Lydia Davis: Almost No Memory

In May, we heard the first nightingale. Just as the night fully darkened, it began to sing. Its song was not really unlike the song of a mockingbird, with warbles, and twitters, and trills, warbles, chirps, and warbles again, but it issued in the midst of the silence of the night, in the dark, or in the moonlight, from a spot mysteriously hidden among the black branches.

First she walked out, and then while she was out he walked out. No, before she walked out, he walked out on her, not long after he came home, because of something she said. He did not say how long he would be gone or where he was going, because he was angry. He did not say anything except “That’s it.” Then, while he was out, she walked out on him and went down the road with the children. Then, while she was out, he came back, and when she did not return and it grew dark, he went out looking for her. She returned without seeing him, and after she had been back some time, she walked out again with the children to find him. Later, he said she had walked out on him, and she agreed that she had walked out on him, but said she had only walked out on him after he walked out on her. Then he agreed that he had walked out on her, but only after she said something she should not have said. He said she should agree that she should not have said what she said and that she had caused the evening’s harm. She agreed that she should not have said what she said, but then went on to say that the trouble between them had started before, and if she agreed she had caused the evening’s harm, he should agree he had caused what started the trouble before. But he would not agree to that, not yet anyway.

A man has been making deliveries in the garment district for years now: every morning he takes the same garments on a moving rack through the streets to a shop and every evening takes them back again to the warehouse. This happens because there is a dispute between the shop and the warehouse which cannot be settled: the shop denies it ever ordered the clothes, which are badly made and of cheap material and by now years out of style; while the warehouse will not take responsibility because the clothes cannot be returned to the wholesalers, who have no use for them. To the man all this is nothing. They are not his clothes, he is paid for this work, and he intends to leave the company soon, though the right moment has not yet come.

He said she was disagreeing with him. She said no, that was not true, he was disagreeing with her. This was about the screen door. That it should not be left open was her idea, because of the flies; his was that it could be left open first thing in the morning, when there were no flies on the deck. Anyway, he said, most of the flies came from other parts of the building: in fact, he was probably letting more of them out than in.

In our town there is an actor, H. — a tall, bold, feverish sort of man — who easily fills the theater when he plays Othello, and about whom the women here become very excited. He is handsome enough compared to the other men, though his nose is somewhat thick and his torso rather short for his height. His acting is stiff and inflexible, his gestures obviously memorized and mechanical, and yet his voice is strong enough to make one forget all that. On the nights when he is unable to leave his bed because of illness or intoxication — and this happens more often than one would imagine — the part is taken by J., his understudy. Now, J. is pale and small, completely unsuitable for the part of a Moor; his legs tremble as he comes onstage and faces the many empty seats. His voice hardly carries beyond the first few rows, and his small hands flutter uselessly in the smoky air. We feel only pity and irritation as we watch him, and yet by the end of the play we find ourselves unaccountably moved, as though something timid and sad in Othello’s character had been conveyed to us in spite of ourselves. But the mannerisms and skill of H. and J. — which we analyze minutely when we visit together in the afternoons and contemplate even when we are alone, after dinner — suddenly seem insignificant when the great Sparr comes down from the city and gives us a real performance of Othello. Then we are so carried away, so exhausted with emotion, that it is impossible to speak of what we feel. We are almost grateful when he is gone and we are left with H. and J., imperfect as they are, for they are familiar to us and comfortable, like our own people.

It is hard for her to write this story, too, or rather she should say it is hard for her to write it well. She has shown it to a friend, and he has said it needs to be more interesting. She is disappointed, even though she knew that only one part of it was interesting. She tries to think why the rest is not.

Maybe there is no way to make it interesting, because it is so simple: a woman, slightly drunk but not too drunk to discuss a plan for the summer, was put into a cab and told to go home by her lover, the man with whom she thought she was going to discuss this plan.

She asks her friend if this, at least, was something that would hurt a woman, or if this was nothing. He thinks it would hurt, and she is right about that much, but it is not very interesting.

He had put her into a cab with two men who were not pleased to be riding with her, as she was not pleased to be riding with them, because of some complicated events that had occurred years before. She was talking politely to them but feeling angry at the man who had done this to her.

It is not entirely clear, in the story, why being put in a cab by this man should cause so much anger in her. Or rather, it is perfectly clear to her, but hard to explain to anyone else, though she knows that anyone else, put in the same cab with the same two men, would be angry.

As soon as she arrived home she telephoned him. She raged at him and he laughed, she raged more and he gave her a slight apology and laughed more and said he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. She hung up. She went on crying and then began drinking. She was so angry she would have been happy to take her fists to him, but he was not there, he was sleeping and probably smiling in his sleep. As she drank she thought hard, and angrily.

What was he trying to do to her this time? she wondered. She and he did not have many chances to be together, and there they were sitting across from each other at dinner, and they had recently started talking about a plan to go away together in the summer, which they had never done before, or even talked about doing before, and he had even sent her a photograph of the house. They had said that after dinner they would talk about it more, and she was very happy about all this, and felt that at last their love was becoming something solid, something she could count on. And then, when she was prepared to walk off with him down the street, her head pleasantly light, her stomach comfortably full, he had suddenly, without warning, taken her arm and led her up to a taxi just as these two men were getting into it, and because there were other people there they both knew, she couldn’t say anything but had to pretend this was something she did not mind. And what did he mean by it? What was she supposed to think now, and what was she supposed to do?

At a certain point in her angry thinking she decided she had to give up the idea of a summer plan with him. If he had done this now, what would he do to her during the summer, and, even worse, when the summer was over? And now she drank more to give vent to her disappointment.

The fact that they were involved in a love affair ought to have been interesting, because any kind of affair is usually more interesting than no affair, as two people in a story should be more interesting than one, and a difficult love affair should be more interesting than an easy one. As, for example, a happy woman walking arm in arm with her lover after a noisy restaurant dinner with friends, enjoying the fact that he is so tall and the feel of his smooth hair under her palm when she reaches up, walking with him and discussing summer plans, as she had been sure they were going to do, may be less interesting than being put into a cab with embarrassing haste and awkwardness, or finding a pair of keys that have been lost, as she did later, and then certainly the idea of a key is more interesting than the idea of a cab, and the idea of something lost and then found is more interesting than the idea of already knowing where she was, that is, in the cab and then at home, though it was true that in a more general way she certainly did not know where she was with him, what he expected from her and what he expected would happen to them.