Come Back, Dr. Caligari

Come Back, Dr. Caligari Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts — 1968 City Life — 1970 Sadness — 1972 Amateurs — 1976 Great Days — 1979 Overnight to Many Distant Cities — 1983 Sam’s Bar — 1987 Sixty Stories — 1981 Forty Stories — 1987 Flying to America: 45 More Stories — 2007 Guilty Pleasures — 1974 Snow White — 1967 The Dead Father — 1975 Paradise — 1986 The King — 1990 Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Barthelme a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF come back, dr. caligari was originally published by Little, Brown and Company in 1964. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company. Vendela Larsson Books 2013 Of the stories in the book the following appeared originally in The New Yorker: “The Piano Player,” “Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight,” “Mar- gins,” and “A Shower of Gold.” The author is grateful to The ‘New York- er for permission to reprint. The author also wishes to thank Harper’s Bazaar for permission to reprint “Florence Green Is 81”; New World Writing for “The Big Broad- cast of 1938”; Contact for “The Viennese Opera Ball” and “Me and Miss Mandible” (which appeared under the title “The Darling Duckling at School”); First Person for “Hiding Man”; Genesis West for “To Lon- don and Rome”; and Arts and Literature for “Will You Tell Me?”. Copyright © 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 by Donald Barthelme Printed in the United States of America iv To my mother and father v Contents 1 Florence Green Is 81 13 The Piano Player 17 Hiding Man 29 Will You Tell Me? 39 For I’m the Boy Whose Only Joy Is Loving You 47 The Big Broadcast of 1938 61 The Viennese Opera Ball 69 Me and Miss Mandible 83 Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight 91 Up, Aloft in the Air 103 Margins 109 The Joker’s Greatest Triumph 117 To London and Rome 127 A Shower of Gold vii Florence Green is 81 Dinner with Florence Green. The old babe is on a kick tonight: I want to go to some other country, she announces. Everyone wonders what this can mean. But Florence says nothing more: no explana- tion, no elaboration, after a satisfied look around the table bang! she is asleep again. The girl at Florence’s right is new here and does not understand. I give her an ingratiating look (a look that says, “There is nothing to worry about, I will explain everything later in the pri- vacy of my quarters Kathleen”). Lentils vegetate in the depths of the fourth principal river of the world, the Ob, in Siberia, 3200 miles. We are talking about Quemoy and Matsu. “It’s a matter of leading from strength. What is the strongest possible move on our part? To deny them the islands even though the islands are worthless in themselves.” Baskerville, a sophomore at the Famous Writers School in Westport, Connecticut, which he attends with the object of becoming a famous writer, is making his excited notes. The new girl’s boobies are like my secretary’s knees, very prominent and irritating. Florence began the evening by saying, grandly, “The upstairs bathroom leaks you know.” What does Herman Kahn think about Quemoy and Matsu? I can’t remember, I can’t remember… 1 Come Back, Dr. Caligari Oh Baskerville! you silly son of a bitch, how can you become a famous writer without first having worried about your life, is it the right kind of life, does it have the right people in it, is it going well? Instead you are beglamoured by J. D. Ratcliff. The smallest city in the United States with a population over 100,000 is Santa Ana, California, where 100,350 citizens nestle together in the Balboa blue Pacific evenings worrying about their lives. I am a young man but very brilliant, very ingratiating, I adopt this ingratiating tone because I can’t help myself (for fear of boring you). I edit with my left hand a small magazine, very scholarly, very brilliant, called The Journal of Tension Reduction (social-psychological studies, learned disputation, letters-to-the-editor, anxiety in rats). Isn’t that distasteful? Certainly it is distasteful but if Florence Green takes her money to another country who will pay the printer? answer me that. From an article in The Journal of Tension Reduction: “One source of concern in the classic encounter between patient and psychoanalyst is the patient’s fear of boring the doctor.” The doctor no doubt is also worrying about his life, unfolding with ten minutes between hours to smoke a cigarette in and wash his hands in. Reader, you who have already been told more than you want to know about the river Ob, 3200 miles long, in Siberia, we have roles to play, thou and I: you are the doctor (washing your hands between hours), and I, I am, I think, the nervous dreary patient. I am free associating, brilliantly, brilliantly, to put you into the problem. Or for fear of boring you: which? The Journal of Tension Reduction is concerned with everything from global tensions (drums along the Ob) to interpersonal relations (Baskerville and the new girl). There is, we feel, too much tension in the world, I myself am a perfect example, my stomach is like a clenched fist. Notice the ingratiating tone here? the only way I can re- lax it, I refer to the stomach, is by introducing quarts of Fleischmann’s Gin. Fleischmann’s I have found is a magnificent source of tension reduction, I favor the establishment of comfort stations providing free Fleischmann’s on every street corner of the city of Santa Ana, California, and all other cities. Be serious, can’t you? The new girl is a thin thin sketchy girl with a big chest looming over the gazpacho and black holes around her eyes that are very promising. Surely when she opens her mouth toads will pop out. I am tempted to 2 Florence green is 81 remove my shirt and show her my trim midsection sporting chiseled abdominals, my superior shoulders and brilliantly developed pecto- ral-latissimus tie-in. Jackson called himself a South Carolinian, and his biographer, Amos Kendall, recorded his birthplace as Lancaster County, S.C.; but Parton has published documentary evidence to show that Jackson was born in Union County, N.C., less than a quarter mile from the South Carolina line. Jackson is my great hero even though he had, if contemporary reports are to be believed, lousy lats. I am also a weightlifter and poet and admirer of Jackson and the father of one abortion and four miscarriages; who among you has such a record and no wife? Baskerville’s difficulty not only at the Famous Writers School in Westport, Connecticut, but in every part of the world, is that he is slow. “That’s a slow boy, that one,” his first teacher said. “That boy is what you call real slow,” his second teacher said. “That’s a slow son of a bitch,” his third teacher said. And they were right, right, entirely correct, still I learned about Andrew Jackson and abortions, many of you walking the streets of Santa Ana, California, and all other cities know nothing about either. “In such cases the patient sees the doctor as a highly sophisticated consumer of outre material, a connoisseur of exotic behavior. Therefore he tends to propose himself as more col- orful, more eccentric (or more ill) than he really is; or he is witty, or he fantasticates.” You see? Isn’t that sensible? In the magazine we run many useful and sensible pieces of this kind, portages through the whirlpool-country of the mind. In the magazine I cannot openly advo- cate the use of Fleischmann’s Gin in tension reduction but I did run an article titled “Alcohol Reconsidered” written by a talented soak of my acquaintance which drew many approving if carefully worded letters from secret drinkers in psychology departments all over this vast, dry and misunderstood country. “That’s a slow son of a bitch,” his third teacher remarked of him, at a meeting called to discuss the formation of a special program for Inferior Students, in which Baskerville’s name had so to speak rushed to the fore. The young Baskerville, shrinking along the beach brushing sand from his dreary Texas eyes, his sad fingers gripping $20 worth of pamphlets secured by post from Joe Weider, “Trainer of Terror Fighters” (are they, Baskerville wondered, like fire fighters? do they 3 Come Back, Dr. Caligari fight terror? or do they, rather, inspire it? the latter his, Baskerville’s, impossible goal), was even then incubating plans for his novel The Children’s Army which he is attending the Famous Writers School to learn how to write. “You will do famously, Baskerville,” said the Registrar, the exciting results of Baskerville’s Talent Test lying unex- amined before him. “Run along now to the Cashier’s Office.” “I am writing doctor an immense novel to be called The Children’s Army!” (Why do I think the colored doctor’s name, he with his brown hand on the red radishes, is Pamela Hansford Johnson? Why do I think?) Florence Green is a small fat girl eighty-one years old, old with blue legs and very rich. Rock pools deep in the earth, I salute the shrewd- ness of whoever filled you with Texaco! Texaco breaks my heart, Texaco is particularly poignant. Florence Green who was not always a small fat girl once made a voyage with her husband Mr. Green on the Graf Zeppelin.

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