Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

WHICH IS YOU TAKE COFFEE, you take milk, you take sugar, or you take sugar substitute, depending on which your preference is, depending whether it's for sugar or for sugar substitute. Me, I always go for the substitute.

Then you go take some ice to it, depending if you have a blender which can deal with ice in it.

So I'm blending.

I'm blending with the reconditioned blender we went ahead and had reconditioned before one thing leads to another and everything goes and gets itself so haywire and she, guess what, drops dead from it.

Brother, does it work!

I'm telling you, talk about when a thing works!

Producing, you might say, on low power a nice type of low-powered type of smooth-powered output — and then, when geared up to full power, giving out more of a more powerful type of full-powered output but meanwhile not being self-induced into erupting into the type of wave motion which you know how it can get crazy on you to the point where the contents of the canister is all of a sudden climbing the walls of the canister, making a wreck of the kitchen counter, not to mention the rest of the kitchen, from like, you know, from coming all of the way up and out from like this — down there! — this, you know, this vortex.

It's not called a vortex?

Well, guess who just cleaned up the tiles up.

Bleached the grout lines even.

You know the tile boundaries around them made of grout, they're not grout lines?

Grout boundaries !

So finish the blending and pour out the blendation — and sorry, I'm sorry, but it's sensational, it's a sensation.

Down her in a gulp.

Down the whole deal in one whole gulp.

Turns out it's the best darn drink which I have ever in all my experience blending drunk.

So here I am — a widower, the widower — standing at the sink, thinking all credit to them which did the reconditioning, credit to the heavens to the outfit which turned around and did the reconditioning — rewinding the little motor for it, regapping the synapses of the switches for it, getting the wiring — isn't there a magneto, a terminal, a resistor? — wired up for it just right.

PEOPLE BELIEVE ME, or think me, imagine me to be Lish, the lit-fag, hyphen entered aforethought. Whereas nothing could be farther — or further — from the truth. The truth is that I have not been, and shall never be, a man of books, as I have, whilst under orders, sought to seem to be, but that I have been — and should like to continue to be — a fighter against our nation's enemies within the theater of our nation's boundaries. I was inducted into service in 1954, this at an installation called Miami Retreat. My sponsor was Helen Deutsch, married name Siegel, younger sister to my mother, Regina. I can furnish the documents. You have heard of Fort George Meade? You have heard of Maryland's Laurel Park? You have heard of the National Security Agency? The terms of the agency's mandate to act for the common good, as inaugurated by the President and as thereafter regulated solely under the direct jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frees the N.S.A., shall we call it, from potentialities of legal and political tether to all entities of Government save those just remarked. Hence, the volatility — or vaporousness — of my position and that of my colleagues — or cohorts. Please know that I seek to cover myself with no special status — or favor — when I hasten, as I must, to illumine a certain detail of my affiliation as heretofore recorded. The N.S.A., or NSA, was organized, as was everything else in its day, to perform duties contextualized within the perception of that which could properly be construed as international in the emphasis of concern, thus confining, to the extent reasonable, the compass of the aforementioned entity to activities whose source and flux placed the impress of those activities beyond the borders of this land — or suitably without the so-called Line of Limit. Here you have it. We come, in this, to the peculiar character of my status and, accordingly, to the case to be made for the making of this disclosure. Let me explain — or struggle to unstitch — what will at first appear, I do not doubt, both inexplicable and too tightly seamed to yield to parsing. My mother is — or was — Regina. She was one of five girls — daughters of Louis Deutsch and Ethel Goldstein. My father, however — and now we commence to approach the crux of it — was one of five boys and three girls — the offspring, it was claimed, of Rachel Boulansky and Isaac Lishkowitz. In fact, my paternal grandmother's name was Routchel Boolski, my paternal grandfather, for his part, named Sik Lescowicz. These two made their way to these shores, it was thought, from Russ-Polen, whereas papers demonstrate Louis and Ethel brought themselves hither from Vienna. The issue of this other pair — Pauline, Regina, Helen, Adele, and Sylvia, names cited in order of birth — spoke, owing to the fluency of their parents in these tongues — or idioms, or idioma — German and Hungarian and, presently, impeccable English, owing, the accomplishment of this last, to the intervention of the Metropolitan Orphan Asylum at Astoria, New York, the shelter to which the children were sent on the occasion of the death of Louis (circumstances "suspicious," to say the "least") and the ensuing incompetence of Ethel, herself confined to a facility for persons suffering such an infelicity. It was here — at Metropolitan — that (these details are acknowledged in diarist accounts given by Pauline, the eldest) the keen lingual and mathematical skills of Helen and Adele were first detected and thereafter, quite purposively, "cultivated," or nourished, or encouraged. That our forefathers were not unalert to the coming belligerencies with the Axis powers, this so long previous to the actual onset of events, is terribly interesting, or intriguing, I believe — or allege — but we doubtless could not handily sustain a digressive inquiry into the matter so soon in the formation of our not unperplexing considerations, could we? Thusly, thenly, as for the case in and among the non-Deutsch side of the "family," the products were these, sequence of enunciation again controlled by order of sequencing: Joseph, Jenny, Ida, Charles, Lily, Samuel, Philip, Henry. I now focus our attention on two suggestive items — no person named Uncle Joseph nor any person named Aunt Jenny was ever in view either of myself or of any official body in pursuit of the Government's proprietary engagement with the lives of its "citizens." Furthermore, Henry, my uncle Henry — all through the war years — which is to say the years one is referring to when one refers to the years of the war years—"fished" for flounder and for fluke, this whilst anchored "offshore" in the so-called channel, his vessel a small, wood boat — or wooden boat — or rowboat — its engine either a modestly powered Johnson outboard motor, or Evinrude, or Mercury. The man's "sons" — Big Eugene, Kenny or Kenneth, and Abby or Abbott — were, during the interval to which I now point notice — members of our armed forces, this in the European theater of operation. Fulton Lewis Jr. would say, "That's the top of the news from here!" Here is a further element worthy, at this stage, I aver, or believe — or think — of notation — namely, that in the film, or in the motion picture, The Memoirs of Vidouq —which "theatrical" event I was witness to whilst conducting myself as a "book editor" (in the employ of the house of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the corporate "body" known as Random House) and thus comporting myself as a participant, on behalf of the foregoing, in or at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1991—there appears a character called "the abbess." Need I say more? I think not. The piece was shown — or exhibited — at — mark you, please — the Prater Nonstop. The credits, offered for one and all at the finito of things — a black-and-white affair mounted, one gathered, sometime during, or just previous to, the hostilities so famously prosecuted across Europe by the "powers that be," or "powers that were" — declare one Sissy Mangan as the performer playing the part of "the abbess." I ask that you offer sensitive study to the name Sissy Mangan. You are, or are not, conversant, are you not, with the curious sentence "It is well for you"? You can, if interrogated on such a score, indicate the speaker of this sentence — the distinguished text wherein the sentence is "spoken"? Let me, as a poseur, or posturer, or postulant, hurry to proclaim that I hope so. I cannot overstate the breadth of what I shall, in this "scription," expect of you — nor the finesse or vitesse or depth of it. I beg you to realize I "sign" my death warrant when I "sign" this writing. It must therefore not be in vain that I do so. Bear in mind, dearest, the sons of Uncle Henry are at large, absence of hyphen aforethought. Nevertheless, insofar as the existence of the commission treating of the resolution of relations between the Deutsches and the "Lishes" is at stake, there remain, or remains, the Chinese to contend with, do there, or does there, not? Am I losing you? Alas, what is it but regrettable that the tale to be told cannot be told elsewise? Yet told it must be. Yet go forward, as teller, I must and I will. Adele is dead—"presumably" of cancer. A carcinoma of the bones, which probably hurts like the dickens. Like Regina — Reggie — Adele busied herself with covering various of her "garments" with sequins and beads. Or spangles. One such spangle — another detail it would "be well" for you to keep "in mind" — was known as the bugle, or bugler. But we must not abandon touch with the truth that these ornaments were obtained by Adele — and by Reggie — in great number, or supply — and without cost to themselves — by their exploiting their ties with the "Lish" side of the family, which "side" was reputedly, or reportedly, or putatively, in the hat business — and was therefore in the practice of buying trim in bulk. Dad — my father — would fetch such "material" home to Mother, who, for her part, would, in turn, fetch a lesser portion of same along to her sister Adele. Helen, meanwhile, was "in" Laurel Park (Maryland), where, as of this writing, a certain Freedom Fighter and his spouse continue to sustain their matrimony in (protected) residence. Helen, meanwhile — we are "talking about" the years 1937 and 1938—was "one of many" or was "one among many," which many — the plant at Fort George Meade was still to become fully operational — devoted itself, or themselves, to the round-the-clock collective expression of their singular gifts in an assault on the stubborn fascia, or raffia, of certain enemy codes, or of the codes of certain enemies. By 1954, or in the year of 1954, Helen Deutsch, then Helen Deutsch Siegel, stood forth, among her kind, as the premier cryptoanalyst in Government service. She was "retired" from that service in the year 1962, this in possession of a lozenge-configured medal. Listen, she kept upon her person two pistols — a sidearm and chest set. What other implements of the kind she might have borne herself about with, one can only, even now, wonder at. Well, we are both, she and myself, bound — to this day — by the War Secrets Act. It scarcely matters, it appears, that Aunt Helen is ninety-four or better and that I was never, at any point in my career, since the impanelment I underwent in 1952—I ask your indulgence for my quite plainly having erred by a factor of two years when I earlier rehearsed for you the date I did — at, or in, Miami Retreat. It owes, or is owing, this small error, one must insist, to the "medication" that, disabling as its effects may sometimes seem to be, enables, or facilitates, or makes composable, the composition of these sentences. Listen, I could get killed for writing this. May it not be that I will be killed for writing this. It is not, for that matter, inconceivable that certain persons in the "publishing biz" might make themselves the instrument of my disconcertion. Does one know? Can one know? One does not know. One cannot know. I went in — in 1952—as a Deutsch against "the Lishes." I did not "go in" as a citizen against whomsoever — as Helen had, as Adele, until her death, did. I complain not. I submit no complaint. It has been a great adventure. It has been one thrill after another. What a happiness, my stint! One cannot claim too lavishly for its part! May God keep this language safe! I, Gordon — Gordon! — speak, shriek, from White Plains, from experience, as a patriot.