Текст книги "Wittgenstein's Mistress"

Автор книги: David Markson

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Even though it is I who am imagining Willem de Kooning and Rembrandt in the same studio, I would appear not to have any control over this.

Then again it is quite possible that Willem de Kooning does not remember the cat's name in either case, it being some years since the cat may or may not have climbed into his or William Gaddis's lap.

Now Vincent Van Gogh is in Giotto's studio.

This would be Vincent Van Gogh the painter, naturally, since Vincent Van Gogh the cat is there already.

The newer Vincent's ear is bandaged.

I have just decided to put El Greco into the studio, as well.

Which is perhaps why everything now appears slightly elongated, or even astigmatic.

The number on the back of Willem de Kooning's soccer shirt would appear to be an eleven, however.

Unless it is a seventeen.

As a matter of fact Willem de Kooning now looks a good deal like Jackson Pollock.

I had also just thought to make Rembrandt bend over as if to pick something up from the floor, and to have Carel Fabritius find this extremely amusing, but I am not certain whether that happened.

Things are actually getting cluttered, to tell the truth.

Especially now that there are sheep.

Still, any one of these figures remains indisputably equidistant from any other.

Well, as I myself do from each, in turn.

Although perhaps I am not equidistant from a single one of them, come to think about it, since they are all only in my head.

Which would again be somewhat like the Christians after they had been eaten by the lions, doubtless.

Then again it is doubtless not like that at all.

Meanwhile the artist who painted the painting of this very house has just come into my head in place of all that, and in this instance I not only do not know what she looks like, but I do not even know her name.

For that matter her painting itself is now in my head as well, even though I have not given that a thought for a week or more.

The reason I have not given that a thought for a week or more, as it happens, is because it is in the room with the life of Brahms, and the atlas, and to which the door is closed.

But which has therefore now brought the life of Brahms and the atlas into my head, likewise.

Although what I am next forced to wonder is what might happen if I were to decide that I have Brahms himself in my head.

Would it be the real Brahms, or the Brahms from the life of Brahms?

And which one of them wrote The Alto Rhapsody,then?

Or do I perhaps have no idea what on earth I mean by this distinction?

At least it has suddenly occurred to me that the Achilles from the seventh grade who could not catch the tortoise is the same Achilles I have been writing about for all of this time.

Well, it had simply not struck me that way before, is all.

Even if I now realize that this means the tortoise was faster than Hector was too, since Achilles did finally catch Hector, even though Hector ran and ran.

Then again, I doubt that the tortoise was the same tortoise that an eagle was said to have dropped on Aeschylus's bald head, which is how Aeschylus was said to have died.

There is an explanation for the eagle having done this, incidentally.

The explanation being that presumably the eagle wished to crack the shell of the tortoise, and believed that Aeschylus's bald head was a rock.

On my honor, it was said that this was how Aeschylus died.

When Aeschylus wrote about all of that bloody business in the bath with Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and the net, by the way, he put in a terribly sad part for while Cassandra is waiting to die herself.

What Cassandra thinks about is how lovely everything had been when she was a little girl, at Troy, and used to sit and play.

Beside the banks of the Scamander.

This being another sort of thing that artists do.

Then again Cassandra is not carried off to Greece at all, in Les Troyens.

What Berlioz does, instead, is have her kill herself, once Troy falls.

Perhaps Hector Berlioz was named after the same Hector also, come to think about it.

I do not remember anything in the opera about anybody lurking at windows, on the other hand.

Although it was Herodotus who wrote the line about the entire war having been because of a single Spartan girl, which I do believe I was trying to remember a good number of days ago.

Raphael and Giulio Romano were two more artists who painted versions of Helen being abducted, incidentally, just as Rubens and Van Dyck both painted versions of Achilles hiding among the women.

I find it interesting, when teachers and pupils do that.

Although Rubens was sometimes not very much happier about Van Dyck than Titian was about Tintoretto, actually.

Even if he did not kick Van Dyck out, what he did was always give him just faces to do, so that he himself could keep on being the best at the parts where everybody is always touching everybody else.

Rubens also spoke five languages, which I mention only because of having mentioned that Rembrandt could speak only one.

Have I said that I brought in an armful of red roses, earlier this morning?

Or that Utrillo actually painted certain canvases by copying scenes he found on picture postcards?

Meantime that question of things existing only in one's head may still be troubling me slightly, to tell the truth.

Basically this is because it has just now come to mind that the fire I am perhaps going to build at the garbage disposal area, in order to watch it glisten on the broken bottles, is something else that exists only in my head.

Except that in this case it is something that exists in my head even though I have not yet built the fire.

In fact it exists in my head even if I may possibly never build the fire.

Moreover, what is really in my head is not the fire either, but that painting by Van Gogh of the fire.

Which is to say the painting by Van Gogh that one can see if one squints just a little. With all of those swirls, as in The Starry Night

And with anxiety in it, even.

Even if a certain amount of the anxiety may be simply over the likelihood that the painting will not sell, of course.

Although as a matter of fact what has now suddenly happened is that I am not actually seeing the painting itself, but am seeing a reproduction of the painting.

In addition to which the reproduction even has a caption, which says that the painting is called The Broken Bottles.

And is in the Uffizi.

Now obviously there is no painting by Van Gogh called The Broken Bottlesin the Uffizi.

There is no painting by Van Gogh called The Broken Bottlesanywhere, in fact, including even in my head, since as I have said what is in my head is only a reproduction of the painting.

I suspect I am getting mixed up.

All I had started to say, I think, is that I am seeing a painting that Van Gogh did not paint, and which has now become a reproduction of that painting, and which to begin with is of a fire that I myself have not built.

Although what I have entirely left out is that the painting is not actually of the fire either, but of a reflection of the fire.

So in other words what I am ultimately seeing is not only a painting which is not a real painting but is only a reproduction, but which is also a painting of a fire which is not a real fire but is only a reflection.

On top of which the reproduction is hardly a real reproduction itself, being only in my head, just as the reflection is not a real reflection for the same reason.

No wonder Cezanne once said that Van Gogh painted like a madman.

At this rate the next thing I am going to ask is if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.

On second thought I am not going to ask if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.

Or even if Cezanne ever happened to talk to anybody about Van Gogh personally, before he said that.

Which would naturally make his insight rather less than memorable, if he had.

I mean if Gauguin had taken Cezanne off into a corner somewhere and muttered a thing or two, for instance.

Or if Dostoievski did.

The dog which would not stay off Emily Brontë's bed was named Keeper, incidentally.

And the way Euripides was said to have died was by having been attacked by dogs, in fact, although I mention this only because of having mentioned Aeschylus and the eagle.

But what this reminds me of is that how Helen died, according to one old legend, was by being hanged from a tree, by jealous women.

Then again, another story insisted that she and Achilles became lovers, and lived forever on a magic island.

Although the identical story was sometimes told about Medea and Achilles.

Well, doubtless both of those stories arose because people were distressed at the notion of Achilles being left in Hades, as when Odysseus visits him there, in the Odyssey.

This does not occur until after Achilles is killed by Paris, of course, by being struck in the heel with an arrow.

In fact Paris himself has gone to Mount Ida to die by then, as well, because of still another arrow.

Even if one is forced to read books by people with names like Dictys of Crete, or Dares the Phrygian, or Quintus from Smyrna, to learn such things, since the Iliaddoes not go that far.

I dropped the pages from those books into the fire after reading the reverse sides of each too, as I recall.

In the Louvre, this would have been, which is perhaps three bridges away from the Pont Neuf.

Once, that same winter, I signed a mirror. In one of the women's rooms, with a lipstick.

What I was signing was an image of myself, naturally.

Should anybody else have looked, where my signature would have been was under the other person's image, however.

Even in late spring, from the ruins at Hisarlik, one can still see snow on Paris's mountain.

There is a painting in the Louvre of Helen and Paris, by the way, by Jacques Louis David, which is perhaps the only convincing representation of Helen that I have ever seen.

As a matter of fact the painting itself is silly, since Helen has all her clothes on while Paris is wearing only sandals and a hat.

Still, there is a wistfulness in Helen's face, that suggests that she has been thinking about a good many things.

I am quite taken by the idea of Helen having been thinking about a good many things.

Doubtless I would never have signed that mirror had there been anybody else to look, on the other hand.

Though in fact the name I put down was Jeanne Hebuterne.

I am also still staining, incidentally.

At a guess, I would say it is nine or ten days, now.

I would appear to have been failing to indicate a good many more of the latter too, as it happens.

Even if that has nothing to do with the staining, which as I have said is scarcely unusual.

Any more than would be waiting for some months without getting my period at all.

Although I have had to go to the spring again, to wash fresh underpants.

Ah, me.

Naturally I did not wash fresh underpants. Naturally the underpants were not fresh until after I had washed them.

In either case I have also left everything outside once more, since there is always something pleasurable about changing into garments that are still warm from the sun.

Conversely I am not extraordinarily happy about this new habit of skipping days so frequently, to tell the truth, even if I am less than positive why.

Although possibly it has something to do with the question I was writing about yesterday.

By which I perhaps mean a day or two before yesterday.

Nor am I certain that I remember the question very clearly.

Or perhaps I did not define it that well.

Although doubtless all I have in mind is that if so many things would appear to exist only in my head, once I do sit here they then turn out to exist on these pages as well.

Presumably they exist on these pages.

If somebody were to look at these pages who could understand only Russian, I have no idea what would exist on these pages.

Not speaking one word of Russian myself, however, I believe I am able to state categorically that the things which had existed only in my head now also exist on these pages.

Well, some of such things.

One can hardly put down everything that exists in one's head.

Or even begin to be aware of it, obviously.

In fact I have no doubt that I have more than once written things that I did not even remember I remembered until I wrote them.

Well, I have commented on that.

Though as a matter of fact there are also certain things that one remembers while one is writing that one did not remember one remembered but does not happen to put down, either.

For instance when I was writing about the fact that Rembrandt and Spinoza had lived in Amsterdam at the same time, which I had learned from a footnote, I suddenly remembered from a different footnote entirely that when El Greco had lived in Toledo such people as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross had lived there, too.

Even though I remembered that, however, I did not put it down.

Basically my reason for not doing so may have been because I do not know one solitary thing about either St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross.

Except obviously that they were both in Toledo when El Greco was in Toledo.

Although there is more to what I am talking about than this.

Still another person who lived in Toledo when El Greco lived in Toledo was Cervantes, except that I had a different sort of reason for not bringing up Cervantes just now when I brought up St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross.

When I brought up St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross it was because, as I said, I had thought about them in connection with El Greco at the time when I was thinking about Rembrandt in connection with Spinoza.

As I also said, however, the fact that El Greco may have known St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross was something I did not remember I remembered until the very moment in which I was writing what I wrote about Rembrandt and Spinoza.

The fact that El Greco may have also known Cervantes, on the other hand, is something I did not remember I remembered until all of these pages later, when I was finally writing what I had remembered but had not put down about El Greco earlier.

This is not really that complicated, although it may seem to be.

All it actually means is that even when one remembers something one did not remember one remembered, one may have still no more than scratched the surface in regard to things one does not remember one remembers.

Although as a matter of fact I believe I did remember Cervantes before too, even if in that case it may have only been in connection with that castle.

Then again, perhaps it was Don Quixote I remembered, what with the castle having been in La Mancha.

The title of the book about Don Quixote being Don Quixote de La Mancha,of course.

Anything that El Greco and Cervantes may have said to each other in Toledo would have been said in the same language as the title also, presumably.

Even if El Greco may have preferred Greek. Or whatever language they spoke on Crete, which was where he was actually from, in fact.

This is of course assuming that even if El Greco and Cervantes did not know each other very well, certainly they would have at least begun to nod in passing, after a time.

And naturally next to exchange amenities.

Buenos dias,Cervantes.

Buenos dias a usted,Theotocopoulos.

Well, and doubtless they would have exchanged similar amenities with St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross eventually, too.

Possibly all of this would have happened in some local shop or other, such as the neighborhood pharmacist's, say.

Even if one doubts that either of the latter two would have been called Saint yet, naturally.

Well, or that St. John of the Cross would have been called of the Cross by then, either.

Buenos dias,Saint Teresa, or, Buenos dias,John of the Cross, surely being a little clumsy for in a drugstore in either event.

Or for while waiting on line at the cigarette counter, certainly.

Still, all of these people always remaining just as equidistant from each of the others as everybody in Taddeo Gaddi's studio was, of course.

Except that they are now undeniably equidistant from me as well, because of being on these pages as opposed to being only in my head.

I think.

So that even if I were to unexpectedly think about somebody else I had not thought about for the longest time, such as, oh, Artemisia Gentileschi, let me say, the same rule would apply.

Although something I have also just incidentally realized is that I was probably wrong, a little while ago, when I said it was Zeno who had proved the other rule, about the hypotenuse of a circle.

Possibly it was Archimedes who proved that. Or Galileo.

Although what now more truthfully surprises me is that I could have written this many pages without having mentioned Artemisia Gentileschi to begin with.

Or that any woman artist could.

In fact Artemisia is perhaps the one person one would call Saint at a cigarette counter or anyplace else without feeling clumsy in the least.

So she was raped too, naturally.

At only fifteen.

But heavens, what a painter. In spite of what kind of a world she had to face, that many years ago.

Well, in spite of even having been tortured, to test her word, when the rape came to trial.

Although of course one of the popes made Galileo take back every word he had said, as well.

Meantime my period and I still remain no distance at all from each other, presumably.

Well, or the pain in my left shoulder and I, similarly.

Perhaps I have not mentioned the pain in my left shoulder.

I have mentioned it.

When I have done so up until now, however, it would have only been as one more thing I was remembering, since I had not actually felt it for quite some time, lately.

Which is to say it would have been still another instance of something which existed only in my head or on the pages where I was writing about it.

Although now it would appear to exist not only in both of those places, but in my shoulder again also.

Even if I am perhaps somewhat perplexed as to how a pain can exist in two other places as well as where it actually hurts.

One would appear to have just expended a great deal of effort in verifying exactly that likelihood, however.

In either event I woke up with it this morning.

This can happen. It does not happen frequently, but it can happen.

Basically, I believe that the pain is arthritic.

Then again, I have sometimes been tempted to connect it to the afternoon on which I drove a Land Rover filled with picture postcards into the Mediterranean, even though I did not believe I had hurt myself badly at the time.

Many of the postcards in the Land Rover happened to show reproductions of certain familiar paintings, by the way.

Mostly by Maurice Utrillo.

Somehow I have the feeling I would like to make a comment about that, but whatever the comment is is eluding me.

Although on third thought the other question may be in no way connected to my arthritis or to that incident near Savona after all.

Or at least in this present instance.

I make that suggestion because it is quite possible that I strained certain muscles, yesterday.

How I might have done that was by moving the rusted lawn-mower, when I was downstairs in the basement.

Perhaps I have not mentioned having been downstairs in the basement.

I was downstairs in the basement. Yesterday.

Naturally I did other things besides moving the rusted lawn-mower. One would hardly go downstairs into a basement one rarely otherwise goes into simply to move a rusted lawnmower.

Moving the lawnmower remains the most strenuous thing I did while I was down there, however.

I did not move any of the bicycles, or the hand truck.

I believe I have mentioned that there are several bicycles in the basement, as well as a hand truck.

There are also a number of baseballs, on a ledge.

I did not move any of the baseballs either, although I am quite certain one would have hardly injured one's shoulder in moving those.

In fact it was silly of me to have brought up not having moved the baseballs.

Then again, perhaps moving the lawnmower did not really have anything to do with anything, either.

The basement of this house is extremely damp, even at this time of year, as I have also perhaps mentioned.

One can smell the dampness, in fact.

And to tell the truth I was down there for quite some time.

So perhaps the pain is arthritic after all, and it was the dampness in the basement which aggravated this.

Although on yet another hand the whole business could have actually gotten started at the spring, when I was washing my underpants on the day before I ever even gave a thought to the basement.

In any case one generally feels wisest in enumerating all such possibilities where an injury is concerned.

Meanwhile the way one reaches the basement is down a sandy embankment at the rear of the house, which I do not remember if I have mentioned or not.

The reason I mention it now is that I would have been confronting that part of the house in returning from the spring, this doubtless having been what brought the basement into mind to begin with.

Even if I have confronted that identical part of the house any number of times without having thought to go down to the basement at all.

So that to tell the truth I have no real idea why I went down there yesterday either, when one comes right down to it.

What I did, after I did happen to get there, was to look at the eight or nine cartons of books.

What one does after having happened to get someplace often having very little to do with why one may have gotten there, however.

So that perhaps I had no reason whatsoever for having gone to the basement yesterday.

Although I do believe I have mentioned the eight or nine cartons of books.

These being the eight or nine cartons of books which have more than once perplexed me by being in the basement rather than in the house, especially since there is adequate room for them, up here.

In fact many of the shelves up here are half empty.

Although doubtless when I say they are half empty, I should really be saying they are half filled, since presumably they were totally empty before somebody half filled them.

Then again it is not impossible that they were once filled completely, becoming half empty only when somebody removed half of the books to the basement.

I find this second possibility less likely than the first, although it is not utterly beyond consideration.

In either event the present state of the shelves is even an explanation for why so many of the books in the house are so badly damaged.

Such as the life of Rupert Brooke, for instance. Or the poems of Anna Akhmatova, or of Marina Tsvetayeva.

Perhaps if there were more books on the shelves, so that so many of them were not standing askew, there would have been less opportunity for the sea air to have ruined as many as it has.

The person who left the additional books in the basement would not appear to have thought of this, however.

Still, perhaps there was some equally important reason for the additional books having been left there.

Perhaps it was my curiosity about this very reason which finally led me to go down to the basement yesterday to look at the eight or nine cartons after all, in fact.

Even if I did not actually look at the eight or nine cartons of books.

What I looked at was one of the eight or nine cartons.

Although as a matter of fact I have no idea why I keep on speaking about eight or nine cartons, either.

There are eleven cartons of books in the basement.

One being able to make this sort of incorrect estimate in many such situations, of course.

And which in fact will then remain in one's head for some time even when one knows better.

Well, as I have just been illustrating.

All of the books in the basement have their own peculiar odor of dampness, incidentally.

I have no idea how one would describe this, but it is an odor of dampness that is peculiar to books.

Or in any event this was undeniably the case with the books in the one carton I had opened before, which was the same one I opened again yesterday.

Possibly I have not mentioned having opened one of the cartons before.

One would scarcely be speaking about eleven cartons in the basement of a house on a beach as containing books without having opened at least one of the cartons to discover this, however.

As a matter of fact one should have doubtless opened all eleven of the cartons before speaking about them in that manner.

So I am still operating on the basis of very limited evidence, actually.

Although to tell the truth the entire question has never interested me very deeply.

In fact moving the rusted lawnmower to open even that same single carton again may have been little more than a way of passing my time, yesterday.

Once I had found myself downstairs in the basement with no reason whatsoever for finding myself there, as I have indicated.

Had I been in a different frame of mind I might have moved the baseballs after all.

And in which instance very likely my shoulder would not feel the way it does, either.

Actually I did look through the books this time, however, which I had not done on the other occasion when I had opened the carton.

Well, the other time I had not moved the lawnmower first in any event, so that it would have been difficult to look through the books even if I had wished to.

All I had wished to do on that occasion was to discover what the carton contained, however.

Yesterday I took the books out of the carton.

With only one exception, every single one of them was in a foreign language.

Most were in German, in fact, although not all.

The one book not in German or in another foreign language was an edition of The Trojan Women,by Euripides, which had been translated from Greek into English.

By Gilbert Murray.

I believe the person who had translated it was Gilbert Murray.

As a matter of fact I am not now certain I looked.

One finds that many of the Greek plays have been translated by Gilbert Murray, however.

In fact I suspect I have even once discussed this subject.

Then again it is perhaps surprising that I did not devote more attention to the translation after all, that being the only book from the carton that I would have been able to read one word of.

Although actually I can read Spanish, too.

Or perhaps I should say I was once able to read Spanish, not having tried to do so for years.

And to tell the truth I never read Spanish very well when I did read it.

Two of the books from the carton were in Spanish.

One of these was a translation of The Way of All Flesh.

In fact I did have a certain amount of difficulty in recognizing that one, come to think about it.

Basically, this was because the word carnewas used in the title, and for some moments I kept thinking of carneas meaning meat.

Certainly The Way of All Meatdid not seem like the sort of title that anybody would give to a book.

The difficulty persisted only until I noticed that the book had been written by Samuel Butler, however.

Naturally one would sincerely doubt that anybody one believed had already written one book called The Way of All Fleshwould have then written another book called The Way of All Meat

Or that the reverse of that statement would have been very likely true, either.

Still, I must admit that the confusion did briefly exist.

The other book in Spanish was not a translation, but had been written in that language. This was a volume of poems by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Well, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz being still another person I suspect I have mentioned.

My reason for suspecting this is that Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was Mexican, and I am quite positive I have spoken of having once lived in Mexico.

Living in Mexico one would naturally have become familiar with the names of certain Mexican poets, even if one did not read the language they wrote in very well.

If one does not read a language very well, one generally reads poetry in that language even less well than that, as a matter of fact.

Although I do believe I once did make an effort to read certain poems by Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, even if the chief reason I did so may have only been because of how taken I was with his name.

Certainly it has a memorable resonance, when one says it out loud.

Marco Antonio Montes de Oca.

Mountains of Goose being what the second half of it would curiously appear to mean, on the other hand.

Although Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz certainly has a resonance of its own.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sister Juana Inés of the Cross being the translation here, obviously.

The sister part also making her a nun, of course. Even if I had not thought of the other connection until this very instant.

Which is to say the connection between Sor Juana Inés of the Cross and St. John of the Cross.

Well, possibly there is a connection. Then again, possibly all sorts of people who had something to do with the Catholic Church were called of the Cross, and it is no more than a coincidence that I have suddenly been thinking about two of them.

Doubtless if I were more interested in such matters I would have been thinking about any number of them.

For that matter I have no idea what I have been saying that has now made me think about Artemisia Gentileschi again, either.

Even if as I said a few pages ago I was surprised that I could have written as many pages as I already had without having thought about her long before that.

Well, Artemisia perhaps being the one person who, if one could have been positive of a life after death, almost any woman artist would have happily hanged herself to see.

Even if nobody had ever even taught her to read or write.

Or were the paintings themselves perhaps enough, if one was Artemisia?

That was a ridiculous question to have asked.

Still, it is perhaps an indication of how one feels about Artemisia Gentileschi.

Of the Brush.

Although for the life of me I now additionally have no idea why I have just remembered that Galileo was one more person who went blind.

In Galileo's case this would have been from looking at the sun too many times through his telescopes, or so it was said.

But so how in heaven's name has this in turn reminded me of that cracked old oblong of plate glass that I used to use as a pallet, all of those years ago in SoHo, and which before that had been the top of my aunt Esther's coffee table?