Free Snow White by Donald Barthelme Page A

imagine.” “ Eight percent! ” “Yes, well, but of course there’s patriotism involved too isn’t there.” “ Eight percent! That’s damned little for doing such a vile and dishonorable thing, damned little.”
     “Yes I know but what is the nature of your information? You’re aware of course that
     it’s not enough just to allege. You have to be able to provide supportive evidence
     or at least sufficient material to lead to a strong case and ultimately conviction
     and/or collection.” “Eight percent!” “I might also point out that it is your duty
     as an American citizen to come forward with this information if you have it.” “Eight
     percent, eight percent.” “Did you hear me? I said it was your duty as an American—”
     “I am not an American citizen. I am under Panamanian registry.So just forget my duty as an American citizen. Eight percent. No, I don’t think I’m
     talking to you any more. There would be some pleasure in doing the thing just for
     the pure vileness of it, but there is more pleasure in spitting on your eight percent.
     Goodbye, Baltimore. Eight percent. Goodnight, Baltimore, and bad cess to you.”
    STANDING in the rotten bathroom, we regarded the new shower curtain. It had two colors,
     a red and a yellow. The red the red of red cabbage, the yellow the yellow of yellow
     beans. It had two figures, a kind of schematic peahen, a kind of schematic vase. These
     repeated, in the manner of wallpaper. There were eight of us standing there in the
     rotten bathroom, including the visitor. The visitor who had said that it was the best-looking
     shower curtain in town. Ho ho. That was a chiller. We had known that it was adequate.
     We had known that it was nice. We had even known that it was “splendid” more or less.
     That was the idea, that it be “splendid.” But we had not known that it was the best-looking
     shower curtain in town. That we had not known. We looked at the shower curtain with
     new eyes, or rather, saw it in a new light, the light of the esthetician’s remark.
     The visitor was an esthetician, a professor of esthetics. Even those of us by no means
     a minority who considered esthetics the least ballsy of the several areas of inquiry
     subsumed under the term, philosophical thought, were affected by the esthetician’s
     remark. First because it had as subject something that was ours, there in the rotten
     bathroom, on little silver rings, and second because the speaker was a professor of
     esthetics, even if there is nothing in it, esthetics, as is likely. As we stood there
     shoulder toshoulder in the rotten bathroom, the eight of us, a sort of hunger arose, to know
     if it was true, what he had said. Felt I daresay by all of us, including the esthetician.
     He must be curious sometimes to know if it is true, what he is saying. We swayed,
     momentarily, there in the rotten bathroom, in the grip of the hunger. A thousand problems
     flashed through our mind. How could we determine if it was true, what he had said?
     Our city, the arena of the proposition, is not large but on the other hand not small,
     in excess of a hundred thousand souls swelter here awaiting the Last Day and God’s
     mercy. A census of shower curtains was possible but to conduct it we would be forced
     to neglect the vats and that is something we have sworn never to do, neglect the vats.
     And to conduct it we would be forced to leave the buildings unwashed, and that is
     something else we have sworn never to do, leave the buildings unwashed. And granting
     we managed to gain access to the rotten bathrooms of all hundred thousand souls who
     swelter here, by what standards were the hundred thousand shower curtains hanging
     there, on little silver rings, to be assessed? A shower-curtain scale could be constructed
     with the aid of the professor of esthetics, or with the aid of shower-curtain critics
     recruited from the curtaining journals, if there are such critics and such journals,