Wittgenstein's Mistress (11 page)

Apparently, one day I had been looking and then one day I was not, as I have said.

Although very likely it was hardly that simple either.

Doubtless I had not even realized that anything had changed, for some time.

For some time I have been watching the sun go down every evening without anxiety, is perhaps what I finally one evening remembered to think.

Or, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces no longer makes me feel like Pascal.

I doubt very seriously that I thought that.

Sculpture is the art of taking away superfluous material, Leonardo once said, if that is at all relevant?

Although it was not Leonardo who said it but was Michelangelo.

And on third thought I believe that Leonardo did not put snow into one of his paintings after all. Certain whitish rocks in mist, were what I had had in mind.

Quite possibly Tiepolo did not paint either of those two paintings either, now that I think about it, although in this instance all I mean is that Tiepolo had a great many assistants in his workshop, and so may have done no more than the preliminary sketches.

Though as a matter of fact he also did, or did not, do a painting of Agamemnon sacrificing poor Iphigenia to raise winds for the Greek ships.

Painting is not my trade, is another thing that Michelangelo once said. When he said this was when a pope told him that the Sistine Chapel might look more agreeable with some pictures up on top.

Perhaps this was the same pope who once offered Michelangelo his chair, out of respect. This was a very significant moment in the history of art, since nothing of the sort had ever happened with an artist before.

I serve him who pays me, is something that Leonardo did say instead of Michelangelo, on the other hand. Doubtless there is a way in which this moment had its significance in the history of art, as well.

Actually, Tintoretto once threatened to shoot a critic with a gun, which many artists would have perhaps felt was a more significant moment than both of those put together.

And possibly it was only one of the Medici, who let Michelangelo sit down. Still, one would be pleased if the pope was not the same pope who made people burn Sappho's poems.

When I state that any of these things were done or said, incidentally, what I more truthfully mean is that they were
alleged to have been done or said, of course.

As it was similarly alleged that Giotto once painted a perfect circle freehand.

Although I happen to believe it categorically about the circle, most of such tales being harmless enough to believe in any event.

Well, and I also see no reason not to believe that Piero di Cosimo would hide under a table when there was lightning. Or that Hugo van der Goes was not able to paint religious paintings in a church unless friars sang psalms to keep him from sobbing all day.

Piero di Cosimo is not to be confused with yesterday's sunset, by the way, which was a Piero della Francesca, nor is Hugo van der Goes to be confused with Rogier van der Weyden, whose
Descent from the Cross
is so badly lighted at the Prado.

Well, nor with Vincent Van Gogh, whose sunset was some days before Piero's.

Which symphony is it, by Shostakovitch, in which one can practically hear the tanks coming off the assembly line?

In any event all that any of these stories would appear to add up to, one suspects, is that many more people in this world than one's self were never able to shed certain baggage.

Surely walking halfway across Naples to add one brushstroke to a wall is a form of baggage itself.

Doubtless cutting off one's ear is one too, if paradoxically.

Well, as is eating one's lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower. Or even lurking at windows.

Nonetheless, what would appear to remain the case on my own part is that one day I had baggage and then one day I did not.

Although very likely it was hardly that simple either.

Accouterments, I did get rid of. Things.

Conversely I can even now still call to mind the last four digits of Lucien's telephone number from all of those years ago.

Or recite the several rumors about Achilles and Patroclus
having been more than just dear friends.

In fact I have just even quoted Friedrich Nietzsche.

Actually, it was almost an hour ago when I quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who was really Pascal.

Where I have been was at the spring again. This time I decided I may as well bring in everything.

Nor am I any longer depressed, incidentally, which I now understand that I had not been to begin with, having only been out of sorts.

Which is to say that I had changed into those fresh underpants perhaps fifteen minutes earlier than I ought to have, having now had to change again, having just gotten my period.

I have no intention of looking back to see what I wrote about inconsequential perplexities now and again becoming the fundamental mood of existence. Or about certain unanswerable questions becoming answerable.

Oh, well.

At any rate everything that had been washed is now in my upstairs bedroom.

For a moment or two, before I came back down, I looked out of the rear window.

I do not often look out of that one, which is not the one from which I watch the sun go down.

What I was looking at was the other house, which is deep in the woods some distance from here.

I do not believe I have ever mentioned the other house.

What I may have mentioned are houses in general, along the beach, but such a generalization would not have included this house, this house being nowhere near the water.

All one can see of it from that upper rear window is a corner of its roof.

In fact I was not aware of the other house at all, when I first came to this one.

Once I did become aware of it, I understood that there would also have to be a road leading to it from somewhere, of course.

Yet for the life of me I was not able to locate the road, and for the longest time.

Looking for it, what I did first was drive the pickup truck along the road one takes to the town, turning off at every other road I came to.

Every one of those roads led to a house which was on the beach, however, and as I have said, this house is not on the beach.

I should perhaps add that when I say I followed the road one takes to the town, there is a manner of speaking in which I was not doing that at all.

The road one takes to the town being naturally also the road one takes away from the town, and it is in that opposite direction that the house can be seen from my upper rear window.

Possibly I did not really need to make that distinction.

In any case my failure to locate the road eventually began to become a wholly new sort of perplexity in my existence.

Unquestionably there has got to be a road leading to that house, I more than once said to myself.

Still, no matter how many times I drove back and forth, I was not able to locate it.

One morning I finally determined to make a major project out of doing so, for all that I was convinced I had put an end to such things as major projects.

Today I am going to locate the road leading to that house no matter what, was what I finally determined.

How I had been looking before this was in the pickup truck, as I have said. How I decided to do so that morning was by walking directly through the woods to the house.

And naturally by this identical procedure I will have also walked directly to the road, being what I obviously now had in mind.

Indeed, I had been just enough distracted by the entire proposition so that the logic in this notion delighted me.

In fact what I additionally told myself was, as quickly as I get
to the house I will next follow the road to wherever it comes out, and thus will have eliminated any trace of the mystery altogether.

The road came out at the road one takes in the direction away from the town.

Well, when I say came, obviously I mean comes, since to this day the road naturally remains exactly where it had been all the while.

The fallen tree naturally remains exactly where it had been all the while, as well.

Good heavens. And how long had I permitted myself to fret over not locating that road?

Surely I had driven past that fallen tree no less than six or eight times.

And meanwhile no sooner had I solved the problem than I understood that I no longer had any interest in the road whatsoever, of course.

Nor do I have very much interest in the house either, to tell the truth.

Except as perhaps something to gaze at the corner of the roof of, on certain occasions, as I just now did.

It is likely that I will now bleed for weeks, incidentally. Or at least stain for that long.

This is a matter of hormones, doubtless, and of change of life.

My hands would appear to indicate that it is time for this. Being a painter, one learns to read such things as the backs of hands.

Even if I rarely did portraits.

That other house is quite ordinary, by the way.

Well, except for being the only house in the vicinity which was constructed for people who preferred a view of the woods to a view of the water, obviously.

I imagine I can understand such a preference. It is hardly my own preference, but I imagine I can understand it.

Then again one would get little more than an inference of the sunset at best, over there, even from the upper windows.

Well, I have looked. Which is a thing one might do.

Although what I was more truthfully looking for was to see if one could see my own house from there.

This is a thing one might do, as well.

One cannot see this house from that one.

Obviously, this is a result of nothing more than where windows happen to be situated. Still, one could easily let it become a perplexity of a sort too, should one be so inclined.

After all, why on earth should one be able to see one house from another, but not vice versa? Surely there is no difference in the distance between this house and that, and that house and this?

Once, in the Rijksmuseum, I brought in new speakers for my phonograph. What the directions told me to do was to make certain that the two speakers were equidistant from each other.

One certainly had to wonder what the person who wrote the instructions could have believed he meant by that.

Well, or the person who had translated the instructions from the Japanese.

No matter where one situated them, how could there be any way in which any two objects could be any distance from each other except equidistant?

Even if there were some miraculous manner in which I were able to move this house, for instance, surely it would still end up being exactly the same distance from the other house that the other house would be from this.

Although in that case this one might at least land where it could finally be seen from the other after all.

As a matter of fact I actually once did see this house from that one anyway, now that I think about it.

What happened was that there was a fire in my potbellied stove, on an afternoon when I decided to take a walk through the woods.

Looking back, I could see the smoke above the trees.

There is my house, being what I thought when I looked.

I have noted the persistence of this sort of thinking before, I believe.

Doubtless I would have expressed an identical thought on the night when my earlier house was turning into little more than an upside down glow on the clouds, in fact, had I had a rowboat to express it in at the time.

Perhaps all such thoughts might very well fall into the same category as the thought that there is somebody at a window in a painting when there is nobody at the window in the painting, since I would appear to have verified that paintings are never basically what one thinks of them as being either.

Then again it is perhaps questionable that I have verified any such thing.

Continuing to think in such terms one might as well ask if I had ever truly walked to the other house to begin with.

Undeniably I walked to the other house, since I can distinctly remember the poster, which is taped to the living room wall.

The poster shows Jane Avril and three other Paris dancers. In fact it also lists all of the dancers' names, including hers.

The other names that the poster lists are Cleopatre and Gazelle and Mlle. Eglantine.

Well, I have a vague recollection that I may have spoken about this before, even.

On the other hand there is no way of telling if the poster had been painted before or after Toulouse-Lautrec may have handled my stick, of course.

There is nothing in Jane Avril's expression which gives any hint about her affair with Brahms either, as it happens.

Still, one remembers other paintings of her in which she appears more than sensitive enough to have attracted him.

Unfortunately there is no life of Brahms in the other house in which I might have looked up more about this.

The life of Beethoven would have been of no help, one presumed.

The title of the life of Beethoven in the other house is
Beethoven,
by the way.

The title of the life of Brahms that I did once look into, insofar as I can remember, was
A Life of Brahms.

Well, doubtless I could readily verify this, there being a second copy of the life of Brahms still accessible right where I am.

Then again, what one is now perhaps forced to wonder is if the title of the life of Brahms would remain
A Life of Brahms
if there did not happen to be that second copy still at hand.

If there were no more copies accessible anywhere
of Anna Karenina,
in other words, would its title still be
Anna Karenina?

I am perhaps less than certain what I mean by that question.

Still, it would undeniably appear that I have more than once thought about a life of Brahms when I was not seeing a life of Brahms.

For that matter I have more than once thought about
The Recognitions,
by William Gaddis, when I have not seen a copy of
The Recognitions
by William Gaddis in twelve or fifteen years.