Nicholson Baker - The Everlasting Story of Nory

‘Is it a diesel?’ Littleguy asked.

Nory suddenly remembered the bathrooms at the restaurant of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco where she had gone to lunch one day with her parents. Each stall of the bathroom had a chandelier above it. She told Kira about it.

‘Wow, your own personal chandelier,’ said Kira. ‘That’s pretty incredible.’

Nory was quite content to have impressed her with a known fact about America.

In the car home from Wimpole House, Kira licked Nory on her face, pretending to be one of the rare kinds of cow. Nory happened to be squeamish about being licked on the face and said, ‘Kira, stop.’

‘Let’s not have any saliva games in the car, please,’ called Nory’s father from the front seat.

That made Kira stop, and instead she and Nory played a game in which you pass a little orange ball back and forth, and whoever has the ball has to tell the next part of the story. Kira started it off.

‘Once,’ she said, ‘there was a good girl and a bad girl. They were identical sisters. One day the bad girl decided to play a trick on the good girl. This trick was …’ And Kira passed the orange ball to Nory.

‘Oh dear, I’ve come unbuckled,’ said Nory, fixing her seatbelt. ‘Okay, the trick was for the bad girl to put her foot down on the girl’s dress in a very fancy party that she was going to suggest to her mom that they have. She was spoiled and knew as a matter of course that her mom would agree. If she stepped on her good sister’s dress, her good sister would be embarrassed in front of everyone and be very upset. And so …’ Nory passed the ball to Kira.

‘So the mother let them do it,’ said Kira, and gave the ball back to Nory.

‘Let them have a big garden party,’ said Nory, and passed the ball back to Kira.

‘Have a huge garden party,’ said Kira. ‘But there was one desperate problem, and that problem was …’

‘That it was raining on the day they were going to have the garden party,’ said Nory.

‘So they decided to have the party inside,’ said Kira. ‘But there was another problem as well. The bad little girl, whose name was …’

‘Kuselda,’ said Nory.

‘Kuselda,’ said Kira, ‘was feeling rather sick. And the party went like this.’

‘The first part was successful,’ said Nory. ‘The good little girl was fussed over, everyone was nice to her, she was superb. Everything went well, until the bad girl decided that she would stagger out and she would still carry out with her plan. She suggested a dance, saying, “Of course I have to be with my beloved sister.” And the sister said …’

‘The sister said, “All right,” ’ said Kira. ‘And they had the dance. But when Krusella was just about to do it, something else happened.’

‘What happened was,’ said Nory, ‘the bad girl felt horribly sick. She felt so sick and faint she was almost too weak to press down hard enough with her foot on the dress. And yet she still decided she would try. But the mother, thinking it wasn’t intentional, called out, “Careful Kruselda, don’t step on your sister’s dress, you’re about to.” ’

‘So Kruselda had to not carry out her plan that night,’ said Kira. ‘But will she carry it out later? Find the answer.’

‘She decided firmly she would,’ said Nory. ‘She had made a plan and she was going to carry it out. She was so angry that she didn’t get to do it all that night she couldn’t sleep, and she was so tired that …’

‘She couldn’t get up for a week,’ said Kira. ‘Her plan almost slipped out of her mind, but at the end of the week, constantly thinking about how she could get revenge, she decided to …’

‘Not only step on her good sister’s dress,’ said Nory, ‘but somehow make her good sister’s hair come out of place and fluff up, in such a way that the good sister wouldn’t know it happened, just before she went out, so she would look just dreadful, and it would be just as well as she stepped on her dress.’

Kira whispered to Nory, ‘You still have to say when she would do this and how she would do this. Would she have another party, or what?’

‘But she didn’t know how to do carry out her plan,’ said Nory. ‘Then she finally thought of it. She’d have to …’

‘Have another party,’ said Kira. ‘But this time everyone was supposed to come all dressed up so you couldn’t guess who they were. If you guessed who a person was, the person had to …’

‘Duck for apples!’ said Nory. ‘And that would be pretty embarrassing at such a fancy wonderful party …’

‘Because you had to stick your head in the water,’ said Kira.

‘And because,’ said Nory, ‘the water would have food coloring in it, that made your face turn a awful color of pale green for a day, which would be extremely embarrassing, for this was a very rich and dignified family. So the bad girl asked her mom, who said sternly …’

‘ “ Yes,” ’ said Kira.

‘The bad girl sang a carol at the first part,’ said Nory, ‘just to make herself more popular. A goose could have sang it better than she did. She sang it like a wild chicken.’

‘Then the dance was to begin,’ said Kira. ‘The two sisters, not knowing each other of course, because they had chosen different outfits deliberately and not telling each other what they were being and what they would look like, chose themselves. They danced with each other.’ And then Kira whispered her advice to Nory: ‘The bad girl has to fall.’

‘First their steps went quickly,’ said Nory, nodding. ‘The good girl, Emmerine, had swift lovely steps. But the bad girl, Kruselda’s steps were big and bulgy, slow and ugly steps. They danced on together for a long time, until Kruselda finally remembered what she was to do. She was just about to do it, but there was a corner of the rug that was flipped back. She tripped on the rug, fell on her chin, and made her nose be an awful shape, which looked so awful and swollen that no one wanted to look at her for the rest of the day, so she decided to sing …’

‘But then decided no, she would not sing,’ said Kira, quite strongly. ‘Instead her mask and fake hair came off, and everyone knew who she was and she had to …’

‘Duck for apples!’ said Nory. ‘She ducked and ducked and ducked, but her face was so dirty and ugly from the beginning that it turned an awful red, and …’

‘No one would look at her and she was in disgrace,’ said Kira. ‘And she learned to be nicer. The …’

‘The Dog was important to the story, too,’ said Nory, because she didn’t want to say, ‘end,’ which Kira of course wanted her to say.

‘No, the end,’ said Kira.

‘The end!’ sang Nory. ‘The end — the end, the end, the end, oh way-ay-end! And then — and then — and then and then and then and then and THEN!’

‘Then that was the end,’ said Kira.

Nory’s parents called out ‘Nice story’ from the front.

‘I have a story to tell!’ said Littleguy, waving his hands in his car seat. ‘It’s about two girls and it’s the story you telled. There are two good girls. One’s bad and one’s good. They cide to to something. The end.’

‘I like it, good,’ said Nory.

‘But it’s not the end,’ said Littleguy. ‘There’s something they had to make up, their momma said they can make marshmellons, they cide to make something, and it’s something they made. They made two engines, the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard. Steam engines! And there was something in the party. It was a double-decker jelly cake, a double-decker bus, to eat. Like a double-decker bus. When it went in the sun, it rolled out, it drived, when it was on the grass it drove!’