Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Or holy and so on.

As in consecrated and so on.

In lieu of, the man loved that, in lieu of. Oh such innocents, these big-bodied hill-dwelling people, such perfect — the lot of them — such perfect naifs — water tumblers in lieu of, of all the things in the world.

Instead of?

In place of?

No, in lieu of, in lieu of!

Sacrality, now there was a word!

Ah, well, what else did the man love? — apart, of course, from his loving in lieu of and loving how the girl was still keeping her head leant against the head of the girl sitting next to her, now the both of them sighing now, now the both of them sighing now into the burning phosphor now, and smiling with little dots of little teeth. Let me see, then, let me see — what else did the man love, you ask me, what else? — well, you shall have your answer, shan't you! — for this man loved, had loved, would always love the tapping of his mother's fingernails tapping on the backs of playing cards. That, that, and the way the woman had of shooting a look heavenward in hopeless appeal and of rolling her eyes at him, one of the wives the man had had, or was it really indeed the man's mother who had done this?

Oh, that's a good one — those hads — a mad murmuring distribution of hads we of us who are still striving to keep paying attention just had. Ah, but what a confusion of things this is getting to be — the man standing amid such a confusion of things — or sitting amid it, settling deeply into the humble chair, the young ladies, no more now than mere biggish impressions of amazingly biggish things, forever seeming to him to be directing at him looks of deeply satisfied approval.

Well, the wife was dead and the mother was dead and people were only their repertoire of gestures anyway and here was the man traveling as travelers will travel and here all of a sudden was suddenly this mere biggish impression of a biggish girl now somehow traveling with the man — and now look, will you please just look, all these festive others now settling with the man into the glimmering deep light of the crepuscular — as if the world had been lifted off its course and laid down into, laid ever so gracefully down into — no, let go of gently gently falling falling — into a very, well, harem — say harem, then.

Or that other word.

Seraglio.

Say seraglio.

Ah, that was the one, that was the very one — at least as words go, it was — into a very, say, seraglio.

What a word, what a word!

At least as words go, what a winner.

"A toast!" the man bleated.

Gad, but who says the man bleated?

Well, the man would not tell of this, of bleating. There would be no telling of this bleating, by gum. Had the man bleated? Had he, well, burped, belched, eructated? What on earth had the man done if not offered a toast? For the man had the sense — or, rather to say, impression, wasn't this the word, had an impression? — for there was this impression forming around him somewhere elsewhere, wasn't there? — perhaps in the man, perhaps somewhere to either side of the man, or all around the man — it was the impression of a kind of bleating or something eructating from somewhere elsewhere. Well, the man could have burped, could he not have? Or belched — or, you know, or eructated? The man could have eructated in a — of course, of course — eructated in a ructation, couldn't he have? Well, the wine — after all, the wine. And the man had done a fine job of it, hadn't he? — of getting the cork from the wine.

Or bottle.

Well, the man did not remember any of it — the struggle to get any cork out of anything, or which of them it was who had called out into the bleating air "Praise be the day!" What the man remembered was this — something was heating on the stove, something in a pot was heating on the stove, there was something in a pot that was heating heating gently gently heating heating hotly on the stove.

The man spoke with enormous care.

"I feel sacred," the man said. "I feel healthy," the man said. "I feel," the man said, "as if I have been given health," the man said—"and a certain holiness. Or sacrality! — I mean sacrality, don't I?"

Was he bleating?

The man burped a little, or belched a little, and touched the tip of his finger to the lips of the girl in love, whereupon the girl in love took the tip of the man's fingertip between her little teeth and gave to it a little tugging nip to it with her little tiny teeth.

"Next time your nose," said the girl in love.

"Watch out it's not next time your nose," the man heard the girl in love say.

"What did you say?" the man said, grinning madly into the amazing eventfulness of this experience.

"Bite it, bite it!" either or both or neither of the other girls shrieked. But this was impossible. Everything was impossible. It was all these opposites ceaselessly disposed to opposing each other, or one another — in a state of ceaseless — well, of opposition, if you like. Ah, the devil take it, love! — yet when in all his days had the man ever seen anything anything anything lovelier? — this gesture of the girl's. The head-leaning. The head-resting. Combined with the murmuring, combined with the mad murmuring combinatory madness of it all — the smiling and the sighing and the sighing and the smiling. Well, hadn't her head — the head of the girl in love — hadn't it been laid to rest, or lain, lain, is it? — against the head of a nearby girl? Look, the main thing is this enormous cup. An altogether wrong sort of a cup for people to be drinking tea out of, isn't it?

Or mug.

Mexican, it looks like, doesn't it?

Tribal.

Humble.

Rudimentary.

Crude.

"Will you just listen to me!" the man said. "My goodness!" the man said. "Oh my goodness," he said.

How strange, the man thought, that a passion could come about in any language, let alone in his own.

"Oh, but we are listening to you," said the one with the bright-bladed knife.

The stove — it was the tiniest humblest affair. It might have been a thing for a child to play with, though fire, although fire, burbled up from its one encrusted burner, a subtle, an even demure, flame.

Pinwheel.

What is a pinwheel, anyway?

Good heavens, is it possible for a story to be told when what is in it are only words?

There was a platter being reached down from somewhere very high up in this place. Wasn't one of the girls reaching down a platter from very high up above the head of the man up in the amazed air of the world far up above the head of the man somewhere altogether too terribly overhead in this place? Because wherever it was — given the man's age, given the man's ridiculous age — the event was altogether too high up for the man to be able to lean back his head far enough for him to give anything that high above his head a look to see what the event up over himself unbearably was.

Clerestory.

Hadn't the word clerestory once been sort of a part of all of this?

Oh, love, love! — here was the cake.

Behold the cake.

The great éclair, the celestial éclair.

The dango-dango, by God — it lay relieved of the foil and the foil lay dropped into the black well beneath the stone where — unseen, unseen! — the foil struggled to relieve itself of the folds that had been folded into it, strained to throw off the cruel twistings the cruel turnings all the multifarious cruelties folded into it to force its silver wing into a crusted lump of goo.

His money!

Where was his money?

Ah, my money, the man said to himself.

"Ah, my money," the man said aloud, touching the pocket where the great lump of money in it was still making a great comforting lump of itself all thick and becrusted on the man's chest.

The voices seemed ever so ardent, so urgent, these voices raised in oblation in a nearby place of prayer, or in prayer in a nearby place of oblation. Well, it's probably in or very near a kind of sanctuary of some kind. Perhaps some sort of hilltop, or hillside, or hill-bound — that's it, hill-bound! — retreat of some kind.