Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

No, vastation didn't mean that. What in the world did vastation mean? And why three of them, these mugs, these cups, why only three of them, when weren't there four people present? Oh, so many present — so many.

These superbly heavy Bavarian mugs.

Or cups, were they? Were they instead to be called not mugs but cups? Very well, call them cups, then.

Ah, yes, but wouldn't the man have some of it?

"But of course he will have some of it! My precious will have all he desires of it!" the girl in love answered for the man in the wonderful way these wonderful people had, confections all of them, weren't they?

Ah, the man — a delicate fellow, a fellow nowhere near the size of these oversized women and, since delicate, a man not unrespectful of things — a careful man, an aware man, a fellow not uninformed, for example, in a not very reliable way, of what style of table a refectory table would in fact be and rightly guessing that this wretched thing the three of them were sitting at, that it was no refectory table at all, not at all, but that it was just an ordinary sort of kitcheny thing made of some kind of ordinary kitcheny material meant to furnish durable service for the hard business kitchen work sometimes, in certain extreme cases — call them solemn, call them solemn — called for — but the word, the word refectory, refectory, would it not go far toward abetting the impression the man would want his tale to get across to all when all would want to hear of this mad murmuring romance of the man's when this mad murmuring romance of the man's had come at last to its mad murmuring annihilation and the man would stand restored to the country of his beginnings and to those to whom the man would then seek to address himself in order that the products of his travel might be enjoyed by all the stay-at-homes back home, those who would never themselves hear the mad murmurings in the earth?

How young was she, did you say?

Very young, would say the man — a shimmering young bit of a thing, the man would say — and oh how it was, how wonderful it was that the very one kept letting her head come to rest against the head of the friend who sat next to her on the bench, oh my, my — and the ring on her finger, one of the rings on her fingers, that she was turning and twisting the ring, kept turning and twisting it, and sighing — oh, how the girl in love let herself sigh — into the amazed amazing conflagration underway?

Crepuscular, what exactly does it mean, crepuscular?

"Ah," the man would say, "the young ladies of the house, they sat us, this shimmering slip of a thing and me, they sat us down in some sort of marvelous sitting room, don't you know. At a refectory table — if can you feature it. Can you feature it? — this great this massive this humble walnut affair — or couldn't it have been made of some obscure but no less humble fruit wood? — so lightly patinated it was — or darkly, darkly — and the light, I forgot the light — the light in this kitchen of theirs, it was positively crepuscular. Or in the, you know, in the whatever it was of theirs. The refectory?"

Ah, the table.

It shone, it gleamed — didn't it really?

Formica.

A layered pattern — overlapping half-moons.

Iridescent.

Fruit wood — what does it mean, fruit wood?

Why would a wood be a fruit wood?

Was there not a platter being just now just now being reached down from somewhere just too high up in the clerestory of this place for the man to exert himself to look? But just see it now, now see it — the mad pastry in its shimmering wrapping having been lifted from where it waited in its paper and daintily ever so daintily lowered upon it, the platter, this platter. How was it that in this strange land that a mere serving dish should come created in the character of what is this, what is this? — is it not suggestive of the speckled eggshell derived from a, well, from a speckled bird? But what of the wondrously silvery point of all attention, the bright thing, that brightest thing, brighter than even the brilliantly gleaming knife blade was bright — wasn't it then that the very largest of the three so very large women made her quick way to it and with such cleverly large long fingers, didn't the woman — oh, the girl, the girl, then! — didn't she first undo the glittery tape the bake shop had been applying to make a fancy package of the treat as the man was pushing his hand down into his pocket for him to extract from it the great lump of money through which the girl in love would have to sort for the man for him to present to the clerk the strange bank notes that appeared to satisfy the matter?

But indolent — hmm, yes, he would say indolent.

But would he say confectionery?

Instead of bake shop?

"The air of the place, the kitchen, if it were a kitchen, it was redolent with indolence" — or would this be going too far for such a man, do you think? — "and there was this marvelous chanting effect that seemed to be encouraging this kind of marvelous under-effect of everything welling up from somewhere elsewhere. Voices of like men, I think — like probably like of monks, like of votaries, like of the, well, like of the ardent — cantorially speaking."

But, by thunder, in a world of dango-dangos, by Jove, how can there be any going any too far in anything in a world where confections came at you anointed with a moniker like that? For pity's sake, dango-dango, a dango-dango — did you ever in all your days? Who who who ever did?

Oh, love, love! — the man loved it, anointed with a moniker. Words, words — anointed, moniker, ahh.

A thing you got in a bakery anointed with — or anointed by? — well, a moniker — going by a moniker — keep it plain, keep it simple, and watch it with the little words, oh the pesky these pesky these tiny little pesteriferous little words everywhere. But, anyway, no really, anyway, this too, this too, everything — it all, it all — it all of it so very fittingly fit the scheme of the narrative the man was assembling for when it all — better told than this, you may be certain — could be told.

Oh, he saw it, he saw it — the foil being collected into itself, the massive woman collecting the foil into itself for her to make a very correct bolus of the thing before discarding it — no, not discarding — say instead letting gracefully ever so gracefully go of it — so that the thing seemed to the man to drift luminously down into the dark hollow beneath the sink. Was there a receptacle under there? Oh, there had to be a receptacle down under there. Didn't there have to be a receptacle down under in there? But what man could be convinced of much in this crepuscular light? Yet the man could be certain of the teeth of the girl in love, for example — ah, her teeth, such teeth. The girl in love was smiling into the amazing space. Her ring, one of her rings, this one ring among her many many rings, she turned it, kept turning and twisting it, kept sighing and smiling, the large head leaning, leant up against the even larger head of the woman — oh no, of the girl, of course of the girl, the even larger head of the even larger girl who sat on the bench beside her — no, to the other side — who sat to the far side of the girl in love.

The man marveled — the man was marveling over all of it, everything — or marveling at it. At how the bustling about was like a languor — or was it that the languorousness of the biggest of the girls was somehow like a slumbrous bustling about everywhere actually — very managerial, magisterial, big-bodied, indolent — yet quick and exacting — or fastidious, this was the word, fastidious — massively fastidious even, really pretty massively.

Oh, everything was opposites!

Everything here was in such a state of being opposites here. Yes, wasn't this the only way to say it, that all here was so marvelously, well, just a jumble of opposites here?