Wittgenstein's Mistress (8 page)

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

Although perhaps Toulouse-Lautrec once handled my stick, even if Archimedes did not, having walked with a cane.

Then again, one of the popes made people burn most of what Sappho did write.

Doubtless my ankle was only sprained. Though it was swollen to twice its normal size.

Could that person T. E. Shaw have been a baseball player, perhaps?

And what have I been saying that has now made me think about Achilles again?

Now is perhaps not the correct word in any case.

By which I mean that I was undeniably thinking about Achilles at the moment when I started to type that sentence, but was no longer thinking about him by the time I had finished it.

One allows one's self to finish such sentences, of course. Even if by the time one has managed to indicate that one is thinking about one thing, one has actually begun thinking about another.

What happened after I started to write about Achilles was that halfway through the sentence I began to think about a cat, instead.

The cat I began to think about instead was the cat outside of the broken window in the room next to this one, at which the tape frequently scratches when there is a breeze.

Which is to say that I was not actually thinking about a cat either, there being no cat except insofar as the sound of the scratching reminds me of one.

As there were no coins on the floor of Rembrandt's studio, except insofar as the configuration of the pigment reminded Rembrandt of them.

As there was, or is, no person at the window in the painting of this house.

As for that matter there is not even a house in the painting of this house, should one wish to carry the matter that far.

Certain matters would appear to get carried certain distances
whether one wishes them to or not, unfortunately.

Although perhaps this is the very subject of that other book, come to think about it. Quite possibly what I have taken to be a book about baseball is actually some sort of scholarly speculation about there having been no grass where people played baseball except insofar as the people playing baseball believed that there was.

At first glance one would scarcely have expected
Wuthering Heights
to be a book about windows, either.

Though it remains a fact that there was once some very real grass that had been mowed at the side of this house.

As can be readily verified by a glance at that same painting.

Though I am very likely now contradicting myself.

In either case the tape has now stopped scratching.

Nor am I thinking about a cat any longer.

Then again I certainly would have had to be thinking about one while I was typing that sentence, even though the sentence says just the opposite.

Surely one cannot type a sentence saying that one is not thinking about something without thinking about the very thing that one says one is not thinking about.

I believe I have only now noted this. Or something very much like this.

Possibly I should drop the subject.

Actually, all I had been thinking about in regard to Achilles was his heel.

Although I do not have any sort of limp, if I have possibly given that impression.

And meanwhile I am also now curious about the tape itself, since for the life of me I cannot remember having put it up.

Unquestionably I did put it up, however, since I can remember very distinctly when the window broke.

Oh, dear, the wind has just broken one of the windows in one of the rooms downstairs, I can even remember thinking.

This would have been right after I had heard the glass, naturally.

And on a windy night.

Yet for the life of me I cannot remember repairing that window.

In fact I am next to positive that I have never had any tape in this house.

The last time I can remember having seen any tape, anywhere, was on the afternoon when I drove the Volkswagen van full of first aid items into the Mediterranean.

As it happened there was a tape deck in the van also, although this is of course in no way connected to the sort of tape I am talking about.

The tape deck in the van was playing
The Seasons,
by Vivaldi.

Even after I had climbed back up the embankment, the tape deck continued to play. In my upside down car that was filling up with the sea.

As a matter of fact what it was playing was
Les Troyens,
by Berlioz.

This held a particular interest for me, in fact, what with my having been in Hisarlik not long before. For some time I sat on the embankment and listened to it.

Though to tell the truth I had much more recently been in Rome. And in Rimini and Perugia and Venice.

So that perhaps the tape deck was playing something else entirely.

For the life of me I cannot remember what I had been trying to get that monstrosity of a canvas up that stairway for.

Even if the question was soon enough rendered irrelevant, considering the manner in which I did not get it up.

And what have I been saying that has now made me think about Brahms's mother?

In this instance I can make an educated guess, since the poor woman had a crippled leg.

For the life of me I would not have believed that the life of Brahms was the book I had read in this house.

Evidently not every question falls into the category of questions that would appear to remain unanswerable, however.

Though what must now surprise me is that I would have troubled to read a book so badly damaged, or printed on such cheap paper.

Any number of books in this house are in considerably better condition, even if all of them show evidence of dampness.

Such as the atlas, for instance. Although the atlas has had the advantage of lying flat, generally, rather than standing askew.

In fact I returned it to that same position not two days ago, after having wished to remind myself where Lititz, Pennsylvania, and Ithaca, New York, might be.

The book about baseball has a green cover, incidentally, which is possibly appropriate.

Conversely there does not appear to be a single book about art in this house.

My reason for remarking on this is not personal. Rather I find it unusual simply because of another painter once seeming to have lived here.

Then again the other painter may have only been a guest. In which case the painting of the house may well have been done as a sort of gift, in return for her visit.

Though in suggesting that, I am of course forgetting the several other paintings in certain of the rooms here that I do not go into, and to which the doors are closed.

Possibly those other paintings are paintings by the same painter, as well.

In fact I am certain that they are, in spite of my not having looked at any of them since closing the doors, which I did some time ago.

The only one of the closed doors which I any longer open is the one to the room where the atlas and the life of Brahms are, and that has been happening only lately.

It is scarcely a demanding proposition to determine that all three paintings on the walls of the same house have been
painted by the same painter, however.

More especially when all three are paintings of houses at, or near, a beach, as I have now remembered that the other two are also.

Though I naturally possess more practiced equipment for making such a determination, should that become necessary.

In either event, what now occurs to me is that the painter was doubtless not a guest in this house either, but more likely was somebody who lived nearby. Which would more readily explain why there are three paintings by her in a house in which there are an inordinate number of books but not one of those books is about art.

Being so closely familiar with the painter's subject matter, the people who did live in this house would have presumably been delighted to display such paintings.

No question of aesthetic understanding would have had to enter into the arrangement at all.

For that matter perhaps all of the houses along this beach, or many of them, contain other examples of the same painter's work.

Perhaps even the very house which I burned to the ground contained such examples, even though it would obviously not contain them any longer, no longer being a house.

Well, it is still a house.

Even if there is not remarkably much left of it, I am still prone to think of it as a house when I pass it in taking my walks.

There is the house that I burned to the ground, I might think. Or, soon I will be coming to the house that I burned to the ground.

None of the three paintings in this house is signed, incidentally.

Actually, I do not remember looking, but I am positive that looking is something I would have done.

Even in museums, it is something I often do.

I have even done it with paintings that I have been familiar with for years.

I hardly do it because I believe that there might be any error in the attribution of a painting.

In fact I have no idea why I do it.

Frequently, Modigliani would sign the work of other painters. This was so they would be able to sell paintings that they otherwise might not have sold.

Doubtless I should not have said frequently. Doubtless Modigliani did this only a handful of times.

Still, it was kind of Modigliani, since a certain number of his friends were not eating very well.

In fact Modigliani himself often did not eat well, although basically this would have been because he was drinking, instead.

Once, in the Borghese Gallery, in Rome, I signed a mirror.

I did that 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.

Doubtless I would not have signed it, had there been anybody else to look.

Though in fact the name I put down was Giotto.

There is only one mirror in this house, incidentally.

What that mirror reflects is also an image of myself, of course.

Though in fact what it has also reflected now and again is an image of my mother.

What will happen is that I will glance into the mirror and for an instant I will see my mother looking back at me.

Naturally I will see myself during that same instant, as well.

In other words all that I am really seeing is my mother's image in my own.

I am assuming that such an illusion is quite ordinary, and comes with age.

Which is to say that it is not even an illusion, heredity being heredity.

Still, it is the sort of thing that can give one pause.

Even if it has also entered my mind to realize that I may be almost as old, by now, as my mother was then.

My mother was only fifty-eight.

Though she was exactly fifty, when I painted her portrait.

Well, it was that birthday for which I painted it.

Though I rarely did portraits.

There were times when I regretted that I had never done a portrait of Simon, however.

Other times I did not believe I would have wished to possess such a reminder.

And perhaps it was their anniversary that I painted my mother and father's portraits for.

In fact it was their thirtieth anniversary.

I painted both of the portraits from slides, meaning the gift to be a surprise.

What this made it necessary to do was to hang dropcloths in my studio, so as to contrive a dark corner in which I could make use of the projector.

Generally I seemed to spend more time walking in and out of the darkness, than actually painting.

To tell the truth, what I generally spent the greatest amount of time doing was sitting, whenever I painted.

At times one can sit endlessly, before getting up to add a single brushstroke to a canvas.

Leonardo was known to walk halfway across Milan to do that, with
The Last Supper,
even when anybody else would have believed it was finished.

Which did not keep
The Last Supper
from beginning to deteriorate in Leonardo's own lifetime, however, because of a foolish experiment he had tried, with oil tempera on the plaster.

In a manner of speaking, one could even say that
The Last Supper
was already deteriorating while it was still being painted.

For some reason the thought of this has always saddened me.

Often, too, I was surprised that so many people did not seem to know that
The Last Supper
was a painting of a Passover meal.

I did not stop in Milan, in any case, on my way from Venice to Savona.

For that matter I had hardly intended to stop at Savona.

An embankment gave way. I have no idea how long the embankment had been deteriorating before I got there.

Leonardo wrote in his notebooks backwards, from right to left, so that they had to be held up to a mirror to be read.

In a manner of speaking, the image of Leonardo's notebooks would be more real than the notebooks themselves.

Leonardo was also left-handed. And a vegetarian. And illegitimate.

The slides that I took of my mother and father still exist, presumably.

Presumably old slides of Simon still exist, too.

I suspect there is something ironical in my knowing so many things about Leonardo and yet not knowing if the slides that I took of my mother and father, or any of my little boy, still exist.

Or, if they exist, where.

Time out of mind.

I have snapshots of Simon, of course. For some time one of them was in a frame on the table beside my bed.

But quite suddenly I do not feel like typing any more of this, for now.

I have not been typing, for perhaps three hours.

All I had anticipated doing, actually, was going to the spring for water. But after I had filled the pitcher I decided to take a walk into the town.

The pitcher is actually a jar. On the way home I forgot about having left it, and so will have to go back out.