AN UNFORTUNATE
WOMAN
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN was born in 1935 in Tacoma, Washington, and spent most of his early life there before moving to San Francisco in the mid-Fifties when he became involved in the emerging beat scene.
It was during the Sixties that Brautigan became one of the most prominent and prolific writers of the flourishing counter-culture. Out of this period came some of his most famous books, several of which are available as Rebel Inc Classics – Revenge of the Lawn, Sombrero Fallout, Trout Fishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur. Translated the world over, these titles helped to establish him as one of the most significant American writers of his generation.
His popularity waned towards the end of the Seventies and he became increasingly disillusioned about his work and his life. He committed suicide in 1984.
ALSO BY RICHARD BRAUTIGAN
A Confederate General from Big SurRevenge of the LawnSombrero FalloutTrout Fishing in America
AN UNFORTUNATE
WOMAN
A Journey
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN
CANONGATE
Edinburgh • London
First published in the United States of America
in 2000 by St Martin’s Press
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Rebel inc, an imprint of
Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
This edition published in 2001
Copyright © Richard Brautigan, 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84195 146 1
eISBN 978 1 78211 484 0
Book design by Michelle McMillian
Iphigenia
A new home you make for me, Father
Where will it be?
Agamemnon
Now stop—it’s not right
For a girl to know all of these things.
Iphigenia
Father, over there when you have done
All things well, hurry back to me from Troy!
EURIPIDES,
Iphigenia in Aulis
N . . .
Pine Creek, MontanaJuly 13, 1982
Dear N,
After I got the telephone call from your friend, I was of course deeply shocked, stunned would be a better word. I just sat beside the telephone for a few moments, staring at it, and then I called a close neighbor M and asked her if she wanted some watermelon. I had bought a watermelon a few days ago for some company, and we didn’t get around to eating it, so there I was, a bachelor stuck with too much watermelon.
My neighbor said she would like some watermelon. Why didn’t I bring it over in half an hour and have dinner with her and a friend T who was visiting.
I said, I think because of your friend’s telephone call, “I’ll just bring it over now.” I think I probably just wanted to see somebody at that exact moment.
“OK,” my neighbor said.
“I’ll be right over,” I said.
I went to the icebox and got the watermelon and walked over to my neighbor’s house, which is just a short distance down the road. I knocked on her kitchen screen door. It took a minute or so for her to answer it. She came downstairs from her bedroom.
“Here’s the watermelon,” I said, putting it on the kitchen counter.
“Yes,” she said, her voice obviously very distant and her physical presence hesitant.
There was something I wanted to show her about the watermelon that required her to get a knife and cut into the melon. It’s not important what I wanted to show her about the watermelon, which after doing so, she continued to be hesitant, as if she were someplace else, not actually there in the kitchen with me.
I wanted to talk to her for a few moments about the telephone call that I had gotten from your friend, but then suddenly her hesitancy and growing uncomfortableness made me feel hesitant and uncomfortable.
Finally, I guess, only a couple of minutes had passed and then she said, looking down at the floor, “I left T upstairs writhing around on the bed.”
T was a man.
My bringing over the watermelon had just interrupted their lovemaking. My first thoughts were: Why had she answered the telephone while she was making love to somebody and then why didn’t she think up some excuse for me not to come over at that time? I mean, she could have said anything and I would have come over later, but instead she had said yes to my coming over.
Anyway, I apologized and went back home.
Then I thought about the humor in the situation and wanted to call you on the telephone and tell you what had just happened because you have the perfect sense of humor to understand it. It’s just the kind of story you would have enjoyed and responded to with your musically screeching laughter and said something like “Oh, no!” while still laughing.
I sat there staring at the telephone, wanting very much to call you, but I was completely unable to do so because the telephone call I had gotten from your friend a little while before told me that you had died Thursday.
I had gone over to my friend’s house to talk about it when I interrupted her lovemaking. The watermelon was just some kind of funny excuse to talk about my grief and try to get some perspective on the fact that I can never call you again on the telephone and tell you something like I’ve just done that basically only your sense of humor could appreciate.
Love,
NIKKI ARAI DIED OF A HEART ATTACK
ON JULY 8, 1982, IN SAN FRANCISCO
AFTER STRUGGLING AGAINST CANCER
UNTIL HER HEART JUST STOPPED
BEATING. SHE WAS THIRTY-EIGHT.
I SURE AM GOING TO MISS HER.
Contents
AN UNFORTUNATE
WOMAN
I saw a brand-new woman’s shoe lying in the middle of a quiet Honolulu intersection. It was a brown shoe that sparkled like a leather diamond. There was no apparent reason for the shoe to be lying there such as it playing a part among the leftover remnants of an automobile accident and there were no signs that a parade had passed that way, so the story behind the shoe will never be known.