Lydia Davis - Varieties of Disturbance

The van resumes going south and she reads with pleasure and some understanding: “Now for to say as worst they may only they only they.” And then with more pleasure: “With leastening words say least best worse. For want of worser worst. Unlessenable least best worse.” And then soon there is something a little different: “So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to dimmer still. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst.”

The sun in another small gas station stops her from reading, heat and brightness coming in her window, what was the west window when the van was heading south but probably must be considered the east window just at this moment. While the driver makes another phone call, two women, now, leave the van to try to find a working bathroom, fail, and return to the bus.

†The van heads south again.

‡Though she is several pages farther along, some of the words are the same again: “Next fail see say how dim undimmed to worsen. How nohow save to dimmer still. But but a shade so as when after nohow somehow on to dimmer still.”

Then there is something new at the bottom of the page: “Longing the so-said mind long lost to longing. The so-missaid. So far so-missaid. Dint of long longing lost to longing.”

Then a combination: “Longing that all go. Dim go.”

Soon after, with confusion, she reads: “Said is missaid. Whenever said said said missaid.” She misunderstands and reads again: “Whenever said said said missaid.” Then a third time, and when she imagines a pause in the middle of it, she understands better.

*At the next stop, the van driver calls out for “folks Benson and Goodwin.” The Benson couple and the single Goodwin, sitting forward in the van, identify themselves as “Two Benson and one Goodwin.” It takes the driver a very long time to find their papers. While he is searching, three women, now, leave the van, find a working bathroom, and return to the van. Now each time the van stops, it stops with the sun coming in what was the west window but is now the east window, preparing to turn right and head south into the sun again. Now she has grown used to waiting with the sun on her face and on the page and watching the asphalt outside and the other passengers inside until the van turns and goes on south.

†Near the end of the book, she reads: “No once. No once in pastless now,” and just now the van passes a cemetery near the airport and she sees many white stone angels, their wings raised.

‡By the time she reaches the end of her trip south, the southernmost point in the van’s route, from which it will head north again, she has finished the book, which is not long. Although she has liked many of the words that came in between, its last words, “Said nohow on,” say as little to her as its first, “On. Say on. Be said on.”