Donald Barthelme Read online

  Dr. Caligari

  Dr. Frank

  Dr. Pepper

  Dr. Scholl

  Dr. Frankenthaler

  Dr. Mabuse

  Dr. Grabow

  Dr. Melmoth

  Dr. Weil

  Dr. Modesto

  Dr. Fu Manchu

  Dr. Wellington

  Dr. Watson

  Dr. Brown

  Dr. Rococo

  Dr. Dolittle

  Dr. Alvarez

  Dr. Spoke

  Dr. Hutch

  Dr. Spain

  Dr. Malone

  Dr. Kline

  Dr. Casey

  Dr. No

  Dr. Regatta

  Dr. Il y a

  Dr. Baderman

  Dr. Aveni

  and other doctors. The air was stuffy here, comrades, for the doctors were considering (yes!) a resolution of censure against the beloved old poet. An end to this badinage and wit! Let us be grave. It was claimed that Cavity had dispensed . . . but who can quarrel with Love Root, rightly used? It has saved many a lip. The prosecution was in the able hands of Dr. Kline, who invented the heart, and Dr. Spain, after whom Spain is named some believe. Their godlike figures towered over the tiny poet.

  Kline advances.

  Cavity rises to his height, which is not great.

  Ingarden holds her breath.

  Spain fades, back, back . . .

  A handout from Spain to Kline.

  Buck is down.

  A luau?

  The poet opens . . .

  No! No! Get back!

  “. . . and if that way is long, and leads around by the reactor, and down in the valley, and up the garden path, leave her, I say, to heaven. For science has its reasons that reason knows not of,” Cavity finished. And it was done.

  “Hell!” said one doctor, and the others shuffled morosely around the drugstore inspecting the strange wares that were being vended there. It was clear that no resolution of censure could possibly . . . But of course not! What were we thinking of?

  Cavity himself seemed pleased at the outcome of the proceedings. He recited to Buck and Ingarden his long love poems entitled “In the Blue of Evening,” “Long Ago and Far Away,” “Who?” and “Homage to W. C. Williams.” The feet of the visitors danced against the sawdust floor of the juju drugstore to the compelling rhythms of the poet’s poems. A rime of happiness whitened on the surface of their two faces. “Even in Texas,” Buck whispered, “where things are very exciting, there is nothing like the old face of Constantine Cavity. Are you true?”

  “Oh I wish things were other.”

  “You do?”

  “There are such a lot of fine people in the world I wish I was one of them!”

  “You are, you are!”

  “Not essentially. Not inwardly.”

  “You’re very authentic I think.”

  “That’s all right in Cleveland, where authenticity is the thing, but here . . .”

  “Kiss me please.”

  “Again?”

  4

  The parachutes of the other passengers snapped and crackled in the darkness all around him. There had been a malfunction in the afterburner and the pilot decided to “ditch.” The whole thing was very unfortunate. “What is your life-style, Cincinnati?” Buck asked the recumbent jewel glittering below him like an old bucket of industrial diamonds. “Have you the boldness of Cleveland? the anguish of Akron? the torpor of Toledo? What is your posture, Cincinnati?” Frostily the silent city approached his feet.

  Upon making contact with Cincinnati Buck and such of the other passengers of the ill-fated flight 309 as had survived the “drop” proceeded to a hotel.

  “Is that a flask of grog you have there?”

  “Yes it is grog as it happens.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  Warmed by the grog which set his blood racing, Buck went to his room and threw himself on his bed. “Oh!” he said suddenly, “I must be in the wrong room!” The girl in the bed stirred sleepily. “Is that you Harvey?” she asked. “Where have you been all this time?” “No, it’s Buck,” Buck said to the girl, who looked very pretty in her blue flannel nightshirt drawn up about her kneecaps on which there were red lines. “I must be in the wrong room I’m afraid,” he repeated. “Buck, get out of this room immediately!” the girl said coldly. “My name is Stephanie and if my friend Harvey finds you here there’ll be an unpleasant scene.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Buck asked.

  Having made a “date” with Stephanie for the morning at 10 A.M., Buck slipped off to an innocent sleep in his own bed.

  Morning in Cincinnati! The glorious cold Cincinnati sunlight fell indiscriminately around the city, here and there, warming almost no one. Stephanie de Moulpied was wearing an ice-blue wool suit in which she looked very cold and beautiful and starved. “Tell me about your Cincinnati life,” Buck said, “the quality of it, that’s what I’m interested in.” “My life here is very aristocratic,” Stephanie said, “polo, canned peaches, liaisons dangéreuses, and so on, because I am a member of an old Cincinnati family. However it’s not much ‘fun’ which is why I made this 10 A.M. date with you, exciting stranger from the sky!” “I’m really from Texas,” Buck said, “but I’ve been having a little trouble with airplanes on this trip. I don’t really trust them too much. I’m not sure they’re trustworthy.” “Who is trustworthy after all?” Stephanie said with a cold sigh, looking blue. “Are you blue Stephanie?” Buck asked. “Am I blue?” Stephanie wondered. In the silence that followed, she counted her friends and relationships.

  “Is there any noteworthy artistic activity in this town?”

  “Like what do you mean?”

  Buck then kissed Stephanie in a taxicab as a way of dissipating the blueness that was such a feature of her face. “Are all the girls in Cincinnati like you?” “All the first-class girls are like me,” Stephanie said, “but there are some other girls whom I won’t mention.”

  A faint sound of . . . A wave of . . . Dense clouds of . . . Heavily the immense weight of . . . Thin strands of . . .

  Dr. Hesperidian had fallen into the little pool in vanPelt Ryan’s garden (of course!) and everyone was pulling him out. Strangers met and fell in love over the problem of getting a grip on Dr. Hesperidian. A steel band played arias from Wozzeck. He lay just below the surface, a rime of algae whitening his cheekbones. He seemed to be . . . “Not that way,” Buck said reaching for the belt buckle. “This way.” The crowd fell back among the pines.

  “You seem to be a nice young man, young man,” vanPelt Ryan said, “although we have many of these of our own now since the General Electric plant came to town. Are you in computerization?”

  Buck remembered the endearing red lines on Stephanie de Moulpied’s knees.

  “I’d rather not answer that question,” he said honestly, “but if there’s some other question you’d like me to answer . . .”

  vanPelt turned away sadly. The steel band played “Red Boy Blues,” “That’s All,” “Gigantic Blues,” “Muggles,” “Coolin’,” and “Edward.” Although each player was maimed in a different way . . . but the affair becomes, one fears, too personal. The band got a nice sound. Hookers of grog thickened on the table placed there for that purpose. “I grow less, rather than more, intimately involved with human beings as I move through world life,” Buck thought, “is that my fault? Is it a fault?” The musicians rendered the extremely romantic ballads “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “Scratch Me,” and “Misty.” The grim forever adumbrated in recent issues of Mind pressed down, down . . . Where is Stephanie de Moulpied? No one could tell him, and in truth, he did not want to know. It is not he who asks this question, it is Mrs. Lutch. She glides down her glide
path, sinuously, she is falling, she bursts into flame, her last words: “Tell them . . . when they crash . . . turn off . . . the ignition.”

  Margins

  EDWARD WAS explaining to Carl about margins. “The width of the margin shows culture, aestheticism and a sense of values or the lack of them,” he said. “A very wide left margin shows an impractical person of culture and refinement with a deep appreciation for the best in art and music. Whereas,” Edward said, quoting his handwriting analysis book, “whereas, narrow left margins show the opposite. No left margin at all shows a practical nature, a wholesome economy and a general lack of good taste in the arts. A very wide right margin shows a person afraid to face reality, oversensitive to the future and generally a poor mixer.”

  “I don’t believe in it,” Carl said.

  “Now,” Edward continued, “with reference to your sign there, you have an all-around wide margin which shows a person of extremely delicate sensibilities with love of color and form, one who holds aloof from the multitude and lives in his own dream world of beauty and good taste.”

  “Are you sure you got that right?”

  “I’m communicating with you,” Edward said, “across a vast gulf of ignorance and darkness.”

  “I brought the darkness, is that the idea?” Carl asked.

  “You brought the darkness, you black mother,” Edward said. “Funky, man.”

  “Edward,” Carl said, “for God’s sake.”

  “Why did you write all that jazz on your sign, Carl? Why? It’s not true, is it? Is it?”

  “It’s kind of true,” Carl said. He looked down at his brown sandwich boards, which said: I Was Put In Jail in Selby County Alabama For Five Years For Stealing A Dollar and A Half Which I Did Not Do. While I Was In Jail My Brother Was Killed & My Mother Ran Away When I Was Little. In Jail I Began Preaching & I Preach to People Wherever I Can Bearing the Witness of Eschatological Love. I Have Filled Out Papers for Jobs But Nobody Will Give Me a Job Because I Have Been In Jail & The Whole Scene Is Very Dreary, Pepsi Cola. I Need Your Offerings to Get Food. Patent Applied For & Deliver Us From Evil. “It’s true,” Carl said, “with a kind of merde-y inner truth which shines forth as the objective correlative of what actually did happen, back home.”

  “Now, look at the way you made that ‘m’ and that ‘n’ there,” Edward said. “The tops are pointed rather than rounded. That indicates aggressiveness and energy. The fact that they’re also pointed rather than rounded at the bottom indicates a sarcastic, stubborn and irritable nature. See what I mean?”

  “If you say so,” Carl said.

  “Your capitals are very small,” Edward said, “indicating humility.”

  “My mother would be pleased,” Carl said, “if she knew.”

  “On the other hand, the excessive size of the loops in your ‘y’ and your ‘g’ display exaggeration and egoism.”

  “That’s always been one of my problems,” Carl answered.

  “What’s your whole name?” Edward asked, leaning against a building. They were on Fourteenth Street, near Broadway.

  “Carl Maria von Weber,” Carl said.

  “Are you a drug addict?”

  “Edward,” Carl said, “you are a swinger.”

  “Are you a Muslim?”

  Carl felt his long hair. “Have you read The Mystery of Being, by Gabriel Marcel? I really liked that one. I thought that one was fine.”

  “No, c’mon Carl, answer the question,” Edward insisted. “There’s got to be frankness and honesty between the races. Are you one?”

  “I think an accommodation can be reached and the government is doing all it can at the moment,” Carl said. “I think there’s something to be said on all sides of the question. This is not such a good place to hustle, you know that? I haven’t got but two offerings all morning.”

  “People like people who look neat,” Edward said. “You look kind of crummy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “You really think it’s too long?” Carl asked, feeling his hair again.

  “Do you think I’m a pretty color?” Edward asked. “Are you envious?”

  “No,” Carl said. “Not envious.”

  “See? Exaggeration and egoism. Just like I said.”

  “You’re kind of boring, Edward. To tell the truth.”

  Edward thought about this for a moment. Then he said: “But I’m white.”

  “It’s the color of choice,” Carl said. “I’m tired of talking about color, though. Let’s talk about values or something.”

  “Carl, I’m a fool,” Edward said suddenly.

  “Yes,” Carl said.

  “But I’m a white fool,” Edward said. “That’s what’s so lovely about me.”

  “You are lovely, Edward,” Carl said. “It’s true. You have a nice look. Your aspect is good.”

  “Oh, hell,” Edward said despondently. “You’re very well-spoken,” he said. “I noticed that.”

  “The reason for that is,” Carl said, “I read. Did you read The Cannibal by John Hawkes? I thought that was a hell of a book.”

  “Get a haircut, Carl,” Edward said. “Get a new suit. Maybe one of those new Italian suits with the tight coats. You could be upwardly mobile, you know, if you just put your back into it.”

  “Why are you worried, Edward? Why does my situation distress you? Why don’t you just walk away and talk to somebody else?”

  “You bother me,” Edward confessed. “I keep trying to penetrate your inner reality, to find out what it is. Isn’t that curious?”

  “John Hawkes also wrote The Beetle Leg and a couple of other books whose titles escape me at the moment,” Carl said. “I think he’s one of the best of our younger American writers.”

  “Carl,” Edward said, “what is your inner reality? Blurt it out, baby.”

  “It’s mine,” Carl said quietly. He gazed down at his shoes, which resembled a pair of large dead brownish birds.

  “Are you sure you didn’t steal that dollar and a half mentioned on your sign?”

  “Edward, I told you I didn’t steal that dollar and a half.” Carl stamped up and down in his sandwich boards. “It sure is cold here on Fourteenth Street.”

  “That’s your imagination, Carl,” Edward said. “This street isn’t any colder than Fifth, or Lex. Your feeling that it’s colder here probably just arises from your marginal status as a despised person in our society.”

  “Probably,” Carl said. There was a look on his face. “You know I went to the government, and asked them to give me a job in the Marine Band, and they wouldn’t do it?”

  “Do you blow good, man? Where’s your axe?”

  “They wouldn’t give me that cotton-pickin’ job,” Carl said. “What do you think of that?”

  “This eschatological love,” Edward said, “what kind of love is that?”

  “That is later love,” Carl said. “That’s what I call it, anyhow. That’s love on the other side of the Jordan. The term refers to a set of conditions which . . . It’s kind of a story we black people tell to ourselves to make ourselves happy.”

  “Oh me,” Edward said. “Ignorance and darkness.”

  “Edward,” Carl said, “you don’t like me.”

  “I do too like you, Carl,” Edward said. “Where do you steal your books, mostly?”

  “Mostly in drugstores,” Carl said. “I find them good because mostly they’re long and narrow and the clerks tend to stay near the prescription counters at the back of the store, whereas the books are usually in those little revolving racks near the front of the store. It’s normally pretty easy to slip a couple in your overcoat pocket, if you’re wearing an overcoat.”

  “But . . .”

  “Yes,” Carl said, “I know what you’re thinking. If I’ll steal books I’ll steal other things. But stealing books is metaphysically different f
rom stealing like money. Villon has something pretty good to say on the subject I believe.”

  “Is that in ‘If I Were King’?”

  “Besides,” Carl added, “haven’t you ever stolen anything? At some point in your life?”

  “My life,” Edward said. “Why do you remind me of it?”

  “Edward, you’re not satisfied with your life! I thought white lives were nice!” Carl said, surprised. “I love that word ‘nice.’ It makes me so happy.”

  “Listen Carl,” Edward said, “why don’t you just concentrate on improving your handwriting.”

  “My character, you mean.”

  “No,” Edward said, “don’t bother improving your character. Just improve your handwriting. Make larger capitals. Make smaller loops in your ‘y’ and your ‘g.’ Watch your word-spacing so as not to display disorientation. Watch your margins.”

  “It’s an idea. But isn’t that kind of a superficial approach to the problem?”

  “Be careful about the spaces between the lines,” Edward went on. “Spacing of lines shows clearness of thought. Pay attention to your finals. There are twenty-two different kinds of finals and each one tells a lot about a person. I’ll lend you the book. Good handwriting is the key to advancement, or if not the key, at least a key. You could be the first man of your race to be Vice-President.”

  “That’s something to shoot for, all right.”

  “Would you like me to go get the book?”

  “I don’t think so,” Carl said, “no thanks. It’s not that I don’t have any faith in your solution. What I would like is to take a leak. Would you mind holding my sandwich boards for a minute?”

  “Not at all,” Edward said, and in a moment had slipped Carl’s sandwich boards over his own slight shoulders. “Boy, they’re kind of heavy, aren’t they?”

  “They cut you a bit,” Carl said with a malicious smile. “I’ll just go into this men’s store here.”

  When Carl returned the two men slapped each other sharply in the face with the back of the hand, that beautiful part of the hand where the knuckles grow.