Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (4 page)

             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 agreed-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.

The Refrigerator.
The refrigerator in the kitchen stands as an island of cold in a sea of warmth within its various skins of enamel, insulation, and plastic which serve to separate the two areas, the warm from the cool and freezing, the outside from the inside. Yet objects cannot be kept indefinitely in a refrigerator, generally reserved for the storing of fresh or relatively fresh food, because despite the cold within they will still spoil or lose their flavor or undergo unpleasant changes in shape, texture, or color. Thus the importance of arranging the food on the shelves and in the bins of the refrigerator in such a way that the older food is closest to the door and so will be taken out and prepared, eaten, served, or drunk before the newer or fresher food, which should be pushed to the back. In this way too, old food will not get shoved into the far corners of shelves or bins and become lost there until suddenly a stench begins leaking out of the box or until it is discovered when the refrigerator is defrosted, all shriveled up. This exercise should be performed every two weeks on the average in winter and every ten days in the summer and should be combined with a general cleaning out of the interior of the refrigerator, to include the washing of the trays and bins with hot soapy water and the enamel inside the box scrubbed with a solution of bicarbonate of soda and water. Throw out the old ice, refill the trays with fresh water—this is also advised, for old ice has a distinctive taste to the sensitive palate, having picked up the odors of various strong foods in the refrigerator despite their being wrapped up in several layers of foil or plastic—onions, cabbage, turnips, some cheeses, to mention a few—for there is virtually nothing that can stop a strong odor that is determined to move from place to place.

             The refrigerator of the kitchen and thus of the house can be seen to represent the refrigerator of the Marriage, and by that I mean the repository of all such things as the Husband and the Wife wish to preserve against the effects of heat and time. You may wish to see it as a kind of memory or memory bank or joint account from which both of us may withdraw—or into which deposit—sustenance at any time. Indeed the vaultlike quality of the strong door with its gleaming nickel-plated latches and hinges can hardly suggest anything else, that this is the place where you and I keep what is dearest and of greatest value to the Marriage, that is, the joint memories. You must take care therefore not to deposit the sort of ill-wrapped food with strong odors that would infect the taste of the blander foods, and remember to clean out the interior at regular intervals in order to discourage the growth of fungi and molds. And as you open and close the door of the refrigerator and the light inside the box goes on and off, so too do you open and close the vault of our collective memory, that is, you remember and forget, remember and forget. But it should not be left open for long periods of time, except when defrosting, so that its contents will not be unduly warmed up and thus spoil.

             Nor should you crowd the refrigerator up with leftovers, needless to say, or foods that no one in the household will eat, or with foods that do not in fact need to be refrigerated at all—for the main function of the refrigerator is to halt the growth and spread of microbes and bacteria of the sort that can make the eaters of the house sick or ill and in some cases even kill them, as in ptomaine and botulism. But in most foods there is no danger of this at all and they can simply be shelved in the cabinets or in the pantry, thus keeping the refrigerator from becoming too overcrowded, not only in the kitchen but in the Marriage as well.

             But we must not forget that food is grown from the earth in order to be eaten, and so what is put in the refrigerator is put there because it is intended to be taken out at some future date and be eaten up either cooked or raw. Cooking will take place either on the four burners of the stove or in its oven or both, which elements may be said to represent the inner life of the Wife, just as the garden may be said to represent the inner life of the Husband, that is, in those cases in which gardens are kept. Eating is what takes place at meals. One associates meals with placemats, silverware, dishes, and china, and the food that is served and eaten with these implements on a table by persons sitting in chairs and who now and then speak to each other between mouthfuls of food and drafts of water or wine. There are as many styles of eating as there are eaters, no doubt, but one of the most serviceable is to close the mouth once the food is inside it, whereupon you are to begin masticating or chewing in a relaxed manner, without haste. This throws the salivary glands into action. And once the food is ground into a pulp: swallow. If the food is well ground, the swallow will be smooth and effortless and you will hardly know what happened. Then you pause to have a sip of water or wine or whatever, after which it is wise to clear the throat discreetly so as to make room for the next swallow, that is, to clear away any loose ends. Of course this process of opening the mouth and taking in food and masticating it and swallowing it, to which may be added digestion and elimination, will be affected by the type of food to be processed, whether tough and fibrous, crisp and brittle, soft and slippery, spicy or bland, and so on, all of which will also affect your speed. But that one should not eat with the mouth open and not speak with the mouth full are well-known principles universally accepted, and I need add nothing to them except to say that beneath them lie even yet greater truths. For the food that is cooked and served at meals can be seen to represent the food of the Marriage, by which I mean the language of the Marriage, and so it is no wonder that the greater part of the eating and the talking takes place at the same time, at meals, with the Husband speaking across the table while his mouth is empty and the Wife listening while hers is full, then speaking when hers is empty and the Husband’s full—in short, the manner in which I have often recommended that we converse at our three meals taken together, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

             For if food at the table represents the language of the Marriage with the various courses representing the parts of speech, with prepositions and articles and conjunctions built around the main course of verbs and nouns, many of which have just come from the refrigerator of the Marriage, and the whole meal composing a sentence or a statement that begins with an aperitif (the capital letter) and ends with a period (cup of coffee), then it should be clear how important it is to prepare and utter your words well and to know when to open your mouth and when to close it—when to speak and when not to speak. You should no more blurt out an ill-formed sentence, for example, than you should throw together a dinner in five minutes out of leftovers and stale food to serve up to an honored guest: good sentences, like good meals, require that their ingredients be kept well stored and be prepared with great care and consideration, with delicate sauces and dressings, but not overly seasoned, and be served on attractive plates whose rims are wiped clean of dribbled gravy, but with confidence and without apology. But is your guest a vegetarian? Is he on a diet today, not taking sugar or salt? Do tomatoes give him hives? Bananas nausea? Does ice cream make his hands and feet swell up? Better to know these things in advance than to find you have poisoned your guest who out of politeness has eaten everything you have served up and who now grows more and more silent as his sufferings increase, to a point finally where he is unable to say anything at all.

Windows.
But whereas the doors represent breaches in the fabric of the Marriage, that is, the house, the windows are altogether another matter, representing the eyes, for they are bastions of strength despite their apparent fragility. The windows should be kept clean at all times, first of all for the simple pleasure of being able to look through them and, conversely, for the displeasure to be found in staring at films of smoke or rain-splashed dust, the droppings of insects on the interior surfaces of the glass and those of birds on the exterior surfaces, for it may be said that a house with clean windows is a Marriage with clean eyes, that is, eyes that see clearly. Curtains, shades, and blinds are to be drawn or lowered at night, however, so that the outside world in its prowlings around will not be able to see inside the Marriage and what goes on or (in some cases) what does not go on, and they are to be drawn open or raised promptly at the first light of dawn so that there is no doubt that the house is alert and awake as early as it is convenient to be so. Likewise lights are to be turned off inside the house promptly at eleven, since late nights—as in the Marriage’s flashing eyes—suggest discord or argumentation between the Husband and the Wife, and should this prove necessary, should the Husband and Wife choose to quarrel after eleven at night, they are advised to draw the curtains and lower the blinds and turn off the lights and to quarrel in a low voice, a whisper if at all possible. The curtains, shades, or blinds represent the eyelids of the Marriage, it should be pointed out.