Alice Friendling says once she saw a blind man carrying what looked like a box of tools, and she remembers thinking: The man is in his fifties and has managed all this time without me, he probably knows there are stairs in front of him. But he blind man fell headlong down the stairs. She says the toolbox made an awful clatter. The light in the room is gone. Nobody moves.
Meyers says his mother died about the time he won his Pulitzer. He says he asked her, “Mother, are you proud of what I’ve done?” She answered, “What do I care what you’re doing. I’m dying.”
Someone goes to make drinks.
Meyers says, “I always meant to put it in a poem.”
“Will you send it to The Magazine?” asks Maurie.
“I sent you five poems a week ago,” says William. “You didn’t so much as acknowledge receipt.”
Maurie says, “I don’t have a secretary. I’ve been away. I’ve had the flu. And now with Lucinella dying …”
“Poor old Lucinella! So embarrassing!” says Betterwheatling.
Winterneet glares. “How do you mean, ‘embarrassing’?”
“Winterneet, come off it,” I say. “You know what Betterwheatling means. I saw you at my funeral trying not to smile.” But I have no voice with which to argue. “He means I’ve slipped on the Great Banana Peel and am permanently floored!” I shout.
“I mean,” says Betterwheatling, “how would you like everybody standing there, knowing that you’re dead?”
Betterwheatling’s saying what I mean turns me on and I reach out to touch him. I remember at a party once, Friendling, whom I’d known for years but never really talked to, said something—I forget what it was that moved me. I saw him look down, surprised to see it was my hand on his elbow, and yet I didn’t want a thing, I swear, except to feel his male and human arm bending inside the cloth tube of his sleeve.
Betterwheatling does not look down. Nothing has touched him. I yank at his arm, pound it. I hurl myself at Betterwheatling. Screeching, I grab the damn pie plate to send it crashing and cause some echo in this world, but they go on, quietly, talking. Dear god, if ghosts had the capacity to polter it wouldn’t be for mischief but from a longing to connect with matter, if it’s only to move it from here to there. But I have no forefinger and thumb with which to take hold of anything.
When you come to think about it, doesn’t incorporeality mean that I neither displace air nor rival any other object in it and can affect no thing. We have maligned the incubus! I think it comes into our beds without equipment, in a desperation of tenderness.
I have no cheek to lay against William’s back. He has doubled over.
Maurie says, “I’m going to call Yaddo,” and William says, “Yes, please. And then would you please go home. Lucinella was more fun than anybody. Also, she could be so awful I still want to murder her. What do I do now with all that unfinished business? Please, Ulla, don’t start tidying, it’s something for me to do when you’ve gone. No, really, I don’t need, I don’t want, anyone sleeping over.” He says, “Come back tomorrow, but now, please, all of you, go home.” He is embraced, embraces, closes the door behind them, and leans his head against it, devastated at their going.
William picks up a cup and saucer and puts it down again. Poor William, you always thought that you helped tidy because you held two glasses and walked behind me, talking about who’d been here and what they’d said or meant. We agreed it was the best part of every party, but why did I have to talk and tidy? Why did I mind? William goes into the bathroom and douses his face with water. I used to think, William, that it wasn’t love if you left your towel scrumpled after use, though I told and told you it couldn’t dry. I was always going to love you, William, as soon as you shaped up. That’s why I nagged and nagged you to straighten your towel out. Also, you do have a tendency to whine if somebody turns down a poem, and the back of your neck is skimpy. I used to kiss it to apologize, or was that love?
William has picked up my shoes and two pairs of panties from the floor—poor William, the ghoulish job of getting rid of my bits and pieces. He puts them down again and lies back on the couch, though he knows that bedspread costs four bucks to dry-clean, but now I know he will put his dirty shoes on white wool through eternity, I don’t mind. Dear William, hope was the enemy! There’s not a man alive, now, I couldn’t love, William, now I’d know how!
Yesterday William arrived at Yaddo and when he saw the lilac in full bloom he wept, but this morning it is even more purple. Once I saw a dancer gain the top of his leap, leap higher, and stand in the air.
It is after noon. This is the third time William comes out of his study and goes around the back. Daily he takes in meat and drink, uses part, and gives the rest back. His elbow bends his arm at an efficient angle so that his thumb and forefinger can close on the tab of his zipper. Who says life isn’t sweet with the sun still high for hours to come?
Through his study window William watches J. D. Winterneet walk up the drive with an old man’s careful step. William opens his mouth and howls and looks around shocked to be making such a noise. There’s no one to hear him, except me.
At the table the silver bowl is full of lilacs. Since ghosts have neither breath nor noses, I can smell nothing, but then I never was very live to odors. William’s poems are full of fragrances. He leans into the heavy sweetness, and because the conversation is friendly and funny, William aches for me, knows now that I really am dead, deader than I was a week ago; daily I recede and William hauls me into the dining room by saying “Lucinella always said …” But even Winterneet, who used rather to like me, cannot, on such short notice, come up with the appropriate feeling to entertain a dead woman over his chocolate mousse and whipped cream, and it does me no good, William! The time has come to argue myself to my conclusion. Ergo, if I have not the wherewithals to speak, or touch, or smell, I know I have no ears either. The world’s sound has switched off. As on a silent television screen I see William’s head laid back. Only the convulsive motion of his shoulders tells me he laughs. I told you I’d go in a little while. Sense by sense I unthink myself. I think I’m ready now to know I see nothing. Where is William? Where’s everybody! I can no longer see William laughing, nor Winterneet raise his cup of coffee to his lips, one elbow on the massive table with its carved and foolish legs. I no longer see the silver bowl full of flowers, nor feel my grief at my absence nor know anything for in the end there is no word
OTHER TITLES IN THE ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
HERMAN MELVILLE
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER
HENRY JAMES
MY LIFE
ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DEVIL
LEO TOLSTOY
THE TOUCHSTONE
EDITH WHARTON
THE HOUND OF THE
BASKERVILLES
THE DEAD
JAMES JOYCE
FIRST LOVE
IVAN TURGENEV
A SIMPLE HEART
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
RUDYARD KIPLING
MICHAEL KOHLHAAS
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE BEACH OF FALESÁ
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
THE HORLA
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED
HADLEYBURG
MARK TWAIN
THE LIFTED VEIL
GEORGE ELIOT
THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
BENITO CERENO
HERMAN MELVILLE
MATHILDA
MARY SHELLEY
STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE
SHOLEM ALEICHEM
FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES
JOSEPH CONRAD
HOW THE TWO IVANS QUARRELLED
NIKOLAI GOGOL
MAY DAY
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA
SAMUEL JOHNSON
THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
THE LEMOINE AFFAIR
MARCEL PROUST
THE COXON FUND
HENRY JAMES
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH
LEO TOLSTOY
TALES OF BELKIN
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
THE AWAKENING
KATE CHOPIN
ADOLPHE
BENJAMIN CONSTANT
THE COUNTRY OF
THE POINTED FIRS
SARAH ORNE JEWETT
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE NICE OLD MAN
AND THE PRETTY GIRL
ITALO SVEVO
LADY SUSAN
JANE AUSTEN
JACOB’S ROOM
VIRGINIA WOOLF
THE DUEL
GIACOMO CASANOVA
THE DUEL
ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DUEL
JOSEPH CONRAD
THE DUEL
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE DUEL
ALEXANDER KUPRIN
THE ALIENIST
MACHADO DE ASSIS
ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE
WILLA CATHER
FANFARLO
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
THOMAS HARDY
THE ENCHANTED WANDERER
NIKOLAI LESKOV
OTHER TITLES IN
THE CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES
THE PATHSEEKER / IMRE KERTÉSZ
THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / GILBERT ADAIR
THE NORTH OF GOD / STEVE STERN
CUSTOMER SERVICE / BENOÎT DUTEURTRE
BONSAI / ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA
ILLUSION OF RETURN / SAMIR EL-YOUSSEF
CLOSE TO JEDENEW / KEVIN VENNEMANN
A HAPPY MAN / HANSJÖRG SCHERTENLEIB
SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / TAO LIN
LUCINELLA / LORE SEGAL
SANDOKAN / NANNI BALESTRINI