Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Never mind this latter's fate.

OR MAYBE HE'D CHANGE his tune and tell it like this — say somebody was coming with jelly apples, so he went and told his father about it and his father said there would always be somebody coming who was going to be coming with something, that if they would not be coming with one thing, then that they were going to be coming with another thing, that there was not anything which they were ever going to be coming with which was not going to cost somebody some money, but that, no, no, the father would not be a father ever to deny any son something, least of all savvy and candied nutrition.

BUT IT ALL WORKED OUT to be the same story, anyway — one bite and the boy was choking to death on whatever he had bitten into — take your pick — sour ball, hot peanut, jelly apple. Whereupon, here comes the brother to come happening along and thereupon to see what lethally gives, so that the brother takes the brother by the belt and yanks the brother up and turns the brother over and holds our father upside-down, et cetera, et cetera, such that whatever it was that had got in him gets knocked loose and comes back up out of him and he is breathing again and is among the living again, even if the whole deal is hokum, hokum, cock-and-bull.

ANYWAY, THIS IS THE STORY the dead man told.

Or that was.

But what else could it do but get him killed?

For the storyteller told the story to his children — who just could not wait to grow up enough for them to get strong enough for them to accomplish the same saving feat that had been so robustly extolled of, who just could not wait for them to be ready enough for when their father would start choking enough, which eventually — as it will with any of us — the father regrettably, but not all that excessively, in the event did.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

From the children's point of view, it was all for love, whereas from the viewpoint of the father, death was no more than the cost of the narrative endeavor paid out to the end of its aboriginal course. Yet whichever ornament you choose to adorn the humbug of the text with, the fact is the kids managed to get the old man head over heels, all right, but then, upended, the kidder slipped loose and cracked something pretty critical, a stiletto of neck bone thence— oh, shit! — stabbing its way up into the back of a drastically literal brain.

LOOK, LET'S MAKE IT SHORT AND SWEET. Who anymore doesn't go crazy from overtures, from fanfares, from preambles, from preliminaries? So, okay, so here is the thing — so this is my Kafka story, fine and dandy. Actually, it is going to be my against-Kafka story. Because what I notice is you have to have a Kafka story one way or the other. So this is going to be my Kafka story, only it is going to be a story which is against Kafka. Which is different from being a story against Kafka's stories, although I could see myself probably producing a story against those, too, if I ever went back and took another look at any of the preservations of them.

I'm not interested.

It's exclusively the man himself which I am incompetent to be uninterested in.

But not to the extent you would get me to give you two cents for this person even if he were made of money, which is what I understand the man in his lifetime was.

I'll tell you about lifetimes.

I have a creature here who is a kindergartner, so right there this takes care of lifetimes. Whereas I don't have to tell you what Kafka got was nafkelehs.

You say this Kafka knew a lot. But show me where it says he knew from doily-cutters.

Or even what cutters were who didn't work in paper.

Take my dad, for the most convenient comparison.

The man couldn't make a go of it in business.

In other words, so far as his fortunes went, if dry goods were hot, then he was in wet ones.

But who has the energy for so much history?

Kafka, on the other hand, the louse didn't even know the meaning of the word idle, that's how fast the fellow sat himself down to write his father a letter. But let me ask you something. You want to read to me from the book where it says this letter-writer ever had the gall to ever say as much as even boo to his mother?

Save your breath.

I am not uninformed as to the character of the heretofore aforementioned author.

Pay attention — we are talking about a son who could not wait to stab the son of a butcher in the back — but where is it on exhibit that this Kafka Shmafka ever had the stomach to split an infinitive in his own language?

Now take me and my mother, to give you two horses of a different color.

You know what?

We neither of us ever had one.

Or even a pony they came and rented you for the itinerant photographer to make a seated portrait.

You see what I am saying to you? Because I am saying to you nothing is out-of-bounds so far as I myself personally in my own mind as a mental thought am concerned — unless it is something which is so dead and buried I have got nothing to gain from unearthing it, which she, the old horseless thing, doesn't happen, as an historical detail, happen to be yet.

But Kafka, so how come wherever you turn, it's Kafka, Kafka? — just because, brushing his teeth, the man could not help himself, even the toothbrush alone could make this genius vomit.

You know what I say?

I say this Kafka had it too good already, a citizen in good standing in the Kingdom of Bohemia, whereas guess who gets to live out his unpony'd life in the United States of a certain unprincely America!

In a mixed building yet.

In yet even an apartment which is also mixed also.

With a kindergartner — who is meanwhile, by the way, looking to me not just like the bug he looked to me like when he came into this world but also more and more like he is turning into a human being who could turn big and normal and dangerous.

You want to hear something?

In kindergarten, they teach reading already. So the teacher makes them make a doily and then lay it down over some Kafka and recite through the holes to her.

This day and age!

These modern times!

Listen, I also had the experience of waking up in my room once, and guess what.

Because the answer is I was still no different.

From head to toe, I had to look at every ordinary inch of what I had taken to bed with me.

Hey, you want to hear something?

I was un metamorphosed!

You look like I look, you think you get a Felice? Because the answer is that you do not even get a Phyllis!

Fee-Lee-Chay.

"Oh, Feeleechay, my ancestor is a barbarian, a philistine, a businessman — so lose not a moment, my pretty, if you are for the Virtual, if for the Infinite, then quick, quick, then with all swiftiness suck my dick!"

But, to be fair, my mother used to say Klee-Yon-Tell.

Still does, I bet.

You know what I bet?

I bet if I ever could get my mother on the telephone, you know what she would say to me? The woman would say to me, "Sweetheart, you should come down here to visit me down here because they cater down here to the finest kleeyontell."

One time I went to call her up once, went to look for her number once, but never did it, never did.

Had to scream bloody murder in my office instead.

Hate to admit it, but I did.

Boy oh boy, was it a scream.

From flipping around the Rolodex cards and then from spotting what was on her card when the flipped-around cards fell open to hers.

You know what I say?

Who wishes the man ill?

But I would nevertheless like to see him wake up to what I wake up to.

Just once.

Forget it.

The rogue was small potatoes.

My dad lived through fifty years as a cutter in girls' coats, whereas Kafka, the sissy could not even shape up and live through his own life.