David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress

The life of Brahms is in the identical room into which I put the painting of this house, which until a few days ago had been on the wall directly above and to the side of where this typewriter is.

The door to that room is closed.

Sea air has contributed to that deterioration.

Hm. I would seem to have left something out, just then.

Oh. All I had meant to say, I am quite certain, was that the life of Brahms is standing askew, and has become badly misshapen.

Doubtless I was distracted for a moment, and then believed I had already put in that part.

As a matter of fact I was lighting a cigarette.

Sea air would have contributed to the deterioration of the tennis racquet as well, come to think about it.

Then again, one gathers that the strings on a racquet will generally come loose in any case.

When I say gathers, I mean used to, of course.

In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.

It is not even unlikely that I could name certain baseball players, should I wish.

I cannot imagine so wishing.

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Sam Usual.

Actually, any number of the men in my life were greatly enraptured by baseball.

When my mother was dying my father watched games endlessly.

Well, perhaps I understood that at the time.

I understood it when he took away the tiny, pocket sort of mirror from beside her bed one evening, certainly.

One finds it difficult to conceive of Bach being enraptured by baseball, on the other hand.

Although perhaps they had not invented baseball at the time of Bach.

Vincent Van Gogh, then.

The black one, for Brooklyn. Well, and the other black one.

And Stan Usual, I perhaps meant.

None of which has answered the question as to how one can have one piece of music in mind and be hearing a different piece of music entirely, meanwhile.

When I say one can be hearing a different piece of music entirely, by the way, I scarcely mean that one will hear the entire piece of music. What I mean is that one hears an entirely different composition, obviously.

Possibly I did not need to make that explanation.

At any rate what is now in my head is that painting by Jan Vermeer again.

Although what I am more exactly thinking about is the sentence I typed just a few pages ago, in which I said that the young woman is asleep in the Metropolitan Museum.

Unquestionably, where the young woman is asleep is in Delft, which is in Holland, and which is where Jan Vermeer painted.

Well, Jan Vermeer of Delft being what he was generally called, in fact.

Nonetheless, what has now struck me is that there is undeniably a way in which the young woman is likewise asleep in the Metropolitan Museum after all.

Unless for some reason the painting itself is no longer in the museum, which one can sincerely doubt.

Even if I had had need of the frame, I would have nailed the painting back into place.

I always took the time to do that, by the way. No matter how chilly it happened to be at the moment.

Once, in the National Gallery, I did crack a canvas by Carel Fabritius, but not so badly that I was not able to wax it and tape the back.

But be that as it may, if I can sincerely doubt that the other painting is not not in the Metropolitan, then it is a fact that the young woman is asleep in the Metropolitan also.

As it is also a fact that in the painting by Rogier van der Weyden they are taking Jesus down from the cross at Calvary, but they are also taking him down on the top floor of the Prado, in Madrid.

Right next to the windows I washed.

I see no way of refuting either of those statements. Even if, as I indicated, there appeared to be something wrong with the first of them when I typed it before.

This is not something I intend to worry about, although I can fully understand how one might worry.

Well, perhaps I have already said that I actually do worry.

Although I have just now eaten a salad.

While I was eating the salad I thought about Van Gogh being mad again.

Lord above.

Van Gogh was not mad for a second time. It was I who was thinking about him once more.

And in any case it was Van Gogh trying to eat his pigments that I was more exactly once more thinking about.

Perhaps the fact that I was eating myself was what reminded me of this, although what I was eating myself were various sorts of lettuce, along with mushrooms.

When Friedrich Nietzsche was mad, he once started to cry because somebody was hitting a horse.

And Jackie Robinson was who, for Brooklyn.

Also Campy, was somebody called?

Actually, there were prostitutes in Van Gogh's life too, although I know of no record of Gustave Flaubert having written to Van Gogh either.

I scarcely mean to give any particular weight to this matter of prostitutes, incidentally, even if I would perhaps sometimes appear to.

Certain matters simply come up, being connected to the subject at hand.

Being sweaty after hitting tennis balls would hardly have appeared to be connected to the subject of Richard Strauss getting into bed to die, for instance, though it proved to be connected to that subject.

As a matter of fact even so trivial an item as Guy de Maupassant eating his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower is very likely connected to something, just as inevitably.

Even forgetting that I have just eaten my own lunch, or that Maupassant was even more mad than Van Gogh.

In fact I would almost be willing to wager that there is some way in which Maupassant is even connected to the soccer shirt with the name Savona on its front, should one wish to pursue such a question.

I cannot conceive of why anyone would wish to pursue such a question.

And actually I never really knew what it was, about wearing that soccer shirt.

Although Maupassant's rowing is now in my mind again, too.

Had I held onto the shirt, doubtless I might have worn it when rowing my own boat.

In fact it is perhaps unfortunate that I did not hold onto the lot of those shirts, in which case I might have worn a different one each time I rowed.

What I find interesting about this notion is that from the front it would have always looked as if I were wearing the same shirt.

Savona, it would have always said.

From under one arm to the other.

Assuredly the numerals on the back of each shirt would have been different, however.

So that possibly I could have even changed my back in sequence.

Although I am perhaps overlooking the question of sizes.

What with the one I did wear having already been too large, doubtless many of the others would have been even larger than that.

One is scarcely about to return to Savona to check on this, however.

And in any event I have practically never worn a shirt, while rowing.

Very likely I was not wearing anything on the day when I played tennis either, to tell the truth.

I am still having my period, by the way.

Having my period is another matter I do not particularly mean to give any weight to.

In this case it is just something that happens to be happening.

Although I have lost track of how long it is now, actually.

Doubtless I could look back through what I have been writing, and try to calculate that. But I am fairly certain that I have not indicated all of the days.

Sometimes I indicate them and sometimes I do not.

Lately I have often merely stopped typing and then started again, without putting in that it is tomorrow.

I did not put in throwing away the lilacs either, which was at least yesterday.

And doubtless if I did look back I would be distracted by other things I have written anyhow.

In fact without looking back at all, but by merely thinking about doing so, I have now remembered that a prostitute with whom Van Gogh once lived was named Sien.