David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress

Perhaps my stick was once a baseball bat.

Perhaps Rembrandt's pupils once played baseball.

Cassandra was raped too, of course, after Troy fell.

Doubtless there is no way of verifying that El Greco was descended from Hermione, however, after practically three thousand years.

Near the end of his life, Titian manipulated his pigments as much with his fingers as with a brush, which was surely not the way Giovanni Bellini taught him.

Naturally I had no way of knowing if the cat at the Colosseum had nibbled at anything behind my back, since most of the cans had seemed less than full to begin with.

Doubtless Brahms was once a pupil, also.

Even if, when he was only twelve, he was already playing the piano in a dance hall, which was more likely a house of prostitution.

In fact Brahms went to prostitutes for the rest of his life.

Nonetheless it is still not impossible to visualize Brahms doing scales.

Well, and perhaps the prostitutes when he was still only twelve were dancing girls after all.

Such as Jane Avril, for instance.

I have no idea if Brahms ever visited in Paris while Jane Avril was dancing there.

Still, for some reason it strikes me as agreeable to think of Brahms as having had an affair with Jane Avril.

Or at least with Cleopatre or Gazelle or Mlle. Eglantine, who were some of the other dancers in Paris at that time.

How one remembers certain things is beyond me.

Perhaps Guy de Maupassant was rowing, when Brahms visited in Paris.

Once, Bertrand Russell took his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein to watch Alfred North Whitehead row, at Cambridge. Wittgenstein became very angry with Bertrand Russell for having wasted his day.

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

Although perhaps Toulouse-Lautrec once handled my stick, even if Archimedes did not, having walked with a cane.

Then again, one of the popes made people burn most of what Sappho did write.

Doubtless my ankle was only sprained. Though it was swollen to twice its normal size.

Could that person T. E. Shaw have been a baseball player, perhaps?

And what have I been saying that has now made me think about Achilles again?

Now is perhaps not the correct word in any case.

By which I mean that I was undeniably thinking about Achilles at the moment when I started to type that sentence, but was no longer thinking about him by the time I had finished it.

One allows one's self to finish such sentences, of course. Even if by the time one has managed to indicate that one is thinking about one thing, one has actually begun thinking about another.

What happened after I started to write about Achilles was that halfway through the sentence I began to think about a cat, instead.

The cat I began to think about instead was the cat outside of the broken window in the room next to this one, at which the tape frequently scratches when there is a breeze.

Which is to say that I was not actually thinking about a cat either, there being no cat except insofar as the sound of the scratching reminds me of one.

As there were no coins on the floor of Rembrandt's studio, except insofar as the configuration of the pigment reminded Rembrandt of them.

As there was, or is, no person at the window in the painting of this house.

As for that matter there is not even a house in the painting of this house, should one wish to carry the matter that far.

Certain matters would appear to get carried certain distances whether one wishes them to or not, unfortunately.

Although perhaps this is the very subject of that other book, come to think about it. Quite possibly what I have taken to be a book about baseball is actually some sort of scholarly speculation about there having been no grass where people played baseball except insofar as the people playing baseball believed that there was.

At first glance one would scarcely have expected Wuthering Heights to be a book about windows, either.

Though it remains a fact that there was once some very real grass that had been mowed at the side of this house.

As can be readily verified by a glance at that same painting.

Though I am very likely now contradicting myself.

In either case the tape has now stopped scratching.

Nor am I thinking about a cat any longer.

Then again I certainly would have had to be thinking about one while I was typing that sentence, even though the sentence says just the opposite.

Surely one cannot type a sentence saying that one is not thinking about something without thinking about the very thing that one says one is not thinking about.

I believe I have only now noted this. Or something very much like this.

Possibly I should drop the subject.

Actually, all I had been thinking about in regard to Achilles was his heel.

Although I do not have any sort of limp, if I have possibly given that impression.

And meanwhile I am also now curious about the tape itself, since for the life of me I cannot remember having put it up.

Unquestionably I did put it up, however, since I can remember very distinctly when the window broke.

Oh, dear, the wind has just broken one of the windows in one of the rooms downstairs, I can even remember thinking.

This would have been right after I had heard the glass, naturally.

And on a windy night.

Yet for the life of me I cannot remember repairing that window.

In fact I am next to positive that I have never had any tape in this house.

The last time I can remember having seen any tape, anywhere, was on the afternoon when I drove the Volkswagen van full of first aid items into the Mediterranean.

As it happened there was a tape deck in the van also, although this is of course in no way connected to the sort of tape I am talking about.

The tape deck in the van was playing The Seasons, by Vivaldi.

Even after I had climbed back up the embankment, the tape deck continued to play. In my upside down car that was filling up with the sea.

As a matter of fact what it was playing was Les Troyens, by Berlioz.

This held a particular interest for me, in fact, what with my having been in Hisarlik not long before. For some time I sat on the embankment and listened to it.

Though to tell the truth I had much more recently been in Rome. And in Rimini and Perugia and Venice.

So that perhaps the tape deck was playing something else entirely.

For the life of me I cannot remember what I had been trying to get that monstrosity of a canvas up that stairway for.

Even if the question was soon enough rendered irrelevant, considering the manner in which I did not get it up.

And what have I been saying that has now made me think about Brahms's mother?

In this instance I can make an educated guess, since the poor woman had a crippled leg.

For the life of me I would not have believed that the life of Brahms was the book I had read in this house.

Evidently not every question falls into the category of questions that would appear to remain unanswerable, however.

Though what must now surprise me is that I would have troubled to read a book so badly damaged, or printed on such cheap paper.

Any number of books in this house are in considerably better condition, even if all of them show evidence of dampness.

Such as the atlas, for instance. Although the atlas has had the advantage of lying flat, generally, rather than standing askew.

In fact I returned it to that same position not two days ago, after having wished to remind myself where Lititz, Pennsylvania, and Ithaca, New York, might be.

The book about baseball has a green cover, incidentally, which is possibly appropriate.