The Collected Stories Read online

  “Tell him you’re pregnant.”

  “Tell him I’m pregnant? I’ll say,‘Your friendship means more to me than anything, but I’m pregnant, so I can’t do it, I want to do it, but I’m liable to vomit. I can’t even look at a pizza.”’

  Kafka imagines a man who has a hole in the back of his head. The sun shines into this hole. The man himself is denied a glimpse of it. Kafka might as well be talking about the man’s face. Others “look into it.” The most public, promiscuous part of his body is invisible to himself. How obvious. Still, it takes a genius to say that the face, the thing that kisses, sneezes, whistles, and moans is a hole more private than our privates. You retreat from this dreadful hole into quotidian blindness, the blindness of your face to itself. You want to light a cigarette or fix yourself a drink. You want to make a phone call. To whom? You don’t know. Of course you don’t. You want to phone your face. The one you’ve never met. Who you are.

  Jimmy says he met a woman at a literary conference in Miami. They spent the night talking and smoking marijuana in his hotel room. They read their stories to each other. He says he had a great time. Never touched once. The talk was so good. Later it came to him — he doesn’t know why — that was no woman. That was a man. He saw her the next day. He wanted to ask but he couldn’t think how to put it. “Hey, man, are you a man?” Either way, her feelings would be hurt. He snaps his fingers, claps, says, “That is the trouble with women, you dig?”

  Plato says the face is a picture of the soul. Could this be true? I thought how noses, teeth, ears, and eyes — in the faces of Evelyn’s ancestors — flowing through the centuries, had combined to make the picture of her soul. But then she had her teeth fixed and her ears pinned back. A face is more like a word than like a picture. It has a sort of etymology. Ancient meanings, drawn from the experience of races, from geography and weather, from flora and fauna, collect in a face just as meanings collect in a word. In Evelyn’s face, I saw the travels of Marco Polo, the fall of Constantinople, the irredentist yearnings of Hungaro — Romanians. How many ancestors vanished when Evelyn had her teeth fixed? In Evelyn’s face I saw the hordes of Genghis Khan invading Poland. Among them was a yellow brute, with a long mustache flowing away from his nostrils like black ribbons. He raped Evelyn’s great-great-great-grandmother with his fierce prick, thereby giving a distinctly slanted plane to Evelyn’s cheekbones, her nicest feature.

  I’m in Boris’s living room. He fixed me a drink. We sit in chairs facing each other. His girlfriend prepares dinner. I’m grateful for the comfort, the prospect of dinner with them. I’ve brought a bottle of wine, but it’s hardly enough. I must give of myself, something personal, something real. None of us has long enough to live for yet another civilized conversation. Boris waits, enjoying the wine. He looks peaceful. Perhaps the book he is writing is going well, but I don’t ask. A book is a tremendous project of excruciating difficulty; sacred business. Thomas Mann lit candles before he began to write. Kafka imagined huge spikes below his desktop which would drive into his knees. To ask Boris if his book is going well would be like asking if he writes with a pencil or a pen. I tell Boris I’m still working on the screenplay. I hope that makes him feel good, superior to me. A screenplay is a low order of writing, nothing compared to a book.

  He says, “Don’t be ashamed. Movies are the most important art form of our day.” As always, he’s brilliantly penetrating. I am embarrassed, confused. I wanted to say something real, but offered a species of fraudulence. He saw through it. I can’t stop now. I tell him the work is torture, hours and hours of typing, though it is relieved by flights to New York and L.A., fine hotels and good restaurants, the company of celebrities, actors, whores.

  Boris says,“I don’t want to hear about it.”

  The pleasant noise from the kitchen, where his girlfriend cooks, comes to a stop. She overheard us. Women have superb ears. In the deepest sleep, they can hear a baby crying. She appears in the living room, saying, “We’re going to have the most delicious crab that ever lived.”

  I say, “What do you mean you don’t want to hear about it?”

  She says, “Boris only means …” but he raises his hand, cuts her short. Then he says, “I just don’t want to hear about it, that’s all. Fuck it.”

  I’m yelling now, “Well, what the fuck do you want to hear about?”

  “How about my book?” he shouts. “You never fucking ask about my book.”

  The woman started doing it again, scratching at her neck. It was difficult to ignore. Her neck was reddish near the collar, almost bloody. I tried to look elsewhere, but I lectured in confusion and finally dismissed the class early. Amid the rush of students, I stopped her.

  “Miss Toiler, do you notice how students chew gum and writhe in their seats?”

  “You must see everything.”

  “I do,” I said, pressing her with my look, urging her silently to understand, to leap from the general to the particular. I stood close to her, too close, but she appeared comfortable, receptive. Her blue eyes were light as her hair, the pupils dark and flat. Her hair was exceptionally fine, several shades below blond. Something in me relaxed, grew still, gazing, desiring nothing. It didn’t matter, suddenly, that she scratched at her neck. She was in her late twenties, older than most of my students. They were gone now, the hallway empty. I could speak to the point. Nobody would overhear.

  “You’re not from California, are you?”

  Thus, no point. I had changed the subject I never raised, and then I asked if she’d like to have coffee.

  “We arrived this summer,” she said. “My husband took a job with an engineering firm in Palo Alto.”

  Her gray wool suit and black shoes were wrong for the hot September morning. Her creamy silk blouse, also too warm, was sealed high on her neck by a cameo, obscuring scratches she had inflicted on herself. She looked correct in an East Coast way, insulated by propriety.

  “Stanton is a geologist and an engineer.”

  I imagined a tall Stanton, then no — average height, or maybe a short man with a lust for power, or, like her black shoes, officious and priestly. I knew nothing. My mind swung around the periphery of concern, like my spoon in the coffee cup.

  “Do you have children?”

  “I have horses.” Smiling, lips together, showing no teeth. Her horses were special, delicious. She blushed, an emotional phenomenon long vanished from this world. It embarrassed me. She said she loved to ride in the hills after dinner. She’d once seen a bobcat. Her voice lifted. The memory excited her. I smiled consciously, trying to seem pleased.

  “In Palo Alto?”

  She giggled. “We live far from any town.”

  She didn’t scratch at her neck, but occasionally pushed her knuckles at her nose. She had long, tapering, spiritual fingers. Her skirt, tightfitting, showed the line of her thigh, good athletic legs. I guessed that she played tennis in Palo Alto.

  “I should tell you that I’ll be missing some classes. I have to go to doctors’ appointments.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “I might have a tropical parasite. Nigerian fluke. We lived in Africa for a year while Stanton worked for an oil company” She smiled again in the prissy way. The smile was self-mocking and embarrassed. Telling about the fluke presumed too much.“It’s probably an allergy. All the new grasses and flowers. The Bay Area is a hotbed of allergies. Stanton loved Africa. He doesn’t blame me for ruining things. I had a persistent fever. Poor Stanton quit the job because of me. He’s so good. Very healthy. He lifts weights.” She grinned, shrugged. “I go on too much.”

  “Not at all. I’m interested.”

  At the south gate, we said goodbye. I went to my office. There was a knock, then Henry peeked in. “Busy?” He carried an unlit cigarette. I waved him inside. He sat; lit his cigarette. His head, fixed high on a skinny neck, was eagle-like; critical. “What’s new?” he said.

  “I have a student who tears at her neck while I lecture. What should I
do?”

  “I never thought of you as squeamish.”

  “I’m not squeamish.”

  “I would like to tell you about an extremely offensive student, but you won’t believe me.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “If you repeat it, I’ll say it’s a lie. There’s a gentleman in my class — a a Mr. Woo — who has a mandarin fingernail.”

  “No shit.”

  “On the little finger of his left hand, the nail is ten inches long. It’s a symbol of his leisurely life.”

  “You find his fingernail extremely offensive?”

  “Why should I care about his fingernail?”

  “I didn’t say you cared.”

  “His face is a mass of pus pimples and he grins at me throughout the hour, as if everything I say is intended for him.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “I want to throw a knife through his face.”

  “You do?”

  “There’s a pilot in my class who is an alcoholic. All pilots, surgeons, and judges are drunks. You know this is true?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  Henry stood, turned to the door. “Let’s have lunch next week,” he said.

  “O.K. Tuesday”

  “Impossible.”

  “Thursday.”

  “No.”

  “You tell me what day”

  “I will.” He left.

  After the next class, Toiler waited outside the room, leaning against a wall, pretending to read her notes. She wore the same suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie. She looked boyish, ascetic, pretty.

  “Would you like to have coffee? I’ll buy it this time.”

  I couldn’t remember saying yes.

  As we talked, she didn’t touch her face or neck. Had I cured her by seeming flirtatious? Sexual juices have healing power. I’d intended nothing, but the human face, with its probing looks and receptive smiles, is a sexual organ. I wondered if Toiler, scratching at her neck, yearned only to be touched.

  She said,“I won’t be able to meet you after class next time. I go to my doctor.”

  I hadn’t asked her to meet me.

  She missed the next class and the next and the next.

  Maybe I was glad not to see her, but I didn’t wonder. I simply forgot her. Over the years whole classes go from memory, as if you’d been lecturing to nobody, hallucinating in the flow of academic seasons. Thales, the first philosopher, said everything is water. I remembered Thales as I stared out my office window at the black-green trees of the Berkeley hills and the glaring blue of a cloudless sky. A hawk circled. There was some bird or mouse, generating flirtatious signals, calling to the hawk.

  The term was half over when I found Toiler waiting outside my office. “I must talk about dropping the class,” she said.

  I ushered her inside, gesturing toward the chair. She wore a new suit, summery cotton, lavender with a dull sheen. Its vitality suggested compromise with California. The dark green silk of her blouse had the lush solemnity of a rain forest. It lay open negligently, not casually, revealing a bra strap and scratches on her neck, like spears of thin red grass slanted this way and that by an uncertain wind. She wasn’t cured.

  “I thought you’d dropped the class.”

  “It’s the doctors’ appointments. They can’t tell me anything. All they do is give me different drugs. Can I take the class independently? I’ll make up the work, do the reading on my own, and write a paper.”

  A breeze, from the slightly open window behind her, pressed the back of her neck. She shivered.

  “Are you uncomfortable? Move away from the window”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Independent study means conferences. Driving back and forth. Hours on the highway.”

  “I want to do it.” She was resigned to the highway, resigned to sit shivering. I felt irrationally annoyed. She’d asked for only a small privilege, a chance to do the classwork.

  The spasms became stronger. Her torn neck demanded attention. Was it a plea for help? Students in my office sometimes cried over disaffected boyfriends, alcoholic parents, suicidal roommates. I stood up and said, “I’ll shut the window.” I stepped to the window, knowing I wanted only to shut her blouse. The window was built in an old, luxurious style, plenty of oak and glass. I pulled. It moved a little, then stuck, fused in its runners.

  “Please don’t bother,” she said.

  Her face, close to my right hip, looked dismayed and apologetic, with sweet pre-Raphaelite melancholy, otherworldly, faintly morbid. Her husband didn’t blame her for ruining things. I could see why. Dreamy hair, eyes of a snow leopard, lacerated neck. I felt pity, not blame; frustration more than pity. The window wouldn’t move. Then her fingers slid beneath the sash. To pull from the bottom. Ethereal fingers vanished as sixty pounds of wood and glass rushed down. Smashed them. She gasped. I lunged, shoving the window back up, the strength of gorillas suddenly in my arms. “I’m so sorry,” I said, backing away. She whispered, “My fault, my fault,” her eyes lit by weird, apologetic glee. “I did it. It’s my own fault.”

  Her hands lay palms up in her lap, fingers greenish-blue. They looked dead, a memory of hands. I sat, waiting for it to end. Turgid feeling, like the walls of a tomb, enclosed us. I said,“Drop the course. Take it independently. Do it any way you like.”

  She whispered, “Don’t you care what I do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know”

  “I do?”

  “You started this.”

  “This?”

  “Yes, this.”

  “What? You sit there shivering in front of me. I go to the window. You stick your hands under it …”

  She leaned forward and kicked me in the shin. Her green blouse, with its open collar, looked more dissolute than negligent; the torn neck fierce. Her posture stiffened, as if she carried a bowl of indignation within. Abruptly she reached to her purse, snapping it open. She removed a pearly comb and pulled it through her hair swiftly. Her hands were all right. She stopped, glanced at me, startled, remembering where she was.

  “May I?” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  Long, gleaming tears flowed from her eyes, in the way of a child too deeply hurt to make a sound. She combed her hair. I watched. She finished, put the comb back into her purse, snapped it shut, and walked to the door in three brisk steps, as if she had somewhere to go. Books and papers lay on my desk in a meaningless clutter. I put them in order as the office darkened.

  The next day I received a note on heavy beige paper, in a fine, small, careful handwriting. It said she’d dropped all classes, apologized for wasting my time, and thanked me for being patient. Squeezed into the right corner was a phone number. I read the note twice, looking for more than it said. The clear script, with its even pressure, said nothing inadvertently. I folded it, put it into my pocket, then picked up the phone. I was about to do something I’d regret. I shouldn’t phone her, I thought. My concern will be misinterpreted. After dialing I listened only to ringing, monotonous ringing. I phoned her from my office, gas stations, drugstores, restaurants …

  One afternoon, on the way out to lunch with Henry, I said, “A student of mine who lived in Africa came back with a parasite. She calls it Nigerian fluke. Have you heard of it?”

  “Nigerian fluke is fatal in every case. I’ve had many students who were diseased …”

  “She dropped out.”

  “See?” Henry seized my elbow and stopped me, grinning as if pleased, yet frightened. “But I’m not a doctor,” he said. “And I’ve never been right about anything. She’s dead?”

  “Dropped out. That’s all I know.”

  As we left the building, he asked, “Were you smitten by her?”

  The daylight was so pure there seemed nothing to say. Like creatures sliding into a lake without disturbing the surface, we entered it.

  I visited a monastery in the wilderness. The monks had carved every stone by h
and. It took years to complete. They were content, but their work was so ugly it seemed to comment on their faith. I wandered in halls and courtyard looking for a redeeming touch. There was none. In works of self-abnegating faith is there necessary ugliness?

  In the American South, it’s said of a medical student,“He is going to make a doctor.” For writers there is no comparable expression, no diploma, no conclusive evidence that anything real has been made of himself or herself.

  I go to the movies. The hero’s girlfriend, about twenty years younger than he, tells him that he is made stupid by his closeness to realities such as work, debts, domestic life. He sees too clearly the little daily facts. He lacks historical understanding, the perspective required for political action. She berates him because he doesn’t assassinate the President, blow up a department store, change the world. He sits stolidly in his tweed jacket and dark knit tie. The seriousness of his expression tells me that he suffers, like a European intellectual, the moral weight of thought. He has no choice. The scriptwriter gave him nothing to say in defense of himself. I want to shout at his girlfriend for him, “What do you know, you narcissistic bitch with your bullshit Marxism and five-hundred-dollar shoes from Paris,” etc. But she is good-looking. I grow quiet inside and try to take in her whole meaning. I wonder, if she were plain, would I put up with her for a minute? The hero wants to be a good man, think the right thoughts, do the right things. I believe he wants more to shove his face between her legs. The scriptwriter is no fool. Why should he give the hero anything to say? It’s enough to sustain a serious expression. This is like life, but I think I can’t stand it another minute, when suddenly she puts her face in her hands, collapses beneath a weight of feeling, and says she wants his baby; that is, she wants him to give her a baby. They lie down on a narrow couch, still wearing their clothes, him in his oppressive tweed jacket, which probably stinks of cigarettes. He is presumably giving her a baby as the scene fades. Is this also like life? Oh, come off it. The question is, When did I last do it with my clothes on? My senior year in high school? No, I remember a hard, cold, dirty floor, papers strewn about, and a shock of hot wet flesh through clothing, wintry light in the windows, the radiator banging, a draft from beneath the door sliding across my ass, the telephone ringing, voices outside saying, “He isn’t here.” “Knock.” “I knocked, he isn’t here.” And the indifference to all that in her eyes, their yellowish-brown gaze taking me into her feelings. She said, “Wait for me.