Bouvard and Pécuchet and Me at the Mall or What it Means to be Middle-Class
(from my notes, a moment that occurred sometime in 2012)
I’m sitting near the stroller
rental kiosk and its candy
machines, watching the family
that maintains them: a square-jawed
Russian-looking man, his raven-
haired wife, and their kid, a skinny
teenager, probably grew up
in America, crew cut with mohawk
ridge, slack-shouldered, bored
but patient. Father and son
try adding candy to the machines
from a big plastic bag.
It’s an awkward business.
The father pours while the kid
cups his hands around the top
of the glass bowl, to block
the spillage. Next to the strollers
is a a cart whose owner is flying
tiny toy helicopters.
They hover above the heads
of passers-by, begging
for attention. Most females try
to ignore the giant mechanical
indoor insects, but smiling
males crane their necks, point
at the helicopters, and nod
at the guy with the controls.
A security guard on a
Segway rolls silently past
the sneaker store and its booming
techno beat. Teenagers in clumps
and couples wander by, no shopping
bags in hand, just wasting time
together at the mall. But I’m
being productive, I’m reading
Bouvard and Pécuchet
on my phone, a 1904
translation of Flaubert’s pitiless
skewering of the bourgeois
mind, now in the public
domain, downloadable
for free. In the Edwardian
English of the old translation
I read on my little screen
about the two kindred souls
who meet on a park bench
on a boulevard, instantly
admire each other’s predictable
opinions, and soon resolve
to move together to
the countryside. I myself
am seated on a bench
in a suburban mall, waiting
while my car gets repaired
at Sears Auto Center:
ball joint alignment, new set
of tires, already it’s almost six
hundred dollars on my credit card.
The teenager from the stroller
kiosk comes back with more
candy, pounds and pounds of squiggly
colors in a clear plastic bag. This time
he’s alone, but now he has a big
red cup, the kind they use
at college keg parties. Quick
and efficient now, red cup
in hand, he scoops the candy
into the bowl until the machine
is bright and full.
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Category: Crystal Cabinets