Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

"Look, there's nothing fishy in this, but I don't want to talk anymore — and besides, I'm calling from home and, with Maggie in the house, it's making me jittery — and I right now can't risk being jittery . I'll telephone tomorrow — around noon — so, for Christ's sake, be there. Because I gave Scharfstein my promise I'd come in and see him in the morning — the jerk thinks he can teach me how to die — and I plan to fly up to Hanover in the afternoon. I guess Mom wrote you that David started Dartmouth this fall — all the way from Texas to my brother's backyard! Buddy, he writes these letters to his grandmother that I cannot believe and do not believe — like a geometer, as if a geometer made them. It gives me the willies to see them, but Mom always makes sure I do. He writes to her! Does he write to me? Does he answer one goddamn letter? Anyway, that's where he is and that's where I'm going tomorrow to get it taken care of. Jesus, man, I've got to choose, don't you see — and I choose Rupert!"

YOUR FATHER HUNG UP, Chap, with the delivery of that declaration. I didn't wait until the next day, though. I called him back right away — and this time I did get a piece of paper and a pencil — for no good reason, actually, but in moments of this kind one sometimes does things like this. I didn't say much. I didn't try to argue with him. I don't think I then knew what arguments to argue with —and I am not certain I know that even now. All I did know was that I had to try to stop him — not because there was in me a conviction that held him wrong —but only because there was a will in me to keep him from doing what he said. He did not answer right away, but when he did lift the receiver I immediately said, "Me again," and then I heard him say, "Mags, I've got a call and I need to talk in private. I'm sorry, but I need to," and then there was a moment's quiet and then my brother said, "Yes?" and I knew there was no arguing, nothing to do but state the livable range marked off by the mad logic of his assumptions.

"I have one thing to say," I said, "and that's this. Let it rest for three months. They've guaranteed you three months, at least three months, so you can wait that long and then do it. Not saying you shouldn't do it — just saying you can wait the three lousy months. Not that I think you'll change your mind — or that I'm sitting here trying to get you to — but just that you're in this position where you can add three months to Chap's life with no danger to Rupert. The minimum they've given you is the minimum you can and therefore must give Chap."

I was writing the numeral 3 again and again across the paper that I had pressed with the heel of my hand up against the wall. But the plaster, if that's what you call it, was making them all come out crooked, no matter how carefully I tried to control the pencil.

Chap, your father said, "Yes," and then he hung up the phone. He hung up without one other word. But the word he had uttered left no doubt — it was said so I would know there was no doubt. My brother knew that I knew he would do it — that your father would give you all the life he could.

That was the fourth of November.

I began writing these sentences that night, last night — and as I write this sentence now, it is morning.

I PROMISED A COURTESY, and this is it. I make this gesture to exist in the place of all the gestures I have not made. I am keeping every promise I have not kept. I am leading along to this courtesy everyone I have loved and ever misled.

There is an American writer, a woman, the only American writer I read. She has not written many stories, so it is no great undertaking to read everything she has written, which she has let have a life in print, that is. I take it that her public, unlike mine, is very, very small. This, I believe, is because she is unwilling to mislead, as I have so very often done and then tried to undo by my silence and now am trying still harder so desperately to undo by this last speaking-up.

It is a great undertaking to understand even one of her stories, such as the one she brought forth into the world about two years ago. It is a story that begins as a story that this writer has stolen from another writer — but only because he had earlier stolen it from her . It was her story, she says, and it has to do with magic and with miracles and with many, many things. I think it has to do with everything.

Near to its infernal conclusion, the story happens on the writings of a very wise man, a man now in prison for knowing too much — about the weakness of man and about the terrible power of God, never more terrible than in the performing of His justice.

Among these writings, as the story calls the wise man's diaries, there is a tale the criminal has recorded.

Here is the tale.

A father is in a concentration camp. He learns that the list for the next day's gassings includes the name of his son, a boy of, say, twelve. So the father bribes a German (a diamond ring, he promises) to take some other boy instead — for who will really know which boy is taken? But then the father is uncertain of the rightness of his design. So he goes for guidance to the rabbi in the camp. And the rabbi will not help him. The rabbi says, "Why come to me? You made your decision already." And the father says, "But they'll put another boy in my son's place." The rabbi hears this, and he says, "Instead of Isaac, Abraham put a ram. And that was for God. Whereas you put another child, and for what? To trick the devil."

The father says, "What is the law on this?"

The rabbi answers, "The law is don't kill."

The next day the father does not deliver the promised bribe, and the Germans kill his son.

The father wanted a miracle, and he decided God would not give it.

But God did.

God created a father who could abide by the facts.

OH, CHAP, silent son, and all the beloveds I have promised, dear brother in heaven and dear brother still on earth, this is the one mir — I mean, m-i-r-a-c-l-e — there is. And you, Rupert, melodious child of our dreaming, for your birthday I give you this gift. It is the lesson I have placed before you — for when you are five and must be strong enough for the five fine candles aflame on your cake.

Breathe .

Now blow them all out.

Now good luck and long life!

THE FOUR THINGS are a key, two benches, and a bicycle wrapped in festive paper but not where the handgrips and the foot-pedals are.

The key opens someone else's door.

The park bench looks out on a river.

The other bench is down where the subway runs.

The bicycle's a chimpanzee's.

The key is a duplicate.

The park bench stands in sunlight.

Four citizens are seated on the bench down here.

The one free place is next to me. The chimpanzee will speak for himself. But I say it's custom-made, the bicycle, balanced to the gram. See where the paper's split? That's chromium underneath.

The key is cut from cheap metal, a feathery replica of the brass original — lent, copied, seventy-five cents. It has no weight worth notice. Sometimes he does not know it's in his pocket. But it's there sometimes — once a week.

Of course, it's filthy down there, but it's also filthy up here. And the floor the chimpanzee rides on, this is filthy too — peanut shells, popcorn, gummy substances flattened out to ovals, a law of physics, the law of shapes.

"I started on the bicycle when I was half the size you see. It's adjustable, wing nuts for all the crucial parts. I did not have the hat at first. But after one circle without a slipup, I did. After four, the jacket. After eight, the trousers. When I could keep it up and keep it up, the shoes were what I got for it. They're sturdy. They're black. See the buckles for getting them on and off?"