Wittgenstein's Mistress Read Free

not have to be mad to decide to visit the grave of one's dead little boy.
    But certainly I was mad when I drove the breadth of Alaska, to Nome, and then pointed a boat across the Bering Strait.
    Even if I did seek out charts, that time.
    Well, and had once known boats, as well. But still.
    Yet after that paradoxically made my way westward across all of Russia with scarcely any maps at all. Driving out of the sun each morning and then waiting for it to appear ahead of me as the day progressed, simply following the sun.
    Brooding upon Fyodor Dostoievski as I went.
    Actually, I was keeping a weather eye out for Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov.
    Did I stop at the Hermitage? Why do I not remember if I stopped in Moscow at all?
    Well, quite possibly I drove right past Moscow without knowing it, not speaking one word of Russian.
    When I say not speaking one word, I mean not reading one either, obviously.
    And why did I write that pretentious line about Dostoievski, when I do not have any notion now if I allotted a moment's thought to the man?
    More baggage, then. At least here and now while I am typing, if not at that earlier time.
    As a matter of fact when I docked the launch after the last island and went hunting for an automobile again I was possibly even surprised that they had Russian printing on their license plates. Having half imagined that I ought to be in China.
    Though it strikes me at only this instant that one possesses certain Chinese baggage too, of course.
    Some. There seems no point in illustrating the fact.
    Even if I happen to be drinking souchong tea as I say that.
    And in either case the Hermitage may be in Leningrad.
    Then again there is no question that I was, decidedly, looking for Raskolnikov.
    Using Raskolnikov as a symbol, one can decidedly say that I was looking for Raskolnikov.
    Though one could also say that I was looking for Anna Karenina, just as readily. Or for Dmitri Shostakovich.
    I was looking when I went to Mexico too, naturally.
    Hardly for Simon, since I knew all too well that Simon was in that grave. Looking for Emiliano Zapata then, perhaps.
    Again symbolically, looking for Zapata. Or for Benito Juarez. Or for David Alfaro Siqueiros.
    Looking for anybody, anywhere at all.
    Well, even mad was looking, or for what earthly reason else, would I have gone wandering off to all of those other places?
    And had been looking on every streetcorner in New York before that, naturally. Even before I moved out of SoHo, had been looking everywhere in New York.
    And so was still looking that winter when I lived in Madrid, as well.
    I am not certain whether I have mentioned my period in Madrid.
    In Madrid I did not live at the Prado, as it turned out. Perhaps I have suggested that I had thought to do so, but it was too badly lighted.
    It is natural light that I am speaking about in this case, already having begun to shed most of my devices by then.
    Only when the sun is especially fierce can one begin to see that Rogier van der Weyden the way it wants to be seen.
    I can attest to this categorically, having even washed the windows nearest it.
    Where I lived in Madrid was in a hotel. Choosing the one they had named after Velazquez.
    Looking, there, for Don Quixote. Or for El Greco. Or for Francisco de Goya.
    How poetic most Spanish names generally sound. One can say them over and over.
    Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Marco Antonio Montes de Oca.
    Though in fact both of those may be names from Mexico again.
    Looking. Dear heaven, how anxiously I looked.
    I do not remember when it was that I stopped looking.
    In the Adriatic, when I was on my way from Troy to Greece, a ketch swooped toward me swiftly, its tall spinnaker taking noisy wind.
    Just imagine how that startled me, and how I felt.
    One moment I was sailing, as alone as ever, and a moment after that there was the ketch.
    But it had only been adrift. Through all of that time, presumably.
    Would it have been as long as four or five years, by then? I am almost