Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

You begin to understand paradox: lying on the bed next to him, you are deeply interested, watching his face and holding his hands, and yet at the same time you are deeply bored, wishing you were somewhere else doing something else.

Although he is at such an early stage in his development, he regresses, when he is hungry or tired, to an earlier stage, still, of noncommunication, self-absorption, and spastic motion.

How he is somewhere between human and animal. While he can’t see well, while he looks blindly toward the brightest light, and can’t see you, or can’t see your features but more clearly the edge of your face, the edge of your head; and while his movements are more chaotic; and while he is more subject to the needs of his body, and can’t be distracted, by intellectual curiosity, from his hunger or loneliness or exhaustion, then he seems to you more animal than human.

He does not know what his hand is doing: it curls around the iron rod of your chair and holds it fast. Then, while he is looking elsewhere, it curls around the narrow black foot of a strange frog.

He is filled with such courage, goodwill, curiosity, and self-reliance that you admire him for it. But then you realize he was born with these qualities: now what do you do with your admiration?

How responsible he is, to the limits of his capacity, for his own body, for his own safety. He holds his breath when a cloth covers his face. He widens his eyes in the dark. When he loses his balance, his hands curl around whatever comes under them, and he clutches the stuff of your shirt.

How he is curious, to the limits of his understanding; how he attempts to approach what arouses his curiosity, to the limits of his motion; how confident he is, to the limits of his knowledge; how masterful he is, to the limits of his competence; how he derives satisfaction from another face before him, to the limits of his attention; how he asserts his needs, to the limits of his force.

There are times when she is gentle, but there are also times when she is not gentle, when she is fierce and unrelenting toward him or them all, and she knows it is the strange spirit of her mother in her then. For there were times when her mother was gentle, but there were also times when she was fierce and unrelenting toward her or them all, and she knows it was the spirit of her mother’s mother in her mother then. For her mother’s mother had been gentle sometimes, her mother said, and teased her or them all, but she had also been fierce and unrelenting, and accused her of lying, and perhaps them all.

In the night, late at night, her mother’s mother used to weep and implore her husband, as her mother, still a girl, lay in bed listening. Her mother, when she was grown, did not weep and implore her husband in the night, or not where her daughter could hear her, as she lay in bed listening. Her mother later could not know, since she could not hear, whether her daughter, when she was grown, wept and implored her husband in the night, late at night, like her mother’s mother.

There is a description in a child’s science book of the act of love that makes it all quite clear and helps when one begins to forget. It starts with affection between a man and a woman. The blood goes to their genitals as they kiss and caress each other, this swelling creates a desire in these parts to be touched further, the man’s penis becomes larger and quite stiff and the woman’s vagina moist and slippery. The penis can now be pushed into the woman’s vagina and the parts move “comfortably and pleasantly” together until the man and woman reach orgasm, “not necessarily at the same time.” The article ends, however, with a cautionary emendation of the opening statement about affection: nowadays many people make love, it says, who do not love each other, or even have any affection for each other, and whether or not this is a good thing we do not yet know.

My body aches so—

It must be this heavy bed pressing up against me.

First they burned her — that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they’re starving him. When he’s dead, they’ll burn him, too.

Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.

It isn’t the same “they,” of course. “They” burned her thousands of miles away from here. The “they” that are starving him here are different.

Wait. They were supposed to starve him, but now they’re feeding him.

They’re feeding him, against doctor’s orders?

Yes. We had said, All right, let him die. The doctors advised it.

He was sick?

He wasn’t really sick.

He wasn’t sick, but they wanted to let him die?

He had just been sick, he had had pneumonia, and he was better.

So he was better and that was when they decided to let him die?

Well, he was old, and they didn’t want to treat him for pneumonia again.

They thought it was better for him to die than get sick again?

Yes. Then, at the rest home, they made a mistake and gave him his breakfast. They must not have had the doctor’s orders. They told us, “He’s had a good breakfast!” Just when we were prepared for him to start dying.

All right. Now they’ve got it right. They’re not feeding him anymore.

Things are back on schedule.

He’ll have to die sooner or later.

He’s taking a few days to do it.

It wasn’t certain he would die before, when they gave him breakfast. He ate it. They said he enjoyed it! But he’s beyond eating now. He doesn’t even wake up.

So he’s asleep?

Well, not exactly. His eyes are open, a little. But he doesn’t see anything — his eyes don’t move. And he won’t answer if you speak to him.

But you don’t know how long it will take.

A few days after that, they’ll burn him.

After what?

After he dies.

You’ll let them burn him.

We’ll ask them to burn him. In fact, we’ll pay them to burn him.

Why not burn him right away?

Before he dies?

No, no. Why did you say “a few days after that”?

According to the law, we have to wait at least forty-eight hours.

Even in the case of an innocent old accountant?

He wasn’t so innocent. Think of the testimony he gave.

You mean, if he dies on a Thursday, he won’t be burned until Monday.

They take him away, once he’s dead. They keep him somewhere, and then they take him to where he’ll be burned.

Who goes with him and keeps him company once he’s dead?

No one, actually.

No one goes with him?

Well, someone will take him away, but we don’t know the person.

You don’t know the person?

It will be an employee.

Probably in the middle of the night?

Yes.

And you probably don’t know where they’ll take him either?

No.

And then no one will keep him company?

Well, he won’t be alive anymore.

So you don’t think it matters.

They will put him in a coffin?

No, it’s actually a cardboard box.

A cardboard box?

Yes, a small one. Narrow and small. It didn’t weigh much, even with him in it.

Was he a small man?

No. But as he got older he got smaller. And lighter. But still, it should have been bigger than that.

Are you sure he was in the box?