Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

“It was pretty much the same when I played softball,” Schiff said. “I was a fairly lousy first baseman, but not a bad hitter. Good hit, no field. Story of my life. And you’ll have to take my word for this— Hell, I have to take my word for it, because seeing how I am now it’s pretty difficult to believe, but I was actually something of a diver back in high school. My specialty was a double somersault off the high board, though I have to admit I always lost a few points for my angle of entry when I hit the water. If you were anywhere near the pool you probably still feel the splash, and …”

Hearing himself, his flagrant boasting, Schiff quite suddenly paused, broke off. “Well,” he said a few seconds later, “you get the idea. I knew him, Horatio. I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know why I take on like this. Possibly to keep you from noticing the salad dressing on my pants.”

“Oh, those stains come right out. They’re nothing to worry about,” Miss Simmons said.

“No, I’m not worried,” Schiff said.

“I’m like that, too,” Miss Simmons said, “I think everyone is. It’s a nuisance when you get all dressed up, then spill something on yourself.”

“Good hit, no field.”

“That’s right,” Jenny Simmons said.

Schiff was thanking his lucky stars he’d had enough sense not to loosen his grip on the arm of his chair, fall forward and kiss her — presence of mind, he thought, regarding the terrible disorder throughout his house, the joke decorations that had come undone and fallen, draped now in waves of construction paper over his sideboard, his dining-room table, over the Oriental rug in his entrance hall like a comic treasure map, casting an eye on the abandoned picnic table that was his living-room floor, the uneaten plates of food, the crushed cocktail napkins working their capillary action on the liquory dregs and stubbed, cold cigarettes at the bottoms of the plastic glasses of booze, abandoned, displaced sofa cushions, on the carpet, against the living-room walls; presence of mind when all about you are losing theirs— when he became conscious of the buzz and grind of his Stair-Glide. Unmistakably — from where he sat he could not see this, merely heard their joyous squeals as they went up his stairs — people were riding his chair, Ms. Kohm directing them like someone working a ride in an amusement park, the Ferris wheel, say, the carousel.

“All right, Bautz, you’ve had your turn. Get off and let Miss Carter have a ride.”

“Aw, come on, Molly, one more time. Please?”

“No, it’s Carter’s turn. Then Tysver, Miss Freistadt next, then Wilkins, Dickerson, Lipsey, Miss Moffett, and Disch.”

“I don’t see why she gets to have all the say-so.”

“What are you complaining about? You’re next. I don’t get to go until last.”

“Disch, you’re such a baby!”

“I’m not a baby. I was here putting up the decorations hours before anyone else even showed up.”

“Oh, yeah, hours,” Dickerson said.

“Well, I was.”

“Big fucking federal deal,” Dickerson said.

“Yeah,” Tysver said.

“If you want,” Miss Freistadt said, “you can ride up with me. You can sit on my lap.”

“Really?”

“Would I tease a baby?”

“Hey!” Schiff called. “Hey!” He turned to Miss Simmons. “Are they really using my Stair-Glide, you think?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Shall I go see?”

“Go see,” Schiff said.

In seconds she was back. A trip that would have taken him five minutes at least, he couldn’t help thinking. If he was even up to it.

“They are,” she said.

“Hey,” called Schiff. “Hey now.”

There was hysterical squealing, shouting, a terrible clamor of drunken, almost falsetto rivalry. Schiff would recall crying out at them to cut the foofaraw, using this word which he’d not only never used before but which he couldn’t remember having ever even heard. Remembering, moreover, that he called it out not once but three times. Like some magic cockcrow in legend. Angered now, crying, “Cut out that foofaraw! Knock off the foofaraw! Enough with this foofaraw!” Thrice denying them foofaraw, forbidding them foofaraw within his house, as if to say, not in this household you don’t, or, take that outside where it belongs, or proclaiming that the neighborhood wasn’t zoned for foofaraw. But overruled. At the very least ignored. Almost, so unmindful of him were they, cut.

Close to tears now he was, the rage of his helplessness. As if they didn’t understand him or, worse yet, as if they did, some nice question of choice here, equating the hick, obsolete word with the hick, obsolete professor. Their continued laughter and cackle not merely an unmindfulness of his sovereignty here, but of his simple (simple, hah!), physical (physical, hah!) presence, an absolute refutation of his existence, an argument against his claims and rights as a landlord. The inmates were in control of the asylum. The students were calling the shots, making the assignments, handing out the grades. Now he was scared, beside himself.

“He is, he is on her lap!”

“How is that, Disch? You like that?”

“May I ride with Dickerson, Ms. Kohm?”

“Little Miss Moffett.”

“Sat on Dickerson’s tuffet.”

Their voices were like noises made in free-fall, a glimpse of the abyss from the apogee at the lip of a thrill ride. Then, suddenly, abruptly, their brassy shrillness ceased— all their odd, excited, asexual soprano. Displaced by a screech. Something mechanical. A sick, scraping sound. Something unoiled and harsh. To Schiff’s ears, perfectly pitched for the noises of stuck, soiled machinery, stalled, soured works.

“Take me in there,” he commanded Miss Simmons. “Bring me, take me. Hurry, I have to see! My wheelchair. Damn,” he said, “the brakes are locked. Wait, I’ll unlock them. Shit,” he said, “my feet aren’t on the footrests. Wait, no, those swing into place. No, the whole whoosis swings over. Right. Yeah. Listen, can you lift up my legs? There. Thanks. There. Hey, thank you. Thanks. Push me into the hall.

“Hey,” he called in the hall, “what’s going on?” But he could see what was going on. His Stair-Glide was stuck, on the blink. Engaging the buttons on its arms, Dickerson could not get it to move. All ten of his students were arranged on the stairway. Frozen in his stare, they seemed like deer startled by headlights on the highway, like folks caught confused in a burning building, not knowing which way to turn in the fire, whether to try to make it to the top of the stairs where it wasn’t yet burning, or to plunge through the fire toward the door. Indeed, some seemed headed in one direction, others in another. Ms. Kohm had somehow been stripped of her powers. Schiff, to judge from the way they looked at him, at least temporarily restored to his. Yet he wasn’t sure he wasn’t mistaken about this. Many of them could have been hiding their real attitudes toward him under what might have been smirks behind the hands they held in front of their mouths. Smirks, or fear, or outright laughter.

Clearly they were still under the influence, had not yet come down. Schiff couldn’t understand the cause of their intoxication. He was certain they hadn’t imbibed that much liquor. Unless, again, strangely, he was somehow the cause, his freedom about himself somehow contributing to their vandalism of him.

“What happens now,” he demanded, “what happens now? Am I supposed to sleep on the couch, or what? Look what you’ve done. You’ve busted my Stair-Glide. How do I get upstairs? How do I get upstairs now?”

“That’s nothing to worry about,” Miss Carter explained. “There are ten of us here, eleven counting that one.” She pointed to Miss Simmons. “If worse comes to worse, we could always carry you.”