Wittgenstein's Mistress (2 page)

At the Tate I did bring in my water from the river, however. One has been able to do that sort of thing for a long while, now.

Well, one could drink from the Arno, in Florence, as long ago as when I lived at the Uffizi. Or from the Seine, when I would carry a pitcher down the quay from the Louvre.

In the beginning I drank only bottled water, naturally.

In the beginning I had accouterments, as well. Such as generators, for use with electrical heating devices.

Water and warmth were the essentials, of course.

I do not remember which came first, becoming adept at maintaining fires, and so shedding devices of that sort, or discovering that one could drink any water one wished again.

Perhaps becoming adept at fires came first. Even if I have burned two houses to the ground, over the years.

The more recent, as I have noted, was accidental.

Why I burned the first one I would rather not go too deeply into. I did that quite deliberately, however.

That was in Mexico, on the morning after I had visited poor Simon's grave.

Well, it was the house we had all lived in. I honestly believed I had planned to stay on, for a time.

What I did was spill gasoline all over Simon's old room.

Much of the morning I could still see the smoke rise and rise, in my rearview mirror.

Now I have two enormous fireplaces. Here in this house by the sea, I am talking about. And in the kitchen an antiquated potbellied stove.

I have grown quite fond of the stove.

Simon had been seven, by the way.

A variety of berries grow nearby. And less than minutes past my stream there are various vegetables, in fields that were once cultivated but are of course now wildly overgrown.

Beyond the window at which I am sitting the breeze is frisking with ten thousand leaves. Sunlight breaks through the woods in mottled bright patches.

Flowers grow too, in great profusion.

It is a day for some music, actually, although I have no means of providing myself with any.

For years, wherever I was, I generally did contrive to play some. But when I began to get rid of devices I had to give up the music as well.

Baggage, basically, is what I got rid of. Well, things.

Now and again one happens to hear certain music in one's head, however.

Well, a fragment of something or other, in any case. Antonio Vivaldi, say. Or Joan Baez, singing.

Not too long ago I even heard a passage from
Les Troyens,
by Berlioz.

When I say heard, I am saying so only in a manner of speaking, of course.

Still, perhaps there is baggage after all, for all that I believed I had left baggage behind.

Of a sort. The baggage that remains in one's head, meaning remnants of whatever one ever knew.

Such as the birthdays of people like Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock, for instance, which I am convinced I might still recite if I wished.

Or telephone numbers, from all of those years ago.

There is a telephone right here, actually, no more than three or four steps behind where I am sitting.

Naturally I was speaking about numbers for telephones which function, however.

In fact there is a second telephone upstairs, near the cushioned window seat from which I watch the sun go down, most evenings.

The cushions, like so much else here at the beach, are musty. Even on the hottest days, one senses the dampness.

Books become ruined by it.

Books being more of the baggage I got rid of, incidentally. Even if there are still many in this house, that were here when I arrived.

I should perhaps indicate that there are eight rooms in the house, although I make use of only two or three.

Actually I did read, at times, over the years. Especially when I was mad, I read a good deal.

One winter, I read almost all of the ancient Greek plays. As a matter of fact I read them out loud. And throughout, finishing the reverse side of each page would tear it from the book and drop it into my fire.

Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, I turned into smoke.

In a manner of speaking, one might think of it that way.

In a different manner of speaking, one might declare it was Helen and Clytemnestra and Electra, whom I did that with.

For the life of me I have no idea why I did that.

If I had understood why I was doing that, doubtless I would not have been mad.

Had I not been mad, doubtless I would not have done it at all.

I am less than positive that those last two sentences make any particular sense.

In either case neither do I remember where it was, exactly, that I read the plays and burned the pages.

Possibly it was after I had gone to ancient Troy, which may have been what put me in mind of the plays to begin with.

Or would reading the plays have been what put me in mind of going to ancient Troy?

It did run on, that madness.

I was not necessarily mad when I went to Mexico, however. Surely one does not have to be mad to decide to visit the grave of one's dead little boy.

But certainly I was mad when I drove the breadth of Alaska, to Nome, and then pointed a boat across the Bering Strait.

Even if I did seek out charts, that time.

Well, and had once known boats, as well. But still.

Yet after that paradoxically made my way westward across all of Russia with scarcely any maps at all. Driving out of the sun each morning and then waiting for it to appear ahead of me as the day progressed, simply following the sun.

Brooding upon Fyodor Dostoievski as I went.

Actually, I was keeping a weather eye out for Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov.

Did I stop at the Hermitage? Why do I not remember if I stopped in Moscow at all?

Well, quite possibly I drove right past Moscow without knowing it, not speaking one word of Russian.

When I say not speaking one word, I mean not reading one either, obviously.

And why did I write that pretentious line about Dostoievski, when I do not have any notion now if I allotted a moment's thought to the man?

More baggage, then. At least here and now while I am typing, if not at that earlier time.

As a matter of fact when I docked the launch after the last island and went hunting for an automobile again I was possibly even surprised that they had Russian printing on their license plates. Having half imagined that I ought to be in China.

Though it strikes me at only this instant that one possesses certain Chinese baggage too, of course.

Some. There seems no point in illustrating the fact.

Even if I happen to be drinking souchong tea as I say that.

And in either case the Hermitage may be in Leningrad.

Then again there is no question that I was, decidedly, looking for Raskolnikov.

Using Raskolnikov as a symbol, one can decidedly say that I was looking for Raskolnikov.

Though one could also say that I was looking for Anna Karenina, just as readily. Or for Dmitri Shostakovich.

I was looking when I went to Mexico too, naturally.

Hardly for Simon, since I knew all too well that Simon was in that grave. Looking for Emiliano Zapata then, perhaps.

Again symbolically, looking for Zapata. Or for Benito Juarez. Or for David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Looking for anybody, anywhere at all.

Well, even mad was looking, or for what earthly reason else, would I have gone wandering off to all of those other places?

And had been looking on every streetcorner in New York before that, naturally. Even before I moved out of SoHo, had been looking everywhere in New York.

And so was still looking that winter when I lived in Madrid, as well.

I am not certain whether I have mentioned my period in Madrid.

In Madrid I did not live at the Prado, as it turned out. Perhaps I have suggested that I had thought to do so, but it was too badly lighted.

It is natural light that I am speaking about in this case, already having begun to shed most of my devices by then.

Only when the sun is especially fierce can one begin to see that Rogier van der Weyden the way it wants to be seen.

I can attest to this categorically, having even washed the windows nearest it.

Where I lived in Madrid was in a hotel. Choosing the one they had named after Velazquez.

Looking, there, for Don Quixote. Or for El Greco. Or for Francisco de Goya.

How poetic most Spanish names generally sound. One can say them over and over.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Marco Antonio Montes de Oca.

Though in fact both of those may be names from Mexico again.

Looking. Dear heaven, how anxiously I looked.

I do not remember when it was that I stopped looking.

In the Adriatic, when I was on my way from Troy to Greece, a ketch swooped toward me swiftly, its tall spinnaker taking noisy wind.

Just imagine how that startled me, and how I felt.

One moment I was sailing, as alone as ever, and a moment after that there was the ketch.

But it had only been adrift. Through all of that time, presumably.

Would it have been as long as four or five years, by then? I am almost certain that I remained in New York for at least two winters, before I went looking elsewhere.

Near Lesbos, I saw that ketch. Or perhaps Scyros.

Is Scyros one of the Greek islands?

One forgets. There is a loss of baggage unwittingly, too.

As a matter of fact I now suspect I ought to have said the Aegean when I said the Adriatic, a few paragraphs ago. Surely it is the Aegean, between Troy and Greece.

This tea is baggage of a sort also, I suppose. Though in this case I did seek it out again, after that other beach house burned. Little as I burden myself with, did wish for tea.

And some cigarettes as well, although I smoke very little, these days.

Well, and other staples too, naturally.

The cigarettes are the sort that come in tins. Those in paper had begun to taste stale some while ago.

Most things did, which were packaged that way. Not to spoil, necessarily, but to turn dry.

As a matter of fact my cigarettes happen to be Russian. That is just coincidence, however.

Hereabouts, everything stays damp.

I have said that.

Still, when I remove it from a drawer, often my clothing feels clammy.

Generally, summers as now, I wear nothing at all.

I do have underpants and shorts, and several denim skirts that wrap around, and some few cotton jerseys. I wash everything at the stream, and then spread it across bushes to dry.

Well, I have more clothing than that. Winter makes demands.

Except for gathering firewood beforehand, however, I have taken to worrying about winter when winter appears.

When it is here, it will be here.

When the leaves fall, generally the woods remain barren for a time before the snows, and I can see all the way to the spring, or even to the continuation of my path to the highway beyond.

It requires perhaps forty minutes to walk along the highway to the town.

There are stores, some few, and there is a gas station.

Kerosene is still to be found at the latter.

I rarely make use of my lamps, however. Even when what seems the last glimmer of sunset is gone, traces still reach the room I climb upstairs to sleep in.

Through another window at its opposite side the rosy-fingered dawn awakens me.

Certain mornings the phrase does happen to fit, as a matter of fact.

The houses along this beach would appear to continue endlessly, by the way. In any case infinitely farther than I have chosen to walk in either direction and still be able to return by nightfall.

Somewhere I have a flashlight. In the glove compartment of the pickup truck, possibly.

The pickup truck is at the highway. I suspect that I may have neglected to run the battery for some time, now.

Doubtless there are still unused batteries at the gas station.

Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz. I no longer have any idea who she may have been, to tell the truth.

To tell the truth I would be equally hard pressed to identify Marco Antonio Montes de Oca.

In the National Portrait Gallery, in London, which is not one of the museums I chose to live in, I was not able to recognize eight out of ten of the faces in the portraits. Or even almost that many of the names, identifying the portraits.

I do not mean in the cases of people like Winston Churchill or the Brontë sisters or the Queen or Dylan Thomas, obviously.

Still, this saddened me.

And why does it come into mind that I would like to inform Dylan Thomas that one can now kneel and drink from the Loire, or the Po, or the Mississippi?

Or would Dylan Thomas have already been dead before it became impossible to do such things, meaning that he would look at me as if I were mad all over again?

Certainly Achilles would. Or Shakespeare. Or Emiliano Zapata.

I do not remember Dylan Thomas's dates. And anyway, doubtless there was no specific date for pollution.

One one eight six, the last four digits of somebody's phone number may have been.

Actually, I have never been to the Mississippi either. Going and coming from Mexico I did drink from the Rio Grande, however.

Why do I say such things? Obviously I would have had to cross the Mississippi as well, both ways, on the same trip.

Still, it appears I have no recollection of that. Or was I mad then also?

The queer selection of books that I read in that period, good heavens. Virtually every solitary one of them about that identical war.

But frequently making up new versions of the stories on my own part, too, one's fanciful private improvisations.

Such as Helen, slipping down from the battlements and meeting Achilles beside the Scamander on the sly.

Or Penelope, making love to one after another of all of those suitors, while Odysseus was away.

Wouldn't she have? Surely, with so many of them hanging about? And if it was truly ten years for the war and still another ten before that husband of hers materialized?

For some reason a part I always liked was Achilles dressing like a girl and hiding, so that they would not make him go to fight.