Lydia Davis - Can't and Won't - Stories

Yours sincerely.

105 years old:

she wouldn’t be alive today

even if she hadn’t died.

Who is this old man walking along looking a little grim with a wool cap on his head?

But when I call out to him and he turns around, he doesn’t know me at first, either — this old woman smiling foolishly at him in her winter coat.

That irritating dog:

They didn’t want it and gave it to us.

We pushed it away and smacked it on the head and tied it up.

It barked, it panted, it lunged.

We gave it back to them. They kept it for a while.

Then they sent it to an animal shelter. It was put in a concrete pen.

Visitors came and looked at it. It stood on the concrete on its four black-and-white paws.

No one wanted it.

It had no good qualities. It did not know that.

New dogs kept coming in to the shelter. After a while, they had no more space for it.

They took it into the euthanizing room to be euthanized.

It had to walk around the other dogs that were on the floor.

It leaped and pulled. It was frightened by the other dogs, and the smell.

They gave it a shot. They let it stay where it fell, and went off to get another dog.

They always took all the dead dogs out at once, at the end, to save time.

Hello dear,

do you remember

how we communicated with you?

Long ago you could not see,

but I am Marina — with Russia.

Do you remember me?

I am writing this mail to you

with heavy tears in my eyes

and great sorrow in my heart.

Come to my page.

I want you please to consider me

with so much full heartily.

Please — let us talk.

I’m waiting!

I’m simply not interested in reading this book. I was not interested in reading the last one I tried, either. I’m less and less interested in reading any of the books I have, though they are reasonably good, I suppose.

Just as, the other day, when I went out to the backyard, planning to gather up some sticks and branches and carry them to the pile in the far corner of the meadow, I suddenly became so deeply bored by the thought of picking up those sticks and carrying them, yet again, to that pile, and then coming back through the high meadow grass for more, that I did not even begin, and simply went inside.

Now I can do it again. It was only on that one day that I was bored. Then the feeling went away, and now I can go out again, pick up the sticks and branches, and take them to the pile. Actually, I pick up the sticks and carry them in my arms, and I drag the larger branches. I don’t do both at once. I can make about three trips back and forth before I get tired and quit.

The books I’m talking about are supposed to be reasonably good, but they simply don’t interest me. In fact, they may be a lot better than certain other books I have, but sometimes the books that aren’t so good interest me more.

The day before that one particular day, and the day after it, I was willing to pick up sticks and take them back to the pile. Actually, for many days before, and many days after. Could I even say: all the days before that day, and all the days after? Don’t ask me why I wasn’t bored on other days. I’ve often wondered why, myself.

If I think about it, it may be that there is some satisfaction in seeing the haphazard pile of sticks and branches near the house get smaller each day, as I carry or drag them back. There is some interest, though not much, so little, in fact, that it is right on the edge of boredom, in looking at the meadow passing under my feet: the grasses, the wildflowers, and the occasional wild animal scat. Then, when I reach the brush pile in the back, there is the best moment: I weigh the bundle of sticks in my arms, or balance the branch in my two hands, and then heave them, or it, as far up to the top of the brush pile as I can. The walk back through the meadow is easy, with my arms and hands free and loose, compared to the walk out to the pile; I look around at the treetops and the sky, as well as at the house, though it never changes and is not interesting.

But on that particular day I did not even begin to feel interested in this chore, and was suddenly more deeply bored than I ever have been before, and just turned around and went back inside. Which made me wonder why I wanted to do this chore at all, on other days, and also which was real: my slight interest on other days or my profound boredom now. And it made me wonder if I really should be profoundly bored by this chore all the time and never do it again, and if there was something wrong with my mind that I was not bored by it all the time.

I’m not tired of all good books, I’m just tired of novels and stories, even good ones, or ones that are supposed to be good. These days, I prefer books that contain something real, or something the author at least believed to be real. I don’t want to be bored by someone else’s imagination. Most people’s imagination just isn’t very interesting — you can guess where the author got this idea and that idea. You can predict what will come next before you finish reading one sentence. It all seems so arbitrary.

But it’s true that I’m also bored, sometimes, by my own dreams, and by the act of dreaming: here I go again, this scene does not make sense, I must be falling asleep, this is a dream, I’m about to start dreaming again. And I am sometimes bored even by the act of thinking: Here’s another thought, I’m about to find it interesting or not interesting — not this again! In fact, I am sometimes bored by my friendships: Oh, we will spend the evening together, we will talk, then I will go home — this again!

Actually, I don’t mean I’m bored by old novels and books of stories if they’re good. Just new ones — good or bad. I feel like saying: Please spare me your imagination, I’m so tired of your vivid imagination, let someone else enjoy it. That’s how I’m feeling these days, anyway, maybe it will pass.

The fish that has been sitting in my stomach all afternoon was so old by the time I cooked and ate it, no wonder I am uncomfortable — an old woman digesting an old fish.

story from Flaubert

Where am I staying? In the home of a pharmacist! Yes, but whose student is he? Dupré’s! Isn’t that fantastic?

Like Dupré, he makes a lot of seltzer water.

“I’m the only one in Trouville who makes seltzer water,” he says.

And it’s true that often, as early as eight o’clock in the morning, I am woken by the noise of corks flying away: pif, paf , and cccrrrout!

The kitchen is also the laboratory. Among the saucepans, there rises, in an arc, from a monstrous still, a

fearful tube of steaming copper

and often they can’t put the pot on the fire because of the pharmaceutical preparations.

To go to the shithouse in the courtyard, you have to step over baskets filled with bottles. They have a pump out there that spits water and sprays your legs. The two boys rinse jars. A parrot squawks over and over all day long: “Have you had lunch, Jako?” or “Coco, my little Coco!” And a kid of about ten, the son of the house, the great hope of the pharmacy, practices feats of strength by lifting weights with his teeth.

A piece of foresight which I find touching is that there’s always paper in the WC— gummed paper or, rather, waxed paper. It’s the wrapping from packages — they don’t know what else to do with it.