Lydia Davis - The End of the Story

But now I suspect that I did not really have much choice about my vocabulary either, or anything else, and in fact the novel had to be just this long, leave out this much, include this much, change the facts this much, have this much description, be precise here but vague there, literal here but metaphorical there, use complete sentences here but incomplete there, an ellipsis here but none there, contracted verbs here but not there, etc.

* * *

Two poets visiting the university from England came to stay with us for a few days, and Madeleine and I conferred about the arrangements like two spinster sisters unused to having men in the house.

One was young, the other older, with a little pot belly and a white beard. They slept on the twin beds in the spare room. In the afternoon they practiced their performance out on the terrace.

Considerate guests, they left new arrangements in the house, clean coffee mugs bottom up on the clean counter. They were polite, smiled often, and gave a high giggle now and then — the younger one heavy-lidded, slower, sitting on a stool in the kitchen, and the older one, more energetic, standing there holding his round belly before him, cup in hand or empty-handed. When they left, I found short silver hairs pasted on the edge of the bathroom sink which then stuck to my black pants.

The English poets performed in a room with a glass wall behind them. Through it I could see a small, dimly lit courtyard bounded by a brick wall on which was painted a portrait of a bearded political leader. Behind the wall, showing over the top of it, was the darkness of the eucalyptus wood that covered the campus. In the first piece, the poets read together, and what they read were sounds that had no meaning: they were making a kind of music with broken words, single syllables. And because these sounds had no meaning, they did not stop my mind from going out through the wall of glass, searching the darkness for him, flying beyond the faint light of the courtyard out to wherever he was. Because I did not know where he was, I located him in all of the large darkness, filling it, as though I had to make him large enough to fill the darkness and the night.

The younger poet sat down and the older one went on by himself with a new poem in which words were used. A word was spoken that had meaning, and soon after came another. These words were used in the same way as the syllables that had no meaning, and maybe they were intended to lose their meaning. But they did not lose it for me, and with each name of a thing came a picture, and each picture could be a place for me to be, other than where I was. If the poet spoke, in his English accent, through his narrow yellow teeth, above his white beard, the word “hedge” quickly followed by the word “wall,” I was in England, it was summer, I was by a hedge and a wall, and the hedge was fragrant, with an untidy grace to it, and the wall was of irregular large stones, and warm from the sun. I wanted more words, but the poet didn’t use any more words for a long time, he spoke only syllables without meaning.

Later, at home, in bed, when I turned off the light, I went on calling up for myself images from the book I had been reading. I wanted to see if I could keep putting things between me and what I might think about. From the book I was reading I took a scrubbed oak table, a pantry, a dimly lit buttery, gray buckwheat pancakes, black sour gravy, a porch, raindrops in lines on the eaves of the porch, and spears of purple desert flowers. The very innocence of these things, of the food, the parts of the house, the light in the house, helped me to fight against him. I lay there with my arm hanging down out of the bed into the current of cold air that ran across the tiles of the floor and I thought of other things, things near me, roads running down to the sea, slopes and levels, a plain between the desert and the sea, flats at low tide, small figures walking to and fro seen from the cliff above. I listened to the tick of the clock, the thrashing sound of the cars going by fast on the road below, and the dim roar of the ocean. But the sound of the ocean was an uncomfortable sound. So was the sound of a train coming through, which was like the sound of the ocean but heavier, steadier, and longer, with a beginning and an end to it. All the sounds of the night, in fact, were uncomfortable, carrying the same associations. Now I had come to a bad place, and when I tried to go back to something safer, when I tried to imagine things in England again, the large sound of the ocean was by then so heavy, so dark, that the hedge and the wall became thinner and flatter, until I couldn’t hold on to them any longer and they faded away.

* * *

Sometimes, at night, when I had done everything else I had to do, when Madeleine had gone into her rooms, and when the activity close around me, and for miles around me, began to subside, when the silence grew and grew, down through the town, when the darkness seemed to open out into wider and wider areas, giving me all the room I needed, I would sit at my card table on my metal chair or up against several pillows in my bed and write about him. I wrote down everything that had anything to do with him, including catching sight of him on the street or looking for him but not finding him. I wrote down not only whatever happened and didn’t happen, but also anything I thought about him. It was possible to relate everything to him. Even when there was no relation, his absence from a situation forced him into it even more strongly. I wrote down everything I remembered about him, even though I could not always remember everything in the right order, or would realize I was mistaken about a certain thing, or hadn’t understood it, and would go over it again. Even after I fell asleep, sometimes, I would continue to write in a dream, I would write even the smallest thing, in my dream nothing happened without my writing it.

Since he wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do, then I would do something I could do without him. I had written things about him when he was still with me, whatever surprised me. Now I still wrote out of surprise, but what I wrote about him did not go along with other things. I didn’t know if writing so much about him meant I had already moved away from the pain, or that I was only trying to. I didn’t know how much I was writing out of anger and how much out of love, or whether the anger was actually much greater than the love, and there was a strong passion in me but love was only a small part of it.

First there was anger, then greater and greater distress, and then I would see how a part of it could be written down. And if I wrote it down very precisely, the thought or the memory, then I would often have a feeling of peace. It had to be written carefully, because only if I wrote it carefully could I deliver over my pain into it. I wrote with fury and patience at the same time. I had a feeling of power as I wrote: bending over the paragraphs, one paragraph after another, I was convinced they were important. But when I stopped working and sat back, the feeling of power went away, and what I had written did not seem important.

There were days when I wrote about him so much that he was no longer quite real, so that if I came face to face with him suddenly on the street, he was changed. I had managed to drain him of his substance, I thought, and fill my notebook with it, which would mean that in some sense I had killed him. But then, once I was back at home, the substance seemed to be in him again, wherever he was, because what was now empty and lifeless was what I had written about him.

Maybe I should have been more resigned. If this was the only way to possess him now, then I was doing all I could. And for a brief time, it did satisfy me, as though all the pain was not for nothing, as though I was forcing him to give me something after all, as though I had some power over him now, or was saving something that would be lost otherwise. In fact, I was not forcing him to give me something but taking it myself. I didn’t have him, but I had this writing, and he could not take it away from me.