Island Page 13

  Let us leave the task to Adam, for Donald Bartlett must likewise invent a story for the amusement and reflection of his family and friends, and if we turn away from him in his time of need, where will he go to find the materials for his story? I shudder to think of it. Ah, but you say, Donald Bartlett has an edge; fiction is his business. But does Donald Bartlett have an edge? Can a museless man be said to have an edge? I think not—and I fear what the crowds will say when they find out that he has no edge, that he is museless, edgeless viscera, suffering from an acute disorder which, because he is witless, he cannot name.

  But watch how Donald Bartlett smiles and nods and slides his wineglass across the table to be refilled by the beautiful redhead whose flashing green eyes seem to be forming an accusation (where else had he seen that accusatory look?) even as she smiles and slides the full glass back to him. Better men than I have traversed the world museless, says Donald Bartlett to himself. And then … Once there was a middle-aged woman who, for reasons we need not reveal, left her prestigious position at an institution (whose junction is not our concern) to stay at home and take on responsibilities, the nature of which are irrelevant. These responsibilities took up some of her time, but left her many empty hours in between, and she, let us call her Alice, did not know how to fill them. Oh, it is true, in the beginning she read a good part of the day, but the texts that interested her were of a peculiar, scholarly sort, and no one, not even her husband, would subject himself to a discussion of her readings. So gradually she put her books aside, and since she did not like to cook or clean and had no hobbies worth the mentioning of them, she soon became ensnared by the spectacles coming across the air waves. (Donald Bartlett, whose eyes had been politely fixed on the mountebank’s performance—though his mind was clearly, or not so clearly, elsewhere—looks across the table here and notes that his daughter is also thinking of waves. On the pad before her—the very same pad on which Donald Bartlett made his bogus attempt to reconcile himself to his wife and his muse, and on which, more recently, his friend Roscoe attempted to reconcile all the world with his Lokian trickery—she is drawing waves. But unlike the flowing air waves which Donald imagined, his daughter’s are unchecked, the foamy and furious swells of the sea in a state of outrage. They make him think of the work of the Japanese artist Korin.) All day and all night, Donald Bartlett continues in his moth-muse-eaten, butterfly-bitten mind, Alice sat nervously before the television set. She would have liked a remote control but she dared not admit it, and so, consequently, she had always to sit at the edge of her seat where she could manipulate the buttons manually.

  But Donald Bartlett stops himself short once again. He cocks his head. Perhaps he has heard us crying, Fiction, Donald, fiction! But no. In his inebriated state, and with his acute and nameless disorder thus amplified, he hears nothing. He is looking again across the table at his daughter’s waves. Loki has gone to make use of the bathroom, and his beautiful redheaded near-wife, having complained of fatigue but showing signs (and sighs) of boredom, has asked to be excused for a moment or two. Donald Bartlett is alone with his daughter. “What are you drawing?” he asks with an ever-thickening tongue. His daughter smiles. “I’m drawing the storm that’s coming,” she replies. “Oh,” says her father, and he attempts to go back to his story, but he sees before him lightning flashes and tall curling waves raging Bacchus-like, without direction. And he imagines himself in the midst of the storm contemplating objects terrible to the will, renouncing the will, becoming the pure will-less subject of knowing, comprehending the aesthetically sublime. “Yes, that is where she dwells!” he exclaims suddenly. His daughter looks up from her pad, but seeing that her father has spoken to himself, she goes back about her business. The storm howls, the sea roars, the lightning flashes from black clouds, and thunderclaps drown the noise of storm and sea. Then in the unmoved beholder of this scene the twofold nature of his consciousness reaches the highest distinctness. Simultaneously, he feels himself as individual, as the feeble phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of these forces can annihilate, helpless against powerful nature, abandoned to chance, a vanishing nothing in the face of stupendous forces; and he also feels himself as the eternal, serene subject of knowing, who as the condition of every object is the supporter of this whole world, the fearful struggle of nature being only his mental picture or representation; he himself is free from, and foreign to, all willing and all needs, in the quiet comprehension of the Idea. Yes.

  Yes. Donald Bartlett congratulates himself for having such a fine memory. But then he remembers that he has forgotten his story and he retracts his congratulations. He reaches across the table for the wine bottle, for it has only now occurred to him that if his inebriation is convincing enough, perhaps the others will take pity on him and not ask him for his story. Or, if they insist, then at least it will be obvious that his story suffers not from any inveterate lack of creativity but merely from his present state. No one need know he goes about museless. Some sudden spark in his brain causes him to see how he could make his recent deliberations into a story of far greater appeal than the one he has begun. The story would be about a brave man who is willing to confront a storm, one on one, on the off chance of meeting once again with his muse. Together we shout, Yes, yes, a brave man who saves his soul by pitting himself against turbulent nature and … But Donald loses his train of thought as he empties his wineglass for the sixth—or is it seventh?—time.

  Roscoe comes back from the bathroom smiling. He gathers up his candles. Donald’s daughter, who has covered an entire page with waves, puts aside pencil and pad to watch him. Donald watches too. He is standing now, gracefully tossing candles over and under his limber limbs, spinning when necessary so as to enhance the effects of his talents. Alice’s husband—let us call him William—was a very dull man who was content to sit reading in the evenings while his wife watched the television. The programs she watched, mostly sitcoms, did not distract him in the least from his books. But the commercials during and between these programs frequently did. He especially liked the commercials which featured beautiful women expounding on the virtues of certain perfumes, soaps, jeans, furs, etc. It made him feel quite content to look up from, say, the frivolous seriousness of Ulysses and see a blooming Molly talking to him about the slender strip of magic which enables her to go about her business—whatever that might be!—in complete security all the days of the month. Sometimes he would smile at the faces on the screen. Often they would smile back. Sometimes he would nod, as though to assure them that their rapture was no small thing. Once or twice he even winked. (They liked that.)

  But what was poor, house-ridden Alice thinking as she sat at the edge of her seat looking back and forth between her husband and the women he so obviously admired? Surely something was going on in her once well-focused mind, for she began to scrutinize the women who came and went on the screen, and now during the programs she seemed to be distracted by the results of her scrutiny.

  As time went by, Alice began to accumulate books which demonstrated secret methods used by countless women to become beautiful. She collected magazines which depicted women before and after their initiations into various beauty cults. Now while she watched the television, she lay on the floor thrusting her heavy legs into the air and counting—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—lustily. Only during the commercials would she sit up. And then, for a moment or two, the house would be at peace.

  William, as previously noted, was an exceedingly dull man, and it took some time for him to understand that his wife’s obsession with her person was somehow related to his neglect of it and to his obsession with the women who came and went on the screen. And as soon as he reached his conclusion, he did not hesitate to wonder whether he should go to her and tell her that she looked fine to him and need not roll about in contortions on the floor in an effort toward transformation. But however dull, William was also compassionate, and he saw, too, that his wife’s quest had given her a renewed sense of purpose
in her life. And who was he to interfere with such a delicate and ephemeral gift?

  Yet his compassion had a price, for it was no easy thing to sit reading each night and all day on weekends in the presence of her tempestuous motion. Her counting became louder as the weeks went by, her exercises more vigorous. She began to paint her face in such a way that she came to resemble the hideous portrait of her great aunt which both she and William (having long ago agreed that the portrait was frightening both to themselves and to their infrequent visitors) had stored in the basement. She bought tights and skin suits in revoltingly bright colors. She bought a jump rope and set the entire house to quaking. She was no longer still. Never! Even in bed there was always some part of her anatomy, an ankle perhaps, or a wrist, which she had previously neglected but could attend to now.

  One day William came home from work and found her lying on the floor with her knees bent and her hips thrusting wildly up into the air. “Hello—five, six, seven, eight—darling,” she said in a seductive tone. William noted the carpet fibers in her hair, the hole in her shocking-pink tights, and the one small toe peeking out through it. He observed the dark shadow of pubic hair extending in either direction from the crotch of her skin suit, and the bulge of her thighs which lifted and fell inharmoniously with the motion of her hips. Perspiration had mixed with her indigo eye shadow and darkened the creases in her lids. “Hello,” he said. And then he hurried outside to water the lawn.

  Out in the drizzle with the hose in his hand, William relaxed. The windows of the house were open, and beyond his wife’s counting and heavy breathing, he could hear a perky young voice describing the fit and feel of her stockings. William had seen her before. She had long legs and lovely dark brown eyes. But he could not think of her or the others now. A decision had to be reached, though on exactly what matter he could not be sure. He looked at his house, at the two elms standing like sentries before it, the brick walkway leading to the street, the two fine vehicles in the driveway. He looked at all the houses on the street. He saw Mr. Mulligan, a neighbor, standing out on his lawn ministering to his rose bushes. Mr. Mulligan saw him too and waved. William waved back and tried to recall Mrs. Mulligan’s face. “Hmmmm,” he said aloud, and he waved again to Mulligan, with more force. Perhaps there was a fraternity somewhere, a brotherhood where one could go to expound on the things one had seen in one’s life.

  The rain came harder. He turned off the hose and stood sheltered under an elm. Now he could see Alice in the window. The direction of her features assured him that she was watching the television. Of course she was not only watching the television. She was exercising as well. In fact, she had recently purchased several books describing the best techniques to alleviate the wrinkles on one’s face. William could see her lips drawing back beyond the point of a smile, into something fierce. In the extreme position her eyes seemed to bulge from her head, and her head quivered from the force of her effort. Then, all at once, she released her pose. Then she took it up again. When she had done this a number of times, she took a deep breath, and for a brief moment William thought he recognized the woman he had married. But the moment passed, and her mouth opened wide to oblige her straining tongue, the tip of which sought her chin, nearly touched it, quivered, and retracted. Before William could look away, the process was repeated.

  William came out from under the tree and marched up the stairs, determined. He swung the front door open in time to see Alice’s tongue retreating yet once more. She was watching a sitcom. He opened his mouth, about to say something forceful, though he did not know what it would be. I want a divorce? Is that what he wanted to say? But they never even argued. And then he knew what he wanted. He wanted to have an argument, the sort that playwrights liked to invent, or even the sort that Alice watched on her soaps during the early part of the day, a good knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out argument that would allow him to clear out his irritations the way a good-sized storm clears the air.

  The sitcom ended, and a beautiful brunette appeared in a shower, smiling and sudsing her hair. Then, in a moment, she was out of the shower, and dressed to kill, her long hair bouncing in curls on her shoulders in slow motion. “You can have hair like mine too,” she said before she turned and departed. William looked at his wife and opened his mouth once more. His wife saw him looking and returned his gaze. Then she smiled and moved her head from side to side, slowly, so that her damp, matted locks beat against her shoulders. She twisted her neck further and further until her chin came to rest first on her left shoulder and then on her right.

  Donald Bartlett reaches for the wine bottle and, while pouring, tries to decide how and where he should end his story. Fool! we shout at him. Your time has been spent in vain. You can’t tell this story.

  Perhaps he has heard us this time. He is rubbing his lip with his finger and pondering. Yes, he seems to have heard us. He rubs his lip faster, and then he reaches for his glass. Perhaps he is thinking of the storm again. Good, we encourage him. But Roscoe is putting his candles aside. He is looking at the clock. He is smiling the way a man smiles when he has a story to tell. Donald Bartlett can’t seem to think while his companion is smiling like that. Suddenly he feels sick to his stomach. He sits perfectly still and tries to concentrate on calming the wave that is rising within him.

  “Hey,” Roscoe says to Meredith and Donald. “I’ve got a riddle for you.”

  Meredith checks the clock. “We’ve only got a few minutes. Then we have to get the others and start on the stories.”

  Roscoe smiles cunningly and reaches for the wine bottle. He pours himself a glass and swallows down half of it in one gulp. “Don’t worry,” he says to Meredith. “I’ll call the others in and then I’ll ask you the riddle while they’re settling themselves.” He finishes off the wine and pours some more. “Belinda,” he calls loudly from his seat. “Belinda, Carole, let’s go.”

  Donald has calmed the wave for the time being, and now he is thinking again of the man and the storm. But where is the connection between them? He crosses his fingers and hopes with all his heart that Roscoe will not tell his riddle. He is afraid he will try to follow it, and he knows such an action will make him sick. He must concentrate only on the man and the storm.

  “Okay,” Roscoe says to Meredith. “Here’s the riddle.”

  Donald Bartlett takes a deep breath. Holding onto the table, he rises. He feels taller than he has ever felt in his life. He makes his way around the table, using the backs of the chairs for support. “Air,” he says to Roscoe as he passes him.

  The Drinking Party—Part 2

  “It’s time,” Roscoe called. “Belinda, it’s time. Come on.”

  Donald came in from the porch. “Carole’snotbackyet,” he said.

  “Maybe you should go look for her,” Roscoe said. “She can’t have gone far. Was she wearing a watch?”

  Donald thought for a moment. Then he shook his head and retreated.

  Belinda appeared in the hallway, patting her red locks into place with the palm of her hand.

  “Got your story ready?” Roscoe queried.

  Belinda yawned before answering. “Oh yeah. I’ve got a story that would knock your socks off. But I ain’t gonna tell it.” She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out in Roscoe’s direction.

  “My story is about a mermaid,” Meredith said. But Belinda and Roscoe were staring at each other and neither heard her.

  “Okay. Don’t tell it. I can’t make you be pleasant, now can I?” Roscoe folded his arms across his chest and sat back. “Meredith’s got a story for us, don’t you, Mer?”

  “Yes, Rosc. I just said that. I have a story about a mermaid.”

  “Good. You can go first.”

  “I don’t want to go first.”

  Roscoe sat forward again. “You shy?”

  Belinda laughed and lit a cigarette.

  “No, I’m not shy. I’m saving mine for last because, one, it’s the best and the best should come last so that everyone remembers it, and
two, Father can’t send me to bed early then.”

  “No flies on you,” Belinda said. “You want more wine, Roscoe?” She poured even before he nodded. “Donald,” she called in the direction of the porch. “You want more wine?”

  “He’s gone to look for Carole,” Roscoe said.

  “My father doesn’t hold his liquor as well as you two. He’s liable to fall asleep out there in the street. I think he’s drunk. Maybe someone should go look for him.”

  “Do him good to wake up in the street once or twice,” Belinda said. She opened the cabinet above the sink. “Hey, where’s the potato chips?”

  “In the refrigerator,” Meredith responded.

  “The refrigerator! Are you people crazy?”

  “We left a box of Cheerios in the pantry the first night. The next morning there were ants all over the place. Carole put everything in the refrigerator after that.”

  “I know about the ants. But potato chips?”

  “Ants,” Donald said at the front door where he had been listening to the muffled voices from within. He bent down and gathered up the bundle of clothes on the steps. “Pants.” He felt better outside, in the wind. “Ants, pants, chants,” he sang, looking up at the stars. But the stars disappeared all at once and he felt a strange sensation, a force, against his eyes. “Ants, pants,” he cried in an effort to keep from going under.

  Carole laughed and let her hands drop from his eyes. He turned around to face her. “You’re not wearing any clothes!” he exclaimed.

  Carole laughed again. “You’ve got my clothes,” she said.

  Donald looked down. It was true. He was holding them. He handed the bundle over to his wife and watched as she began to dress. “Wherewereyou?”

  She stepped into her baggy white shorts. “I went out dancing.” She pulled the drawstring tight and tied a bow. Then she slipped her t-shirt over her head.