“Now!” she said. “Mount them! Cover them! Devour them!”
There was no doubt that she could hear them now. She heard them quite palpably. Their sound was like grass in the wind, like the first stirrings of gravel dumped from a truck. Then there was the Shchapalov woman’s scream, and curses from the men, such terrible curses that Marcia could hardly bear to listen.
A light went on, and Marcia could see them, the roaches, everywhere. Every surface, the walls, the floors, the shabby sticks of furniture, was mottly thick with Blattelae germanicae. There was more than a single thickness.
The Shchapalov woman, standing up in her bed, screamed monotonously. Her pink rayon nightgown was speckled with brown-black dots. Her knobby fingers tried to brush bugs out of her hair, off her face. The man in the undershirt who a few minutes before had been stomping his feet to the music stomped now more urgently, one hand still holding onto the lightcord. Soon the floor was slimy with crushed roaches, and he slipped. The light went out. The woman’s scream took on a rather choked quality, as though . . .
But Marcia wouldn’t think of that. “Enough,” she whispered. “No more. Stop.”
She crawled away from the sink, across the room, on to her bed, which tried with a few tawdry cushions to dissemble itself as a couch for the daytime. Her breathing came hard, and there was a curious constriction in her throat. She was sweating incontinently.
From the Shchapalovs’ room came scuffling sounds, a door banged, running feet, and then a louder, muffled noise, perhaps a body falling down stairs. The landlady’s voice: “What the hell do you think you’re—” Other voices overriding hers. Incoherencies, and footsteps returning up the stairs. Once more, the landlady: “There ain’t no boogs here, for heaven’s sake. The boogs is in your heads. You’ve got the d.t.’s, that’s what. And it wouldn’t be any wonder, if there were boogs. The place is filthy. Look at that crap on the floor. Filth! I’ve stood just about enough from you. Tomorrow you move out, hear? This used to be a decent building.”
The Shchapalovs did not protest their eviction. Indeed, they did not wait for the morrow to leave. They quitted their apartment with only a suitcase, a laundry bag, and an electric toaster. Marcia watched them go down the steps through her half-opened door. It’s done, she thought. It’s all over.
With a sigh of almost sensual pleasure, she turned on the lamp beside the bed, then the other lamps. The room gleamed immaculately. Deciding to celebrate her victory, she went to the cupboard, where she kept a bottle of crème de menthe.
The cupboard was full of roaches.
She had not told them where to go, where not to go, when they left the Shchapalov apartment. It was her own fault.
The great silent mass of roaches regarded Marcia calmly, and it seemed to the distracted girl that she could read their thoughts, their thought rather, for they had but a single thought. She could read it as clearly as she could read the illuminated billboard for Chock-Full-O’-Nuts outside her window. It was delicate as music issuing from a thousand tiny pipes. It was an ancient musicbox opened after centuries of silence: “We love you we love you we love you.”
Something strange happened inside Marcia then, something unprecedented: she responded.
“I love you too,” she replied. “Oh, I love you. Come to me, all of you. Come to me. I love you. Come to me. I love you. Come to me.”
From every corner of Manhattan, from the crumbling walls of Harlem, from restaurants on 56th Street, from warehouses along the river, from sewers and from orange peels moldering in garbage cans, the loving roaches came forth and began to crawl toward their mistress.
I miss a lot. There are stories I don’t find out about till two years— or two weeks—later. And then there are the ones that get away. Usually this is for contractual reasons—exclusive rights granted elsewhere, or problems about contract provisions and prices. Sometimes the reasons are purely editoriaclass="underline" Anthology editors have publisher’s editors, and authors have agents and magazine and book editors) it is surprising how many people can say no.
This year there’s a new reason: Tom Lehrer doesn’t answer his mail.
Right here is where those two songs from the 1965 Lehrer album. That Was The Year That Was, would have gone, if they hadn’t gotten away. As it is, I can only urge you to go hear (or even buy) the record for yourselves. Well, maybe a little more than that.
The one I wanted to go after “The Roaches” was a catchy little calypso called “Pollution”: If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don’t drink the water, and don’t breathe the air.
(Of course, Tom Disch had to go to Spain to get hepatitis. When he wrote about his writing, publishing, and travel plans he added sadly: . . . for the next year I am going to be the only teetotaling swinger in Europe. Doctor’s orders. Germany, Spain, England, France/ bier, Jerez, ale, vin, kaput. . .)
Some of the other topics treated in Professor Lehrer’s latest lesson on contemporary culture are New Math, National Brotherhood Week, the folk-singing rebels, how-to-sell religion, the U. S. Marines, and World War III in a song called “So long. Mom ...” which echoes some of the more reassuring sentiments of “The Survivor”: . . . But while you swelter,/Down there in your shelter,/You can see me/On your TV . . ./Watch Brinkelly and Huntilly/Describing contrapuntally/ The cities we have lost./No need for you/To miss a moment/Of the agonizing holocaust. . .
Which should set the mood for “Game,” a story less gentle than it may at first appear—as anyone familiar with Barthelme’s earlier work will understand. (Come Back, Dr. Caligari, Little, Brown, 1964. His first novel, Indian Uprising, is forthcoming from Atheneum.)
And my thanks to Tom Disch, for suggesting the story.
GAME
DONALD BARTHELME
Shotwell keeps the jacks and the rubber ball in his attaché case and will not allow me to play with them. He plays with them, alone, sitting on the floor near the console hour after hour, chanting “onesies, twosies, threesies, foursies” in a precise, well-modulated voice, not so loud as to be annoying, not so soft as to allow me to forget. I point out to Shotwell that two can derive more enjoyment from playing jacks than one, but he is not interested. I have asked repeatedly to be allowed to play by myself, but he simply shakes his head. “Why?” I ask. “They’re mine,” he says. And when he has finished, when he has sated himself, back they go into the attaché case.
It is unfair but there is nothing I can do about it. I am aching to get my hands on them.
Shotwell and I watch the console. Shotwell and I live under the ground and watch the console. If certain events take place upon the console, we are to insert our keys in the appropriate locks and turn our keys. Shotwell has a key and I have a key. If we turn our keys simultaneously the bird flies, certain switches are activated and the bird flies. But the bird never flies. In one hundred thirty-three days the bird has not flown. Meanwhile Shotwell and I watch each other. We each wear a .45 and if Shotwell behaves strangely I am supposed to shoot him. If I behave strangely Shotwell is supposed to shoot me. We watch the console and think about shooting each other and think about the bird. Shotwell’s behavior with the jacks is strange. Is it strange? I do not know. Perhaps he is merely a selfish bastard, perhaps his character is flawed, perhaps his childhood was twisted. I do not know.