Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Jostling opposites.

All these opposites jostling one another.

Or is it oppositions, oppositions? — and is it not each other, not one another but each other?

Well, everything was a jumble, wasn't it? — a murmuring madness — amazed and amazing — the large handsome little-toothed young woman — a girl, a mere girl — so wondrously in love with, of all things, the man, this man.

With such speed.

With such ease.

Or ease first and next, then next, speed.

Well, so much for travel.

It was wonderful to travel.

It was marvelous to travel.

The man had traveled, was traveling — had come to this land to get a bit of a travel in him taken care of. Wasn't travel experience?

Experience.

An experience.

And this was what it was to really have it, wasn't it?

The girl?

A girl in love insisting that she is what the story says she is — a girl in love — and in love — crazily, crazily — with this wonderful wonderful marvelous marvelous, can you believe it, American!

The girl in love sighed.

Her little teeth showed in her big sighing face.

There was something on the stove, heating. There was a pot of something heating gently gently heating on the stove. He would have some, wouldn't he? Your lover, your fiancé, your American from the United States, he would have some of this, wouldn't he? And the wine? Aren't we ready for the wine? Who is ready for the wine? But first — the dango-dango!

The man caught sight of the shimmering glimmering foil — the amazing paper. Someone was collecting it into a ball of some kind — a bolus, a bolus — and was now laying it — this was the biggest girl, the really biggest one, right? — was just now laying it ever so gracefully down into the dark well beneath the humble sink.

Oh my God, the sink.

The stone sink.

A sink made out of stone.

Humble, wasn't it?

And how had they got to this place? Wasn't it up, had the girl not led them up a long dark twisting turning oh so, well, so humble hill?

"My friends!" she had said. "My very best in all the world so lovely lovely friends!" the girl had said.

So-and-so and so-and-so.

Their names were so-and-so and so-and-so.

Well, it was hard for the man to hear.

He could hear voices, hear the voices of men — of the worshipful, the man imagined — chanting, or groaning, in a neighboring room.

He said, "Are there people here? It sounds like zealots or something."

Everything was so — well, glittery.

The light was downright crepuscular in here.

"The heavy Turkish cups — Morrocan — sacred, I think they were. Probably semi-sacred, don't you think? Mugs, ceremonial mugs, perhaps they were."

That's it! — it was tea, wasn't it?

A kind of tea was brewing, wasn't it?

Look at her, troubling herself to separate out the glossy tape the bakery had used to bind the glorious foil. The man saw somebody save the tape, wind it into a tight spool, then set the result to the side of something — of the humble sink, that humble cavity — so shallow, so very shallow, it seemed to the man from where he sat — a scooped-out effect in a stone that must have been cut from the very oldest of old stones. Wait a minute — didn't the spool just sort of loosen itself when the girl let go of it? Then what was the point of that, what was the point of it? — of tightening the tape like that into such a precise spool of it like that if it was only to lose its form, the tension spilling out of it — spooling out of it in an instant — when the thing had been set to the side of what was it?

Yes, the sink made out of stone — yes, to the side of the humble sink created from a humble stone.

Humble, everything so humble.

Well, the light in this place, whatever it was, it was so very crepuscular — by jiminy, this light in this place, isn't it altogether too terrifically crepuscular?

Her dress, one of them, the dress of one of them — its loose sleeves seemed to the man cuffed or turned up in some interesting way, or twisted oddly, oddly twisted — that was it, twisted — so that the immense girl's immense arms appeared to the man to be too visible, to be sort of angrily visible, great bulky things, great swollen things, angrily jostling the amazed air. But thank goodness the man could see that the dress she wore — who was this, which one of them was this, was it the one in love? — that it was a sort of cream-colored affair, wasn't it, the color of this dress.

The color of cream?

It seemed to the man that there was somebody whose dress was colored a sort of creamy color — that there was a dotted effect scattered all about — some sort of dotted device — or not dot, not dot, but pinwheels perhaps, perhaps pinwheels. Yes, there seemed to the man to be a sort of dotted pinwheely effect, brought forth into the light by a range of strengths — in maroon, in the color maroon. Well, mightn't washings, mightn't long sad riverbank washings account for the variation from here to there in the vividness, or lack of it, the lack of it, mightn't it be the variability in this, in long sad desert-bound washings — they beat cloth, didn't they? — whipping at it with long thin sticks — with reeds probably, probably with reeds — mightn't it be the hard washings — actually whippings — the cloth had undergone to get it clean that accounted for the weak effect of one pinwheel and then of another pinwheel and then of yet a further even weaker pinwheel — maroon, hardly even still maroon, so beaten into proud cleanliness this least of all the pinwheels was?

I mean, it wasn't a design, was it?

Some intentionality in it of some sort?

By design?

And where was the knife point?

The dango-dango, had they cut into it yet?

The man rather liked the notion of this rough homespun subjected to a furor of care unique to this large mysterious person, common to these large mysterious persons. The word chestnut occurred to the man. The word maroon. Weak maroon, a weakened maroon, whipped to only barely scarcely even hints of a maroon — just barely visible tiny tiny — well, pinwheels of a kind of tiny-hearted maroon.

Whatever pinwheels were.

And maroon.

How-hearted maroon, what-hearted?

It was cold in here, or cool, wasn't it?

"Oh, how lovely all this is — how lovely," the man murmured into the madly amazed space.

Hadn't he meant to say chilly?

Well, the man was certain someone was waiting for him to speak. So the man spoke. He said, "It's so terribly lovely in here." He said, "I am the happiest man there is in here."

Ah, perfect.

Splendid.

The man let himself settle back into the one good chair. He listened to the heating of whatever it was — tea — yes, it was tea — that was heating on the stove. The adorations of the adoring, their obeisances, superb, superb. Had the man ever heard anything more superb? Belief was a wonderful thing — marvelous, really — faith. Was there a sanctuary nearby? Was such a sanctuary actually here within? Were they in it? Is this what this was? — no kitchen, after all — not a scullery but a site where life leant over to huddle into itself in great grand occurrences of prayer?

"Perfect — perfectly perfect," the man murmured as he settled back into the vast depths — the vastation, isn't it permissible to say vastation? — of this very decent — an important piece actually — of this very good, though humble, probably emphatically sturdy humble chair.

The young ladies seemed to be looking at the man in very deep approval of this.

Or at — at this.

"Perfect," the man said, a little madly, he now thought. "Oh, this is perfect," the man said.

Yes, yes, a toast, somebody called — time for a toast! Mustn't something be said in testimony of this great happiness? But how conduct a toast when the cork had yet to be taken from the bottle? No wine had been poured yet, had it? Oh, these people, these perfect people, water tumblers in lieu of wineglasses and a wine that was devised as sacred and health-giving, even sacerdotal.