Wittgenstein's Mistress (12 page)

I have even thought about William Gaddis himself, when I have not seen William Gaddis for twelve or fifteen years either.

In fact I may never have seen William Gaddis.

Moreover I have also thought about T. E. Shaw and I do not even know who T. E. Shaw was.

Although having finally remembered that Marco Antonio Montes de Oca wrote poetry, perhaps I can at least safely assume that Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz did also.

But what I am actually now thinking about, for some reason, is the scene in
The Trojan Women
where the Greek soldiers throw Hector's poor baby boy over the city's walls, so that he will not grow up to take revenge for his father or for Troy.

God, the things men used to do.

Irene Papas was an effective Helen in the film of
The Trojan Women,
however.

Katharine Hepburn was an effective Hecuba, as well.

Hecuba was Hector's mother. Well, which is to say she was the baby boy's grandmother also, of course.

Just imagine how Katharine Hepburn must have felt.

Very likely one might have driven right past that fallen tree eternally, I suppose, without ever having noticed the road. Especially since the road turned sharply at once, too.

Although I now remember that I watched a certain few other films as well, before the projector I had brought into my loft stopped functioning.

Peter O'Toole playing the part of Lawrence of Arabia may have been one.

Marlon Brando as Zapata was possibly another.

Meanwhile I have just eaten a dish of sardines.

Most items in cans would still appear to be edible, by the way. It is only foods packaged in paper that I have stopped trusting.

Although two fresh sunnyside eggs are what I would give almost anything for.

What I would more seriously give almost anything for, in all truth, would be to understand how my head sometimes manages to jump about the way it does.

For instance I am now thinking about that castle in La Mancha again.

And for what earthly reason am I also remembering that it was Odysseus who found out where Achilles was, when Achilles was hiding among the women so that they would not make him go to fight?

Granting, that what Odysseus doubtless felt was that if he himself had to go, everybody else should have to go, too.

But still.

In fact I was about to add that this was still another episode that Tiepolo did, or did not, paint, but it was Van Dyck who painted this.

Even if Van Dyck rarely did anything except portraits.

In either event, one aspect of things that Odysseus was
presumably not aware of was that Achilles had gotten one of the women pregnant.

One wonders if Patroclus was ever aware of this, either.

To the castle, a sign must have said.

And something else I believe I watched, just by accident, was an interesting Russian film about Andrei Roublev and Theophanes the Greek.

Who were two Russian painters.

Even if Theophanes was not really Russian, obviously.

None of which has anything to do with the fact that there is no life of Brahms in the other house, I imagine, whatever its title would have been if there were one.

In addition to the life of Beethoven, which is called
Beethoven,
there is also a book called
Baseball When the Grass Was Real

As I have indicated, there is a copy of the identical book in this house.

I have decided that this is not a scholarly speculation in the manner of Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger after all, by the way.

Although quite possibly it may have something to do with meteorology. What I am thinking about, in that regard, is the question of the time of year in which baseball was presumably played.

In which case the book would appear to have been astonishingly ill edited, however,
Baseball When the Grass Is Real
having surely been the title that was intended.

In fact
Baseball When the Grass Is Growing
would have been more appropriate yet.

What one can doubtless be certain of, on the other hand, is that the author would have been a friend of people who lived in both of these houses. Or perhaps even lived nearby himself.

Surely two different people in two such close houses would not have each actually spent money for an identical book about baseball.

Then again, had there been a copy of
Wuthering Heights
in
each house, it is perhaps doubtful that I would have speculated that somebody from each had known Emily Brontë.

Or that Emily Brontë had once lived on this beach.

Incidentally, there is an explanation for my generally speaking of Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard, but of Martin Heidegger as Martin Heidegger.

The explanation being that Kierkegaard's first name was Søren, and in typing that I would repeatedly have to go back to put in the stroke.

There would appear to be no way of avoiding the two dots over Brontë, however.

In any event, none of the few other books I have noticed over there interests me remarkably either.

Although I am perhaps forgetting the one-volume selection from among the Greek plays, which is an edition I had never seen before.

Conversely, I have no more intention of even opening something called
The Origin of Table Manners
than I do of reading the book about grass.

One other is actually called
The Eiffel Tower,
of all nonsense subjects.

There is naturally nothing in any of the plays about anybody menstruating, incidentally.

Although when one comes right down to it, one can often make an educated guess about that sort of thing despite the silence.

One has a fairly acute inkling as to when Cassandra may be having her period, for instance.

Cassandra is feeling out of sorts again, one can even imagine Troilus or certain of the other Trojans now and again saying.

Then again, Helen could be having hers even when she still possesses that radiant dignity, being Helen.

My own generally makes my face turn puffy.

One is next to positive that Sappho would have never beaten around the bush about any of this, on the other hand.

Which could well explain why certain of her poems were used as the stuffing for mummies, even before the friars got their hands on those that were left.

On my honor, pieces of Sappho's lost work were found cut into strips inside dead Egyptians.

Have I mentioned that Sappho's father was named Scaman-dros, for the river near Hisarlik that I once went to see, by the way?

I am by no means implying that there is anything significant about this, which merely strikes me as an agreeable fact to include.

Once, in the National Portrait Gallery, in London, looking at Branwell Brontë's group portrait of his three sisters, I decided that Emily Brontë looked exactly like what Sappho must have looked like.

Even though the pair of them could have scarcely been more different, of course, what with the considerable likelihood that Emily Brontë never even once had a lover.

Which is presumably an explanation for why so many people in
Wuthering Heights
are continually looking in and out of windows, in fact.

Or climbing in and out of them, even.

Still, the thought of this sort of life has always saddened me.

What do any of us ever truly know, however?

The name of Hector's little boy was Astyanax, incidentally.

As a matter of fact that was only a nickname. What he was really named was Scamandrius.

I have no wish to imply anything in regard to this coincidence, either.

A certain number of such connections do appear to keep on coming up, however. A few days ago, for instance, when I remarked that Aristotle had once been Plato's pupil, I also remembered that Alexander the Great was later Aristotle's.

What that reminded me of was that Helen's lover Paris was really named Alexandros. And for that matter that Cassandra was often called Alexandra.

There seemed no point whatsoever in mentioning any of this. Even if it happens that Alexander the Great always kept a copy of the
Iliad
right next to his bed, and actually believed that he was directly descended from Achilles.

Or that Achilles once almost drowned in the Scamander.

Although I have also now remembered that Jane Avril kept a certain book right next to her bed too, even if I have forgotten what book.

And now I further remember that it was Odysseus, again, who convinced the other Greeks that they should not leave any male survivors at Troy.

God, the things men used to do.

I have just said that, I know.

Still, what especially distresses me, in this instance, is how quickly Odysseus had forgotten that plow, and his own little boy.

At least one can be gratified that Sappho had a child of her own, too. Well, a daughter, like Helen.

Which is to say that any number of later Greeks could have been directly descended from Sappho as well, even if one would have surely lost track, after a certain period of years.

But who is to argue that it might not have come all the way down to somebody like Irene Papas, even?

Plato's own teacher was of course Socrates, if I have not said.

Meanwhile the title of that life of Brahms, I suddenly suspect, may well have been
The Life of Brahms,
and not
A Life of Brahms
after all.

Undeniably
The Life of Brahms
would have been more appropriate, the man having had only one life.

Which is perhaps failing to consider the possibility of its having been called simply
Brahms,
however.

Or that there also happens to be a life of Shostakovich in the other house, the title of which is
Shostakovich, A Biography.

There is no poster showing Jane Avril and three other Paris dancers taped to the living room wall in the other house, incidentally.

The poster is on the floor of the living room in the other house.

After so much discussion, when I went out for my walk yesterday I decided to walk through the woods rather than along the beach.

Which is also to say that it is again tomorrow. And which I imagine needs no further explanation, by this juncture.

Except to perhaps note that everything is still all lilac.

What I do wish to mention, however, is that the poster had indisputably fallen some time ago, since it was covered with leaves. And with fluffy cottonwood seeds.

The reason I wish to mention this is that through all of that time, in my head, the poster was still on the wall.

In fact the very way I was able to verify that I had ever even been to the other house, some few pages ago, was by saying that I could distinctly remember the poster.

On the wall.

Where was the poster when it was on the wall in my head but was not on the wall in the other house?

Where was my house, when all I was seeing was smoke but was thinking, there is my house?

A certain amount of this is almost beginning to worry me, to tell the truth.

I have no idea what amount, but a certain amount.

Actually, I did well in college, in spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned.

One is now forced to wonder if underlining sentences in Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger might have shown more foresight, however.

Or if some of these very questions may have even been answered as long ago as when Alexander the Great happened to raise his hand in class.

Perhaps they were the identical questions that Ludwig Wittgenstein would have preferred to think about on the afternoon when Bertrand Russell made him waste his time by watching
Guy de Maupassant row, in fact.

Although come to think about it I once read somewhere that Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had never read one word of Aristotle.

In fact I have more than once taken comfort in knowing this, there being so many people one has never read one word of one's self.

Such as Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Even if one was always told that Wittgenstein was too hard to read in any case.

And to tell the truth I did once read one sentence by him after all, which I did not find difficult in the least.

In fact I became very fond of what it said.

You do not need a lot of money to buy a nice present, but you do need a lot of time, was the sentence.

On my honor, Wittgenstein once said that.

Still, yesterday, if he had been hearing the tanks coming off the assembly line in Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, what exactly would Wittgenstein have been hearing?

When people first heard Brahms's first symphony, all that most of them could say was that it sounded a lot like Beethoven's ninth symphony.

Any donkey can see that, being what Brahms said in turn.

I believe I would have liked Brahms.

Well, and I certainly would have found it agreeable to tell Ludwig Wittgenstein how fond I am of his sentence.

Then again I harbor sincere doubts that I would have liked John Ruskin, even if I have no idea what I have been saying that has now made me think about John Ruskin.

Well, Ruskin being still another of the assignments I skipped, was doubtless what.

And what I more truthfully happen to feel in regard to John Ruskin is sorry for him.

This is because of the silly man having spent so many years looking at so many ancient statues that he almost went into
shock on his wedding night, what with nobody ever having told him that living women had pubic hair.

Normally, the person one might more probably feel sorry for under such circumstances would be Mrs. Ruskin. Except that she was sensible enough to soon go running off with John Everett Millais.

When I comment that she was sensible, incidentally, I do not mean only because she ran off, but because it was with Millais, who had been a child prodigy. Which is to say that he had been painting from models with no clothes on since he was eleven.

Sappho is said to have taught music, by the way.

Well, and Achilles also played an instrument.

I enjoy knowing both of those things.