Exercises in Style (18 page)

“I get on the bus …”

I get on the bus, the S. I take the bus, the one that goes to the
Porte Champerret. There were a lot of people. We were tightly packed in because
of the crowd. In fact, there were oodles of people crammed up one against the
next on the rear platform of the S bus that goes to the Porte Champerret. To
summarise, it was full, a full S. Among the people that were crammed together on
the rear platform of that S, there was a man, fairly young, not too old, in his
mid-twenties, approaching thirty; his neck was really quite long, serpentine,
swan-like, giraffish, abnormal; as for his hat, it was a fedora, without
anything extraordinary about it, unremarkable, rather commonplace—except for
there was a plait around it instead of a ribbon, [end of ms.]

How the game is played …

The game is played with two dice and a board (included).

If you roll 8 or 4, get on the S bus (84). If you roll 1 or 7, go
back to 17 (Parc Monceau). If it is full, go to 1 (miss a turn), otherwise go to
the Porte Champerret. Make your way back to Contrescarpe. If you roll 7 or 3, go
to 73 (the young man with the long neck) or to 37 (the plait of the hat). If you
roll 10 with 6 and 4, go to 64 (squished toes). If you roll 12 with 6 and 6, go
to 65 (the quarrel). If you roll 1, go to o (the empty spot).

If you roll 9 twice, go to the gare S[ain]t-Lazare. From there, with
a 3 and 2, go to 71 (the encounter), and with a 3 and 2 to 62 (Button).

The game is played with [four crossed out]

The Conductor
-----------------------------------Clubs

The Spectator
-----------------------------------Joker

The Passenger
-------------------------------Diamonds

The Big Bad Wolf
--------------------------------Spades

The Sartorial Adviser -------------------------Hearts

If the Conductor rolls 3 or 4, he goes to the Parc Monceau (16)

If the Spectator rolls 7 or 12, he gets on the bus (32)

If the Passenger rolls 4 or 8, he puts on his large ribboned hat

If the King of [blank], this is called “Doing the Big S.”

romotional

“One day on the platform.”

“The what?”

“The platform.”

“The platform?”

“Yes, the platform of a bus. You don’t know what the platform of a
bus is?”

“No. First of all, buses don’t have platforms.

“Well, my good sir, in days gone by they had them!”

“Oh bah.”

“One day, then, on the platform of an S-Line Bus…”

“Of the what line?”

“Of the S-Line. S-Line. S.”

“S? The letter of the alphabet?”

“Yes, number 84.”

“Oh, I see! The line on which the cars don’t have platforms…”

“Exactly! Well, one day, on a then still-extant platform of that
formerly otherwise designated line, I noticed a young man whose hat…”

“Whose what?”

“Whose hat.”

“Whose hat…”

“Yes, whose hat. You’re not going to tell me that you don’t know wot
a hat is?”

“Of course I know wot a hat is. But a young man… whose hat…”

“Good sir, back in the day when buses platformed, young people wore
hats.”

“You don’t say…”

“Well, my story doesn’t seem to be all that interesting to you.”

“Please continue…”

“I’ll spare you the details. The fact remains that an hour
later…”

“A what?”

“An hour later…”

“That’s not very long.”

“Yes, it isn’t very long. That’s what makes the anecdote
interesting—otherwise it would be insipid."

“Anyway… As you were saying…”

“An hour later I saw him once again in the company of a friend who
was questioning the sartorial value of a button…”

“Of a what?”

“Of a button. You’re not about to tell me that you don’t know what a
button is. A—BUT—TON.”

“Oh a button! (full of joy) A button! But that’s the only thing that
never goes out of fashion! Ladies, gentlemen, purchase your buttons from the
F.F.B.B.F., the French Federation of Bituminous Button
Fabricators—Non-oxidising! Non-decaying! Non-dissolving!—you have nothing to
lose, the one you should choose is a button to use!”

roblem

Given

a) a means of transportation known as a bus
that will subsequently be abbreviatedly designated by the letter S;

b) the rear platform of said bus;

c) a certain quantity of representatives of
the genus Homo sapiens transported by this bus, from among them will be
selected

c') one specimen
α
of the species coolcaticus with
maximal length of neck;

c") one specimen of the species tepidus
that measures up to said maximal length of neck;

d) the plait surrounding the headwear of
α
;

e) a vacant seat at time T.

Calculate the minimal distance
α
—
β
where
β
is subsequently projected onto
γ
after having pronounced remarks
R.

II—Assuming that the preceding problem has been solved, with time T
having become T' and the means of transportation passing in front of the
gare [Saint]-Lazare, determine which remarks regarding overcoat buttons
R
'
are exchanged by Homo coolcaticus A with another
representative of the same species C.

oppelgängers

I walked as far from where I’d lived as I could walk until I wasn’t
walking any longer but only standing in a field. The field was filled with
carrots and I was holding more carrots than I could hold. I can’t hold all these
carrots—I don’t want these carrots, I heard me saying, in a voice. Who has put
them in my hands? Just then a bus pulled up. It was an orange bus. I could
hardly tell it from the field. I wasn’t aware this was a bus stop and I don’t
think I should have to be at one, I thought. Why should I have to be somewhere
with carrots and my face again today, this day again facing a machine inside
this heat, today being the day it is as forced upon by sun and walls and fields
on which I’d never meant to stand. Through the dark orange glass of the window I
could see all these other people on the bus were holding carrots too, and they
were crammed in and they were glaring. The bus was overcrowded to the point of
several dozen forced to stand—nowhere to sit today inside a bus filled with
anxious people armed with no idea about the way of now, like me. Regardless, the
bus door opened, and regardless, I got on. I had to go on. Where else was I to
go? It had always been this way, and I was not one to not follow directions.
When I did, I found therein the man standing beside me had on the same coat as
my coat, and of course he was standing up and holding carrots like me and was
old like me and had my arms and had my face. The man beside that first man too I
found shared our expression and our posture and our make. We were all three the
other’s mirror this cold morning. I did not look to see about the rest of all
those along the aisles, as no sooner had I noticed the men and how they seemed
just like me then one of the men made like me threw all his carrots on the
ground, right on the feet of the other made like me. Or was the man me? Or was I
him? I could no longer tell, though I knew I’d been through this before. I could
feel it in me. Held it in me always. Either way the men were screaming and I was
screaming even as the bus began again to leave the field, where through the
windows all the air held carrot-yellow as I watched where I’d been before this
bus there leaving and I could not stop it and never would. The man now with his
arms free of the heavy ugly carrots saw where the others of us could not see
along the aisle. A free seat had appeared, a hole unfilled among the many bodies
where in this thrall he could sit down, and with the other man and me beside him
still just screaming not even knowing what words from anyone were coming out he
jumped away and fell into his found hole all surrounded by our clasping arms,
and as we passed on through the orange fields I could no longer see him. He’d
disappeared among the flesh of all the fleshes, another me I’d never brush
again, while meanwhile me here and the other still were one against the other,
though our screaming shortly thereafter shattered too, stopping up the words
inside the each of us unto the silence of the passing of the air among the many
faces I’d not had the heart to look upon in stench of carrot rot and all the
pressing skin of all our ways.

It seemed like years between us then. I felt the light of days come
in and out and all against me, though in passing sheens I looked the same. A day
could not have passed, nor could even several hours, though suddenly I found
myself at last no longer on the bus, still holding carrots but not as many, and
my stomach full of hell. My teeth hurt. My skin seemed beaten. So many
buildings. The sky a bell. I stumbled forth in no clear color and felt a shape
and turned around. Then there I was: all young and ugly as I had been on the bus
before I’d disappeared, now reappearing in an orange coat, with some strange
orange woman on my arm. From in the hole of me against the air I watched the
woman put her mouth up to the younger me’s mouth and move her lips. I could hear
her words as well in my own head, wound in warm breath: “My love, we need to
mend you.”

Blake Butler