Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts Read online

  Putting Things Away. Keep all things clean and keep them put away in their proper places, whereof you know, and take them out when needed and, when used, put them back into their places, whether they be cupboards, shelves, cabinets, boxes, sacks or bags, or the yellow or green trash containers under the sink; the ones made of plastic.

  Friends Near and Far. When the women of the neighborhood wish to tell you of their sheets and bedding, turn a deaf ear, though it is permissible to listen if they live sufficient distances away, over a hundred miles away, for example, so that daily intercourse is not likely, and therefore it does not matter to me what they do, they and their husbands, between the sheets, and I will not have to lend either of them money, tools, seed, or grain, or advice, or help start their cars, repair their stovepipes, or move their freezers. For knowledge is power, my dear, and power diminishes in proportion to its ultimate destination or administration in time and place, in its terminus; far friends, as we know, are good friends, while with near friends one must live with deaf ears, although with friends both far and near it is perhaps best and wisest to be deaf while they are near and keen of ear when they are far, and both when they are in transit from the one state to the other.

  Daily Appearances. Your seemingly interminable training will be complete when the appearance of each room of the house corresponds to its appearance for a set hour of the day, each day, for a set period of weeks, months, years—whatever. To make this clear, let us take an example. Supposing there is a cloud of dust in the living room—it is being swept, vacuumed, dusted, repaired—at four in the afternoon, then at every subsequent four in the afternoon there should appear a like or similar cloud of dust raised by a similar process, as generated by a like or similar person dressed in a like or similar manner employing approximately the same gestures to achieve the same end, a cloud of dust.

  Running Lists. The keeping of a running list of household needs is, my dear, essential to the smooth operation of the entire house, and I cannot easily overemphasize the importance of it, however much I might try and try. For what could be more disastrous to the even temper of the household than to wake up one fine morning and discover snow piled halfway up to the roof and no sugar left in the kitchen—no butter in the refrigerator—no toilet paper in the bathroom? Thus a good rule is to make note of an item when it is two-thirds or three-fourths depleted, that is, when three out of four quarters of butter have been eaten, three out of four rolls of toilet paper used up, or six and two-thirds pounds of a ten-pound bag of sugar emptied. You may also find it useful to lay in a reserve of essential items for emergencies, as long as you make a note to replenish those that are used up during such emergencies as may have come to pass so that should emergencies recur there will always be emergency supplies from which to draw—for there is nothing worse than to discover in an emergency that the household is not only out of regular supplies but out of emergency supplies as well! The keeping of a list is not, however, as simple as it may first seem, for it is not enough to start at the top of the page and write out the items in the order in which they come to mind, that is, in an order in which their exhaustion draws near. Certainly one must start in this fashion, but this is not to say that you should finish here, with a randomly drawn-up list that corresponds to no order except that of chance. It is for this reason that I have posted in the pantry a floor plan of the supermarket at which we habitually shop, and with the most important items marked and labeled according to aisle and counter. Now of course I cannot guarantee the daily accuracy of this map—for unscrupulous supermarket operators are likely to scramble everything up overnight in order to confuse and bewilder their customers into buying their way out of the labyrinth—but I do take notes on the latest changes every time we shop so that I may then revise the map the moment we return home, as I think you have often noticed.

  Thus I suggest that the mornings we set aside to go into town to shop you get up especially early in order to recast your first rough draft of a list into an order that corresponds to the path I have recommended you take through the supermarket, that is, starting from the right of the building, fresh produce, and threading your way through the aisles, up one and down the next, until you reach the left side of the building, the meat counter, and from thence pass directly to the checkout stalls. In this way the whole circuit can be completed in ten minutes or less and will not expose you to undue or prolonged temptations, while allowing me sufficient time to inspect the aisles and counters for changes or alterations of any sort.

  Nor should you fail, upon returning home, to enter all items purchased, both separately and as totals, into the housekeeping account book I have provided for your exclusive use, and then to balance these totals against the cash contents of your purse and my wallet in relation to the original sums we first left the house in possession of or withdrew from the bank on the way. In this manner you can easily spot any miscalculations you may have missed earlier, notably overpricings, which may be brought to the attention of the supermarket manager the next visit into town, or any pure and simple losses, while accounting also by the same means for all coins or bills found on the sidewalks or in the parking lots or elsewhere, behind cushions or under chairs. In any case, whether we go shopping or not, it is a good idea to make certain twice daily, once in the morning, once in the evening, that such cash as we carry about with us is flowing through the course of the day without secret losses, which, if left undetected, could mount up to considerable sums over the years.

  Inventory Lists. To know the contents of the house is also to know the contents of the Marriage, not only the large but the small as well, from major appliances and furniture down to handkerchiefs and doilies or even pins and needles, and it is for this reason that I have prepared an inventory list for your use in keeping up the house. Needless to say, you should carry it around with you at all times so that you can use it to verify the correct number and condition of our possessions and thus be able to discover almost at once when something is lost—disappears—is stolen—which is more likely to happen with the smaller objects of the household than with the larger. Nonetheless you will find it useful as you walk into the kitchen each day to ask, consulting your list, whether there are the right number of stoves, refrigerators, tables and chairs in the room and if not, why not, or, if they are all there as they should be, whether any of them is in need of repairs or maintenance or total replacement. In this way the condition of each object of the household can be ascertained by a glance at the list (without having to rummage through everything), and replacements can be ordered and purchased in advance, before the sheets rip or the towels fray or the shirts give out at the elbows, thus avoiding ill-timed failures, whether of garment or of appliance. And it is a task best carried out in the early morning hours of each day—as you may gather from observing me go over the yard and garden each morning with my inventory list in hand, noting down the condition of the trees, shrubs, fenceposts, walls, gates, livestock, garden rows, tools and supplies, car and truck, and whatever else might have been damaged by the passage of time or the weather or carried away in the darkness of the night.

  Household Calendars. The function of the household calendar, that is, the various schedules I myself draw up for our joint use for the year in progress, is to assure that the days flow smoothly one after another in such a way as to spare either you or me, the joint partners of the Marriage, the sort of surprise or shock that can be occasioned by abrupt and unannounced changes. Health is a function of diet and regularity, and that is why I have made a point of marking down not only the hours at which I wish all meals to be served over the course of the year, but also a detailed menu for each meal, each day of the year—the menu and meal hours schedule I keep posted on the inside of the pantry door. You will note slight seasonal variations in both hour and menu content which are keyed—you might also notice—to slight variations in the hours I have set for going to bed and getting up in the morning, which are in turn reflected in the time and length of the a
fternoon nap. There are also minor variations tied to the phases of the moon. What is unpredictable here is the weather—yet I have attempted to make allowances, particularly for those days and weeks it is most likely to be extreme or abnormal. And the eating and sleeping schedules are also reflected in the dressing schedule to be found posted inside the clothes closet and on which I have indicated what articles of clothing I will wear for each day of the year, in turn mirrored in the seasonal bath and shower schedule, the whole indicating—if you read between the lines—those nights I have scheduled in advance for going out to be entertained or for other extraordinary activities, as listed on the schedule pasted to the inside of the glove-box door of the car. The utility of this system should by now be obvious to you, for should we find ourselves fully dressed up at five in the afternoon—having dutifully followed the bathing and dressing calendars—then it should be clear that this is a night to go out and that we should then proceed to do so, following as closely as possible the itinerary suggested inside the glove-box door, to Chinese or Italian restaurant, foreign or domestic comedy, chamber music or symphonic concert, and so on, whenever the facilities and activities in the neighboring towns permit, as usually they will.

  The whole, of course, composes what I often refer to as our Marriage Almanac, on the composition of whose various calendars and schedules I spent at least three whole evenings each year, that is, the year preceding its actual issuance. For I have often observed that a Marriage will most often founder on the little matters of when and what to eat, what to wear and when to wash or clean it, when to go out and where to go and when to stay home, when to invite someone in and who it should be, and so on, and thus to follow the Almanac of our Marriage is to avoid making these decisions on the spur of the moment—since I have already made them months in advance, from an objective distance in time when I am neither hungry nor thirsty nor affected by the weather, hot or cold, nor can have any idea of what films or plays or concerts might be scheduled for the neighboring towns, and am thus best able to determine the shape and form, as it were, of the upcoming year, down to its most seemingly insignificant details. And further, by publishing my little Almanac—as I intend to do someday, in the distant future—and mailing copies to our friends, we will not only be able to inform them in advance of our schedule for each day of the year, thus sparing us unwanted or inconvenient visits, but provide as well a model of sorts upon which they may wish to reconstruct their own Marriages in order to reinforce and strengthen them.

  The House. The house is the Marriage, and thus to maintain and keep in good repair the house, tidy and well cleaned, is to keep the Marriage too in good repair, tidy, well cleaned. The house, with its four walls, roof, floors, windows and doors, resembles the Marriage in other respects as well, so that if you focus your attention on the house you are focusing your attention on the Marriage as well. Many well-known proverbs come to mind here, all proven by time beyond memory, and I am content to let them stand as they are. In substance they state that it is the duty of the Wife to keep the interior of the house clean (as was said) as well as to offer food, drink, clothing, and bedding to those who enter its doors, that is, the invited, while it is the duty of the Husband, who I happen to be in this case, to keep the exterior surface of the house in good repair so that there will be no leaks, drafts, darkness where light is wanted, nor any intruders of any sort through any of the openings in the fabric which composes the outer walls. Yet if you fail to see me at these tasks, unremitting as they easily can be, guarding the ramparts, so to speak, oiling the locks on the doors, checking the tightness of the bars across the windows, scanning the horizon with my telescope—then do not suppose me gone. I am always around.

  The Yard. As the house is the Marriage, so too can the yard or grounds or the land be seen to represent what came before the Marriage, and by that I mean the courtship, for a house can no more be built on thin air or on a cloud in the sky than can a Marriage begin without an introduction and a subsequent courtship. Thus as the house needs its lot or land to sit on, so does the Marriage need its courtship, its romance, or its affair to sit on also beforehand. And in the same way neither is the house nor the Marriage simply dropped from the sky onto the land without any preparation whatsoever, to fall wherever it may. Certain things must be investigated by the prospective Husband and Wife before building their house, which is also their Marriage. In the first place, the fiancés should study their lot or their land to make certain it is well drained and that its subsoil is such that it will be able to support the vast weight of the foundation and structure of their future house. Then they should decide where the house will be best situated in relation to scenic views or neighboring roads or highways, prevailing winds and breezes, and the course of the sun across the sky, supposing that they are wise in their choice of the site to begin with, and are well out of sight of neighboring houses, stores, factories, highways, and railway lines. Next they will have to arrange for the thickets of wild rose and plum and willow or whatever other wild vegetation there might happen to be growing to be bulldozed off into a corner and burned, for how else will they be able to build their house if the growth upon their property is rank and tangled? With their land cleared and naked of vegetation, they may order the digging of the trenches for the foundation and the pipes, and command that wires be brought down from the sky to deliver their electricity. They will watch the walls rising next—the walls which must be strong. Beams will be hoisted. The roof will be nailed on, tarred, graveled, and it must not leak. Then the plastering will begin inside the house to make the walls smooth and true, not only along the vertical but along the horizontal as well. The strong doors and tight windows go in, and the sleek drapery, and the rich carpets that are nailed down to the floors. A van arrives with the bridal furniture and appliances and the nuptial bedding. Finally the fiancés, now Bride and Groom, arrive with their honeymoon suitcases and trunks and move into their new house.

  And as they lock the doors behind themselves and begin taking up residence in the house, so too do they begin taking up residence in the Marriage itself, which, like the house, has been built upon land stripped of all vegetation. Thus at first as the Bride and Groom look out the windows they will see not only desolation and loneliness on all sides—all the remains of their once flowering courtship. For as the house and thus the Marriage are built and moved into, so too is the land and thus the courtship laid waste to, the one growing out of and consuming the other and thus bringing about a momentary and ecological imbalance. But this is as it should be, for to prolong the courtship in the interests of preserving the flora and fauna of the land, so as not to disturb the mounds of red ants or cut back the poison ivy, is to postpone the building of the house and thus the Marriage in the mistaken belief that the courtship can last forever, in plain defiance of the laws of nature. Autumn and winter follow upon spring and summer, whereupon the once admired wild roses lose first their blossoms, then their leaves, then their hips—while the house stands upright, eternal, or relatively eternal—eternal enough, at any rate—and sheds the snow with its peaked roof and remains inside like spring and summer through the heating action of stoves and furnaces. And over the years the house asserts itself and comes to preside over the land upon which it stands, surrounding itself with well-trimmed lawns and well-planted flower beds in the place of the former growth which was wild and undisciplined. So too, then, should the Marriage work at replanting the devastated land of the courtship, not only with lawns and orchards, but with easily cared-for annuals and perennials as well, whose blooms are both predictable and regular throughout the various seasons of the year.

  The Floor. Likewise the floor of the house can be considered the floor of the Marriage, that is, what the Husband and Wife stand on and walk on and what they rest the furniture on. As is well known, floors are both dirty and “clean” at the same time. Yet it can also be said that no floor is ever entirely clean so much that it is “not dirty” and “not very dirty.” But it is an agre
ed-upon principle that the floors of the household are to be kept as clean as possible and that this is primarily your task and that you should furthermore guard against dirt being tracked into the house and therefore into the Marriage. And should you perform your duties in this area in the proper manner, it follows that you will not have to worry about dirt being tracked out of the house, out (therefore) of the Marriage.

  The Walls. The walls of the house represent the walls of the Marriage, and as one or two walls standing alone represent a ruin, so do four or more walls in multiples thereof represent the closing in upon, the rounding out of, the consummation of the copulatory embrace, though vertical rather than horizontal. The house then represents the sexual act frozen into architecture, and though doors will open and slam closed as children run in and out, and windows will be flung open in summer and latched closed in winter, and faucets be turned on and toilets flushed, and fires lit and be allowed to die out—we cannot ignore this fact. Therefore as you make your rounds throughout the house in the course of the day, cleaning the floors, walls, ceilings, and other interior surfaces (while I am at work outside rehanging shingles, touching up cracks in plaster, repainting the trim), it would be well to consider where you are. For as the interior of the house (and we also mean by “house” Marriage) is the female and what is outside the house is male, it follows that wherever I (who am the male) enter the house, which lies passive and horizontal and open unto my comings and goings, and as I wander among its furnishings (which we will call the organs), the overstuffed armchair, the pink sofa, the rich red carpets, and come upon you, surprising you and—but what more is there to add?

  Electricity. The modern house with all its conveniences can no more function without electricity than can the modern Marriage function without its equivalent, and by that I mean the nervous energy which powers the Marriage. For the wiring of the house with its wires, outlets, and switches is also the wiring of the Marriage or the nerves of the Marriage through which electrical impulses are transmitted, causing light bulbs to glow, toasters to heat up, the motors of washing machines, blenders, and other appliances to turn, and so on. And as the electrical circuits should not be overloaded by turning on all the lights and appliances at once all over the house, so too should not the wiring of the Marriage be overloaded by putting too many demands on it at once if one is to avoid overheated lines and blown fuses. For the effect of the blown fuse is to plunge everything into darkness and make time stop. Yet this can sometimes happen accidentally, as when the Husband and the Wife are drawing power in large quantities from separate ends of the house unbeknownst to each other. In such cases either you or I but preferably both of us should immediately undertake to find candles and flashlights and go down into the basement and replace the fuse or reset the circuit breaker, and start all over again. But now and then the lights will go out unexpectedly in the middle of dinner, the result of a distant lightning bolt, for example, and there is nothing that either of us can do except sit quietly by the candles until the lights finally go back on. That is, there are two kinds of power failure with the Marriage, the one brought on from within, the other from without; the effect, however, is essentially identical.