Short story by U.R. Bowie, from the forthcoming collection, Stories from Russian Literature
Copyright 2014, all rights reserved
Link to Nabokov's collected stories on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679729976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408454743&sr=1-1&keywords=nabokov+short+stories
U.R. Bowie
Hobnob
Time and place: The Ohio State University, Denney
Hall (New Arts College Building), June 15, 1952. Final exam week.
Dramatis Personae: (1) “Hob” –Robert Hobson, 19,
student taking final in course on European literature (2) “Nob”—Vladislav
Nabkin, well-known writer of fiction, professor who taught the course and who
is now proctoring the exam (3) father of Hobson (deceased) (4) father of Nabkin
(deceased) (5) Supernumeraries filling seats in the auditorium
…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Hob
"As he was
a heavy sleeper, old Dicky, Dicky Dickerson, brought so afraid, so afraid of
missing tomorrow's glory, glory but then does it really, as he, Being a heavy
sleeper, Dicky Dickerson was mortally afraid, mortally fatally so what he did
was to buy and bring home a to buy and bring home to borrow all over the
dormitory alarm clocks not one yes one one magnum magnum not two not three
mortally fatally, of different sizes and vigor of ticking, old mucked-up Dicky
Dickerson, nine, eight, seven, no six alarm clocks of all different sizes,
placing them in strategic spots around the room, which made his look rather
like a five four three two rather like a"
PICK ONE AND ONLY ONE ESSAY QUESTION
A.
"Start
with the given mumbo jumbo and work it into a coherent treatise on the Molly
soliloquy from Ulysses."
Hard.
Old
screwed-up Dicky Dickerson, Bobby Hoberson, and the thing just rang and rang,
big important test waiting out there, Bobby, time to wake up and face the but I
don't want to face it, keep it down below conscious water, but then it broke
free and surged to surface surgesurfacing grabbed my mind. The pain.
Physical
pain, emotional pain, most esteemed Herr Doktor Professor. Neuralgic stuff been
with me since May. Xylocaine doesn't help. Hurts along the course of a nerve,
can be in the back of the head, the neck, with me it's between the ribs. But
I'm used to living with that.
So
this is how the story goes: "Mumble
mumble, lyrical wave, mumble lyrical wave; mumble blunder, sucked asunder,
mumble lyrical wave--FANTASTIC CLIMAX--mumble grumble, why do we fumble,
lyrical wave, lyrical wave, waddle waddle, fuck-a-duck twaddle, tweekledum and
tweekledee, maunder mumble, lyrical wave--WILD POSTLOGUE--mumble mutter, life's
languid clutter, maunder on, maunder on blah blah blah blah blah, and then
slither-dither slowly, ineluctably, back into primordial ooze." No, that's not Ulysses. But I should get some credit, since it's a
direct (almost) quote from my classroom notes on the structure of Nikolai
Gogol’s “Overcoat.”
Time
to start. Get this exam done, Bob Hobson, and get it over with. Prove you're a
better man than him... Swell-looking girl. Greasy blonde hair could use a wash,
but then, after all, it's exam week. She gets up to sharpen her pencil, yes,
nice behind, and the pencil grinds away, going ticonda, ticonda, ticonda,
ticonda, roga, roga, roga reega, reega, REEGA REEGA REEGA ahhhhhh… whirr,
whirr, silence. You can take it out now.
Got
to get my butt in gear. Just turn the page in the bluebook and begin,
red-headed, green-eyed Bobby Hobson.
...............................................................
Nob
As
he, A heavy sleeper, Roger Rogerson, old Rogerson bought old Rogers brought...
And so… Being a heavy sleeper, so afraid, so afraid of missing tomorrow's
insomnia. Insomnia. Is it a blessing or a curse? After all, Vladik Vladerson, heavy sleepers
miss so much in the night, and then again, you never are so receptive as after
a sleepless, your omnivorous eye so eager to eat the essence of living life,
something, that pimply lad, watching the blonde, every freckle on his nose
gleaming with concupiscence, he's writing on great lit but his mind's on female
tail, so mortally afraid of missing tomorrow's, but then, what is great lit if
not an elevated wallow in the netherly-bodily, the vigorous fornication of your
brain waves? No, of course it's more
than that, Vladvlad, afraid of missing tomorrow's early train into the tunnel
of love glory glory, so what he did was he bought and he brought home that
evening not one yes one but ten nine alarm clocks seven nine as a pussy has
nine lives ticking, ticking away which he placed which made his bedroom look
like a and then they, the clocks, all gird up their loins, take a deep breath
five four three two and ring out in unison, a choir of chimes, Roger, Roger
(“roger”--an eighteenth century British slang term for the male organ) old
Roger Doberson. Can't see the nape of her neck from here.
Stop
wasting time. Finish writing your letter. "No, Catherine. It’s a take it
or leave it, an analogue of a Hobson’s
choice. Just publish the story the way I wrote it. You can bludgeon me,
blandish me, nudge me outlandishly, but I won't give up the word
'hobnailnobbing.'" The pain...
So here we sit
on the ides of June, 1952, in the Amphitheatre of Academe. The moment of
reckoning. Exam runs eight a.m. to ten thirty. It's hot. The smell of
sweat. Their deodorant's broken down,
but no, they don't use deodorant during exam week. A superstition. No washing no shaving, let the body stink,
concentrate on the fetid brain waves; get the thoughts attenuated, penciled
down between lines in bluebooks. Me, the proctor, my premonitory spiel:
"You have a total of two and one half hours. Please answer only one
question. Remember that the details
count, the details. Anyone
mentioning the words 'symbol' or 'sincere' will be automatically assigned a
grade of 'F.' Any questions? Yes, you may use the pencil sharpener without
asking permission, but you must shut down the waterworks (kidneys, even bowels)
until you complete your composition. All right, then, begin. Bon voyage."
Graffito
in a "men's room" booth down the hall: "What are we doing here?" Apparently an ontological крик души, cri de
coeur (“heartfelt plaint”?). Answer written below, in a different hand:
"We are partaking in the universal process of elimination."
Little coughs,
coming in clusters. You cough, then I'll cough, then we'll all cough-cough in a
chorus of coughing. Now dirizhiruet the invisible dirizhor (conductor, chef
d’orchestre), who slams down his baton to cut it all off, and they go back to
sweating in silence. But then he raises the stick once more, his grim furrowed
face. He’s bald on top, with long grey hair hiding the crisscross of wrinkles
on his neck nape, as another face, two warts for eyes, peers out backwards from
the bald spot, at us, the audience. Wiggle of the stick and they respond with a
communal turning of pages/scores rustle rustle rustle--good teamwork,
orchestra.
Looks directed
at me, hostile envious (after all, I am the god who gives out the grades). A
quick stab into my eyes and then she raises hers to the ceiling in pious
meditation.
What
are they thinking? I'm in pain. Come on, ribs, steel yourselves (ryobra,
in Russian, the word itself is a groan). Are they thinking anything worth
thinking? They are, I fear, banalizing the brilliant insights I've spoon-fed
them, regurgitating onto paper not my salubrious nourishment, but the acidic
gallimaufry they've concocted in their own petty intestines. And yet, as
teachers, do we not reap our greatest rewards through reverberations of our
minds in such minds as vibrate in later years? But I'm sick of teaching, sick
of teaching. I yearn to write! Away with
lectures, deadheaded students! Time to
garner up, like Plewshkin, bits of straw, fluff, the minutiae of life. Eat some
pebbles, conceive!
Time
to write another letter:
"Dear Ed,
I
crawled back to Columbus in the grip of a hideous neuralgia intercostalis.
Spent a week in bed. The pain is a cross between pneumonia and heart trouble;
there's always an iron finger prodding you in the side. It's a rare illness,
like everything about me... Now we're in the midst of "spring
finals," and I'll have 150 exams to slog through (in high fisherman's
waders, holding my nose with thumb and index finger of left hand) before Tonya
and I can leave for Arizona. At this moment I sit calmly writhing in a
cavernous auditorium, while my students pour their coruscations into
bluebooks."
Strange. Those two.
Side by side on the front row.
There's no resemblance at all, but I looked at them and got a sudden
frisson of the gruesome: the assassins, Tork and Baboritsky. How many years has
it been now?
.................................................................
Hob
B.
"Discuss
the double-dream theme as embodied in two teams of twin dreamers: Stephen--Bloom (Ulysses) and
Vronski--Anna (Anna Karenina)." Jesus Christ. Couldn't you think of
a cutsier, artsier way of posing the question? Among the things that make me
angry about this course: (1) Why did we need to know, and to draw a picture of!
exactly what kind of cockroach Gregor turned into? This is not a fucking course
on entomology. A cockroach is a cockroach is a. He could have woke up as an
armadillo, and the point of Kafka's story would be the same. (2) Why did we
have to draw a diagram of the inside of a railway carriage, on the
Moscow-Petersburg line in 1876? If we can't understand Tolstoy’s novel without
this, then why don't you need, say, a sketch of Anna's bedroom in the deathbed
scene or a picture of a marsh with sedge in the hunting scenes, or an
anatomical chart showing Kitty's erogenous zones?
If
you want to draw pictures, why not teach painting instead of literature?
Tolstoy paints the word pictures for us, that's the point, and each of us
repaints them imaginatively. You want us to repaint them the way you do,
but I intend to paint my way, and another thing, how dare you tell us,
"Just skip the apotheosis of the grain"? Why, it's one of the great
scenes in world literature, Levin out mowing with the peasants. And I'll have
you know that I read it and reread it, and I'm prepared to write you an essay
about how wonderful, 'symbolic' and 'sincere' it is.
Tell
you what, Mr. Learned F. Prof, sitting up there on the proscenium, with your
aristocratic nose in the air. Here's a drawing of a dead duck, shot by Levin
and retrieved by his dog Laska. It's dripping blood and guts. Now that's
down-to-earth Tolstoyan realism. Take a good sniff, you effete, modernist
hoity-toity high and mighty...
So
afraid. The pain. The pain.
Don't know which is worse, physical pain or mental. Did Joyce or Kafka
ever treat the subject? Twinned dream squeme theme scream shit. So why did he
do it? My father. Why did you do it, huh?
Everybody's a double of everyone else, Tolstoy’s wife Sonya once wrote a
story about Dublitsky, Dublitsky, any man's death diminishes me, for I am
involved in mankind. My major is English lit.
Most
esteemed professor! Hope you won't
mind. I have decided to eschew the
questions provided and to write my exam on an entirely different subject. Leo
Tolstoy once said...
My
father was not a particularly remarkable man.
I once remember him reading a book on flying saucers; can't recall him
reading anything else except the morning papers. But you see, honorable
academic sir, his son Bobby Hob was/is an 'intellectual,' the first of his line
to indulge in matters of the mind. By the time I was ten I already knew that
Father's petty trains of thought were not the kind I wished to buy tickets on
and ride, oh no. Let him sell his real estate and go out fishing twice a week.
Leave me alone to my sublime cogitations.
But
he wouldn't. He wanted me to be a son worthy of him, tough and masculine. And to fish. When I was little he used to harangue
me, routing me out of my solitude. Be normal, be a real boy! I still hate him
for that, I mean I hated him. Now I forgive him, I forgive you, father, for you
knew not what you did, but why, why the? We could have talked about it, I mean
who can talk if not a father and son? In the twenty years I've known you, knew
you, why didn't we ever have a conversation?
One.
Twin dream theme. Two half. Half not. To half and half not. You can't really
split us in two. Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky... Last week, for the whole of last
week, the stomach of my dreams was tied up in knots. Was it a premonition? How
much time do we have left? Am I going to write this exam? You damn right I am!
Nob
Fathers
and sons. Turgenev. In Russian the title is actually Fathers and Children
(Отцы и дети). God, how lucky I am to have had a father like
Father. His tender soul and brilliant mind. How lucky... Literary sons, литературные
сыновья, always strive to annihilate the fathers, show they
can do more, be better, but I never should have written that frivolous thing on
Gogol. Thought I had him in ignominious retreat, run out of the book named
after him, the structural plan (run him out of his own biography and take his
place), but then, when you read Gogol your eyes and your mind get Gogolized,
you find yourself in the throes of gobbledygook and gogoldegookery. Last night
I was caught up in a hideous, grueling dream, looking back from my wallow in
that nightmare index of mine, sibilants all running amuck, me on hands and
knees in the mire, looked back and there he stands, that neurasthenic genius,
Niklolai Gogol, long-nosed and leering, cocking a snook at me.
I
sit here looking at all the little movements that make life out of present
moment: the curl-twisting,
pimple-teasing, the roving wide-eyed gazes... "The only real number is
one, the rest are repetitious." The collective mass of C minus, backbone
of the nation, sitting there spewing into bluebooks mass collectivist drivel.
Brain waves going, "Mumble mumble, lyrical surge," look at the
redheaded one, what's his name, don't know any of their names. He's profoundly
sunk in cogitation, putting pencil to paper with purposeful verve! Ah, the ache
in the brain, the ache-panache of the undergrad, enveloped in THOUGHT, or
UNTHOUGHT.
Little
blonde with stringy hair, been up twice to sharpen her sharp pencil. Spends
lots of time gazing on high: help me, Lord, send down some inspiration. Not
much to look at, but if viewed from behind I imagine a wonderful nape. I'll get
up and take a casual proctoring stroll to the back of the room--neck
proctologist on a ramble. When does the anxiety ease off? The brunette has a
body more to my taste, "down, down, thou cullionly randiness."
"Bright
ray of my life, throb in my loins, my sin, my succor, my suck." No, that won't do... “Fire of my loins,” what
would that be in Russian? Огонь моих чресел, awful! Tabork,
tabork, tabork... Things I loathe: jungle music, Freud, circuses, pornography
(most), dead minds of students, nightclubs, any kind of clubs, 'highballs,'
balls, political commitment, Dostoevsky, minds not in tune with my own, any
kind of music, critics who harp on 'ideas,' 'myths' and 'symbols,' politicians
(all), interpretations of literature that aren't my own, Pound, Gorky, Hemhaw
(who thinks he has, but has not), cretinous pin-brained murderers, Tork and
Bab.
Thirty
years. That long? Could they still be rotting away in a German prison? No, by
now they're dead or back out among their fellow degenerates of Berlin.
Arthritic and avuncular. At this very moment Tab or Bork or Tabork is sitting
in Teutonic sunshine, dandling a blue-eyed grandniece on a creaking knee. She's
smiling, now laughing: squeak haha, squeak haha. He's happy... Or then again, maybe she's straddling his
lap. Up down, up down. He sweats. She
yawns. "Hold that pose. Let me have a look at your uvula."
Filchenkov,
leader of the Cadet Party in emigration, spoke at the Philharmonic Hall:
"Europe and the Restoration of Russia." In the middle of the lecture
a short pockmarked man stands up in the crowd and starts walking, limping,
slowly to the front of the auditorium. Everyone is nonplussed: whither is this
crippled sleepwalker bound? But, most astounding in retrospect, nobody even
thinks to be alarmed. The speaker goes on with the lecture, and all eyes watch
the homunculus gimp his way along, and then (now) he has reached the front row
and our film suddenly bursts out of slow motion. He pulls a revolver,
shrieking, "For Tsar Nicholas the Martyr and for Mother Russia!" He
gets off several wild shots at Filchenkov. That's when Father jumped up from
his seat, grabbed the madman's arms and pinned him to the floor. And then the
other one came out of nowhere, leapt up on the stage and shot my father three
times in the back.
The
Viennese witchdoctor says we all want to bed our mother and kill our pa. What banality. God, how I loved that man. I'm
older now than he was then, but God, how I still love him. And don't tell me
the trite tale of the extinction of consciousness with death! I'll hand in my
ticket to eternity if they don't give it back to us, re-communion, our fully
knowing love for one another.
I'm
an optimist. Through the physical pain and the nerves of this difficult spring
I sense we'll be together again. They say Lev Nikolaevich once said, "Life
is a tartine de merde, which one is obliged to eat, slowly."
Disgusting old man, in his beetled brows and peasant blouse. No, life for me
has been freshly baked black bread, with country butter and orange blossom
honey... Except for the times when it's an excrement sandwich.
Hob
It
hurts, hurts in the ribs... Okay, sit up
there and look superior, mister blueblood patronizer. You just spent a semester
force-feeding us your la-tee-dah views on the transcendence of prettified lit.
You’re offended by the gross sensuality, the lack of balance, the vomit and hysteria
in Fyodor Dostoevsky. You told us he wasn't worth reading, so I went out and
read five novels. He was worth reading.
Oh,
shit, what am I doing here, taking this fucking test? What you're doing, dear Bobby, is engaging
with life in the game called "Elimination." Life wears us down,
eliminates our existence with its slow, inexorable, peristaltic movements.
While we resist the inevitable, the being eliminated. That's our job... Also sprach the redoubtable
philosopher, Robert L. Hobson! God, the
pain, the throbbing in the temples, the sterile turmoil of thoughts. Don't give up, keep on writing, red-headed
kid.
That's
what you called me when you joked around, "red-headed kid," but then,
you were red-headed too, with the same green eyes. Maybe that was your problem;
growing up with red hair is hard on a kid. You were damn good at selling real
estate, something about you could win people over, they liked you, the
freckles, you had charm, I've never had that in all my life. How did a man so
outgoing produce such an indrawn son? But you could have been kinder, you could
have tried to understand that people are different. I remember the time in the
new house, when I knocked over the bucket, ah the rage, you had such a temper
and then me, contrite me, mopping the floor feeling lower than low, and you
come in with a coke, trying to apologize, so you did really care about me,
didn't you?
Maybe
you were alone too much after the divorce. Is that what set your mind out of
whack, the divorce? But you, you... I'll never forgive you, how could you just
go and, didn't... Didn't I mean anything to you in the end?
...............................................................
Nob
Joggy,
jittery, buzzy with insomnia... Light of
my life, my rainbow, радуга моя...
They're on the
way to being done, thank God. The clearing of nervous throats, hoarse bursts of
sound, the communal sense of tedium and disaster is nearly exhausted. Tabork
directs its bovine gaze at me, then looks back down. Stringy blonde enveloped
in cerebration, bony arms linked behind lovely nape. Big-busted brunette puts
on a Giaconda smile. Yes, one could... Cramped wrists whining, pens in a panic
(out of ink, dried up, help!), armpits bewailing their missing dose of
deodorant, mouths in the throes of halitosis. The ginger-haired scholar has his
head down on the desk, done in by his encounter with THOUGHT (UN).
Some,
including my inner eye, say I'm a prig and a snob--that I see only the gestures
and poses of people. Must keep this personal weakness in mind when evaluating
my inferiors. Yes, the viscosity of consciousness cannot be determined by the
labels on the test tubes. Don't you forget that, Vladik Vladerson.
Oo,
oo, ahh, ahh, ahh, ugh. Been howling and
writhing since the end of May, when the neuralgia set in. The unceasing pain,
panic, nerves warped and ragged after all these wretched weeks...
Berlin.
Feb. 28, 1922. It had been a wonderful
day. I came home about nine and opened a volume of Fet’s poems. Mother was
laying out the cards for patience. All was quiet and peaceful. I read aloud the
sibilant, susurrous love poem, “Whispers, timid breathing” (Shopot, robkoe
dykhan’e). "How splendid that is," said Mother. The phone rang in
the hall. Not an especially strident ring--it was controlled, pedestrian.
Isachev’s
voice: --Who's that?
--It's Vladik.
Hello, Yakov Borisovich.
--Vladik, I'm
calling because I have to tell you something... I have to...
--Yes, go
on.
--Something has
happened to your father.
--What? What exactly do you mean?
--Something
horrible. We're sending a car.
--But what
happened?
--A car is on
the way to pick you up, you and your mother.
I
put down the phone, got to my feet.
Mother was standing by the door, looking at me. What is it? Nothing special. Father's had an accident, hurt his leg or
something. They're sending a car.
Her
eyes went wide. She stood there... I
changed my shirt, filled my cigarette case.
My thoughts, all my thoughts, clenched their teeth.
Hobnob
"Shattering
news arrives in the vestments of the commonplace." Two nights ago, was it
that long? I'm sitting in my dorm room, the phone rings down the hallway, and
someone comes to get me. Writing poetry and I don't welcome the interruption.
Hello... Yes, Mother. BIG BLANK
SPACE. Then: Are you still there? Yes,
Mother. BIG BLANK SPACE. Then: So you'll
come as soon as you can? Yes. Will you be all right? Yes. So when can you come
home? I'll be there, Mother, but I've got one more final to take.
Maybe
I should have gone right away, but I wanted to prove that Bobby Hobson is
tougher than the world ever gave me credit for being. So here I sit, most
esteemed chickenshit Professor, mired on bleak intercostal bogs, swamped in the
obloquy of aching ribs, proving nothing. Is that being tough? And now back to
my non-writing of this non-essay: my unthoughts recall that Tolstoy once said,
"Life is a shit sandwich, which we all must eat, slowly."
Then
came the night trip in the car, to the other side of the city. Mother and I,
and the whole febrile thing was somehow set outside of life. I recalled
the lovely afternoon on the commuter train with Aleksandra. I had traced out
the word 'happiness' (счастье) on the
fogged-in carriage window, and then every letter came trickling down in a damp
wriggle. Yes, my happiness had run down, and out. Our conversation the night
before, what do you say to a loved one in the final hobnob? We talked about the
opera Boris Godunov, trying to remember when Vanya returns after his
father has sent him away. Then I demonstrated a boxing clinch and he struggled
and laughed. Just before going to bed, I asked him to hand me the newspapers
from the next room, where he was undressing. When he passed them through the
slit of the parted doors I didn't even see his hands, and that movement, I
remember, seemed gruesome, ghostly--as if the papers had come floating through
all by themselves.
Some
years from now, after Robert Hobson is a household word in the literary
pantheon, I can fabricate a better story about how I got the news and how I
responded. Right now it's still just one
enormous numb blank space... Why didn't we laugh more together, wrestle around
like fathers and sons do? There was the time way back when, on the Western
motor trip, at a gas station in Texas, and he comes back to the car from the
men's room cracking up. Says, "I'm
sitting there doing my business, and I hear this voice outside the booths, kind
of pleading: 'Could one of you fellows in there please hurry it up? I'm about
to mess my pants.' I said, 'Okay, hang
on just a sec, buddy,' and I finished things up right quick, flushed the toilet
and opened the door. Well, this bald-headed fat guy, he's standing there with
one leg crossed over the other, and he sort of hobbles like that, still
cross-legged, on into the booth, and as he does he nods at me and says, 'Thanks
a lot, old buddy, but I believe you're too late.'"
When
Mother called last night, she said, "I know you'll see him again, in some
natural paradise, where everything is radiance." We English majors learn
to sneer at sentiments like that. But all sneering aside, I can’t believe the
myth of afterlife. It's just too pat and contrived to be true. But we did have
that day in Texas, didn't we? We did laugh together... "Begin completing
your essays. Time's almost up, people. Fifteen minutes." Uh-oh. Looks like
hysteria's rising. Mr. Gingerhead's got the giggles, he's beaming laughter out
of those strange green eyes. Who does he remind me of? Father. Why, why for
God's sake? There's no resemblance.
Sudden
recollection, apropos of nothing: the word 'hobnob' is from 'hab nab,' a phrase
used by drinkers in the eighteenth century. It referred to a ritual of taking
turns drinking, and meant, originally, "to have and have not." What
kind of laughter am I laughing? The desperate laughter that verges on tears--he
knows he's failed the exam. Ah, to have
once been a boy is as fantastic as the dream of being, some day, a rich old
man. "Ten eighteen. Twelve minutes left."
Dear
Krolikov,
Just had an
interesting idea for a story. It’s all stream of consciousness. We’ll begin it,
say, and end it with conjuror’s patter, apparently senseless badinage, but not
really senseless at all upon a second reading. We’ll have two characters, two
streamers of consciousness (one of them representative of me, or a pale
refraction of my ‘I’), and as the characters dream/stream through their brains,
their streams (unbeknownst to them) will begin lapping over one another, little
wavelet upon little wavelet, until finally, at the end they will merge-surge
together into the mighty Stream of Life, all egos evaporating. You are aware,
of course, that I’m an inveterate monist, and, mirabile dictu, despite
my overweening ego, the most egotistical of earthly egos (mea culpa), I do,
nonetheless, comprehend in my inner sanctum that we humans all stream together
in the river of humanity, we’re all the same person. Although life is a
mumble, a mumble and jumble, a jangle and jingle of pleasure and pain,
recriminations, malice toward others, who are really us... You see? Us!
Etc. No time to
tell you more now, but it will all come clear when I write it, and when it does
we’ll have something that has never quite been set down exactly like this in
literary words! Okay, when I try to sum
it up I realize it sounds trite, and I’m sure there are those who will say (as
they always do), “No, it’s too hard, stylistically. That’s too much of a
challenge for the reader.” Or others who whine, “I feel as if someone were
playing a trick on me, condescending to me.” Never mind them. Life is hard,
complicated. Literary art is part of life. There’s no reason that it too should
not be hard, complicated.
The
pain. We're all united by pain... I know that in some sense we'll be
together. The feelings you breathed out
toward me and I breathed out toward you--certainly, at least, those vapors will
blend again. Maybe that's all that counts...There was the time at the beach,
Daytona, Nice, and I was what? twelve
years old? and that bitch of a neighbor girl tells me, "You know what your
problem is? You're not lovable, you'll never be lovable. Nobody will ever love
you." I was devastated. Her words rang true. I stood there blushing,
holding back the tears. You didn't say anything, you didn't know what to say,
but you put your arm around me...
"Winding
up, please, time to finish. Five minutes. FIVE." Herr Doktor Professor.
Who does he remind me of? Daddy. Why,
why for God's sake? There's no resemblance. My mind is totally on the blink...
Well, just a final note, not for anybody's eyes (my bluebook goes in the waste
basket):
Dear
honored arbiter of my fate, I might have finished this exam and even written a
semblance of something that made sense, but the problem is my mother won't stop
calling me. She phoned again fifteen minutes before I came here for the test.
She said, "You know, Bobby, once, right in the middle of all our problems,
I asked him to tell me frankly if he'd ever felt good about the marriage, and
he just said, 'Well, you know, I guess the happiest day of my life was the day
my son was born. Now that was happiness.'"
FOUR. Four more minutes. So he's gone but not gone.
The love lives on. The most wonderful day in my life as he was a heavy sleeper,
a heavy sleeper, he, old Dicky Dickerson, old Roger Rogerson, mumble mumble,
lyrical wave, so afraid, so afraid of missing the missing the pain, missing the
love, no, if you live you'll get your share of the one and the other, don't be
afraid, Daddy, we're still together, Father, old Dicky Dickerson, young Roger
Rogerson, young Robby Hoberson, old Vlady Vladerson, mumble mumble,
mumbo-jumbo, life is a muddle and lyrical wave, so he bought so he bought and
brought so he sought and bought and brought, brought home not one yes one not
one yes one but ten, nine alarm clocks eight, seven ticking on down through the
glory glory aching beauty of life, the great countdown to the grand
climacteric, six, five, four. THREE.
All in the end
is yellowly blurred, all is illusive which made him look rather like a gory
gory but mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble, it's a lyrical wave, mumble
mumble, lyrical jumble. TWO.
All, in the end,
is yellowly blurred, yet all in the end is a splendid blend, a mumble maunder
splendid blended ONE.
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