Donald Barthelme - Paradise

The cop is trying to pull herself to her feet by the iron railing in front of the building and at the same time wiping blood from the scalp wound out of her eyes. Simon places his hands under her arms, half-drags her to the steps, sits her down.

“Motherfuckers,” she says. “Goddamn motherfuckers.”

“Sit still,” he says. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“Don’t need no ambulance. Where’s my stick?”

Simon retrieves it for her. She’s produced a handkerchief and is holding it to her head.

“Where’s my cap?”

He finds the uniform cap and hands it to her. She stuffs the handkerchief inside the cap and places it on her head. She leans forward, half-rises, then moans and sits down again.

“Motherfuckers.”

“You want me to call the precinct?”

“No. I’ll be fine. Just gimme a minute.”

She’s pretty, maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

“Those creeps had more muscle than I figured them for,” she says. “Perps lookin’ for something to make happen. Shake ‘em down and you’ll find burglar tools. They dress up all raggedy and you think they’re not as young as they really are. Got my damn stick away from me.”

“You want me to walk you down to the hospital?”

“I’m gonna walk in just a minute.”

She pulls a radio from her back pocket and calls in, telling the precinct about “two white males, lookin’ to do a break-in,” and the location.

“Thank you,” she says to Simon. “You’re a good citizen. Got a good yell on you.” She stands and, staggering slightly, moves off down the street. She turns and calls again, “Thank you!”

Simon goes back inside and pours another glass of wine. Death may haunt Calcutta’s streets, but teeming city throbs with life.

Q: You got the beds.

A: I went to this bed store and bought three beds. The guy said for an extra fifty he could deliver them by eight o’clock. He had his own truck, he said. Got them there right on the button. We stripped off the cardboard and plastic and set them up. Two in the back room and one in the little room in the front.

Q: Where were you?

A: I had the bedroom in the middle. I already had a bed.

Q: You’d sublet this place.

A: For a year. The owners had left me the bare essentials, dishes, towels, that sort of thing. A few pieces of furniture.

Q: Did the women like it?

A: They kept saying, This is so good of you. The other thing they said was, Probably you can sell the beds after we go. They’d sent all their money to Africa. To fight hunger.

Q: Did they just hang around all day, or what?

A: They came and went. They enjoyed the city. They went to Bloomingdale’s and the Met. They went to the Cloisters. They went to Asti’s and banged on their water glasses while the Anvil Chorus was being sung. They went to Sweet Basil and heard Wynton Marsalis. I went with them that night, he played very well, had his brother Branford on tenor. They went to the Museum of Modern Art and bought postcards in the gift shop. They went to Lincoln Center and saw various things, the film festival and all that. They got excited by the Strand and came back with books. They went to the Palladium and saw Lily Tomlin or somebody. They didn’t always go together. Sometimes Veronica and Dore went, sometimes Anne went by herself, and so on. Sometimes they went together to Balducci’s and came home with various exotic foods. They cooked together, sometimes. I remember a particularly good Cream of Four Onion soup. They spent a lot of time just walking around looking at things. I think they were happy. Although in limbo.

Q: Limbo.

A: They were in an in-between state, it was hard on them. I’d come in and Anne would be sitting on the couch, weeping. The couch wasn’t much. Some kind of dull gray fabric. Ask her why she’s weeping and she’d say she didn’t know. Veronica hit me once. Hauled off and slugged me in the chest. It was just frustration. Still, I wondered what in her gave her permission to slug me. Then she made a pie, a blueberry pie —

Q: Did they ever go to Fizz?

A: I believe they went there quite often.

Q: What went on there?

A: It was a meat rack, a heterosexual meat rack. From what they’ve told me.

Q: So they picked up guys there…

A: They did, I suppose. They may have been just playing, just exercising…

Q: How did that make you feel?

A: I didn’t like it.

Q: Sometimes I think I should have been a shrink.

A: Why aren’t you?

Q: It’s not medicine.

A: I imagine them thinking, talking to each other…

Q: What did they say to each other?

A: I don’t know, of course. I imagine they were careful, thoughtful. Direct.

Q: My wife was the world’s champion at leaving things lying around. I spent much of my marriage picking up after her. She’d strew things about, as a sower scatters seed over a field. She could not so much as strike a match without leaving the matchbook and a burnt match on some convenient surface. If she’d go into the John with a magazine you could be sure that she’d leave the magazine in the John, open to the page she’d been reading. She was a marvel. You’d call this to her attention and she wouldn’t understand what you were talking about. Little balls of Kleenex everywhere, yellow Kleenex, occasional grapefruit hulls — Were you worried that it would end?

A: Good Lord no. Maybe worried that it wouldn’t. Those women were powerful presences. Took up a lot of space, made a lot of clatter. There were days when I couldn’t hear myself think.

Q: All in all, then, it was on the stressful side.

A: We talked a lot. I think of it as a series of conversations. A series of ordinary conversations. Simple as pie. They were very good people. I miss them.

Q: Do you hear from them?

A: Postcards.

Q: These women spread out before you like lotus blossoms…

A: Not exactly like lotus blossoms.

Q: Open, blooming…

A: More like anthills. Splendid, stinging anthills.

Q: You fall face down onto an anthill.

A: Something like that.

Q: The ants are plunging toothpicks into your scrotum, as it were. As they withdraw the toothpicks, little particles of flesh like shreds of ground beef adhere to the toothpicks.

A: Very much like that. How did you know?

Q: I’m not inexperienced.

A: By what standard?

Q: Generally accepted standards.

Sunday morning. Simon listening to one of his radios.

“Jesus is a rock in a weary land,” says the radio. The preacher is black, with a deep sonorous voice.

“I wrote a little song that says, don’t wait till the battle is over, you can shout now. ‘Cause you know that in the end, you gonna be victorious. That don’t mean you ain’t gonna cry. That don’t mean you ain’t gonna feel pain. But in the end, you will prevail, in His name. Lift your face to Him, and let Him lead the way. Rejoice. It’s all right. Rejoice. It’s all right. Rejoice. It’s allllllright. Despite what may be going on around you, you can, you can find perfect peace. How much, continuously, do we love Him.”

Simon thinks about a day many years before when his wife was taking the baby to the park. “Goodbye, you dirty rat,” his wife said. The baby was wearing a blue parka and a brown knitted watch cap. “Goodbye, you dirty rat,” the baby said.

When Sarah was born he stood in the delivery room wearing green paper pants, a green paper shirt, paper bags on his feet and a green paper cap on his head. He lacked only a fool-yellow rubber bulb of a nose to be a perfect clown.

He pressed his back against the green-painted wall, trying to keep out of the way. His wife had been in labor two hours and forty minutes; a monitor had indicated fetal distress and the doctor, a man known for not doing Caesareans, had a choice to make. The doctor’s name was Zernikie and he had a pair of large dull-steel forceps inside the birth canal and was grappling for purchase. The instrument looked to Simon, who knew something of the weight and force of tools, capable of shattering the baby’s head in an instant. After all these years, he thought, that’s the best they can do?