Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

Have we gone on like this long enough?

DOES INTEGRITY LIE IN failure? Do you recall the last time that you really had fun? If I told you that if I had a wounded blue jay that was content to convalesce under my care in a nice cage with pine bark in the floor of it, and that caring for this bird, and this bird’s tolerance of me as I did so, in his nice fragrant cage, was all I needed to be content, would you think me a little off? Would you likewise take a dim view — isn’t that a nice conceit? — of me if I predict that were the bird to not convalesce to the point that it could be released, but instead were to live apparently happily in the cage until I found it one day on its side, departed, looking up sideways with that terrible glazed eye birds get, that I would be then more devastated than a child? If I told you that I intended to take this shovel, and this fresh bottle of whiskey, and go out and bury my blue jay and never be heard of again, and I invited you to come along, would you come?

Do you know anything at all about the circumstances by which Leon Trotsky, in exile in Mexico City, happened to be assassinated with an ice ax? Do you find any resemblance between the mouth of a bearded man and a vagina? If you find a resemblance, are you unsettled by it or excited by it or left neutral? Do you like to sharpen pencils? Have you ever seen a woman of a certain age change the pants of a woman twice a certain age? Is there one enterprise or course of action you wish you had undertaken as a younger person but that you feel is bootless to try to pursue now? Does your tolerance for people about you increase or decrease as you age? Have you ever bought and used a petroleum-based spot remover? Have you ever used a petroleum-based spot remover that someone else bought? Is a petroleum-based spot remover something you will use if you find it but which you will not yourself purchase? Is, in your opinion, the work of a mental asylum good or evil? If you were to crash fatally in a small plane, does it matter to you whether you shit your pants before the crash, or after? Do you recall when your last stuffed animal as a child was lost to you, or do you perchance still have one? To what degree are you aware on a daily basis of coming into contact with polyvinyl chloride (PVC)? Does fair weather or foul depress you more? Would you think this assertion true: the ratio of blue snakes to red snakes on earth mirrors exactly the ratio of blue food to red food? Have you known anyone who has drowned?

If integrity resides in failure, does the abnegation of integrity reside in success? If it is the case, and certainly it must be, that integrity does not always reside in failure, but only when the failure is not casual and not the fault of a want of industry or ambition, and so on, on the part of the failer, then of course it is the case that the abnegation of integrity does not always reside in success, but only when the success is some evil stripe of it that someone has figured out the world does not need more of but that was usually thought of as pretty hot when it got started, like say populating the earth and land development — early successes, as it were, that turn into wholesale fucking disasters…and is it clear to you that I cannot for the life of me think of what the proper opposite of “integrity” is, hence this fey “abnegation of integrity”? Can you think of what the opposite of integrity is? Have you ever witnessed the effect a child can have on a drunk adult if he, the child, repeatedly calls the drunk adult a “poo-poo train”? Would you think a child who calls drunk adults poo-poo trains more inclined to a life of criminality than a child who does not so taunt drunk adults? If you were to travel to the graves of all your known relatives, how many cemeteries would you need visit?

If you find a bat on the ground, will you give it succor? Is it fair to say that cathedrals tend to be gaudy and overdone, and mosques clean and spare? When you drink from a water hose, are you bothered by the slightly moldlike taste of the rubber sometimes? Do you credit that pickled things and smoked things induce cancer? Do you know the history or provenance or origins of Raggedy Ann and Andy? If you could get a dog small enough to transport in your coat pocket, would you get one? What would be the most fun thing you could do, right now? If you could successfully rob a person of his ill-gotten wealth, would you? Have you ever had to dig a large ditch or a deep hole? If you were in a streaming crowd being pushed into what appears to be a bifurcated tunnel ahead, and over one entrance was the word HOPE and over the other NO HOPE, and you could just barely manage to maneuver yourself within the crush of the crowd into either entrance, and it looked like a preponderance of the crowd was entering Hope, which entrance would you take? If you had a dog small enough to be transported in the pocket of your coat, what would you name it? Do you think in terms of salvation or redemption? Do you appreciate the color changes of leaves in the fall or is that spectacle a tad too popularly sentimental for you? Have you ever been catheterized? Is there a set number of rings you like a phone to ring before you pick up? Does the noise made by corduroy pants irritate you? Do you eat flan? Would you rather see a bay at high tide or low tide? If you could be instantly fluent in a language you do not now speak, what language would it be? Can you change a tire by yourself? Have you ever petted a vole or a shrew? Do you partake of syrups?

Do you credit that a man seriously advanced “Cogito ergo sum” with a straight face? How many screwdrivers do you think is necessary for able-bodied normal household maintenance? If there were a service whereby everything in your apartment or house could be made to disappear (called House Fire without Fire), without any mess or hassle or delay, and you would receive, in compensation, partial value of the material that disappeared, what partial value would be necessary for you to contract with this service? If you were to be executed and, by standard practice in executions, were offered anything you wanted as a last meal, and instead of ordering lobster or an impossibly thick Porterhouse steak or some peculiar fond dish like fish sticks and packaged macaroni, you said, “I want boiled kittens and puppies, and I want them boiled alive, like crabs,” do you think there would be amusement, and do you think they would comply? If you were to be executed and you ordered boiled kittens and puppies as your last meal and they were served you, would you eat the kittens and puppies? Do you think you would keep a stoic countenance throughout your execution or would you get bad cotton mouth and then get to trembling or puking or jabbering or sobbing or wetting yourself or anything else like that?

Why do you think red became the dominant color for children’s wagons, to the extent that it is virtually eponymous, as in “little red wagon”? Would you be interested in a rough safari up the Amazon? Do you know the different kinds of courses in which brick and block can be laid? Are you made a little more confident about things when you hear or use the term “hex-head”? Do you not think the next big disorder after chronic dehydration will be chronic asphyxiation? If you have a dog and you lie down beside him, do you prefer that he slap the floor gently once or twice with his tail in acknowledgment of your joining him, or that he lick you in the face and shovel his head into your neck and drive you off the floor with his boundless enthusiasm for you?

What are the instances in your life when you have been seen naked that you did not wish to be seen naked? Do you understand exactly what malt is? Do you understand exactly what sorghum is? If you had to be struck by lightning or by a car, which would it be? Will you use the phrase “forever and a day,” and will you deal with someone who uses it? Does the word thumb impress you as somehow having a power or meaning beyond what it denotatively should have — I guess I mean, does it spook you a little, or sound totemic or talismanic, or maybe pornographic?