace, some high artifice, down he dropped like a discredited predicate through what he called space (sometimes he called it time) and with an earsplitting crack splattered the base earth with his vital attributes. Oh, I’ve had a great fall, he thought as he lay there, numb with terror, trying desperately to pull himself together again. This time (or space) I’ve really done it! He had fallen before of course: short of expectations, into bad habits, out with his friends, upon evil days, foul of the law, in and out of love, down in the dumps—indeed, as though egged on by some malevolent metaphor generated by his own condition, he had always been falling, had he not?—but this was the most terrible fall of all. It was like the very fall of pride, of stars, of Babylon, of cradles and curtains and angels and rain, like the dread fall of silence, of sparrows, like the fall of doom. It was, in a word, as he knew now, surrendering to the verb of all flesh, the last fall (his last anyway: as for the chips, he sighed, releasing them, let them fall where they may)—yet why was it, he wanted to know, why was it that everything that had happened to him had seemed to have happened in language? Even this! Almost as though, without words for it, it might not have happened at all! Had he been nothing more, after all was said and done, than a paraphrastic curiosity, an idle trope, within some vast syntactical flaw of existence? Had he fallen, he worried as he closed his eyes for the last time and consigned his name to history (may it take it or leave it), his juices to the soil (was it soil?), merely to have it said he had fallen? Ah! tears tumbled down his cheeks, damply echoing thereby the greater fall, now so ancient that he himself was beginning to forget it (a farther fall perhaps than all the rest, this forgetting: a fall as it were within a fall), and it came to him in these fading moments that it could even be said that, born to fall, he had perhaps fallen simply to be born (birth being less than it was cracked up to be, to coin a phrase)! Yes, yes, it could be said, what can not be said, but he didn’t quite believe it, didn’t quite believe either that accidence held the world together. No, if he had faith in one thing, this fallguy (he came back to this now), it was this: in the beginning was the gesture, and that gesture was: he opened his mouth to say it aloud (to prove some point or other?), but too late—his face cracked into a crooked smile and the words died on his lips . . .

“Marmosets,” a very short story by Clarice Lispector

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“Marmosets”

by

Clarice Lispector

translated by Elizabeth Bishop

The first time we had a marmoset was just before New Year’s. We were without water and without a maid, people were lining up to buy meat, the hot weather had suddenly begun—when, dumfounded, I saw the present enter the house, already eating a banana, examining everything with great rapidity, and with a long tail. It looked like a monkey not yet grown; its potentialities were tremendous. It climbed up the drying clothes to the clothesline, where it swore like a sailor, and the banana-peelings fell where they would. I was exhausted already. Every time I forgot and absentmindedly went out on the back terrace, I gave a start: there was that happy man. My younger son knew, before I did, that I would get rid of this gorilla: “If I promise that sometime the monkey will get sick and die, will you let him stay? Or if you knew that sometime he’d fall out the window, somehow, and die down there?” My feelings would glance aside. The filthiness and blithe unconsciousness of the little monkey made me responsible for his fate, since he himself would not take any blame. A friend understood how bitterly I had resigned myself, what dark deeds were being nourished beneath my dreaminess, and rudely saved me: a delighted gang of little boys appeared from the hill and carried off the laughing man. The new year was devitalized but at least monkey-less.

A year later, at a time of happiness, suddenly there in Copacabana I saw the small crowd. I thought of my children, the joys they gave me, free, unconnected with the worries they also gave me, free, and I thought of a chain of joy: “Will the person receiving this pass it along to someone else,” one to another, like a spark along a train of powder. Then and there I bought the one who would be called Lisette.

She could almost fit in one hand. She was wearing a skirt, and earrings, necklace, and bracelet of glass beads. The air of an immigrant just disembarking in her native costume. Like an immigrant’s, too, her round eyes.

This one was a woman in miniature. She lived with us three days. She had such delicate bones. She was of such a sweetness. More than her eyes, her look was rounded. With every movement, the earrings shook; the skirt was always neat, the red necklace glinted. She slept a lot, but, as to eating, she was discreet and languid. Her rare caress was only a light bite that left no mark.

On the third day we were out on the back terrace admiring Lisette and the way she was ours. “A little too gentle,” I thought, missing the gorilla. And suddenly my heart said harshly: “But this isn’t sweetness. This is death.” The dryness of the message left me calm. I said to the children: “Lisette is dying.” Looking at her, I realized the stage of love we had already reached. I rolled her up in a napkin and went with the children to the nearest first-aid station, where the doctor couldn’t attend to her because he was performing an emergency operation on a dog. Another taxi—”Lisette thinks she’s out for a drive, mama”—another hospital. There they gave her oxygen.

And with the breath of life, a Lisette we hadn’t known was revealed. The eyes less round, more secretive, more laughing, and in the prognathous and ordinary face a certain ironic haughtiness. A little more oxygen and she wanted to speak so badly she couldn’t bear being a monkey; she was, and she would have had much to tell. More oxygen, and then an injection of salt solution; she reacted to the prick with an angry slap, her bracelet glittering. The male nurse smiled: “Lisette! Gently, my dear!”

The diagnosis: she wouldn’t live unless there was oxygen at hand, and even then it was unlikely. “Don’t buy monkeys in the street,” he scolded me; “sometimes they’re already sick.” No, one must buy dependable monkeys, and know where they came from, to ensure at least five years of love, and know what they had or hadn’t done, like getting married. I discussed it with the children a minute. Then I said to the nurse: “You seem to like Lisette very much. So if you let her stay a few days, near the oxygen, you can have her.” He was thinking. “Lisette is pretty!” I implored.

“She’s beautiful!” he agreed, thoughtfully. Then he sighed and said, “If I cure Lisette, she’s yours.” We went away with our empty napkin.

The next day they telephoned, and I informed the children that Lisette had died. The younger one asked me, “Do you think she died wearing her earrings?” I said yes. A week later the older one told me, “You look so much like Lisette!”

I replied, “I like you, too.”

“Ordinary Nudes,” a very short story by Stuart Dybek

Biblioklept1 Comment

“Ordinary Nudes”

by

Stuart Dybek

  She stands before the full-length mirror that’s framed by the bedroom door, observing how her nipples, navel, and the delta of copper hair, which has grown back at the confluence of her thighs, shimmer in the dusky light. Her reflection dimples and ripples like the surface of a pond where fish rise to feed on a mayfly hatch. Imagine his wonder when in the years to come he’ll realize that she was not to be confused with ordinary nudes—not some nymph frolicking along the shore, or goddess ascending from sea foam, or ballerina poised to wade into her morning bath. Those photographs she let him take, kept in a drawer, beneath his underwear as if hidden in the depths, will age as she does.

“The Darlette” — Henri Michaux

BibliokleptLeave a comment

“The Darlette”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by Richard Ellmann

The Darelette is found in dry and sandy terrain. It is not a plant but an agile beast, corseted and boned unlike any insect, fat as a rat and long as one, if the tail is included.

If a man jumps on her last segment (there are three), it may well break if the animal has not arrived at adult age.

Since the inside, under walls as thick as a little finger, does not contain any essential organs, the wounded beast continues her walk with her abdomen pounded to jelly and her walls breached. She is a beast who fears no one, eats snakes, and goes to suck the udders of cows which do not dare move.

The ditch spider makes war on her successfully; it winds around her, overwhelms her with threads; as soon as she is paralyzed, it pumps her out completely through the ears.

Her rosy ears and her eyes and her internal organs are the only tender parts of her body.

It pumps her out completely through the ears.