Lydia Davis - Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

My husband and I are Siamese twins. We are joined at the forehead. Our mother feeds us. When we are moved to copulate we join lower down as well forming a loop like a certain espaliered tree. Time passes. I separate from my husband below and give birth to twins who are not joined together as we are. They squirm on the ground. Our mother cares for them. They are most often asymmetrical with each other, even in sleep when they lie still. Awake, they stay near each other, as though elastic bands held them, and near us and near our mother. At night the bond is even stronger and we snap together and lie in a heap, my husband’s hard muscles, against my soft muscles, against our mother’s stringy old muscles, and our babies’ feather muscles, our arms around one another like so many snakes, and distant thumping music in the fields behind us.

I am happy the leaves are growing large so quickly.

Soon they will hide the neighbor and her screaming child.

On the counter lay a pile of plastic packets of duck sauce, soy sauce, and mustard from their Chinese dinner. In her anger she was provoked by the smooth, slippery little bodies and slammed her fist down among them. Two or three exploded. She could not see through her tears. Her bathrobe cuff was drenched in mustard, and the next morning he discovered a spatter of soy sauce, or maybe duck sauce, over the ceiling, two windows, and one wall. She cleaned it off the windows, but it wouldn’t come off the ceiling, where it had stained through the white paint, and then when she was done trying to get it off she saw that the drops of detergent and water falling on the wood floor had spotted the finish.

A few days later, carrying the baby, she stepped into a hole in the dining room floor in the old house where a plank had been removed because of termites. She bruised her arm badly, though the baby was not hurt. Then she stopped up the coffee maker with coffee grounds so that it overflowed onto the counter and floor when it went on in the morning. She sprayed the side of her face with the spray attachment at the sink. She burned her hand feeding the wood stove. The baby rolled off the side of their bed and fell onto the floor. She took the baby out for a walk late in the afternoon when the temperature was below freezing, its face turned red, and it started screaming with pain. This was the holiday season.

They sat talking peacefully before dinner. He said she probably needed to get more sleep. She was waiting for the oven to heat, but had forgotten to turn it on.

At dinner, he pointed out that the soy sauce had also spotted the apples in the fruit bowl and the lamp over the dining table. He went on to remind her of the toilet seat she had broken. It was an expensive red Swedish toilet seat. The lid had slipped out of her hand and dropped, cracking the seat. He had immediately taken the whole thing off and replaced it with a green one.

He had also replaced the plastic sheeting over the door to the deck because it had shattered when she left the door open in the cold. Then for the second time she disengaged the connection of a wire over the bedroom door. As he stood on a chair fixing it, she asked him if she could hold the light for him, but he said No, just don’t slam the door anymore when you get mad.

The most recent thing was that she took a roll of photographs with no film in the camera, though this did not cost them any money or cause any damage, except for the baby’s weariness in its many poses and her regret for the lost pictures, so many of which she remembered clearly, the last being a shot of an oil barge with a tugboat coming up the creek through the first winter ice toward her where she stood at the window, beginning to realize there was no film in the camera.

Now that we are living out here in the country the only people we see are working men who come to do jobs for us. They are independent and self-reliant, and they start work early in the day and they work hard without stopping. Last week it was Bill Bray, to install the washing machine. Next week it will be Jay Knickerbocker, to tear off the front of the porch. Today it is Tom Tatt. Tom Tatt is supposed to come disconnect some wires for us. Where is he? Early in the morning we stand in the kitchen together. Where is Tom Tatt? We walk outdoors. Here in the early sunshine is Tom Tatt. He has already finished the job, and is snubbing the cut ends of wire with little black snubs.

Magin was over seventy and not well. His right leg was lame and his lungs were weak. If his wife had been alive, she would not have let him go. As it was, his friends had told him to stay at home and wait for his brother Michael to come back. Yet he had never listened to anyone but his wife, and now he did not listen to anyone.

He was close to Silit, if the maps of the Trsk Land Office were correct. He had walked since early morning, very slowly, and his feet were sore. Just at noon, he came within sight of the town. His brother’s postcard had been sent from here. Karsovy, therefore, should be only a few miles to the north.

He set down his bag on the snow and rubbed his cramped fingers. He looked up at Silit: the street was lined by narrow houses with shuttered windows. Many of the roofs had fallen in and tumbled over the doorsills. Down by the well at the end of the street, under a couple of pine trees, he saw two old women knitting on a bench. He picked up his bag and walked to them and they stopped knitting to stare at him.

Until he shouted his question, they did not understand him. Then one of them opened her mouth and pointed wordlessly across the street.

In the shadow of the eaves, a man sat combing his brown beard with a broken comb. His eyes were on Magin. A roofless car was parked in the lane beside him.

Magin crossed the street. “Can you take me to Karsovy?” he asked in Trsk. The man stopped moving.

“There’s no such place,” he said.

“There must be,” said Magin. He pulled out the creased postcard from his brother and started to thrust it at the man.

“There is not. You are mistaken.”

Magin dropped his bag and shook his fist in the man’s face, crumpling the postcard. He would not argue. “I am not mistaken,” he shouted. His voice broke.

The man was startled. “Well,” he said, spitting on his palm and rubbing his boot with it, “I don’t often go there.”

Magin was trembling with anger and the blood at his temples throbbed. “How much?” he asked.

“I’ll take fifty,” the man said. Magin drew a purse from his back pocket and laid two coins on the man’s palm.

Magin picked up his bag and followed the man to the car. The man pulled himself up into the driver’s seat, looking straight ahead. Magin hoisted his bag onto the back seat and climbed in beside it. When he sat down, the springs gave way so far that he came to rest on something that felt like an iron rod. He did not move.

The engine turned over and the car jerked forward and threw Magin against the back of the seat. The car skidded into the snowy ruts of the road. Magin lurched from side to side as the trees veered at him around the bends of the road. Two doves flapped away as the car passed them

The driver’s hostility bewildered Magin. As an hour passed in the monotonous woods, he grew more and more uneasy. His search might be hopeless. There had been no word from his brother for weeks. And there was the question of how long he himself would last. “This is crazy,” he said to himself suddenly. “Here I am with one foot in the grave, in a north country winter, and I expect something to come of it. Mary would have laughed.” He pulled the collar of his overcoat up around his chin.