Wittgenstein's Mistress (6 page)

Although perhaps that house and this house were identical. Or quite similar, at any rate.

Houses along a beach are often that way, being constructed by people with basically similar tastes.

Though as a matter of fact I cannot be absolutely certain that the painting is on the wall beside me any longer itself, since I am no longer looking at it.

Quite possibly I put it back into the room with the atlas and
the life of Brahms. I have a distinct suspicion that it had entered my mind to do that.

The painting is on the wall.

And at least we have verified that it was not the life of Brahms that I set fire to the pages from also, out on the beach.

Unless as I have suggested somebody in this house had owned two lives of Brahms, both printed on cheap paper and both ruined by dampness.

Or two people had owned them, which is perhaps more likely.

Perhaps two people who were not particularly friendly with each other, in fact. Though both of whom were interested in Brahms.

Perhaps one of those was the painter. Well, and the other the person in the window, why not?

Perhaps the painter, being a landscape painter, did not wish to paint the other person at all, actually. But perhaps the other person insisted upon looking out of the window while the painter was at work.

Very possibly this could have been what made them angry with each other to begin with.

If the painter had closed her eyes, or had simply refused to look, would the other person have still been at the window?

One might as well ask if the house itself would have been there.

And why have I troubled to close my own eyes again?

I am still feeling the typewriter, naturally. And hearing the keys.

Also I can feel the seat of this chair, through my underpants.

Doing this out at the dunes, the painter would have felt the breeze. And a sense of the sunshine.

Well, and she would have heard the surf.

Yesterday, when I was hearing Kirsten Flagstad singing
The Alto Rhapsody,
what exactly was I hearing?

Winters, when the snow covers everything, leaving only that
strange calligraphy of the spines of the trees, it is a little like closing one's eyes.

Certainly reality is altered.

One morning you awaken, and all color has ceased to exist.

Everything that one is able to see, then, is like that nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of plaster and glue.

I have said that.

Still, it is almost as if one might paint the entire world, and in any manner one wished.

Letting one's brushing become abstract at a window, or not.

Though perhaps it was Cassandra whom I had intended to portray to begin with, on those forty-five square feet, rather than Electra.

Even if a part I have always liked is when Orestes finally comes back, after so many years, and Electra does not recognize her own brother.

What do you want, strange man? I believe this is what Electra says to him.

Well, it is the opera that I am thinking about now, I suspect.

At the intersection of Richard Strauss Avenue and Johannes Brahms Road, at four o'clock in the afternoon, somebody called my name.

You?
Can that be you?

Imagine! And here, of all places!

It was only the Parthenon, I am quite certain, so beautiful in the afternoon sun, that had touched a chord.

In Greece, no less, from where all arts and all stories came.

Still, for a time I almost wished to weep.

Perhaps I did weep, that one afternoon.

Though perhaps it was weariness too, behind the veil of madness that had protected me, and which, that afternoon, had slipped away.

One afternoon you see the Parthenon, and with that one glance your madness has momentarily slipped away.

Weeping, you walk the streets whose names you do not know, and somebody calls out after you.

I ran into an alley, which was actually a cul-de-sac.

Surely that is you!

I also had a weapon. My pistol, from the skylights.

Well, when I was looking, I almost always carried that.

Looking in desperation, as I have said.

But still, never knowing just whom one might find, as well.

Not until dusk did I emerge from the cul-de-sac.

And saw my own reflection behind the window of an artists' supplies shop, highlighted there against a small stretched canvas.

To tell the truth, one book in the shop next door to that one did happen to be in English.

This was a guide to the birds of Southern Connecticut and Long Island Sound.

I slept in the car that I was making use of at the time. Which was a Volkswagen van, filled with musical instruments.

Kathleen Ferrier had very possibly died even before I had purchased that old recording, I now believe.

I have forgotten whatever point I might have intended to make by mentioning that, however.

Veil of madness was a terribly pretentious phrase for me to have written, too.

The next morning I drove counterclockwise, among mountains, toward Sparta, which I wished to visit before departing Greece.

Not thinking to look into the book on birds for what it might have told me about seagulls.

Halfway to Sparta, I got my period.

Throughout my life, my period has always managed to surprise me.

Even in spite of my generally having been out of sorts for some days beforehand, this is, which I will almost invariably have attributed to other causes.

So doubtless it was not the Parthenon which had made me weep after all.

Or even necessarily my madness temporarily slipping away.

Already, obviously, the other had been coming on.

And so somebody called my name.

I still do menstruate today, incidentally, if irregularly.

Or else I will stain. For weeks on end.

But then may not do so again for months.

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

Or in the
Odyssey.
So doubtless a woman did not write that after all.

Before I was married, my mother discovered that Terry and I were sleeping together.

Was there anybody else before Terry? This was one of the first questions my mother then asked me.

I told her that there had been.

Does Terry know?

I said yes to that, also.

Oh you young fool, my mother said.

As the years passed I often felt a great sadness, over much of the life that my mother had lived.

What do any of us ever truly know, however?

I can think of no reason why this should remind me of the time when having my period caused me to fall down the central staircase in the Metropolitan and break my ankle.

Actually it may not have been broken but only sprained.

The next morning it was swollen to twice its normal size nonetheless.

One moment I had been halfway up the stairs, and a moment after that I was making believe I was Icarus.

What I had been doing was carrying that monstrosity of a canvas, which was extraordinarily unwieldy.

How one carries such a monstrosity is by gripping the crossbars between the stretchers, at its back, meaning that one has no
way whatsoever of seeing where one is going.

Still, I had believed I was managing. Until such time as the entire contraption floated away from me.

Possibly it was a wind, which caused that, since there were many more broken windows in the museum than those I had broken on purpose, by that time.

Presumably it was a wind from below, in fact, since what the canvas seemed to do was to rise up in front of me. And then to rise up some more.

Remarkably soon after that it was underneath me, however.

The pain was excruciating.

I am gushing, being what I thought at first, however. And I do not even have underpants on, under this wraparound skirt.

To tell the truth, when I had actually thought that had been perhaps two seconds earlier.

And so had shifted the way in which I was standing, naturally, to close my thighs.

Forgetting for the same instant that I was carrying forty-five square feet of canvas, on stretchers, up a stone stairway.

In retrospect it does not even become unlikely that there had been no wind after all.

And naturally all of this had occurred with what seemed no warning whatsoever, either.

Although doubtless I had been feeling out of sorts for some days, which I would have invariably laid to other causes.

The museum of course possessed crutches, and even wheelchairs, for just such emergencies.

Well, perhaps not for exactly just such.

All of these were on the main floor, in any event, along with other first aid items.

It would have been inordinately easier for me to crawl to the top of the stairs, rather than to the bottom.

Most of my accouterments were down there too, however. I believe I have mentioned having still possessed accouterments, in those days.

As it turned out, I became astonishingly adept at maneuvering my wheelchair in next to no time.

Skittering from one end of the main floor to the other, in fact, when the mood took me.

From the Greek and Roman antiquities to the Egyptian, or whoosh! and here we go round the Temple of Dendur.

Often even with music by Berlioz, or Igor Stravinsky, to accompany myself.

Now and again, the same ankle still pains me.

This is generally only in regard to the weather, actually.

For the life of me I cannot remember what I had been trying to get that canvas up the stairway for, on the other hand.

To paint on it, would be a natural supposition.

Then again, after not having painted on it for months, perhaps I had wished to put it someplace where I would not have to be continually reminded that I had not done so.

A canvas nine feet tall and five feet wide being hardly your most easily ignored reminder.

Doubtless I had had something in mind, at any rate.

There is a tape deck in the pickup truck here, now that I think about it.

There would appear to be no tapes, however.

Once, changing vehicles beside some tennis courts at Bayonne, in France, I turned an ignition key and found myself hearing the
Four Serious Songs,
by Brahms.

Though I am possibly thinking about the
Four Last Songs,
by Richard Strauss.

In either event it was not Kathleen Ferrier singing.

Actually, a fairly high percentage of the vehicles that one comes upon will have tape decks, many still set to the on position.

Rarely would it occur to me to give this any attention, however.

Obviously, one's chief interest at such moments would concern whether the battery on hand still functioned.

Assuming one had already determined that there was a key in the vehicle, and gasoline.

Kirsten Flagstad was singing, at Bayonne. Which was in fact Bordeaux.

To tell the truth, one was generally pleased enough that a car was moving so as to have driven some distance before noticing whether a tape deck was playing or not.

Or at least to have gotten clear of whatever obstacles had made it necessary to switch vehicles to begin with.

Often, bridges caused such switching. One solitary nuisance car can render your average bridge impassable.

For some years I normally troubled to transfer my baggage from one vehicle to the next, as well. On certain trips I even thought to carry along a hand truck.

When I was living at the Metropolitan I towed clear a number of my access routes, finally.

Well, or sometimes made use of a Land Rover, and came or went directly across the lawns in Central Park.

There is no longer any problem in regard to my husband's name, by the way. Even if I never saw him again, once we separated after Simon died.

As a matter of fact there is a hand truck in the basement of this house.

It is not one of my own, since I rarely make use of such contrivances any longer. Rather it was there when I came.

There are eight or nine cartons of books in the basement also, in addition to the many books in the various rooms up here.

The hand truck is badly rusted, as are the several bicycles.

The basement is even more damp than the remainder of the house. I leave that door closed.

The entrance to the basement is at the rear of the house, and below a sandy embankment, so that one does not see that in the painting.

The perspective in the painting having been taken from out in front, if I have not indicated that.

There are several baseballs in the basement also, on a ledge.

There is also a lawnmower, although there is only one exceedingly small patch of grass, at one side of the house, that I can imagine ever having been mowed.

That patch, on the other hand, does appear to be discernible in the painting.

I can see now that it had, in fact, been mowed at the time when the painter painted it.

The things one tardily becomes aware of.

Which reminds me that I am now convinced that the sentence that came into my head yesterday, or the day before yesterday, about wandering through an endless nothingness, was written by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Even if I am equally convinced that I have never read a single word written by Friedrich Nietzsche.

I do believe that I once read
Wuthering Heights,
however, which I mention because all that I seem able to remember about it is that people are continually looking in or out of windows.

The book called the
Pensees
was written by Pascal, by the way.

I also believe I have not indicated that this is another day of typing, which is why I expressed hesitation as to whether quoting Friedrich Nietzsche had occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday.

I did not make any sort of note about where I stopped, simply leaving that sheet in the machine.

Possibly I stopped at the point where I came to the baseballs in the basement, since the topic of baseball has always bored me.

Afterward I went for a walk along the beach, as far as the other house, which burned.