Nicholson Baker - The Everlasting Story of Nory

Shakespeare’s name was probably William R. Blistersnoo but he thought he needed a preferable name in order to be famous, and since there was tons of stabbing and spearing of people with swords in his plays he thought, ‘Let’s see, William Swordjab, no. William Fight? No. William Killeveryone? No. William Stabmyself? No. Aha! William Shakespeare! Yes, that will be just the thing.’ In Shakespeare’s plays what they would do, according to the drama teacher at the Junior School, is they would have an outfit on and they would sew a pig’s bladder in a little tiny place under the outfit that would have a little mark on it so that the person knew right where to stab. The guy would go king! — stabbing lightly right at that particular spot, and blood would instantly coosh out from the pig’s bladder.

‘But wouldn’t they run out of pigs quite quickly?’ Nory thought to herself. ‘And therefore run out of pig’s bladders, and therefore could not do another play?’ Shakespeare would have to go on stage before the play and say, ‘As you may know, we cannot do any of the blood we were going to do tonight, because we have run out of our lovely pig’s bladders. We checked in the cupboard this morning, but due to good business, and a number of highly gruesome plays, we have run out. Please enjoy the show. You can have your ticket refunded if you would rather not see the show without blood, since early next week we will have more fresh pig’s bladders shipped to us. We are also going to be getting some big, fat, juicy cow bladders in stock that we will be using for some extremely disgusting effects in a play I will be finishing soon. So please, dear friends, sit back, and enjoy the show.’ And say if somebody was in too much of a rush and forgot to empty out the urine and pour in the blood? In the big swordfight Shakespeare would stab the guy. ‘Die like a filthy scoundrel, you midget!’ And then, pssshooo , oh dear, that blood’s a bit on the yellow side, hm. ‘Oh, yellow blood, is it?’ Shakespeare would say. ‘You monstrous, yellow-blooded confendio master! Hah-hah! Return to your imperial distinctive land!’ Hack, chop. And a little later he would take a smug giggle and walk off the screen.

After drama there was Sciences. They looked through microscopes at different kinds of line — pencil line, crayon line, colored pencil line, medium-nib fountain pen line, and one other line. Biro line, they call it. A Biro is just a normal kind of everyday pen that you would use next to the phone to write out a phone message. In class they used an eraser on the lines to see what happens when you erase. The amazing thing was that the pencil left big gaps of white paper in its line, sort of the way an eraser will jump in a rubbery way in little tiny bounces if you pull it lightly over the paper, and the eraser left twisted shapes like something an insect would leave behind. One kid, Peter Wilton, was still in a state from drama class and was fidgeting all over the place. He was obviously in a Shakespeare mood of wanting to chop something up, and so he looked down at his desk and thought, ‘Here’s something.’ He had a whole nice beautiful green pen in front of him. He sawed a quarter of it off, using his ruler, and then another quarter, and then a whole half of it. Nory shouldn’t have smiled but it was quite cute, this tiny shrub of a pen, just enough for the cartridge to fit in, which he tried to write with. Then he got carried away and took the cartridge and sawed that in half. Now that was not a brilliant idea. As you can imagine, the cartridge went plume , everywhere. He said, ‘Mrs. Hoadley, my pen leaked.’ But Jessica — who was sitting right next to him and rather exasperated by this point since it’s very hard to look in a microscope even when things are calm and peaceful because your head moves and you push the thing the wrong direction and lose what you’re looking at, or the light gets boffled up — so Jessica had lost her patience and she said to the teacher, ‘Yes, it leaked because, ahem, he was sawing it into a-tiny a-little a-pieces.’ The science teacher got steamingly angry when she got the picture and breathed through her nose in a furious way after everything she said. She said, ‘Peter, that is unacceptable behavior, bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup.’

‘May I go wash my hands?’ he asked.

‘No, you may never wash your hands,’ said the teacher. ‘Your hands will stay blotched for the rest of your life.’

Which was a little joke by Mrs. Hoadley, although in fact she didn’t let him wash his hands. But it was really nice to see the pencil lines and to think how many adventures happen to a pencil line while you’re just writing a simple word.

The next thing in the order of the day was that they were supposed to go to music class, and that’s what Nory was in the process of doing, but she went by a place near the auditorium where there were some wooden boxes, because she took the wrong turn in the hall, and she found some boys crowding around saying ‘Feeding time, Pamela.’ Pamela was shoved back behind one of the boxes and she was hiding there. It was just after the sixth year kids’ drama class. Nory couldn’t understand exactly what was happening except that Pamela couldn’t come out and wouldn’t come out, and the boys were saying stuff about ‘Eat,’ and saying ‘Are you hungry, Pamela?’ One of them said: ‘Feed the monster.’

Nory said, ‘Let Pamela out! Stop it, let her out!’ But they wouldn’t. Then the French teacher walked by and the boys went into a quick flutter. They said, ’Sssh, don’t let her see.

‘Pamela, please come on out,’ said Nory, while the teacher could hear, so she would notice the situation. The boys were all pretending to be doing something else. The teacher said, ‘Pamela? Are you there? Come out.’ So Pamela did. Nory said, ‘Hi, Pamela, come on, let’s get our stuff.’ Nory got her hurried away and waved to the French teacher who waved back. The French teacher probably didn’t know much of what was going on, but that was good because Pamela did not want any teachers to know, because then they would have a word with Mrs. Thirm, and then she would have to have a word with Mrs. Thirm, and she thought Mrs. Thirm thought she’d done all those bad things last year.

Nory said, ‘Pamela, you’ve got to go to Mr. Pears, because Mr. Pears is very nice. You’ve got to complaint to him. If you don’t complaint to him nothing will get better. It’ll just keep getting worse.’ But Pamela said she couldn’t find the time to complaint to him. The problem was that if you get bullied for a certain amount of time, you start thinking that it’s average to be bullied and you end up stopping being able to fight back for yourself. It’s like having a cold for so long that you start thinking its normal to have a stuffed-up nose. Nory didn’t want to say that to Pamela because it wasn’t the perfect thing to say. Pamela had the sound of almost-but-not-quite-crying in her voice when she said, ‘I have to get my stuff,’ and she went off.

The next thing that happened, not counting music, which was fairly anonymous, was that everyone was outside, waiting to be picked up. Nory was out with a bunch of other kids, including Kira. Pamela came out and sat down nearby with a big sigh and slumped her backpack down, and everyone froze and went dead quiet. Pamela concentrated on doing a strange thing, which was: taking off her shoe and sock and checking on an orange Band Aid that was on her toe. That was such an unexpected thing for Pamela to do that all the girls started to laugh at her, and then Nory couldn’t help it and she laughed, too, although she felt it was mean. Jessica said to Nory, ‘Can you please get her to go away?’