Wittgenstein's Mistress Read online

  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.

  This is hardly a chore. And there is a frisky breeze.

  In the town, I looked at the boats in the boat basin.

  While I was there I also realized that there is an explanation for so many people forgetting that The Last Supper is a painting of a Passover meal, doubtless.

  The explanation being that what they really forget is that everybody in the painting is Jewish.

  For a long period, in the Borghese Gallery, I stood in front of a pediment carving of Cassandra being raped. Her hair is magnificently wild, for anonymous stone.

  Cassandra and Helen, both, had told the Trojans there were Greeks in the wooden horse. Nobody paid attention to either of them, naturally.

  Quite possibly I have not mentioned the boat basin before. There are several, nearby.

  Very few of the boats would appear to be seaworthy any longer.

  Though I rarely have any impulses in that regard any longer, either.

  Once, I sailed to Byzantium, however. By which I mean Istanbul.

  Though how I actually went, after the Bering Strait, was by various cars across Siberia. Next following the Volga River south, until I turned toward Troy.

  Constantinople thus becoming very little out of my way.

  Now and again I have regretted that I did not continue on across to Moscow and Leningrad, on the other hand. Especially having never been to the Hermitage.

  And to tell the truth I have never done any sailing at all, when one comes down to it.

  Every boat I have made use of has had an engine.

  This is scarcely including my rowboats, naturally.

  Which in either case I have rarely done more in than drift.

  Though I did give serious thought to the notion of rowing out beyond the breakers on the night on which my house was burning to the ground, actually, once it had struck me to wonder from how far out the flames might be seen.

  Doubtless I would not have rowed nearly far enough, even if I had gone, since one would have surely had to row all the way beyond the horizon itself.

  For that matter one might have actually been able to row as far as to where one was out of sight of the flames altogether, and yet still have been seeing the glow against the clouds.

  Which is to say that one would have then been seeing the fire upside down, so to speak.

  And not even the fire, but only an image of the fire.

  Possibly there were no clouds, however.

  And in either case I no longer had a rowboat.

  Now, each time I go to the beach, I take a look to make certain that the new rowboat is in its place.

  In fact I took such a look only moments ago, when I came back from the town.

  Perhaps I have not mentioned that I came back from the town by way of the beach, instead of the way I had gone, which was by way of the road.

  Which would explain why I did not remember to bring in my pitcher, which I had left at the spring.

  Frequently I tend to think of my jar as a pitcher. Doubtless this is only because a pitcher has more of the sound of what one would wish to carry to a spring.

  Though perhaps another reason why I did not remember it is that I am feeling somewhat tired.

  Actually, I am not feeling tired. How I am feeling is not quite myself.

  Well, perhaps what I am more truthfully feeling is a kind of depression. The whole thing is fairly abstract, at this point.

  In any case, doubtless I was already feeling this way when I stopped typing. Doubtless my decision to stop typing had much to do with my feeling this way.

  I have already forgotten what I had been typing when I began to feel this way.

  Obviously, I could look back. Surely that part cannot be very many lines behind the line I am typing at this moment.

  On second thought I will not look back. If there was something I was typing that had contributed to my feeling this way, doubtless it would contribute to it all over again.

  I do not feel this way often, as a matter of fact.

  Generally I feel quite well, considering.

  Still, this other can happen.

  It will pass. In the meantime there is little that one can do about it.

  Anxiety being the fundamental mood of existence, as somebody once said, or unquestionably should have said.

  Though to tell the truth I would have believed I had shed most of such feelings, as long ago as when I shed most of my other sort of baggage.

  When winter is here, it will be here.

  Even if one would appear never to be shed of the baggage in one's head, on the other hand.

  Such as the birthdays of people like Pablo Picasso or Dylan Thomas, for instance, which I am convinced that I might still recite if I wished.

  Or the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, even if one still has no idea who she may have been.

  I do not know who Marina Tsvetayeva may have been either, although in this case the name at least did not come into my mind until an hour ago, when I was at the boat basin.

  Obviously, I was thinking about the other sort of marina.

  Actually it was Helen Frankenthaler's name that caught my eye on that poster not far from the Via Vittorio Veneto. I do not remember ever having been in a show with Georgia O'Keeffe.

  T
hough in fact perhaps it was Kierkegaard who said that, about anxiety being the fundamental mood of existence.

  If it was not Kierkegaard it was Martin Heidegger.

  In either case I suspect there is something ironical in my being able to guess that something was said by Kierkegaard, or by Martin Heidegger, when I am convinced that I have never read a single word written by Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger.

  A good deal of one's baggage would appear to be not even one's own, as I have perhaps elsewhere suggested.

  Anna Akhmatova is somebody else whom I have never read, although doubtless she is in some way connected to Marina Tsvetayeva.

  Then again it is not impossible that there are books by all of these people in this house.

  I have noticed guides to several of the National Parks. As well as one to the birds of the southern Aegean and the Cyclades Islands.

  There is an explanation for the atlas generally lying flat, incidentally, instead of standing askew.

  The explanation being simply that the atlas is too tall for the shelves.

  And in either event I have just now categorically determined where it was that I read the life of Brahms.

  Where I read the life of Brahms was in London, in a bookstore near Hampstead Heath, on the morning when I was almost hit by the car.

  I believe I have mentioned being almost hit by the car, which came rolling down a hill.

  Perhaps I was not almost hit by the car. Still, one moment I was reading the life of Brahms, and a moment after that, whoosh! there went the frightening thing right past me.

  Just imagine how this startled me, and how I felt.

  Only a day before, I had sat in a vehicle with a right-hand drive and watched a street called Maiden Lane, near Covent Garden, fill up with snow, which must surely be rare.

  Naturally the car that came down the hill had a right-hand drive also, this still being London.

  My reason for emphasizing this is simply because that same side of the car was the side that was nearest me, and naturally my first reaction was to look for who in heaven's name could be driving.

  Naturally nobody was driving.

  Still, my condition of being startled continued for quite some time.

  Unquestionably it was still continuing while I was realizing that what the car was going to do next was to crash into the car I had been driving myself, and which I had double parked a certain distance farther down the hill.

  Instead it crashed into something else altogether.

  As a matter of fact it did not crash into anything at all, that I saw, but kept right on down the hill and out of sight.

  All I am assuming when I say it crashed into something else is that surely there would have had to be other obstacles in its path sooner or later.

  Certainly it would have had to hit a street sign, or possibly even an English house, if it did not hit another car.

  When one comes right down to it, on the other hand, I did not hear the sound of the crash either.

  Then again it is quite possible that I was not really listening, what with the overall duration of that condition of being startled.

  All that I was truthfully doing was continuing to stand in front of the bookstore, which was next door to a Mexican restaurant.

  The restaurant had reproductions of paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros in its window.

  The car in question had been a London taxi cab, by the way.

  To this day I have no idea what may have caused it to roll down that hill on a morning when I happened to be visiting in the same neighborhood.

  Something had finally deteriorated, doubtless, that it had been wedged against.

  Doubtless any number of other vehicles have been rolling down any number of other hills, in fact, through all of these years.

  Quite possibly a certain number of them are doing exactly that at this very moment, even.

  One has no idea what number, but a certain number, surely.

  Then again the tires on many cars have become flat, which would indisputably have become a factor.

  But be that as it may, eventually I walked some distance past my own car to see which of the various possible obstacles the taxi had crashed into.

  I did not see the taxi anywhere.

  The hill made a turn, as it happened.

  Still, surely I would have eventually come upon it, if I had wished to pursue the matter.

  And assuming of course that I did not mistake a different wrecked taxi for the taxi I was looking for.

  What I appeared to be more interested in at the moment, however, was the Mexican restaurant, which I had not noticed earlier.

  Although actually what I let myself into the restaurant for was a bottle of tequila.

  Well, all of this having occurred during the period when I was still looking, if I have not indicated that. So that surely a drink was permitted.

  Moreover I was doubtless also remembering having been identically startled by that ketch, in sight of Mount Ida.

  Actually, what surprises me about the ketch in retrospect is that that spinnaker had not been shredded years before.

  Although possibly the ketch had been sheltered somewhere, and had not begun to drift until lately.

  As the taxi had not begun to roll until the same morning on which I stopped at the bookstore and read the life of Brahms.

  I had not gone into the bookstore with anything approximating a life of Brahms in mind, incidentally. All I did was pick up the first book I happened to see, which was lying on a counter.

  And which in fact was not a life of Brahms at all, but a history of music. For children.

  But which had been open to a chapter on Brahms.

  The book was printed in extraordinarily large type. Addi- tionally, the chapter on Brahms could not have been more than six pages long.

  Unquestionably there would have been nothing about dancing girls in it either.

  Still, if I had not decided to read the chapter, certainly I would have been somewhere else by the time the taxi rolled down the hill.

  Instead, there I was, forced to think, good heavens! here comes a car, and a moment after that, oh, well, of course it is not a car.

  In thinking the latter I meant only that it was not a car with anybody driving it, obviously.

  Naturally you can never find a taxi when you want one.

  But again, all of this in the midst of all that looking, nonetheless.

  Not to speak of all that anxiety.

  Although as a matter of fact I noticed a taxi just today, at the boat basin.

  That particular taxi has been in the identical spot since I came to this beach, however.

  Nor will it leave, what with all four of the tires being flat in this case.

  In fact its wheels are in deep sand, also.

  The tires on the pickup truck are fine. Though naturally I check those.

  There is an air pump under the seat, in any event.

  Then again I suspect that I may have neglected to run the battery for some time, now.

  I have just walked out to the pickup truck.

  Actually where I walked was to the spring, which the truck is next to. I went for the pitcher, which is how I think of the jar.

  Before bringing it back I emptied it out and filled it again, since the water had already turned warm from standing in the sun.

  The water at the spring itself is always cool, however.

  I have brought in lilacs, also.

  It is Joan Baez, I believe, whom I would like to inform that one can now kneel and drink from the Loire, or the Po, or the Mississippi.

  Winters, when the snows come and the trees write their strange calligraphy against the whiteness, sometimes the only other demarcation is that of my path to the spring.

  Well, and in the opposite direction too, of the path that I follow through the dunes to the beach.

  Although I am completely forgetting the third path, just in back of the dunes, which is still another that can be seen at such tim
es.

  That third path is the path to the house that I have been dismantling.

  Perhaps I have not mentioned that I am dismantling a house.

  I am dismantling a house.

  It is tedious work, but necessary.

  I do not make a major project out of it, on the other hand. Basically I treat it in much the same way as I treat the question of my driftwood.

  Perhaps I have not mentioned how I treat the question of my driftwood.

  All that will happen, basically, is that now and again I will be walking past the house, and a board will catch my eye, and so I will dismantle the board and carry it home.

  Assuming I am not already carrying driftwood, obviously.

  Actually there was adequate firewood here already, for my first winter.

  Well, there was almost adequate firewood here. Later along I burned certain items of furniture.

  All of those were from the rooms that I no longer make use of, as it happens, and to which the doors are closed.

  Now that I think about it, very possibly that is even why I have taken to closing those doors, although I cannot imagine why I would not have made this connection before.

  In any case the house that I am dismantling contains almost no furniture at all. In fact it is quite indifferently built.

  The only tool I have needed for any of the work is a crowbar, which I took from beneath the same seat in the pickup truck.

  Well, there is also the saw, which I came upon in the house itself.

  Then again I do not really think of the saw as a tool for dismantling. Rather I think of that as a tool for turning dismantled lumber into firewood.

  After it has been dismantled.

  Although perhaps this distinction is no more than one of semantics.

  At any rate I have no idea why the house should have been constructed so indifferently.

  One can only guess that it had been built to be rented, perhaps, rather than to be lived in, which is sometimes the case with houses along a beach.

  The world is everything that is the case.

  I have no idea what I mean by the sentence I have just typed, by the way.

  For some reason I seem to have had it in my head all day, however, although without the vaguest notion about where it might have come from.

  Such things can happen. One morning not too long ago all I could think about was the word bricolage, which I presume is French, even though I do not speak one word of French.