Can't and Won't: Stories (7 page)

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

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

Yours sincerely.

III

The Last of the Mohicans

We are sitting with our old mother in the nursing home.

“Of course I’m lonesome for you kids. But it’s not like being in a strange place, where you don’t know anyone.”

She smiles, trying to reassure us. “There are plenty of people here from good old Willy.”

She adds: “Of course, a lot of them can’t talk.” She pauses, and goes on: “A lot of them can’t see.”

She looks at us through her thick-lensed glasses. We know she can’t see anything but light and shadow.

“I’m the last of the Mohicans—as they say.”

Grade Two Assignment

Color these fish.

Cut them out.

Punch a hole in the top of each fish.

Put a ribbon through all the holes.

Tie these fish together.

Now read what is written on these fish:

Jesus is a friend.

Jesus gathers friends.

I am a friend of Jesus.

Master

“You want to be a master,” he said. “Well, you’re not a master.”

That took me down a peg.

Seems I still have a lot to learn.

An Awkward Situation

A young writer has hired an older, more experienced writer to improve upon his texts. However, he refuses to pay her. He keeps her, in fact, in a situation that amounts to imprisonment, on the grounds of his estate. Though his frail and elderly mother, while turning her back and walking away, as though unwilling to look at him, urges him, weakly, to pay this writer what he owes her, he does not. Instead, he holds his arm out straight towards her, his hand in a fist, while she holds her hand out under his fist, palm up, as though to receive something. He then opens his hand, and it is empty. He is doing this for revenge, she knows, because he and she were once involved in what might be called a love relationship, and she was not as kind to him as she should have been. She was sometimes rude to him, and belittled him, both in front of others and in private. She tries, over and over, to think whether she was as cruel to him then, so long ago, as he is being cruel to her now. Complicating the situation is the fact that another person is living here with her, and depending on her for support, and that is her ex-husband. He, unlike her, and unlike her bitter former lover, is cheerful and confident, not knowing, until at last she tells him, that she is not being paid. Even then, however, after a moment’s pause in which he absorbs the news, he continues to be cheerful and confident, in part, perhaps, because he does not believe her, and in part because he is distracted, having just embarked on another writing project of his own. He invites her to work with him on it. She is interested and willing, until she looks at it. She then sees that, unfortunately for her, it involves the writing of yet another person. She does not like the writing, or the character, or what she suspects is the corrupting influence, of this other person, and she does not want to be associated with her. But before she can tell him this, or, better, hide it from him, while still declining to collaborate on the writing project, another question occurs to her. Where, in all this, she wonders now, after a surprisingly long time, perhaps weeks, is her own present husband, always so helpful to her, and why does he not come to help her out of this most awkward situation?

Housekeeping Observation

Under all this dirt

the floor is really very clean.

The Execution

story from Flaubert

Here is another story about our compassion. In a village not far from here, a young man murdered a banker and his wife, then raped the servant girl and drank all the wine in the cellar. He was tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. Well, there was such interest in seeing this peculiar fellow die on the guillotine that people came from all over the countryside the night before—more than
ten thousand
of them. There were such crowds that the bakeries ran out of bread. And because the inns were full, people spent the night outside: to see this man die,
they slept in the snow.

And we shake our heads over the Roman gladiators. Oh, charlatans!

A Note from the Paperboy

She tries to get her husband to look at the dog and the cat lying stretched out together companionably side by side on the floor. He is immediately annoyed with her because he is trying to concentrate on what he is doing.

Since he won’t talk to her, she then starts talking to the cat and the dog. Again he tells her to be quiet—he can’t concentrate.

What he is doing is writing a note to the paperboy. He is writing a note in answer to a note they have received from the paperboy.

The paperboy has written that when walking through their yard in the dark in the early morning, he has “met several animals”—“like skunks.” He is announcing that from now on, he would prefer to leave the paper outside the yard, “at the back gate entrance.”

Now, in response, her husband is writing to the paperboy saying No, they prefer to have the newspaper delivered
as always
to the back porch, and if he can’t do that, they will discontinue the paper.

In fact, according to the grammatical construction used by the paperboy in his note, it is the animals themselves who are not only walking through the yard but also delivering the paper.

In the Train Station

The train station is very crowded. People are walking in every direction at once, though some are standing still. A Tibetan Buddhist monk with shaved head and long wine-colored robe is in the crowd, looking worried. I am standing still, watching him. I have plenty of time before my train leaves, because I have just missed a train. The monk sees me watching him. He comes up to me and tells me he is looking for Track 3. I know where the tracks are. I show him the way.

dream

The Moon

I get up out of bed in the night. My room is large, and dark but for the white dog on the floor. I leave the room. The hallway is wide and long, and filled with an underwater sort of twilight. I reach the doorway of the bathroom and see that it is flooded with bright light. There is a full moon far above, overhead. Its beam is coming in through the window and falling directly on the toilet seat, as if sent by a helpful God.

Then I am back in bed. I have been lying there awake for a while. The room is lighter than it was. The moon is coming around to this side of the building, I think. But no, it is the beginning of dawn.

dream

My Footsteps

I see myself from the back, walking. There are circles of both light and shadow around each of my footsteps. I know that with each step I can now go farther and faster than ever before, so of course I want to spring forward and run. But I am told that I must pause at each step, letting my foot rest on the ground for a moment, if I want it to develop its full power and reach, before taking the next.

dream

How I Read as Quickly as Possible Through My Back Issues of the
TLS

I do not want to read about the life of Jerry Lewis.

I do want to read about mammalian carnivores.

I do not want to read about a portrait of a castrato.

I do not want to read this poem:
(“… and so I stood/at the water’s edge among electrolytes…”)

I do want to read about the history of the Inca
khipu.

I do not want to read about:
the history of the panda in China
a dictionary of women in Shakespeare

Do want to read about:
sow bugs
bumblebees

Do not want to read about Ronald Reagan.

Do not want to read this poem:
(“What’s the point of sitting on a bus/and fuming?”)

Do want to read about the creation of the musical
South Pacific
:
(“This study will contribute greatly to the still under-written history of the Broadway musical”)

Not interested in:
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

Not interested in (at least not today):
Hitler
London theater productions

Interested in:
the psychology of lying
Anne Carson on the death of her brother
French writers admired by Proust
the poems of Catullus
translations from the Serbian

Not interested in:
the creation of the Statue of Liberty

Interested in:
beer
East Prussia after World War II
philosemitism

Not interested in:
the Archbishop of Canterbury

Not interested in this poem:
(“Light dazzles from the grass/over the carnal dune…”)

Not interested in:
the Anglo-Portuguese establishment
heraldic leopards

Interested in
:
the lectures of Borges
Raymond Queneau’s
Exercises in Style
dust jackets in the history of bibliography:
(“For the first time, the dust jacket has been given its due status…”)

Not interested in:
the friendship of Elgar and Schenker
the work of Alexander Pope
T. S. Eliot’s fountain pen

Not interested in:
the Audit Commission

Interested in:
the social value of altruism
the building of the Pont Neuf
the history of daguerreotypes

Not interested in:
a cultural history of the British Census:
(“It is salutary to see, from this learned book, that,
mutatis mutandis
, such controversies have plagued the census since its inception…”)

Not interested in:
a cultural history of the accordion in America
(“Squeeze This”)

Interested in:
the Southport Lawnmower Museum

Not interested in:
a history of British television criticism
fashion at the Academy Awards:
(“How Oscars dress etiquette has changed since the ceremony’s inception in 1928”)

Not interested in:
Anacaona: The Amazing Adventures of Cuba’s First All-Girl Band

Always (or almost always) interested in:
JC’s NB and the doings of the Basement Labyrinth

Not interested in—or, well, yes, maybe interested in:
the history of diplomacy
Laura Bush’s autobiography

Notes During Long Phone Conversation with Mother

for summer    she needs

pretty dress    cotton

Men

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women—endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.

Negative Emotions

A well-meaning teacher, inspired by a text he had been reading, once sent all the other teachers in his school a message about negative emotions. The message consisted entirely of advice quoted from a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.

Emotion, said the monk, is like a storm: it stays for a while and then it goes. Upon perceiving the emotion (like a coming storm), one should put oneself in a stable position. One should sit or lie down. One should focus on one’s abdomen. One should focus, specifically, on the area just below one’s navel, and practice mindful breathing. If one can identify the emotion as an emotion, it may then be easier to handle.

The other teachers were puzzled. They did not understand why their colleague had sent them a message about negative emotions. They resented the message, and they resented their colleague. They thought he was accusing them of having negative emotions and needing advice about how to handle them. Some of them were, in fact, angry.