Saturday, December 12, 2009
New York
September 1, 1933. “Rockefeller Center, New York City. RCA Building, general view from the old Union Club.” ph: Samuel H. Gottscho
Ernest Hemingway: A Very Short Story
A Very Short Story
One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night.
Luz stayed on night duty for three months. They were glad to let her. When they operated on him she prepared him for the operating table; and they had a joke about friend or enema. He went under the anaesthetic holding tight on to himself so he would not blab about anything during the silly, talky time. After he got on crutches he used to take the temperatures so Luz would not have to get up from the bed. There were only a few patients, and they all knew about it. They all liked Luz. As he walked back along the halls he thought of Luz in his bed.
Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet, and there were other people praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not enough time for the banns, and neither of them had birth certificates. They felt as though they were married, but they wanted everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it.
Luz wrote him many letters that he never got until after the armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch to the front and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They were all about the hospital, and how much she loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night.
After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so they might be married. Luz would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to meet her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not want to see his friends or anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padua to Milan they quarreled about her not being willing to come home at once. When they had to say good-bye, in the station at Milan, they kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that.
He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back to Pordonone to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there, and there was a battalion of arditi quartered in the town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter, the major of the battalion made love to Luz, and she had never known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that theirs had only been a boy and girl affair. She was sorry, and she knew he would probably not be able to understand, but might some day forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected, absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always, but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career, and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best.
The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.
New York
Camel cigarette billboard featuring open mouthed aviator that blows out real smoke rings, on Broadway & 44th Street - 1944 - Photographer: Peter Stackpole
Lydia Davis: The Busy Road
The Busy Road
I am so used to it by now
that when the traffic falls silent,
I think a storm is coming.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Human Factor (1979)
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The directors of the British foreign intelligence service MI6 have determined that a double agent in the organization is supplying information to the Soviets and terminate the wrong guy.
Despite top-notch casting, a famous director and some production value this is a bleak and somnambulary adaptation of a Graham Greene novel.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Lydia Davis: Order
(ph: Walter Sanders)
Order
All day long the old woman struggles with her house and the objects in it: the doors will not shut; the floorboards separate and the clay squeezes up between them; the plaster walls dampen with rain; bats fly down from the attic and invade her wardrobe; mice make nests in her shoes; her fragile dresses fall into tatters from their own weight on the hanger; she finds dead insects everywhere. In desperation she exhausts herself sweeping, dusting, mending, caulking, gluing, and at night sinks into bed holding her hands over her ears so as not to hear the house continue to subside into ruin around her.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
New York
The first arrive of the Queen Mary on the New York Harbor. June 1st, 1936. The Financial District in the background.
Raymond Carver: Little Things
Little Things
Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.
He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.
I'm glad you're leaving! I'm glad you're leaving! she said. Do you hear?
He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.
Son of a bitch! I'm so glad you're leaving! She began to cry. You can't even look me in the face, can you?
Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up.
He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.
Bring that back, he said.
Just get your things and get out, she said.
He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.
She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.
I want the baby, he said.
Are you crazy?
No, but I want the baby. I'll get someone to come by for his things.
You're not touching this baby, she said.
The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.
Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.
He moved toward her.
For God's sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.
I want the baby.
Get out of here!
She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.
But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.
Let go of him, he said.
Get away, get away! she cried.
The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove.
He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.
Let go of him, he said.
Don't, she said. You're hurting the baby, she said.
I'm not hurting the baby, he said.
The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.
She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.
No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.
But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.
In this manner, the issue was decided.
"Little Things" from Where I'm Calling From: The Selected Stories Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by Tess Gallagher.
The story appeared as "Mine" in Furious Seasons And Other Stories Capra Press, 1977 and as "Popular Mechanics" in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Knopf, 1981.
Zwartboek (2006)
aka
Black Book Germany / International (English title) / Italy / UK / USA
In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.
Very professionally made and highly entertaining, this movie is rather more a Hollywood-style historical thriller than a serious depiction of occupied Holland during WWII.
Black Book Germany / International (English title) / Italy / UK / USA
In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.
Very professionally made and highly entertaining, this movie is rather more a Hollywood-style historical thriller than a serious depiction of occupied Holland during WWII.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Lydia Davis: Lonely
Lonely
No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
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