Wittgenstein's Mistress (29 page)

Well, as I have only just explained.

But in either case doubtless when Dostoievski was writing about Rainer Maria Raskolnikov he took Rainer Maria Raskolnikov quite seriously.

Well, or as Lawrence of Arabia undeniably did when he was writing about Don Quixote.

Or just look at how many people might have gone through life believing that castles in Damascus was just a phrase, for instance.

Still, what happened next was that I realized just as quickly that writing a novel would not be the answer anyhow.

Or certainly not when your ordinary novel is basically expected to be about people too, obviously.

And which is to say about certainly a good number more people than just one, also.

In fact without ever having read one word of that same novel by Dostoievski I would readily be willing to wager that Rainer Maria Raskolnikov is hardly the only person in it.

Or that Anna Akhmatova is the only person in
Anna Karenina,
as well.

So that as I say, there went my novel practically even before I had a chance to start thinking about a novel.

Unless on third thought it just might change matters if I were to make it an absolutely autobiographical novel?

Hm.

Because what I am also suddenly now thinking about is that it could be an absolutely autobiographical novel that would not start until after I was alone, obviously.

And so that obviously there could be no way whatsoever that it could be expected to have more than one person in it after all.

Even though I would still have to remember to keep out of my head while I was writing any of that also, of course.

But still.

As a matter of fact it might even be an interesting novel, in its way.

Which is to say a novel about somebody who woke up one Wednesday or Thursday to discover that there was apparently not one other person left in the world.

Well, or not even one seagull, either.

Except for various vegetables and flowers, conversely.

Certainly that would be an interesting beginning, at any rate. Or at least for a certain type of novel.

Just imagine how the heroine would feel, however, and how full of anxiety she would be.

And with every bit of that being real anxiety in this instance, too, as opposed to various illusions.

Such as from hormones. Or from age.

Even though her entire situation might certainly often seem like an illusion on its own part, paradoxically.

So that soon enough she would be quite mad, naturally.

Still, the next part of the novel would be about how she would insist upon going to look for other people in all sorts of places whether she was quite mad or not.

Well, and while also doing such things as rolling hundreds and hundreds of tennis balls one after the other down the
Spanish Steps, or waiting during seventeen hours for each of her seventeen wristwatches to buzz before dropping each one of them into the Arno, or opening a vast number of cans of cat food in the Colosseum, or placing loose coins into various pay telephones that do not function while intending to ask for Modigliani.

Or for that matter even poking into mummies in various museums to see if there might be any stuffing made out of lost poems by Sappho inside.

Except that what one senses even this readily is that there would very likely be almost no way for such a novel to end.

Especially once the heroine had finally become convinced that she may as well stop looking after all, and so could also stop being mad again.

Leaving her very little to do after that except perhaps to burn an occasional house to the ground.

Or to write make-believe Greek writing in the sand with her stick.

Which would hardly make very exciting reading.

Although one curious thing that might sooner or later cross the woman's mind would be that she had paradoxically been practically as alone before all of this had happened as she was now, incidentally.

Well, this being an autobiographical novel I can categorically verify that such a thing would sooner or later cross her mind, in fact.

One manner of being alone simply being different from another manner of being alone, being all that she would finally decide that this came down to, as well.

Which is to say that even when one's telephone still does function one can be as alone as when it does not.

Or that even when one still does hear one's name being called at certain intersections one can be as alone as when one is only able to imagine that this has happened.

So that quite possibly the whole point of the novel might be
that one can just as easily ask for Modigliani on a telephone that does not function as on one that does.

Or even that one can just as easily be almost hit by a taxi that has come rolling down a hill with nobody driving it as by one that somebody is, perhaps.

Even if something else that has obviously become evident here is that I would not be able to keep out of my heroine's head after all.

So that I am already beginning to feel half depressed all over again, as a matter of fact.

Doubtless making it just as well that writing novels is not my trade in either case.

Well, as Leonardo similarly said.

Although what Leonardo actually said was that there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

And which has now given me the curious sensation that most of the things I do write often seem to become equidistant from
themselves,
somehow.

Whatever in heaven's name I might mean by that, however.

Once, when Friedrich Nietzsche was mad, he started to cry because somebody was hitting a horse.

But then went home and played the piano.

On my honor, Friedrich Nietzsche used to play the piano for hours and hours, when he was mad.

Making up every single piece of music that he played, too.

Whereas Spinoza often used to go looking for spiders, and then make them fight with each other.

Not being mad in the least.

Although when I say fight with, I mean fight against, naturally.

Even if for some curious reason one's meaning would generally appear to be understood, in such cases.

Would it have made any sense whatsoever if I had said that the woman in my novel would have one day actually gotten more accustomed to a world without any people in it than she
ever could have gotten to a world without such a thing as
The Descent from the Cross,
by Rogier van der Weyden, by the way?

Or without the
Iliad?
Or Antonio Vivaldi?

I was just asking, really.

As a matter of fact it was at least seven or eight weeks ago, when I asked that.

It now being early November, at a guess.

Let me think.

Yes.

Or in any event the first snow has been and gone, at least.

Even if it was not a remarkably heavy snow, actually.

Still, on the morning after it fell, the trees were writing a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.

For that matter the sky was white, too, and the dunes were hidden, and the beach was white all the way down to the water's edge.

So that almost everything I was able to see, then, was like that old lost nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of gesso.

Making it almost as if one could have newly painted the entire world one's self, and in any manner one wished.

Assuming one had also wished to paint outdoors in such chilly weather, that is.

Although the cold had been coming on for quite some time before that too, naturally.

So that I had already been to the town any number of times in the pickup truck, in fact.

Well, scarcely wishing to be caught short for supplies once I am basically locked in here, obviously.

And which is to say that I have now dismantled a good deal more of the house next door, as well.

Making two toilets fastened to pipes on the second floors of houses which no longer possess second floors that I now see when I go for my walks along the beach.

Now and again when I was calculating which of the boards I
could get at next with my crowbar up there, by the way, I was reminded of Brunelleschi and Donatello.

Early in the Renaissance when Brunelleschi and Donatello had gone about measuring ancient ruins in Rome, this would be, and with such industry that people believed they could only be searching for buried treasure.

But after which Brunelleschi returned home to Florence and put up the largest dome since antiquity.

While Giotto built the beautiful campanile next door.

Even if there would appear to be no record in art history as to whether Giotto did that before or after he had painted the perfect circle freehand, on the other hand.

And as a matter of fact Giotto's campanile is square.

Although there is practically no place in Florence from which one cannot see either of those structures, incidentally.

Well, as there is practically no place in Paris from which one cannot see the Eiffel Tower, either.

And which might certainly disturb one's lunch, should one not wish to look at the Eiffel Tower while eating one's lunch.

Unless like Guy de Maupassant one had taken to crawling about on a floor and eating one's own excrement, say.

God, poor Maupassant.

Well, but poor Friedrich Nietzsche, too, actually.

If not to mention poor Vivaldi while I am at it also, since I now remember that he died in an almshouse.

And for that matter poor Bach's widow Anna Magdalena, who was allowed to do the same thing.

Bach's widow. And with all of those children. Some of whom were actually even more successful in music at the time than Bach himself had been.

Well, but then poor Robert Schumann as well, in a lunatic asylum and fleeing from demons. One of whom was even Franz Schubert's ghost.

For that matter poor Franz Schubert's ghost.

Poor Tchaikovsky, who once visited America and spent his
first night in a hotel room weeping, because he was homesick.

Even if his head at least did not come off.

Poor James Joyce, who was somebody else who crawled under furniture when it thundered.

Poor Beethoven, who never learned to do simple child's multiplication.

Poor Sappho, who leaped from a high cliff, into the Aegean.

Poor John Ruskin, who had all those other silly troubles to begin with, of course, but who finally also saw snakes.

The snakes, Mr. Ruskin.

Poor A. E. Housman, who would not let philosophers use his bathroom.

Poor Giovanni Keats, who was only five feet, one inch tall.

Poor Aristotle, who talked with a lisp, and had exceptionally thin legs.

Poor Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who I also now remember was one more person who died in a plague. But in her case while taking care of other nuns who were more ill than she.

Poor Karen Silkwood.

Well, and poor all the young men who died in places like the Hellespont, by which I mean the Dardanelles, and then died again three thousand years after that, likewise.

Even if I hardly mean the same young men.

But meaning poor Hector and poor Patroclus, say, and after that poor Rupert Brooke.

Ah, me. If not to add poor Andrea del Sarto and poor Cassandra and poor Marina Tsvetayeva and poor Vincent Van Gogh and poor Jeanne Hebuterne and poor Piero di Cosimo and poor Iphigenia and poor Stan Gehrig and poor singing birds sweet and poor Medea's little boys and poor Spinoza's spiders and poor Astyanax and poor my aunt Esther as well.

Well, and poor all the youngsters throwing snowballs in Bruegel, who grew up, and did whatever they did, but never threw snowballs again.

So for that matter poor practically the whole world then,
more often than not.

And of course without even thinking about that Wednesday or Thursday morning, this is.

Even if for the life of me I have no idea why I am talking about one bit of that now, either. Any of it.

When all I had actually been about to say was that I have no real explanation for not having written anything in these past seven or eight weeks.

Even if I have already listed several, such as going for supplies, or devoting more time than usual to my dismantling.

Although another reason may very well be that I have appeared to be frequently tired lately, to tell the truth.

As a matter of fact what I ought to have perhaps just said was not that I have no explanation for not having written anything in the past seven or eight weeks, but for having been so frequently tired during that period.

In fact I am feeling tired right at this moment.

Perhaps I was feeling tired when I spent that week lying in the sun before I last did do any writing, too, now that I stop to think about it.

So that I am less than positive that I have brought in as many items for winter as I will need after all, actually.

Or that I have done nearly as much dismantling as is necessary, either.

Especially since any number of the boards are still waiting to be sawed, as it happens.

Although I have never considered sawing the boards to be part of the process of dismantling, incidentally.

Being rather a question of turning dismantled lumber into firewood.

After it has been dismantled.

Even if such a distinction is doubtless no more than one of semantics.

And in either case perhaps I will do some more of that, later today.

Perhaps I will find the painting I have lost later today, also.

Although doubtless I have not mentioned that I have lost a painting.

Well, assuredly I have not mentioned having lost it, what with not having written one solitary word since some time before that happened.

It being the painting of this very house, that I am talking about, and which until at least last August had been hanging directly above and to the side of where this typewriter is.

I believe the painting is a painting of this very house.

In fact I believe there is a representation of a person lurking at the window of my very bedroom in it, even, although one had never been able to be positive about that.