The completed piece, 42787 feet, is fashioned of steel, wood, canvas, and magnesium. A flat, wilted chess rook, caged behind bars, leans toward a female torso made of steel (as if it were armor); a string of wire and double-headed nails, suggesting a barbed-wire fence, separates the torso from a rumpled man"s shirt with a hole in the heart. The right sleeve reaches toward the woman"s body but is blocked by the wire. Above and below this sleeve, words are etched into brightly reflective rectangular panels.
The top panel reads: Everything reflects well on our cityOur audiences are amazingly perceptiveThe string section has a broken heartWe cheer it because it is outstandingGulls smash into the great gla.s.s windowsI have never been more optimistic, more sanguine.
The bottom panel is more somber: She is riding naked on the catafalqueWe"ll to the woods no more my darlingI am boned, crack-skinned, malaproposA chorus of dromedaries humming triumphantlyRevolves the stage machineryAway from me, away from me.
Like the best of Don"s fiction, The Rook"s Progress The Rook"s Progress is both playful and melancholy: the giddiness of the words near the top (and their apparent indifference to the figures around them); the elegiac tone of the bottom words; the visual pun of the word is both playful and melancholy: the giddiness of the words near the top (and their apparent indifference to the figures around them); the elegiac tone of the bottom words; the visual pun of the word reflects reflects shining from a smooth, reflective surface, and the verbal pun of the shining from a smooth, reflective surface, and the verbal pun of the Rook Rook in the t.i.tle, implying fool as well as chess piece; the reference to Hogarth"s in the t.i.tle, implying fool as well as chess piece; the reference to Hogarth"s The Rake"s Progress The Rake"s Progress (1734), which Hogarth conceived as a novel in paintings; the sad, impossible reach of the empty shirt. (1734), which Hogarth conceived as a novel in paintings; the sad, impossible reach of the empty shirt.
The viewer"s eye goes immediately to the heavily shielded female figure: This torso is not to be trifled with. The rook"s resemblance to a softening p.e.n.i.s is unmistakable, and the flattened, damaged shirt, like wrinkled skin, lies forever unrequited-a balloon popped on the wire or on the sharp, virile curves of the womanly form. The shirt"s shape recalls Matisse"s Icarus Icarus from his from his Jazz Jazz series-the right arm straining to grasp what"s always out of reach, the void in the heart. Away from me, away from me... series-the right arm straining to grasp what"s always out of reach, the void in the heart. Away from me, away from me...
One of Don"s final collages, The Rook"s Progress The Rook"s Progress fully marries his visual and verbal skills. fully marries his visual and verbal skills.
In November 1987, Don joined several other writers, including Grace Paley, William Gaddis, Walter Abish, Robert Coover, Rita Dove, Lisa Alther, and Marilyn French at a festival of American writing in Berlin, billed as "The American Chapter." Heidi Ziegler, a young literary scholar, and Lutz Engelke, then the director of international cultural events for the deputy mayor of West Berlin, arranged the event. Don and Marion flew sixteen hours from Houston and arrived exhausted on a cold and dismal evening. They were whisked to a reception at the American consulate in West Berlin. Don retired into a corner with a drink while Marion served as his "social bridge to the world," Engelke recalled.
The following day, Don and Marion walked around the Reichstag, visited the Bauhaus Museum, and saw the "spy bridge" near the Schloss Glienicke. At the Wall, in the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum, Don became intrigued by a flight simulator that took him through aerial images of war-torn Berlin. "He kept looking into those city scars as if he needed to find an explanation for it," Engelke said later.
From the start, Walter Abish had clashed with the conference organizers. For some reason, the arrangements were not to his liking. He threatened to boycott a panel he was slated to chair; in response, the organizers threatened not to pay him. "Fine," he said. Don tried to mediate the dispute. He called Abish early one morning and said, "I know you"re upset, but you don"t want to let our side down." Abish exploded, saying, "What side? America? American literature? f.u.c.k our side." On the other hand, Don and Grace Paley treated each other civilly, if coolly-sadly, silently mourning their damaged friendship.
Late in the week, a semiclandestine meeting was planned between the Americans and a group of East German writers. "[A]lthough it was clear that the STASI had somehow heard about the meeting, the level of fear was low enough so that it could take place. All the same, it took place under circ.u.mstances of conspiracy," Engelke said. "The group met in an old pottery workshop" on the east side, within walking distance of the Brandenburg Gate, "and because it was unofficial-that is, not reported-we had to use all sorts of little tricks to come together. For instance, everybody from the West had to memorize the address, so that no one"s name would be written on a piece of paper, and we had to arrive at intervals. Because of this, Robert Coover didn"t get the message right and got there too late! The press had not been informed, although the meeting was of political and cultural significance. For the Westerners, a certain romantic flavor was evident. It was a little like planning, playing, and editing your own black-and-white movie," Engelke wrote.
Don and Paley read stories, translations of which had been provided to the group; then some of the East German writers-among them, Jan Faktor, Helga Konigsdorf, and Edmond Hesse-read. In that "brownish, dark East Berlin atmosphere," Don"s stories "were all of a sudden more than merely Postmodern," Engelke said. To Western ears, accustomed to too much language too much language-a surfeit of meaning-Don"s stories sounded merely playful. But to the East Berliners, who in their daily lives scoured "every detail for sense and meaning, although the official metaphors for sense had been reduced to stupid rituals of repet.i.tion," Don"s absurdities exploded like "Molotov c.o.c.ktail[s]." Quietly, he had smuggled across the Wall radical devices to scramble and reshape semantics.
Still, he refused to let his fiction be reduced to Cold War polemics. "Politics is something of which literature has to have a disappointed position," he declared to the group. Asked about Texas, he said that Houston and East Berlin were "two poles of the same world."
Don returned to the States. Marion and Grace Paley stayed for a couple of days at Marianne Frisch"s apartment in Berlin. A few months later, Robert Coover reprised Don"s Postmodern Dinner. The event, "Unspeakable Practices: A Three-Day Celebration of Iconoclastic American Fiction," honored John Hawkes upon his retirement from Brown University. Held in Providence, Rhode Island, the festival could not have been more different from the edgy, romantic gathering in East Germany.
On a panel whose subject was "Traditional Values and Iconoclastic Fiction," the critic Leslie Fiedler called "postmodern" writers "iconoclasts with tenure." He asked his fellow panelists-Don, William Ga.s.s, William Gaddis, Stanley Elkin-rote questions: Why do you write? Who is your audience? Irritated by Fiedler"s superficiality, Gaddis grumbled, "I write to avoid boredom, which is probably why I came up here today." After that, he slumped into a torpid silence.
Don said, "I know exactly who I"m writing for. They are extremely intelligent and physically attractive."
Fiedler closed the discussion with this remark: "None of us will be remembered as long or revered as deeply as our contemporary, Stephen King."
The writers filed out of the hall, quietly furious.
On the festival"s final night, Coover took everyone to a Portuguese restaurant in East Providence for roast pig and fried calamari. A singer named Manny, dressed in a maroon jacket, told moronic jokes and sang loungelizard tunes, occasionally shouting to Gaddis or Hawkes, "You"re lookin" good!" Coover loved the camp, and clapped along; he insisted on keeping the group there through three full sets of the show. Most of the others, including Don, felt ill at ease.
This was the last full gathering of the leading figures of what had come to be known as American postmodernism.
Following all these travels, Don seemed, for a while, more at home in Houston. He was the king there, the "one who ironically, gracefully, and profoundly bore the burdens and shouldered the responsibilities," letting out, now and then, a "lovely sigh-weighty, humorous, world-weary," according to Ed Hirsch. Don told him, "All writers are really black sheep," and a "writing community is a whole flock of them." The "black sheep have to stick together and help each other out."
Briefly, he experienced renewed relish at the creative-writing lunches. "Let"s stir up the troops!" he"d goad his colleagues. Or: "Let"s have a Dada happening!" Among the faculty, there were "rivalries for Don"s affection," Hirsch recalled. "I once asked him about his theory of committee meetings. "Be the last one to speak," he said. He preferred not to speak at all, to just let things unfold. But if the meeting took a dark turn, and there was a risk he wouldn"t get what he wanted, he"d intervene. His reserve gave him tremendous authority. Incidentally, I think that was also his theory of fatherhood-and of teaching."
In the cla.s.sroom, he challenged a new group of students to rethink narrative. On one occasion, he took a pair of scissors and cut a student"s story into several sections. "There"s something wrong with this piece. Let"s rearrange it," he said. After collaborating with the cla.s.s to redo the story, he admitted, "No, this doesn"t make it any better, does it?"
"The first time I met [Don], I recognized that he was the most intelligent person I"d ever met-not just in terms of knowledge, but also in terms of his perceptions about people," recalled Vikram Chandra, a New Delhi native who had come to Houston via Johns Hopkins. At the time, Chandra was writing his novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain. Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The other students hated his work. "It was 1987 when all the minimalist stuff was in vogue, and suddenly here I am with these Indian G.o.ds making p.r.o.nouncements," Chandra said. "They"d say, "This is melodramatic!"-and I"d answer, "I know, but I like melodrama. We Indians do melodrama." " The other students hated his work. "It was 1987 when all the minimalist stuff was in vogue, and suddenly here I am with these Indian G.o.ds making p.r.o.nouncements," Chandra said. "They"d say, "This is melodramatic!"-and I"d answer, "I know, but I like melodrama. We Indians do melodrama." "
Another student, Eric Miles Williamson, says, "One day, after we read a piece by Vikram-I thought it was tedious, but Don loved it-Don said, "I think Mr. Chandra"s work deserves a round of applause." And he made us clap for this guy. Half of us didn"t want to, but Don made us."
In 1995, Red Earth and Pouring Rain Red Earth and Pouring Rain was published to worldwide acclaim. was published to worldwide acclaim.
Outside of cla.s.s, Don continued to extend to his students extraordinary generosity. When George Williams and his wife, both enrolled in the program, learned they were going to have a baby, Don called them. "I understand there is a pregnant woman on the premises," he said.
"How did you find out?" Williams asked.
"Jungle drums, jungle drums. Will a thousand do?"
It took Williams a moment to realize Don was offering them money.
"Often, students would end up at Don"s house late at night after a reception for some visiting writer," Williams says. "I got the impression we"d go till two or three in the morning if Marion hadn"t kicked us out. She was very protective of Don. We were all in our twenties and could stay up all night. Marion knew Don couldn"t take it physically. But he wouldn"t be the one to throw us out."
One late spring night in a Thai restaurant, Don joined several students to celebrate the end of the school year. A waiter approached the table and asked the group if they wanted something to drink. "A thousand gla.s.ses of wine," Don said.
"By the end of the evening [his] guests were out on the sidewalk, flush with the success of the evening, due entirely to [Don"s] presence," Williams recalls, "talking and shaking hands and hugging and b.u.mping into one another and promising phone calls and dinners and tennis games and fishing trips that never materialized, while Don tried to break up a party that refused to, by reminding us he didn"t enjoy playing father to us. "Home now," he said. "Home now." "
During the spring semester of 1988, Phillip Lopate noticed that Don"s reserve seemed to be growing. At public gatherings, he acted more remote than ever. "I kept having the feeling that Don was becoming cooler toward me," Lopate says. "Interactions that used to take up thirty-five seconds were now clipped to twelve....Had I done something to offend him? I raised the question to Ed Hirsch, who was closer to Donald than I was, and Eddie told me that he had detected the same curtness of late."
At lunches, Helen Moore Barthelme also encountered a more closed-down companion. He looked like an old man, she thought. But he loved being father to Katharine. One day, he admitted to Helen he had been writing one morning, when he realized that Katharine, whom he was supposed to be watching, had disappeared. He scrambled downstairs and found her toddling halfway down the block.
"After we left the restaurant, I drove [us] through two of our old neighborhoods off Montrose Boulevard," Helen said. "The apartment building in which we had lived on Richmond Avenue was still standing, an ugly, imposing interior. Don and I commented on the strangeness of seeing it....We were extremely happy when we had lived there....
"When we returned to his home...he looked especially unhappy...his demeanor as he walked away was somber and dispirited."
In mid-April, Don"s friends and colleagues learned that he had been hospitalized for throat cancer. For a while before that, Marion says, "despite Don"s smoking, his doctor hadn"t suspected that his long-term sore throat and some weight loss might be cancer, and put him through three rounds of antibiotics." Houston"s M. D. Anderson Cancer Center housed one of the world"s premier cancer-research facilities, but Don refused to go there. "He had a lot of Houston biases-you know, he liked to eat at that terrible Mexican place, Felix-and maybe the biases extended to hospitals," says Ed Hirsch.
"He was so sure that MDA had nothing over Memorial and Park Plaza," Marion says. "I would have preferred him to go to MDA, and in hindsight I think real follow-up care might have saved his life, but I trusted and respected his choice, especially when he told me he had discussed it with his doctor, who felt Park Plaza could do the job."
Don asked his friends not to visit him in the hospital because he didn"t want people to see him looking frail. Eerily, at around the same time, his brother Pete was diagnosed with throat cancer. He was recovering from a similar operation.
The doctors told Don he had squamous cell carcinoma of the pharynx. It had metastasized to the lymph glands in the right side of his neck.
He remained in the hospital for nearly two weeks. A few days after he"d returned home, Phillip Lopate paid him a visit, bringing five jazz alb.u.ms as a get-well gift. "With his newly shaven chin, Donald looked harshly exposed," Lopate wrote. "His eyes were dazed. He had a tube running from his nose to his mouth like an elephant"s proboscis; its purpose was to feed him liquids, as his throat was still too sore to take in solids."
Don set the alb.u.ms on his lap and patted their covers without looking at them. "I"m tired of sounding like Elmer Fudd," he told Lopate in a pinched, weak voice. But "Demerol is great stuff."
He had no energy, and Lopate felt awkward. Fortunately, their visit was interrupted by a naked and squealing Katharine, who ran into the room dripping water. "Don"t look at me!" she shouted. "I"ve just taken a shower!" Her presence cheered Don and gave Lopate an excuse to slip away.
A week later, Don showed up unexpectedly at the weekly lunch meeting of the creative-writing faculty. "He said he was bored hanging around the house," Lopate said. "He also seemed to be telling us with this visit: I may be sick but it doesn"t mean I"m giving up my stake in the program. Perhaps because he was up and about, and therefore one expected an improvement, his pasty, florid appearance shocked me even more than when I had seen him at home." He was beardless and gaunt. "He looked bad. We wanted him to go home and lie down, not sit through our boring agenda."
Don"s doctors had forbidden him to drink or smoke, and he pa.s.sed up his usual white wine. When he left the meeting, one of his colleagues said, "That just wasn"t Donald." The others agreed.
Over the next several weeks, he showed up at readings and other public events, his face and neck marked by the blue lines the doctors had drawn on his skin to guide the radiation treatments. "He was a walking art object," one of his students said.
He went to Del Rio, a local rehab center, to kick booze and cigarettes. "He quit drinking for about three months and when he thought he had it under control, he began slowly, occasionally, to take a gla.s.s of white wine," Marion says. "He discovered when he was in radiation that he didn"t have the stamina to drink, write, and deal with cancer, so he cut out the drinking to protect his writing." On the phone, he told Lynn Nesbit it had been "easy" to kick alcohol. She thought, "For Christ"s sake, Donald, if it was easy, why didn"t you do it long ago?" Talking to Anne, however, he admitted he worried about writing-what would losing booze do to his imagination?
The news that he had received the thirty-thousand-dollar Rea Award for the Short Story did little to console him. One day, an old pal and former colleague at the Houston Post, Houston Post, George Christian, came by the house. Several times that day, Don told Christian he wanted to die. He just wanted to "go to sleep and never wake up." Whenever Marion walked through the room, Don put on a cheerful face for her. But as soon as she went out, Christian said, "Don resumed talking about how miserable he was." George Christian, came by the house. Several times that day, Don told Christian he wanted to die. He just wanted to "go to sleep and never wake up." Whenever Marion walked through the room, Don put on a cheerful face for her. But as soon as she went out, Christian said, "Don resumed talking about how miserable he was."
The later medical "follow-up he got from Methodist and Park Plaza Hospital was inadequate," Marion says. But slowly, over the next few months, he appeared to gain strength and seemed to be in remission. He grew back his beard, though it was not as thick as before. He remained thin. In the fall, he resumed teaching part-time, though his cla.s.sroom duties strained his voice. "He was talking through the blood etchings in his throat, all raspy," says Eric Miles Williamson. "It was scary and amazing."
Little by little, he regained his old pluck. "One day, a student read a story about a woman with a baby, sitting in a trailer house," says George Williams. "Nothing was happening in the piece, and the other students were asking, "What could make the story interesting?" Don said, "Kick the baby."
"In another workshop, there was a student who was one of these therapist types who are now trying to run the world, you know, and he was challenging Don a little, making veiled references to Don"s alcoholism. Don turned three shades of red. He was humiliated by this personal attack in the cla.s.sroom. But afterward he never treated this guy any differently. He just took it."
At a party one night, Williams overheard Don say, "Life is altogether too impoverished without booze."
In the spring of 1989, Don and Marion flew to Rome. He had been awarded a senior fellowship by the American Academy there. He was offered a brief residency and studio s.p.a.ce in the Academy"s villa atop Janiculum, the tallest, most glorious hill above the city.
Established in 1894, and chartered as a private inst.i.tution by Congress in 1905, the American Academy awards fellowships in a range of disciplines, among them literature, music, architecture, history, and design. In the spring, Ed Hirsch had also been awarded a Prix de Rome, and Don looked forward to seeing him in Italy. "He didn"t like to leave home," Hirsch says, "but having me there helped Marion convince him to go."
Don loved the villa, ten buildings and eleven acres of gardens overlooking Rome"s bell towers, stucco walls, and golden domes. Don and Marion"s apartment had a huge living room with "shabby old furniture and old paint," Don said. A small terrace off the bedroom opened out above the city center. "[J]ust looking [through] the window in the morning is a great joy," Don wrote his parents. Each day, he and Marion breakfasted on the terrace, which offered a stunning view of the hills.
That spring, the Academy was busy replacing old furniture with new birch, plywood, and wire designs by the New York decorator Mark Hampton. Don enjoyed the mix of old and new things in the villa"s rooms, and loved overhearing discussions of design. He and Marion relished short trips out of the city. They saw Mount Vesuvius and, with Katharine and Marion"s parents, who had arrived for a visit, a "tiny town called Ravello on the Amalfi coast which turned out to be the most beautiful place I"ve ever been," Don told his folks.
Mostly he spent time working in the villa. He knew the Academy"s rich history. Henry James had once been a guest. In the 1950s, architectural postmodernism had gotten a start here, as Robert Venturi stayed in the villa with several other architects, engaging them in lengthy discussions. Marion"s great-uncle, Gorham Phillips Stevens, had been a temporary director of the American Academy after World War I. His portrait hung in the entrance hall.
Both Marion and Ed Hirsch attest to the fact that Don was surpa.s.singly happy during his stay in Rome. "He was writing and he was in high spirits," Hirsch says. "It was a good moment for them as a family. Kate was with them. And the setup suited him. He loved the layers of Rome, the way the old and the new came together, contemporary life against the ancient backdrop. He was as relaxed as I"d ever seen him, more spiritually at ease than in either Houston or New York. Part of the pleasure of the experience for him was that his happiness there was so unlikely. Or so he"d thought. He had a flaneur"s temperament, and he could indulge it in Rome."
There was no more talk of a desire to die.
"I have neither television nor newspapers," Don wrote in an unfinished "diary" of his time in Rome-remarks found on a computer disc after his death. "[One day] I followed a whistling man down the street for several blocks, just for the music. He was whistling the Marine Corps Hymn and I thought he might be a fellow countryman, but he looked very barbarico, as we say here, and I hesitated to speak to him." On another occasion, Don wrote, "I picked up the Corriere della Serra Corriere della Serra and it told me that BUSH INQUISITORE NON PESCARE. Our President menaced by fish, and me six thousand miles from home." and it told me that BUSH INQUISITORE NON PESCARE. Our President menaced by fish, and me six thousand miles from home."
In Italy, Don finished a draft of his novel The King. The King. A mythic and rueful meditation on dead societies and the "worrisome" twentieth century, it would be published in 1990, a year after his death. A mythic and rueful meditation on dead societies and the "worrisome" twentieth century, it would be published in 1990, a year after his death.
The story takes place during World War II. Britain is being pounded by the Axis military powers. In Don"s version of history, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table share the battlefield with Winston Churchill"s army. The legendary figures know they"re anachronisms. Contemporary technowarfare, with its tactics of bombing civilians and killing at a distance, has no place for courteous knights who wrestle face-to-face.
The book presages the Cold War"s end: A Polish fellow from the "ship-yards"-a clear reference to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement-agitates for justice as the fighting escalates. (Within months of Don"s pa.s.sing, the Berlin Wall would collapse.) As he had done so often, Don contrasted old and new. But if, in The Dead Father, The Dead Father, tradition seems exhausted, it has much to offer in tradition seems exhausted, it has much to offer in The King. The King. (Just as (Just as Paradise Paradise reverses the story of reverses the story of Snow White, The King Snow White, The King is a mirror image of is a mirror image of The Dead Father. The Dead Father.) Few contemporary commanders in chief would refuse to develop a tactical weapon, but that is precisely what Don"s Arthur does out of concern for civilian lives. Knowingly, the King gives away his future: He is bound by the traditions of chivalry, courtliness, and politeness-and though his prolonged existence is the chief irony in a heavily ironic book, he is a dignified figure.
Perhaps the novel"s gentle treatment of Arthur can be traced to Don"s feelings of loss, his suspicion that this would be his last book. He had witnessed modernism"s failure to change the world. He had watched American postmodernism fall from critical favor, and he had grown weary of the concept himself. Safe to say that he-like Daumier in his his day-felt eerily anachronistic. day-felt eerily anachronistic.
In quoting the sad, anti-Semitic ravings of Ezra Pound, The King The King portrays the modernist spirit as blind and mad instead of innovative and hopeful. Contrast the exuberance of the Dead Father"s good-bye speech with its playful echoes of portrays the modernist spirit as blind and mad instead of innovative and hopeful. Contrast the exuberance of the Dead Father"s good-bye speech with its playful echoes of Finnegans Wake Finnegans Wake-"I was Papping as best I could like my AndI before me"-with Pound"s venom in The King: The King: "[T]he Talmud...is the dirtiest teaching that any race ever codified." "[T]he Talmud...is the dirtiest teaching that any race ever codified."
The King appears to be Don"s final argument with himself, a valentine to the ethos that nurtured him as well as recognition of its dark side: its potential for tyranny and "messianic impulses"; its tendency to value aesthetics and technical advancement over human needs. appears to be Don"s final argument with himself, a valentine to the ethos that nurtured him as well as recognition of its dark side: its potential for tyranny and "messianic impulses"; its tendency to value aesthetics and technical advancement over human needs.
The argument is conducted through now-familiar dialogues, punctuated by only a little exposition. Many of the chapters start with participial fragments: "Guinevere...sitting in a chair b.u.t.tering an apple"; "Launcelot whanging away at the helm of the Yellow Knight."
These sentences establish an eternal present-the action is ongoing, like the lives of the mythical figures. Yet they (and their humane qualities) belong to the past, and they know it. At one point, Guinevere tells Launcelot that Arthur chants for strength in his sleep. "Always before," she adds, "he"s had had strength, don"t you see." strength, don"t you see."
Arthur paces the world, but he"s fading. So are his companions. Deftly, Don ill.u.s.trates their predicament with subtle grammatical twists. The present-participial phrases mix with past-tense verbs to create a simultaneous then and now: At the Cafe Balalaika, Launcelot and Guinevere drinking coffee."All these people who don"t know who we are!""Anonymity," said Launcelot, "is something I have always cherished."
The lovers are here and not here: drinking drinking continuously in the present, but speaking ( continuously in the present, but speaking (said) in the past. Linguistically, thematically, these characters are caught in a time warp-like their author, wondering if he"d outlived his historical moment.
Toward the end of the book, the worshipful knights begin to vanish. Their time is finally up. "You, dear Arthur, are a bit at sixes and sevens, in terms of legend. You require, legend requires, a tragic end," Guinevere reminds the king. "No particular hurry, I suppose?" he replies, but he has already doomed himself by refusing to develop the atomic bomb. The age of chivalry is dead.
In the book"s final scene, two unidentified speakers, who have served throughout as a chorus, watch Launcelot dream: "He is dreaming that there is no war, no Table Round, no Arthur, no Launcelot!""That cannot be! He dreams, rather, of the softness of Guinevere, the sweetness of Guinevere, the brightness of Guinevere, and the s.e.xuality of Guinevere!""How do you know?""I can see into the dream! Now she enters the dream in her own person, wearing a gown wrought of gold bezants over white samite and carrying a bottle of fine wine, Pinot Grigio by the look of it!""What a matchless dream!""Under an apple tree..."
And so we return to the garden, and to an ordinary yet marvelous vision of Paradise. The King The King is heavily elegiac-a catalog of wonders about to disappear from the earth. Though the novel echoes Malory"s is heavily elegiac-a catalog of wonders about to disappear from the earth. Though the novel echoes Malory"s Le Morte d"Arthur, Le Morte d"Arthur, this final exchange sounds more like Puck"s last speech in this final exchange sounds more like Puck"s last speech in A Midsummer Night"s Dream: A Midsummer Night"s Dream: "Think.../ That you have but slumb"red here /While these visions did appear. /And this weak and idle theme, /No more yielding but a dream..." "Think.../ That you have but slumb"red here /While these visions did appear. /And this weak and idle theme, /No more yielding but a dream..."
Fragile and brief. The supply of strange ideas is not endless, but in Don"s stories and novels-technical and imaginative achievements of the highest order-matchless dreams, with each rereading, continue.
On Don"s last day in Rome, Ed Hirsch lunched with him on a terrace at the Academy. Don drank several gla.s.ses of wine and smoked a cigarette. "Don"t tell Marion about the cigarette," he warned his friend. "If you tell her, I"ll never speak to you again." (Marion knew about the cigarettes because she could smell them. "I did not bug him about these things," she says.) "We had a terrific lunch," Hirsch recalled. "[P]asta in cream sauce...We took a long walk, since it was one of those days when the singing sunlight turns you every way but loose. He was going home in the morning. "So long, see you but not tomorrow," I said, ever the glib one. "See you," [Don said,] "but not in Paradise." "
Back in the apartment on West Eleventh Street, Don didn"t appear any frailer than he had in Rome, "but he did seem disconnected some of the time, irritated by loud noises," Marion says. "He showed uncharacteristic irritation if Katharine yelled too loudly."
Marion recalls that "the ceiling in the living room had partially fallen-the molding, actually-and we were fixing it." For this reason, Don may have postponed a medical check-up he had scheduled in Houston, but eventually, in late June, he decided to fly to Texas to see the doctor. He asked Marion to stay in New York to finish the ceiling job and other repairs. "I don"t think he felt well, but he never said that," she recalls.
In Houston, Don was alone in the house on South Boulevard. One afternoon, he phoned his brother Pete and asked if he would accompany him on a "test drive." Don wanted to see if he could "function as a driver." He was "not really coherent," Pete discovered, and the short drive was "terrifying." Pete forced Don to pull over; he took the wheel and drove them back to the house.
"Some time later, maybe the next day, Donald had the check-up with the internist that he had gone to Houston for. It included blood samples," Marion says. "Following the appointment, Donald went home. I talked to him then and he told me he was going to take a nap. Meanwhile, the lab found his blood electrolytes-I guess calcium, too-to be way out of whack, and telephoned him to go to the hospital. He didn"t answer because he was asleep. I got a call from a friend he"d listed as a contact that the hospital was looking for him. I told her to go bang hard on the door because he was asleep. She did and then waited for him to pack a few things which he put into his computer bag. He told her to stop rushing him and she sat quietly until he was ready. She drove him to the hospital."
Shortly afterward, having arrived from New York, Marion moved Don to M. D. Anderson. "Donald"s blood stabilized with IVs and we hoped he would be able to start chemo, but he never became strong enough," she says.
Pete had fully recovered from his own bout with throat cancer. He speculated that Don"s withdrawal from alcohol had weakened his stamina. Doctors told Marion that "cells from [Don"s] original cancer either spilled during the surgery or were already circulating in his system and took up sites in other areas of his body-his heart, head, femur."
Calcium was streaming into his blood, causing him to hallucinate. Doctors met with Don"s family in a plush office filled with potted plants and framed pictures of the doctors" children. Calmly, the medical men outlined the seriousness of Don"s condition.