Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

To explain.

There was a sort of large sign, fixed into position rather high on a post, stationed centermost in the little park. On it was given, at the start, and in the exclamatory, this word, in this form — REGLIMENT. There followed, also of course in the language of this land, item after item of statements the man took to be topics of instruction governing one's uses of the little park.

He did not, as you know, read this language and could not have told you what infamies these regliment had been conceived, in the populace, to subdue. But however ignorant as he was of the particulars, that much, toward the end of civilized demeanor, was expected of the citizenry was an implication the man plainly understood and approved. All the more reason, then, that it was such a point of distress to him that, day after day, upon the occasion of his arrival in the little park, there should each of these days be discovered by him, near to where there stood the depository for trash, the same undisturbed arrangement of discards — a pair of cardboard suitcases and a topcoat of equally low grade.

This was mysterious, was it not?

Not with respect to the matter of to whom these objects might have once, or still, belonged — but as to why the authorities had not, when the trash was so regularly and so fastidiously removed, and when the little park was elsewise so conscientiously restored to itself-but as to why these very authorities had not, in thunderation, treated not even the merest fringes of the eyesore now under discussion.

Goddamn.

No, there it still squatted, day after day, a ghastly excrescence exhibiting its putrescence not only in doubtless defiance of at least one of the regliment but of everything this nation had seemed to the man to stand for.

The civic.

The municipal.

The decidable.

The closed.

Our man meanwhile, especially while he was himself on view in the little park, sought in all his aspects to do all that he might to obtain the good opinion of those in charge of the common domain, even if this body, and its delegates, were nowhere in sight.

And so, all to himself, in a condition of excruciating alertness, he all day, our man, in the little park for the whole of the day, day after day of every day of his holiday, sat as a very vigilance, as a very sentinel, the bread and the butter his only sustenance, the pair of little stubborn books laid out beside him on the little stone bench in a manner so vitally reassuring to him, his stewardship, his guardianship, his very ghost fastened upon the keeping of constant tabs on the human commerce in the street. But when the insistings of his stomach should no longer let themselves be appeased by his appealing to patience and restraint, he would get a package of butter out from either of his caches, meticulously laying open the folds of the exalted foil scored with such admirable precision in such intelligent anticipation of this very procedure, and, by this craft, reveal to himself his prize, well softened by the duration of its storage upon his person.

This marvel of the nation, this cunning pat of butter!

Using the foil to keep his fingers unsoiled, he would then insinuate the kingly spread into the cavity he had poked into what portion he had torn free from the bread, rushing the creamy morsel into his mouth as would one maddened by the dishevelments of famine. Immediately thereafter, it would happen that our fellow would hurriedly close the wrapper against the oily side, fold the paper and fold it further until it then existed as no more than a tiny crushed pellet of a thing, scrub very vigorously at his fingers with one of the napkins that he had, deposit the dot of waste into the napkin, and then, having reduced the napkin to the densest materiality his strength could manage to make of it, he would get to his feet, not without some excitement abruptly racing in his limbs, and with all deliberation transport the result of his exertions to where refuse was meant to go, noting as he went, and with visible distaste, the continuing dominion there, near to where the rubbish bin was, of the inexplicable pair of hideous suitcases and of the no more explicable, no less hideous, topcoat.

But, wait, was it an overcoat?

He was — on one of the several excursions just remarked — stunned to catch himself having to wonder which, which — for nothing can be both the one and be also the other.

Was this a topcoat that was, in consort with the pair of suitcases, the genie of his ruin, or was it an overcoat?

He could not come to a decision.

No longer was it the lack of compliance with ordinance that was at the alpha of the turbulence that had been erupting against the limit within him and had been establishing the alibi for all his experience, now, now was it not the very belligerence — no, the very viciousness! — of utterance itself?

It was the day after this episode that our man took at his morning's repast a glass of the strange libation always so unforgivably on offer.

It was, still was, as it had at first been at that first testing reported to you at the onset of this narrative, bitter — oh, bitter to the last drop.

Tether abandoned, bondage overturned, our wanderer drank down, all the way down, his next glass, the whole glass, the next day, which day was the last day — at last! — of his holiday here, and then, as had been planned for, as he himself had planned for himself, the source of our concentrations did quit this bewildering place and did make vindictively, unrenewably — with plenty of malice aforethought — for another littler still.

JUST HEARD THE EDITOR of this book complaining of her not having enough in the way of fictions to fill up the pages of this book to what she must imagine to be an adequate number of pages of same. So by way of fancying myself prepared to be responsible for an act of adequation, I turned in my seat and said to her, "Would something concerning us as us perhaps be acceptable to you in this embarrassing regard?"

"Which?" she said. "Which?"

"To fill up the book," I said, "I mean, I am wondering if you might want to see your way clear for me to see if I can make a little filler for you."

"For the book?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "Because I think I just heard you sort of complaining about there being a certain insufficiency of stuff for the book," I said.

"Insufficiency?" she said.

"Of pages," I said.

"Am I to treat this as a criticism of myself?" she said "Are you telling me you wish to heap scorn upon me as myself?" she said.

"No," I said. "It's not that," I said. I said, "All it is is I like to write fictions sort of to order, I think — and so I just naturally when I heard the complaint — because didn't I just hear you say something which just seemed to me a sort of complaint? — and I agree, I agree! — please believe me, I agree I perhaps failed to quite catch quite the essence of what it was I think I just heard you saying, or had heard you — wait!" I said. "Look," I said. "I think this is getting sort of, you know, kind of sort of pretty all mixed up as to communication, don't you think?"

"Don't you think?" she said. "What do you mean — don't I think, don't you think?" she said. "Have I, is it that I have somehow said, have I, or given any indication, have I, of my having any interest in something with respect to anything you have in the recent course of things said?"

"No," I said. "Please," I said. "Will you listen?" I said. "Because today," I said, "this morning," I said, "as I was on my way downtown," I said, "I couldn't help but hear behind me — on the bus, that is, on the bus before this bus, that is — two women talking, two women having a conversation, or two women anyhow having a talk with each other, or with one another, and I hear one of them say, I hear this one of them say, ‘Well, she was offended,' and then the other one says, ‘They take offense. That's the thing with them nowadays, they take such offense — you say one word to them and they're instantly determined to take offense,' and then the first one says, ‘She was offended. That's what I'm telling you, that she was very offended,' and then the other one says, ‘But this is the way it is with them these days. Did I not tell you that this is the way it is nowadays? There is no way you can talk to these people without the minute you say anything, one of them is going to jump right down your throat screaming they're offended. That's all they know how to say to you anymore — I'm offended, I'm offended, I'm offended,' and then the first one says, ‘Well, she said she was offended,' and then the other one says, ‘Didn't I tell you? I told you. Didn't I just tell you? You can't talk to these people, you can't say anything to these people, there is no possible way for anyone to say anything to these people, you are taking your life into your hands when you make the slightest attempt to try to say anything to any of these people — so I ask you, I ask you, is it any wonder when one of them says to you that she is offended? Of course she is offended. Of course she said she was offended. That's all these people know to say to you, they don't know anything else to say to you, is there anything else they know how to say to you? Offense, offense — they go to bed at night, they get up in the morning, this is all they know to say to people, they do not know one other thing for them to say to people, they have not the least knowledge of anything else for them to say to people, they do not have the simplest conception of anything else which could possibly be said from one day to the next to people, this is all these people are concerned with, this is the one thing which these people are concerned with, taking offense, taking offense, taking umbrage,' and then the first one says, ‘To think — will you just think?' And that's all she said," I said. ‘"To think — will you just think?'"