LYDIA DAVIS
Stories
Part II
THE THIRTEENTH WOMAN
In a town of twelve women there was a thirteenth. No one admitted she lived there, no mail came for her, no one spoke of her, no one asked after her, no one sold bread to her, no one bought anything from her, no one returned her glance, no one knocked on her door; the rain did not fall on her. the sun never shone on her, the day never dawned on her, the night never fell for her; for her the weeks did not pass, the years did not roll by; her house was unnumbered, her garden untended, her path not trod upon, her bed not slept in, her food not eaten, her clothes not worn; and yet in spite of all this she continued to live in the town without resenting what it did to her.
THE OUTING
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.
LOST THINGS
They are lost, but also not lost but somewhere in the world. Most of them are small, though two are larger, one a coat and one a dog. Of the small things, one is a valuable ring, one a valuable button. They are lost from me and where I am, but they are also not gone. They are somewhere else, and they are there to someone else, it may be. But if not there to someone else, the ring is, still, not lost to itself, but there, only not where I am, and the button, too, there, still, only not where I am.
LOVE
A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years. It was not enough for her to brush his coats, wipe his inkwell, finger his ivory comb: she had to build her house over his grave and sit with him night after night in the damp cellar.
[from: ALMOST NO MEMORY, Stories, Picador, 1997]
Only “Lost Things” makes any particular sense to me. Sorry. Everything here is dreary and remote. Alas!
A friend of mine in Poland is doing a dance cooperation project with German dancers about memory. How dance can evoke through different movements other moments when we remember this and not that.
Likewise in this story about the woman who fell in love with a dead man: she invokes her memories of him by building a house over his grave. An interesting, if not melodramatic moment of remembering.
It is said that most churches in Europe are build over former battle fields, thus over mass graves, to silence those who want to go through paintings becoming poems to speak to the rest still living but without remembrance.
“Master of a literary form mostly of her own invention.”
Strange and provocative. Fill in the blanks.
“Master of a literary form mostly of her own making.”
Strange and provocative. Fill in the blanks as you will . . .