Ordinary! Everyday! She could see that the girl was completely gobsmacked.
The girl was an art student. She did not even have an iron. She did not even have paper napkins, if she had people over for a meal she would tear off paper towels. But as soon as she moved in she bought an iron and an ironing board, and she bought some cloth napkins, and if you are going to have cloth napkins maybe you need a tablecloth so she bought a matching tablecloth. And maybe she would have reverted to natural behavior, but Ivo kept saying, I just want you engaging in some ordinary, everyday activity, something like vacuuming, or dusting. So of course then she had to buy a vacuum cleaner and a dust cloth, and of course Ivo would come over to experiment with the light at different times of day so she would feel the apartment had to look presentable for the kind of person who thinks vacuuming is an everyday activity. So she became fanatical about housekeeping, she would vacuum, she would wash all the dishes and put them away, she bought a teapot and a creamer and a sugar bowl and a little tray and a glass plate for cookies.
It was like an extreme form of this phenomenon that’s really common, which is that when you have gay friends to dinner you suddenly remember that they had hand towels and scented soap in the bathroom and you are conscious of living in squalor. Or at least, she thought it was like this phenomenon, but that was just the perception of the possessor of the mechanical eye. She had some money at this point. She rented an apartment, and she found a girl to live in it, and she said she would leave her assistant to handle the details. One of the reasons she loved gay bars, of course, is that there is this fanatical attention to detail, and they cosset you, so you become aware that you can ritualize looking after someone and that doesn’t devalue it. So she asked Ed Vittorini, who ran her favorite bar, if he would take care of this; she said she was going to want the inhabitant engaged in some ordinary, everyday activity, and he should just get her to act naturally, live naturally in the apartment. And of course, as it turned out, the end result was these two girls in an apartment with an ironing board and cloth napkins and a matching tablecloth and a tea tray and something in a clothes bag that had just been picked up from the dry cleaners and a vase of fresh flowers.
Entourage
He went to Krakow for no particular reason.
He had found a flight for 5 euros; for an additional 9 euros one could take a suitcase weighing 20 kg, or 44 pounds. He packed a small suitcase with books.
He went into a bookstore and began opening books. A sample of randomly encountered words:
Note the frequency of the letters z, w and y. The sample is, in fact, unrepresentative; in a larger sample of Polish words the letters j and k are also common. Couple of sentences:
Żył raz pewien wielki konstruktor-wynalazca, który nie ustając, wymyślał urządzenia niezwykłe i najdziwniejsze stwarzał aparaty.
Żył raz pewien inżynier Kosmogonik, który rozjaśniał gwiazdy, żeby pokonać ciemność.
He had once read a collection of Robotermärchen, robot tales, in German. A translation of some stories by Stanisław Lem. One had naturally not grasped that the word “gwiazdy,” whatever it might mean, featured in the original. One had not understood that the title of the original was Bajki Robotów.
It was now unexpectedly necessary to purchase a small suitcase and fill it with books replete with the letters z, w, y, j and k. It was necessary to hire someone to fly with him to Berlin to accompany the suitcase. Słowosław was the applicant whose name had the best letters.
His life was quite difficult at this time for reasons we need not discuss. It was often necessary to travel. One never knows how long one will be gone, you see. If it’s just an overnight trip one might manage with a couple of old favorites, but once, you see, he went to Bilbao and was unexpectedly kept hanging about for weeks.
He took the precaution for a while of booking a second ticket and hiring someone to bring a second suitcase. It’s not just that it was beginning to be complicated to bring an extra bag; it’s so much easier, obviously, if the bag is accompanied by someone able to carry it for you.
To all intents and purposes that should have been perfectly adequate for unexpected contingencies, but the fact is, one had to mull over the candidates for the second suitcase. He still needed the whole of the indispensable collection which had filled the first suitcase, but now he had Bajki Robotów to consider, not to mention others too numerous to mention.
He would travel, at any rate, to, as it might be, Istanbul with his first suitcase under his own supervision and the second suitcase in the care of an escort, and on arrival in Istanbul would discover all sorts of books that one simply never sees. Books, you know, with a dotless i. Umlauts up the gazoo. It would be necessary, obviously, to purchase a new suitcase and hire someone locally to fly back with it.
An American need never learn a language to communicate. One should choose a language the way one chooses a dog or a musical instrument.
He went to Copenhagen at one point. The Danish word for island is Ø. The common run of visitors do not see the phenomenon as necessitating purchase of a suitcase and hiring of a Dane.
He had seen ø described as a monophthongal closed mid+front rounded vowel. Reliable sources informed him that this was the sound of the vowel in British “bird” or, in the light form, the vowel of French “bleu.” His approach was to sit in a café in Copenhagen and lure one of the natives into recording Odins Ø in GarageBand on his MacBook. On a subsequent occasion he sat in a café in Oslo and lured an unsuspecting native into selecting a book from the suitcase and recording a passage.
It’s interesting, everyone knows that Perec’s La disparition is a book in which the letter e does not appear, but Rabbit, Run is never mentioned as a companion piece in which the letter å does not appear. Ångstrom being the correct spelling of the surname of the eponymous protagonist.
It’s better to bow to the inevitable. It’s really simpler, you know, to purchase the empty suitcase and hire its minder before one sets out. In Catalan the letter x proliferates. The word for fiction is ficció. He was unable, in the event, to find a Catalan at short notice in Berlin; an ad on the Barcelona Craigslist turned up Francesc.
Those were the early days. The days when he could make do with one additional packed suitcase plus carrier and one empty suitcase, ditto.
He noticed at some point that one could fly EasyJet to Bilbao, 10 people, each with 20 kg of checked luggage, for £346.90. A mere £34.69 per person.
In the later days if he had to go to Bilbao he would book one ticket for himself and 20 for the entourage.
It would have been simpler in many ways to put the entourage up at a hostel in 12-bunk rooms but he could not bring himself to do it. He had tried it once but it had been a mistake. It had been necessary to replace the gossipy backbiting entourage with a clean new entourage.
He would be getting on with things, minding his own business, be dragged into conversation, leave, leave a message for a member of the entourage to join him in Ürümqi.
The books are marked with colorcoded flags. They have marginal notes.
He buys books to remind himself to read them.
At one point it looked as though he might have to replace a member of the entourage. Francesc was having a fit of the sulks. It was by no means clear that a Xavier or Xulio would not be a better man for the job.