Donald barthelme - Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts

UnspeakablePractices, Unnatural Acts

by DonaldBarthelme

eVersion 4.0 /Notes at EOF

Thislow-priced Bantam Book

hasbeen completely reset in a type face

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fromnew plates. It contains the complete

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NOTONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

UNSPEAKABLEPRACTICES, UNNATURAL ACTS

ABantam Book / published by arrangement with Farrar, Straws and Giroux

PRINTINGHISTORY

Farrar,Straus and Giroux edition published 1968

Bantamedition published May 1969

2ndprinting

Exceptfor "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning," "Can WeTalk,"

and"Alice," all the stories in this book appeared originallyin The New

Yorker. The author is gratefulto The New Yorker forpermission to reprint.

Theauthor also wishes to thank Artand Literature forpermission to reprint

"CanWe Talk," ( 1965 by Artand Literature), and New American Review

forpermission to reprint "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning."

Allrights reserved.

Copyright 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 by Donald Barthelme.

Thisbook may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by

mimeographor any other means without permission.

Forinformation address: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

19Union Square West, New York, N.Y. 10003.

Publishedsimultaneously in the United States and Canada

BantamBooks are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a subsidiary

ofGrosset & Dunlap, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words

"BantamBooks" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in

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MarcaRegistrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y.10016.

To Herman Gollob

Contents

The IndianUprising

The Balloon

This NewspaperHere

Robert KennedySaved from Drowning

Report

The Dolt

The Police Band

Edward and Pia

A Few Moments ofSleeping and Waking

Can We Talk

Game

Alice

A Picture Historyof the War

The President

See the Moon?

The IndianUprising

We defended thecity as best we could. The arrows of the Comanches came in clouds.The war clubs of the Comanches clattered on the soft, yellowpavements. There were earthworks along the Boulevard Mark Clark andthe hedges had been laced with sparkling wire. People were trying tounderstand. I spoke to Sylvia. "Do you think this is a goodlife?" The table held apples, books, long-playing records. Shelooked up. "No."

Patrols of parasand volunteers with armbands guarded the tall, flat buildings. Weinterrogated the captured Comanche. Two of us forced his head backwhile another poured water into his nostrils. His body jerked, hechoked and wept. Not believing a hurried, careless, andexaggerated report of the number of casualties in the outer districtswhere trees, lamps, swans had been reduced to clear fields of fire weissued entrenching tools to those who seemed trustworthy and turnedthe heavy-weapons companies so that we could not be surprised fromthat direction. And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and morein love and more in love. We talked.

"Do you knowFaure's 'Dolly'?"

"Would thatbe Gabriel Faure?"

"It would."

"Then I knowit," she said. "May I say that I play it at certain times,when I am sad, or happy, although it requires four hands."

"How is thatmanaged?"

"Iaccelerate," she said, "ignoring the time signature."

And when theyshot the scene in the bed I wondered how you felt under the eyesof the cameramen, grips, juicers, men in the mixing booth:excited? stimulated? And when they shot the scene in the showerI sanded a hollow-core door working carefully against theillustrations in texts and whispered instructions from one whohad already solved the problem. I had made after all other tables,one while living with Nancy, one while living with Alice, onewhile living with Eunice, one while living with Marianne.

Red men in waveslike people scattering in a square startled by something tragic or asudden, loud noise accumulated against the barricades we had made ofwindow dummies, silk, thoughtfully planned job descriptions(including scales for the orderly progress of other colors), wine indemijohns, and robes. I analyzed the composition of thebarricade nearest me and found two ashtrays, ceramic, one darkbrown and one dark brown with an orange blur at the lip; a tin fryingpan; two-litre bottles of red wine; three-quarter-litre bottles ofBlack & White, aquavit, cognac, vodka, gin, Fad #6 sherry; ahollow-core door in birch veneer on black wrought-iron legs; ablanket, red-orange with faint blue stripes; a red pillow and a bluepillow; a woven straw wastebasket; two glass jars for flowers;corkscrews and can openers; two plates and two cups, ceramic, darkbrown; a yellow-and-purple poster; a Yugoslavian carved flute, wood,dark brown; and other items. I decided I knew nothing.

The hospitalsdusted wounds with powders the worth of which was not quiteestablished, other supplies having been exhausted early in the firstday. I decided I knew nothing. Friends put me in touch with a MissR., a teacher, unorthodox they said, excellent they said, successfulwith difficult cases, steel shutters on the windows made the housesafe. I had just learned via an International Distress Coupon thatJane had been beaten up by a dwarf in a bar on Tenerife but Miss R.did not allow me to speak of it. "You know nothing," shesaid, "you feel nothing, you are locked in a most savage andterrible ignorance, I despise you, my boy, mon cher, my heart.You may attend but you must not attend now, you must attend later, aday or a week or an hour, you are making me ill...." Inonevaluated these remarks as Korzybski instructed. But it wasdifficult. Then they pulled back in a feint near the river and werushed into that sector with a reinforced battalion hastily formedamong the Zouaves and cabdrivers. This unit was crushed in theafternoon of a day that began with spoons and letters in hallways andunder windows where men tasted the history of the heart, cone-shapedmuscular organ that maintains circulation of the blood.

But it is you Iwant now, here in the middle of this Uprising, with the streetsyellow and threatening, short, ugly lances with fur at thethroat and inexplicable shell money lying in the grass. It is when Iam with you that I am happiest, and it is for you that I am makingthis hollow-core door table with black wrought-iron legs. I heldSylvia by her bear-claw necklace. "Call off your braves," Isaid. "We have many years left to live." There was a sortof muck running in the gutters, yellowish, filthy streamsuggesting excrement, or nervousness, a city that does not knowwhat it has done to deserve baldness, errors, infidelity. "Withluck you will survive until matins," Sylvia said. She ran offdown the Rue Chester Nimitz, uttering shrill cries.

Then it waslearned that they had infiltrated our ghetto and that the people ofthe ghetto instead of resisting had joined the smooth,well-coordinated attack with zipguns, telegrams, lockets, causingthat portion of the line held by the I.R.A. to swell and collapse. Wesent more heroin into the ghetto, and hyacinths, ordering anotherhundred thousand of the pale, delicate flowers. On the map weconsidered the situation with its strung-out inhabitants andmerely personal emotions. Our parts were blue and their parts weregreen. I showed the blue-and-green map to Sylvia. "Your partsare green," I said. "You gave me heroin first a year ago,"Sylvia said. She ran off down George C. Marshall. Alice, utteringshrill cries. Miss R. pushed me into a large room painted white(jolting and dancing in the soft light, and I was excited! and therewere people watching!) in which there were two chairs. I sat in onechair and Miss R. sat in the other. She wore a blue dress containinga red figure. There was nothing exceptional about her. I wasdisappointed by her plainness, by the bareness of the room, by theabsence of books.