Read Online The End of the Story by Lydia Davis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lydia Davis
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the bay. We spent most of the time in the back yard, and enormous airplanes flew low overhead frequently. Each time, we would stop talking and wait until they passed. The yard was weedy and a pretty lime tree grew near the house. Two little boys threw balls into the air over and over again, and the balls kept getting caught in the tree or landing on the roof of a shed at the back of the yard.
He had not read the story I knew already, the one he had described to me as a novel the first evening we met, a very clear, precise, and confident story about a man and a woman in their middle age who meet at the seaside where the woman is on vacation and the man works for a hotel, the setting vaguely European. It contained quiet, well-turned descriptions, including one about the effect of the sun on the womanâs pale legs, that I liked each time I read them. I liked so many parts of the story that the rest of it also seemed good. Now I wonder if I was drawn to him because he had the sort of mind that would want to write that sort of story, the sort that I liked already, or if he was drawn to me because I had the sort of mind that would like the sort of story he liked to write. A friend of mine, after reading the story, said he did not like it, because the characters, so very silent and distant with each other, yet so firmly tied by their wordless understanding, were not people he would want to know. I did not think about that, but only about how the story was written.
Later he read me seven short poems that he had written for me. He told me he had made a rule for himself that each one had to contain a reference to a flower. He would not let me keep them because they were not finished. In the end, he never gave me a copy of the poems. Maybe he never finished them. So I donât have them here, where I could reread them and see what I think of them now, as I have the story. It is here in my room, in a folder by itself, though I have not looked at it often, in all these years, for fear of knowing it so well that I canât see it anymore for what it is. But every time I have read it, the phrases ring peacefully in my ears, the order and clarity still please me.
I remember a few lines from his poems, including one in which he said the coast had a mile in it. That was the mile between my house and his. I liked the poems, though they were more careful than the story, or rather the care he put into them was so evident they seemed cautious, whereas the care in the story seemed just right. I had heard those poems, and I heard others at his reading, and I had read still others in the library, or maybe the same ones he had read, and I knew one story well, and heard another at his reading, and later he would read to me from his notebook, and this was all I knew of his writing. He was always writing, and he told me from time to time that he was working on a story, or a play, or another play, and later a novel, but I never saw any of them because he never seemed to finish one thing before abandoning it or putting it aside temporarily, as he said, and starting another, and he wouldnât show me any work unless it was almost finished.
He wrote things in a notebook, and I wrote things in a notebook. Some of what we wrote was about each other, of course, and now and then we read aloud from our notebooks. The things we had written were often things we would not say to each other, though we would read them aloud. But we were not willing to say anything about them after we had read them either.
So that behind my silence, and behind his silence, there was a good deal of talk, but that talk was in the pages of our notebooks, and was therefore silent, unless we chose to open the notebooks and read from them.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
If he had been a bad writer, I think I could not have gone on with him. Or my lack of respect for the thing he did that was most important to him would have destroyed us before very long. But the fact that he
He had not read the story I knew already, the one he had described to me as a novel the first evening we met, a very clear, precise, and confident story about a man and a woman in their middle age who meet at the seaside where the woman is on vacation and the man works for a hotel, the setting vaguely European. It contained quiet, well-turned descriptions, including one about the effect of the sun on the womanâs pale legs, that I liked each time I read them. I liked so many parts of the story that the rest of it also seemed good. Now I wonder if I was drawn to him because he had the sort of mind that would want to write that sort of story, the sort that I liked already, or if he was drawn to me because I had the sort of mind that would like the sort of story he liked to write. A friend of mine, after reading the story, said he did not like it, because the characters, so very silent and distant with each other, yet so firmly tied by their wordless understanding, were not people he would want to know. I did not think about that, but only about how the story was written.
Later he read me seven short poems that he had written for me. He told me he had made a rule for himself that each one had to contain a reference to a flower. He would not let me keep them because they were not finished. In the end, he never gave me a copy of the poems. Maybe he never finished them. So I donât have them here, where I could reread them and see what I think of them now, as I have the story. It is here in my room, in a folder by itself, though I have not looked at it often, in all these years, for fear of knowing it so well that I canât see it anymore for what it is. But every time I have read it, the phrases ring peacefully in my ears, the order and clarity still please me.
I remember a few lines from his poems, including one in which he said the coast had a mile in it. That was the mile between my house and his. I liked the poems, though they were more careful than the story, or rather the care he put into them was so evident they seemed cautious, whereas the care in the story seemed just right. I had heard those poems, and I heard others at his reading, and I had read still others in the library, or maybe the same ones he had read, and I knew one story well, and heard another at his reading, and later he would read to me from his notebook, and this was all I knew of his writing. He was always writing, and he told me from time to time that he was working on a story, or a play, or another play, and later a novel, but I never saw any of them because he never seemed to finish one thing before abandoning it or putting it aside temporarily, as he said, and starting another, and he wouldnât show me any work unless it was almost finished.
He wrote things in a notebook, and I wrote things in a notebook. Some of what we wrote was about each other, of course, and now and then we read aloud from our notebooks. The things we had written were often things we would not say to each other, though we would read them aloud. But we were not willing to say anything about them after we had read them either.
So that behind my silence, and behind his silence, there was a good deal of talk, but that talk was in the pages of our notebooks, and was therefore silent, unless we chose to open the notebooks and read from them.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
If he had been a bad writer, I think I could not have gone on with him. Or my lack of respect for the thing he did that was most important to him would have destroyed us before very long. But the fact that he
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