“Cashes in!”—“Cashes in pretty good!”—“The cops?”— “By the cops!”—“Cashed in?”
“ … broken!”—“with grief …”—“The neck?”—“A bottle!” —“ … the neck!”—“Broken …”—“ … and stuck the finger in …”—“Good!”—“Cut off!”—“What kind of head?”— “The conversation?”—“What?”—“He’s one good head shorter.”—“Off.”—“What kind of head?”—“Good, good.”
“ … three, four:”-“One, two, three — go!”—“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven …”—“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven (pause) eight (pause) nine (pause) ten — finished!” “Once, once more, a third time, four times, five times, and once more …”—“And then it was already getting bright outside …”—“Twenty-one, twenty-two-it’s uncanny, uncanny.” —“And then I stopped counting …”
“Corpses in quiet waters …”—“Oh, what a pretty title”—“Like an O?”—“ … laying their eggs there:”—“Like Story of O?”—“As though it were nothing …”—“Shame!”—“ … ‘and didn’t say a single word!’”—“What a beautiful title!”— “Oh!”—“ … the carps lay their eggs in quiet waters …”—“In Lake Erie?”—“Shame! shame! and shame once more!”—“Let’s say it was nothing!”—“According to the Geneva convention, o.k.?”
“The project died …”—“‘Dying’ is a typo, actually it should say ‘dried’!”—“Of fear?”—“A projectile with a cross-notch at the tip …”—“Quietly!”—“Died?”—“Very quietly!” —“I’m dying.”—“What was the name of that bar?”—“DumDum!” —“Of laughter?”—“I can’t go on!”—“Blood?”—“Into the blood!”—“As for me, he died!”—“Died for all of us …”—“Quiet!”-“Psst!”—“Silence!”—(silence)—“An angel walked through the room!”—“Oh, Harlem …!”—“Yes.” —“Unforgettable those tulip fields!”—“Haarlem …”—“Yeasz …”
“ … shaking with fear!”—“Pardon the question: ‘Shaking with fear’?”—Someone else in the background: “ … shake well before use!”—“Excuse me!”
“ … could be seen from far away: fucked the cows …” —“Fucked?”—“Forgot the cows, John Wayne. I believe, I forgot the name of the film.”—Someone farther away: “Knocked out her teeth!”—“Who knocked her up?”-And someone even farther away: “Knocked them down with bombs.”
Continuing at once: “Rammed a rod up his ass!”—Louder: “Ramrods have passed.”—Quite comprehensible but not too loud, recited negligently like verse: “ … rambling through the brambles of glass … / … roaring through the riptide of grass …” To his partner: “Do you still remember?” The partner lowers his or her head, smiles, and walks on: “Whether W. C. Fields slipping freely …” The first one, more softly: “Sipping.”—Even more softly: “What simpering?” The sound of someone becoming louder emanates from an altogether different spot: “ …. chalice of sorrow …” Now the first of the two partners walks on smiling. And on: “And a bit of spit on the fly which …” The lady with the fan in the background. — “Yes, the tits of my girl Friday.” One thereupon thinks one hears one of the two partners saying. — “No, a dog that bit off my clitoris(?) …”
While stepping-slowly-forward: “ … and I tasted …” Correcting himself while approaching: “ … which tasted me …”—“ … tasted the soft inside of a … cyst …”—In front by the footlights, humming elatedly with lowered head: “ … a foretaste of heaven …”—A character who is just walking past the lady with the fan says: “Tested me to the utmost,” and one thinks one can still hear the lady with the fan’s partner say — one can’t really make out who is speaking-while the two are edging into the background: “ … cash his cut … taste buds … spit and polish … soft insides got sick … fucked watery corpses at Easter …” while all around on the stage many other characters are walking around chatting, though more softly, and smiling.
Then they recount: “‘Cold,‘he said, ’cold, completely cold.‘”—“‘Ice,’ as she used to say then.”—“‘Like a glance out of a ranch house in Nebraska,’ they told us.”—“‘Where the train got stuck in the snow,’ she wrote back to me.”—“‘Indescribably white!’ she exclaimed.”—“‘No!’ he screamed.”—“‘Light, nothing but light!’ she squealed like a pig on a spit.”—“He cabled: ‘In the chest-high snow where the two, who had become snowblind in the meantime, were surrounded by St. Bernards …’”—“And I replied: ‘And what are you?’”—“‘Put in cold storage,’ I still understood, then the line went dead.”—“‘A mouse?’ I couldn’t resist asking.”—“‘For New Year’s Eve in the fridge!’ he wrote in so many words though the stamp allowed room for one more.”—“The note said in Gothic script: ‘Born dead …’”—“‘The ice pick already lodged in his head,’ I read, ‘he still bit his murderer’s hand.’”—Someone then produces a poor imitation of the sound of “croaking,” a chocking noise with the gums—kch—and his female partner emits a quick light laugh.
For a short while one hears the characters leave out one word in their sentences and sees them casting significant and conspiratorial glances at each other: “You remember how (smirking and nodding of heads) … used take lonely walks with his dog?”—“I don’t need to tell you that … held different opinions on the matter.”—“I often thought of … when I sat in my deck chair.”—“When the radio announcer says … I drop everything at once.”—“For days after … had squeezed my hand my whole body would break out in hives.”—“I can’t forget how … dangled on his suspenders on the hotel room door.”—“It’s unthinkable that … would have gone out on the street without his umbrella.” —“What would have been different if … had succeeded in getting a hit at that time?”—“Not only when I sat on Plymouth Rock did I have to cry about what … told me about death.”—“I often worry myself nearly to death whether Paraguay is really the right place for …”—“Usually one glance by a dark-eyed foreigner in an Indonesian restaurant is enough and I can’t breathe any more and only see … (outraged recollection) in front of me — how he suddenly stepped out from behind the column toward (melancholy recollection) …”
Or they use the wrong instead of the correct word under the assumption that they understand each other anyway. “One should herd them together and then—‘treat them to a good meal!’” (Smirking and gentle laughter.)-“Go after them—‘and slap them on the shoulder!’”—“ … because his ‘shirt tail’ hung out of his ‘door’ …”—“ … When she came up to me and told me that I could ‘visit’ her.”—“All I had to do was ‘smile’ at him and blood began pouring from his nose.”—“ … grabbed between his legs to help him ‘get upstairs.’”—“His dentures fell out of his mouth even before I’d ‘said a single word.’”—“The ‘slight draft’ when we entered the room was enough for him to catch his death of cold.”—“Up on the platform ‘I kissed him on the forehead,’ so that he suddenly lost his balance.”—“Drove him, ‘drove him out of his wits.’”—“Got caught in the fan belt and—‘woke up!’”—“I sent him a ‘get-well card’ registered mail and the man thanked me and dropped dead!”—“He aimed at—‘progress and change!’”—“ … I tried putting the ‘cookie’ in his mouth!!”—“Across the barbed wire—‘into the soft moss of the Okefenokee, …’”—“Cut a ‘piece of bread’ off for him!”—“ … will give her a teaspoonful of ‘cinnamon,’ ‘to taste!’”—“ … so that these bastards will let her ‘come.’”