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This is not a Story
This is not a Story
This Is Not A Story
When one tells a story it is for a listener; and however short the story is, it is highly unlikely that the teller is not occasionally interrupted by his audience. So I have introduced into the narration that will be read, and which is not a story, or which is a bad one if you have doubts about that, a character that might approximate the role of the reader; and I begin.
* * * * *
And you conclude right there?
– That a subject this interesting must make us dizzy, be the talk of the town for a month, be phrased and rephrased until flavorless, produce a thousand arguments, at least twenty leaflets, and around a hundred bits of verse in favor or against. In spite of all the finesse, learning, and pure grit of the author, given that his work has not lead to any violence it is mediocre. Very mediocre.
– But it seems to me that we owe him a rather agreeable evening, and that this reading has brought…
– What? A litany of worn-out vignettes fired from left and right, saying just one single thing known for all eternity, that man and woman are extraordinarily unfortunate beasts.
– Nevertheless the epidemic has won you over, and you have contributed just like any other.
– Whether or not it be to one´s taste, it is only good taste to strike the tone given. When meeting company, we customarily tidy up appearances at the door of the apartment for whomever we are seeing; we pretend to be funny when we are sad; sad, when we would have liked to be funny. We do not want to appear out of place anywhere; so the literary hack politicizes, the political pundit talks metaphysics, the metaphysician moralizes, the moralist talks finance, the financier, letters or logic. Rather than listen or keep quiet, each ramble on about what they are ignorant of, and everyone bores each other with silly vanity or politeness.
– You are in a bad mood.
– I usually am.
– And I think it is appropriate for me to reserve my vignette for a better time.
– You mean you will wait for me to leave.
– It is not that.
– Or you are afraid that I might have less indulgence for you, face to face, than I would for your average gentleman.
– It is not that.
– Be agreeable then and tell me what it is.
– That my vignette will not prove any better than those that have annoyed you.
– Hmph. Tell it anyway.
– No. You have had enough.
– You know that of all the ways the others have enraged me, yours is the most unpleasant?
– And what is mine?
– That of being asked to do the thing you are dying to do. Well, my friend, I ask you, I pray you satisfy yourself.
– Satisfy myself?
– Begin, by God, begin.
– I will try to be short.
– That cannot hurt.
Here, a little out of spite, I coughed, I spat, I drew my handkerchief out slowly, I blew my nose, I opened my snuff box, I took out a pinch of snuff; and I heard my fellow man say between his teeth: `If the telling is short, the preliminaries are long…´ I had the urge to call a servant under the pretext of some errand. But I did not, and I said:
* * * * *
It must be admitted that there are very good men, and very bad women.
– One sees that every day, and sometimes without leaving the house. Go on?
– Go on? I knew an Alsatian beauty. Beautiful enough to make old men come running and stop younger ones in their tracks.