Wittgenstein's Mistress Read online

  Doubtless the stick was originally nothing more interesting than the handle of a carpet sweeper.

  Once, when I had set it aside to drag a piece of driftwood along the beach, I worried that I might have lost it.

  When I looked back it was standing upright, however, where I had had the foresight to place it without really paying attention.

  Then again it is quite possible that the question of loss had not entered my mind until I was already in the process of looking back, which is to say that the stick was already not lost before I had worried that it might be.

  I am not particularly happy over this new habit of saying things that I have very little idea what I mean by saying, to tell the truth.

  It was somebody named Ralph Hodgson, who wrote the poem about the birds being sold in the shops for people to eat.

  I do not remember that I ever read any other poem by Ralph Hodgson.

  I do remember that Leonardo da Vinci used to buy such birds, however, in Florence, and then let them out of their cages.

  And that Helen of Troy did have at least one daughter, named Hermione.

  And that Leonardo also thought up a method to prevent the Arno from overflowing its banks, to which nobody obviously paid any attention.

  For that matter Leonardo at least once put snow into one of his paintings too, even if I cannot remember whether Andrea del Sarto or Taddeo Gaddi ever did.

  In addition to which, Rembrandt's pupils used to paint gold coins on the floor of his studio and make them look so real that Rembrandt would stoop to pick them up, although I am uncertain as to why this reminds me of Robert Rauschenberg again.

  I have always harbored sincere doubts that Helen was the cause of that war, by the way.

  A single Spartan girl, after all.

  As a matter of fact the whole thing was undeniably a mercantile proposition. All ten years of it, just to see who would pay tariff to whom, so as to be able to make use of a channel of water.

  A different poet, named Rupert Brooke, died in the Dardanelles during the first World War, even if I do not believe that I remembered this when I visited the Dardanelles, by which I mean the Hellespont.

  Still, I find it extraordinary that young men died there in a war that long ago, and then died in the same place three thousand years after that.

  And on second thought the gold coins that Rembrandt's pupils painted on the floor of his studio are exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about Robert Rauschenberg.

  Or rather what I was talking about when I was talking about the person who is not at the window in the painting of this house.

  The coins having only been coins until Rembrandt bent over.

  Which did not deter me from rigging up a generator and floodlights in the Colosseum, however.

  Or from being shrewd enough to call the cat Calpurnia, after having gotten no response with Nero and Caligula.

  Still, if Rembrandt had had a cat, it would have strolled right past the coins without so much as a glance.

  Which does not imply that Rembrandt's cat was more intelligent than Rembrandt.

  Even if it so happens that Rembrandt kept on doing that, incidentally, no matter how many times they tricked him.

  The world being full of stories about pupils playing tricks on their teachers, of course.

  Leonardo once played a trick on Verrocchio by filling in part of a canvas so beautifully that Verrocchio decided to go into another line of work.

  One finds it difficult to think of Aristotle playing tricks on Plato, on the other hand.

  Or even to think of Aristotle doing lessons.

  One can easily manage to visualize Helen doing them, however. One can even see her chewing on a pencil.

  Assuming the Greeks had had pencils, that would be.

  As a matter of fact even Archimedes sometimes did his geometry by writing in the sand. With a stick.

  I accept the fact that it is doubtless not the same stick.

  Even if it could well have drifted for years. Over and back any number of times, in fact.

  Helen left Hermione at home when she deserted Menelaus and ran off with Paris, which is the one thing Helen did that one wishes she hadn't.

  Though it is not impossible that the ancient writers are not to be fully trusted in regard to such topics, having been mostly men.

  What one really wishes is that Sappho had written some plays.

  Though in fact there are other versions anyhow.

  Such as in the painting by Tiepolo, for instance, where Helen is shown being carried off by force.

  The Rape of Helen, in fact, being what Tiepolo called the painting.

  Medea is a little harder to visualize chewing on a pencil.

  Perhaps at seven or eight. After that she would have been Germaine Greer.

  For the life of me I cannot remember when the last time I thought about Germaine Greer was. Possibly there are some books by her in this house, however.

  Though I still cannot imagine what that other title might mean, about grass no longer being real.

  Perhaps my stick was once a baseball bat.

  Perhaps Rembrandt's pupils once played baseball.

  Cassandra was raped too, of course, after Troy fell.

  Doubtless there is no way of verifying that El Greco was descended from Hermione, however, after practically three thousand years.

  Near the end of his life, Titian manipulated his pigments as much with his fingers as with a brush, which was surely not the way Giovanni Bellini taught him.

  Naturally I had no way of knowing if the cat at the Colosseum had nibbled at anything behind my back, since most of the cans had seemed less than full to begin with.

  Doubtless Brahms was once a pupil, also.

  Even if, when he was only twelve, he was already playing the piano in a dance hall, which was more likely a house of prostitution.

  In fact Brahms went to prostitutes for the rest of his life.

  Nonetheless it is still not impossible to visualize Brahms doing scales.

  Well, and perhaps the prostitutes when he was still only twelve were dancing girls after all.

  Such as Jane Avril, for instance.

  I have no idea if Brahms ever visited in Paris while Jane Avril was dancing there.

  Still, for some reason it strikes me as agreeable to think of Brahms as having had an affair with Jane Avril.

  Or at least with Cleopatre or Gazelle or Mlle. Eglantine, who were some of the other dancers in Paris at that time.

  How one remembers certain things is beyond me.

  Perhaps Guy de Maupassant was rowing, when Brahms visited in Paris.

  Once, Bertrand Russell took his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein to watch Alfred North Whitehead row, at Cambridge. Wittgenstein became very angry with Bertrand Russell for having wasted his day.

  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, i
nstead.

  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.