Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

I thought, He pushes that thing in here. He gets you to look at him doing it. I'm his client if I look.

Then I saw the head. It was sitting perfectly upright in the chair. I mean it — a head, right in the center of the seat.

It was a colored man's head with a bit of a colored man's beard, and there was a neckerchief at the bottom of it sort of rakishly flared.

You will say I am not to be trusted. But I know I am. I saw. I heard. I saw the mouth in the head open up wide just as the train came in to my stop. I know what I heard before the door behind me was shut.

It was full-throated, deep-chested.

Only one line, but good and loud.

Way down upon the Swanee River. .

Very thrilling, very theatrical.

The son of a bitch was a baritone!

THE THIRD THING was I went home.

I THREW ONE AWAY just before I started this. I tried and tried. But it wasn't any use. This one here has the same title that that other one had because that other one had had it. In that other one, I was telling the truth, which is why it wasn't any use. Whereas this one, I'm already lying my head off with the thats and the hads in this one, not to mention the residuum masquerading as an honest title.

But I don't want you getting off on the wrong track until that's where I want you getting. So just for the record, I did have aunts, I still do have some of them, and I was always as much of an imp among them as I could manage.

They called me one, for that matter — the aunts did. Or they called me bandit or Mr. Mischief or rascal.

Bandit was actually bondit, which is another language and which maybe doesn't in it mean bandit. But I always thought it did, even though the aunts put all their stress on the second syllable.

Can you hear it — how it sounds?

Well, I always thought so many things.

I was trying to get one of them declared in what I was writing and gave up on. But I just couldn't not tell the truth in it, it being something about Aunt Helen.

Here's what I was doing.

I started off by naming all the aunts — like this: Ida, Lily, Esther, Dora, Miriam, Sylvia, Pauline, Adele, Helen, with Helen coming last, just the way you see it here.

That wasn't a truth but it was the beginning of one.

Then it got worse. Or I did. For pages and pages, saying something bizarre about each of them — about the aunts — only nothing about the one aunt who really mattered.

I'll give you an example.

I said, Take Dora. I said, Dora makes brisket and then goes to all the windows. There's Dora, I said, standing at each window, looking out of each window, going oy at each window.

Just listen to her as Dora goes oy.

Like this.

Oy.

As for Helen, I was getting to her. Helen's hard. She's my mother's side. Helen's on my mother's side. I am getting nervous from thinking about getting to Helen on any side.

Helen could get you nervous.

Here's what Helen looks like.

Chinese-y eyes. Silvery hair. In a bob.

Helen was a spy without leaving a desk. Helen broke codes. Helen ran the cryptanalysis unit at somewhere so secret you could die from it even if I didn't tell where.

This is true.

I went to see her once. If I told you even the state she was in, it could get us all in trouble. Of course, I don't mean state like emotional. State geopolitical is what I mean. Helen was never in a state emotional. This is the thing about Helen — and it still is.

The place wasn't much, the apartment Helen was in. I suppose she was in it to be near where she did her spying on what all of the people in the world were or are saying.

There was a buzzer, not a bell. This'll give you an idea of how crummy Helen's was.

The door comes open this little bitsy crack.

"Yes?"

"Aunt Helen live here?"

"Aunt Helen who?"

"My aunt Helen."

"Stand back."

I stand back. Door gets opened a bitsy bit more.

"Who are you?"

"Her nephew. Are you Aunt Helen?"

"Say her name."

"Helen?"

"Say yours."

"Mine?"

"It's okay!"

THAT WAS HELEN CALLING, that last thing you heard. You would know it in a flash, her voice, scratchy and exasperated-sounding, a little teasing, a little taunting — yes, Chinese, Chinese-y, that would be Aunt Helen all the way.

The woman in the W.A.C. uniform had a heavy automatic pistol stuck down into a holster strapped to her at her waist.

That's true — except it wasn't really stuck down. It was sort of sitting in there — loose-ishly.

Aunt Helen stayed right where she was, which was back behind the blocky woman at a pink Formica table with a pencil in her hand. When I got up close enough, I could see it was a crossword puzzle that Aunt Helen was working on — slanty eyes, bobbed hair, everything colored, her success colored, the color of polished steel.

Oh, Aunt Helen!

She just picked up and left it all. I mean, in 1938, she just picked up and went away from everybody — from husband, from child — to go be a code-buster and bust the codes of the world.

But I don't know another thing about her.

Aunt Helen's not talking.

Why should she?

I wouldn't.

Working at a pink Formica table, go ahead and tell me it does not speak unfurtively for itself!

I JUST SAID THAT to throw you off. Her name's not even Helen, if you want to know the truth. Neither is anybody's, Miriam included.

I just thought of a good name for Aunt Helen's bodyguard.

Mr. Mischief.

Since I just made her up.

Mr. Rascal.

Since I just make things up.

IT'S WHY they called me that.

Bondit.

I bet it's why.

I am such an imp.

Every inch a nephew.

All nephew.

Oy.

Go ahead and break it.

Here it is again.

Oy.

I DON'T KNOW about your first lesion, but let me tell you about mine. It was just itching when it started, just a tiny itching region, a little dot is all. My mother said it was the sting of like of an insect or like of something like that which made it itch. It wasn't. Everybody said it was something like that which made it itch right up until the time it got as big as a dime, and then they all after that started saying after that if only it was the size of a dime again. Because it wasn't long before it was a quarter and a bigger quarter and then a half-dollar they were all saying it was the size of.

It was money.

It was psoriasis.

Psoriasis .

I've seen worse words. Besides, it got me an education, being as how I took up an interest in language right after psoriasis got going divvying me up.

I started with all the pee-ess words and just kept on going after that. There was no stopping me, I can tell you. There was no stopping it, either. They did everything, my mother and father. You can't say they didn't try. They tried all the things the neighbors knew about. Then they sent away for things the neighbors never heard of. I put them all on. But you had to have a lot of stuff, being as how it was everywhere now, being as how there was nowhere it wasn't.

I was twelve.

I stayed home — working, as you can see, on the dictionary. I just went on from all those pee esses in it to the rest of the trick spellings. I liked the old words too. Here are some of my favorites. Pinguid. Pilous. Anachorism , which I'm always getting corrected on. But which I swear it to you, I swear it — this is the one which isn't about time, but what it's about I'm not telling!

You can't make me.

I don't have to.

I WENT TO DOCTORS when I had to go somewhere. They got the duds off me and took a look. They didn't like it, I can tell you. They were probably doing their best not to let on, but they didn't, I don't think, like it one bit.