Donald Barthelme - Paradise

“Simon, I don’t want to go,” Anne says.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“But I have to.”

“I understand that. But you could be foolish and unwise.”

“You’d get tired of me.”

“No. The reverse, if anything. We could sit around and watch old movies on television. That’s all I ask.”

“That’s not true.”

“I ask you, formally, to stay. Will you stay?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t work out.”

“We could enjoy it for a short time. Might be as much as two whole years.”

“You make it sound like a cancer situation. It wouldn’t be fair to the others.”

“When is anything ever fair to the others?”

Simon flew to North Carolina to inspect a job he’d done in Winston-Salem, a hospital. The construction was quite good and he found little to complain of. He admired the fenestration, done by his own hand. He spent an agreeable night in a Ramada Inn and flew back the next day. His seatmate was a young German woman on her way to Frankfurt. She was six months pregnant, she said, and her husband, an Army sergeant in Chemical Warfare, had found a new girlfriend, was divorcing her. She had spent two years at Benning, loved America, spoke with what seemed to Simon a Texas accent. Her father was dead and her mother operated a candy store in Frankfurt. They talked about pregnancy and delivery, about how much wine she allowed herself, whether aspirin was in fact a danger to the baby, and how both of her brothers-in-law had been born in taxis. She was amazingly cheerful given the circumstances and told him that the Russians were probably going to attempt to take over Mexico next. We had neglected Mexico, she said.

Over the Atlantic on the long approach to Kennedy Simon saw a hundred miles of garbage in the water, from the air white floating scruff. The water became agitated at points as fish attacked the garbage and Simon turned his mind to compaction. When they landed he kissed the German woman goodbye and told her that although she probably didn’t feel very lucky at the moment, she was very lucky.

“I got to go away now,” Dore says. “I got to leave this place.”

“I gots to make mah mark in de whirl,” says Veronica.

“The prophet Zephaniah appeared to me in a dream,” Anne says. “He said, Split! Split!”

“Time boogies on,” Dore says.

They are gathered by the door with much duffel. Aspects of optimistic gloom.

” ‘Bye guys,” Simon says.

They lurch through the door.

Q: Maybe they’ll come back.

A: No, no. Of course not. Why should they?

Q: Do you want them to come back?

A: I have peculiar dreams. But I sleep very well, on balance.

Q: How many hours a night?

A: Four or five.

Q: Some people like Giacometti. As a sculptor. Although I suppose it’s foolish to speak of “liking” Giacometti. Armature with impetigo. He’s not about women.

A: Yes he is. Also, he’s got a razor in his shoe.

Q: Do you want some of these little green ones? They’re supposed to be good.

A: I think not.

Q: Feels like Saturday today, I don’t know why…

A: It does feel a bit like Saturday…