Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

I used to think he could do it because of his teeth, or because of his gums, or because of his tongue — or because he had this kind of a cockeyed kind of an enunciation and nyalked nyike nyis.

It scared me silly — somebody eating an apple like that, somebody nyalking nyike nyis.

Hey, where did I all of a sudden get all this get-up-and-go from? To speak with such vim and vigor with!

Considering.

Considering that I have been trying so hard to get across to you and to your fruiterer the impression that I absolutely do not give a shit.

So what do you think — fact or fiction, Morton Lishnofski?

I WONDER WHAT it would have felt like, kissing a person with a funny-looking lip. Kissing the person right where the funniest-looking part of his lip is — just imagine it! All I can say is, praise be that in my house we had a host of rules set up to keep the specter of contagion at a distance, or in check. Wiping off the mouthpiece of the telephone with anything disinfectant — there was one of them for you, and kissing someone on the cheek, there was a second.

I can't think of a third.

Sorry, mind's not quite on enough on what I am saying, I think.

So which was it, Pine-Sol or Breath O'Pine or CN?

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU — but me, I have had enough of this. I mean, how much is it that they can expect a man to take?

Considering, of course.

Considering today's another Father's Day.

Considering that here I am having to sit here and hear myself say all of this.

It's nyile and nyutrid, isn't it?

Or, to get it really hard and right — carbuncular is as carbuncular does — nyanyonyis for atrocious.

Apples falling, falling, falling at all, and then where, where they fall, when they do.

LISTEN TO ME, there are a pair of hippopotamuses standing in a river, such a filthy dirty river, it is horrible, it is simply horrible, and the sun, my God, you would not believe it, who could believe it, what with the heat and with the sun and with how sticky and muggy and awful it is, it is stifling, it is absolutely unbelievable how stifling, it is positively beyond all believability, a day so stifling like this day is, a day which could kill you like this day could, a day which could do away with you in just one hour, in just one minute, in just one breath, but meanwhile all day long, from when the sun comes up in the morning to when the sun is going down at night, all day long this pair of hippopotamuses is standing here in the scorching water like this, they are up to their ears, they are up to their eyeballs in the scorching torpid water like this, and it is this filthy dirty hot disgusting dirty scorching torpid water like this, not either one of them moving a single muscle in it, the two of them not budging, not even one inch, not even leaning a fraction of an inch in this direction or in that direction, except for maybe if you want to count these little tiny twitches of the eyelids, these little tiny twitches of the ears, these little tiny trembles you would probably call them, these little tiny trembles and twitches, but otherwise the two hippopotamuses are like granite, like stone, like standing here in the disgusting filthy water from first thing in the morning to the time when it is almost sundown, all day long the two of them all covered up by the filthy hot dirty torpid scorching dirty water like this except for just where their little ears are sticking up out of it and are constantly twitching little twitches and for where their big bulgy eyes are poking up a little bit out of it and the eyelids, the eyelids, you can see the eyelids are giving these little bitty trembles, these little tiny itty-bitty trembles, these little tiny tremblings like, like maybe from flies probably or like maybe from little nits like or like from something even tinier than this, or it could be from some kind of teensy almost invisible itsy-bitsy thing which likes to creep around on the eyelids of hippopotamuses — but barring this, but barring the twitchings of the ears and the twitchings of the eyelids, the two hippopotamuses are just standing here and standing here and you could not even see them even breathing even, because this is how still as stones they're standing, because this is how still as boulders they are standing, and the water meanwhile, it just just goes gurgling all around them like it is some kind of filthy dirty torpid scorchy syrup probably, or more like it is torpid dirty ooze than it is like anything like even water even, more like it is some kind of special water which can get totally exhausted from just being water, and this is it, this is how it is, this is how the whole situation of it is from just after when the sun first comes up in the morning to almost when the sun is getting good and ready to go down again at night, which is when one of the hippopotamuses, which is when, lo and behold, the hippopotamus which is the slightly older hippopotamus and which is the slightly more overweight hippopotamus, which is when this particular hippopotamus all of a sudden moves his little feet a little teensy tiny bit and more or less just gets them moved into place into a somewhat slightly new position a teensy tiny bit, and then he opens his eyelids all of the way open and he looks all around a little bit and he says, "I don't know — all day long, I still can't get it through my head today is, you know, not Monday but Tuesday."

No, he says, instead the hippopotamus says, "Hey, it's such a crime for me just to stand?"

No, wait a minute, she said he says, she says the big old hippopotamus says, "Who can think, a thing like this? Can anybody collect his thoughts, a thing like this?"

The truth is this — I don't really remember what the punch line was. But I don't suppose I have the other part much more faithfully recorded, either. You see, I think I was pretty jumpy when I heard it, plus I know I was much too young to be anywhere near old enough for me to listen faithfully enough when big stuff were probably being said. The only point I have for all of these years been sure of is that my Aunt Adele hunkered down and told jokes when the cancer started going from her bladder to her bones, that and the fact that my Aunt Adele kept calling up to my house from Miami to New York to tell lots of different jokes to whoever it was who was home. Of course, it was always my mother who always was home — my mother, so far as I can remember, always was. Not that I didn't once pick up the downstairs phone once, and hear something for myself on the order of what you just heard, this plus the power of hearing two women laughing as a child listens in.

MY WIFE SAYS, "Look at you. Just look at you. How can you look like that? Why don't you take a good look at yourself? Look at me, don't you have any idea of what you look like? What do you think people are going to think when they look at you? Tell me, how can you go around looking like that? Do you know what you look like? You couldn't conceivably know what you look like. Who would believe anyone could look like this? I cannot believe what you look like. It is hard for me to grasp it, a man who can go around looking like what you look like. What is the matter with you, don't you know what you look like? You probably don't have the first idea of what you look like. You act like you are completely oblivious to what you look like. Don't you realize people are looking at you? Have you no conception of the fact that there are people who are looking at you? Why are you so utterly unaware of the fact that you cannot go around looking like whatever you happen to feel like looking like? Take a look at yourself. Just go ahead and just take just one good look at yourself."

This is what my wife says.

As for myself, I used to think it didn't put her in the best of lights for her to be going around being heard looking like somebody saying things like that.