WILLIAM GASS
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charging the living for their life and paying off only when death was a
winner-what was he with his busy pencil and greedy teeth , in the
flesh of his flesh, but the purest muck, individuation driven to the
point of indifference, asafetida not energy, sheer dumb disagreeable
stuff, unworked, unrealized, raw, foolish in its lean and teeter, its oils,
wows, and ouches, as an Evereadied dolly, yet with a prick which led
him on his little trot through life like a leash held at the loop end in the
Pope's fist? Butterflies leave laces in the air like a courtier's cuffs, she
said. Faugh . Easy to say such, harder to prove so. Still, in order not to
shit, she wou ld refuse to eat-intolerable the sounds of devoured
food: unfeathered, fried, carved, bitten, chewed-therefore why was
his pissing so productive? How about a belch, he'd ask her , much
message in that? How about a fart? What can you read in a sneeze or
the ooze of sweat, that collar of water on the toilet pipe-ha-what do
you say?-what about the petulent whine and then the frightened
whinny of laboring machines? leap of light from a mirror? unkinking
cock? but she would smile her sad peacemaker's smile at his coarseness,
face him with a calm forbearing palm, explain that only the plainest
idea could be contained in such a short intemperate sound as a sneeze,
bereft of feeling and every fineness, say how often there ' d be but blunt
sense in the sharpest signal, because you never can tell about such
things, Edgar, you must know that by now, surely you do, you do,
surely, and though paint slides from a brush sometimes in a way that's
purely meditative, never mind, I have heard hush! in the batter of
hammers, the clatter of cans, and please in the rasp of a file. I know
every letter of the law, Hess said: L. . . A. . . -and I know of the awe
in it, was her reply. It helped her to hit her, Hess knew that. Surely he
knew that. Who had his hat? She hadn't his hat. He had his hat. She
wanted hitting in the worst way, although her surrender to his will was
like another conquest of China. Still, what did it matter whether she
was out from a blow or lost in her dizzy mind's movies, since she could
easily have dreams during dinner, trances during a doze? There was no
place or moment she was willing to occupy the way Hess took over his
air and hours-fully, heavily, persistently-so he was unable to feel
there were any outlines to her-no weights , no volumes, no shifts-she
was never anywhere. His wife might undergo visions while steaming a
crease in his office trousers, plume out a chimney and disappear,
receive visitations washing dishes , her thin hands gloved in suds as
