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By Root 313 0

saw the printed words fighting for her attention, their confrontations disrupting order and meaning. To amuse her, to vie for her gaze, they allied themselves in provocative ways. They formed poems and plays, essays and the beginnings of very long short stories. They promised her the words to an opera and the history of everyone who has ever lived. GertrudeStein rummaged through the pockets of her jacket. Anything, a pin to prick some of her own red ink would be fine at a moment like this, she thought. Instead, her fingers found and pushed aside wrapped pieces of cinnamon candy that Miss Toklas had placed in her pockets in order to delay the faint fluttery feeling just prior to hunger, a feeling that she knew GertrudeStein deplores. Forethought is indeed Miss Toklas's hallmark, but forethought is never a match for a whim. This lapse in an otherwise spotless record of devoted anticipation left GertrudeStein in a rare predicament.

Recalling that it takes energy to fend for herself, GertrudeStein popped a red lozenge into her mouth and waited for the burn of cinnamon to wake her tongue. She then called out to the garage clerk and told him to hand her the pencil tucked behind his ear. For the next several hours, GertrudeStein steadily covered the book on her lap with her own writing. She found room inside the front cover, inside the back, in the margins, the cleansing expanses of white at the beginning of each chapter. The lines of text were printed too closely together, otherwise she would have written between them as well. When GertrudeStein returned to 27 rue de Fleurus, she presented the book to Miss Toklas, who promptly began to transcribe. Miss Toklas typed three complete copies and spent the remainder of the week carefully proofing each one. She then erased GertrudeStein's scribbles, turning the book pages gray. When she returned it to the lending library, both of their memberships were revoked. When Miss Toklas asked, GertrudeStein proudly identified their automobile as the mechanized muse. Every person and everything has its own throb and rhythm. The automobile, according to GertrudeStein, just helps to amplify them as it zooms on by. Now that she can so easily hear them, she told Miss Toklas, she would know exactly when to devote a sentence or a paragraph to any passing person or thing. Sentences can be hundreds of lines long. Paragraphs can be one word or two. Length has nothing to do with it. GertrudeStein does not eyeball a paragraph or a sentence. She hears it as her automobile zooms on by.

"Zooms on by?" Miss Toklas repeated, demanding to know how GertrudeStein could possibly drive and write at the same time.

"No, no," said GertrudeStein, "I was parked in a garage."

Miss Toklas wondered whether GertrudeStein's logic was, here, somewhat flawed. If Lovey was sitting inside a parked automobile, in a garage of all places, then it would suggest that movement and speed had little to do with Lovey's creative gush and flow. Miss Toklas concluded, despite GertrudeStein's assertions, that it must have been the garage and possibly the fumes. Of course it was the garage. Sweet Sunday Man, can you imagine any place more masculine, more exclusively male? Yes, there are the pissotières, but my Madame does not have what it takes to gain entrance there. GertrudeStein does have an automobile, and that is all she needs to be admitted into the meetinghouses of the fraternal order of mechanics, taxi drivers, freight deliverers, and chauffeurs, among whom there is rarely a lady present, except for my Madame. She enjoys the attention, the fizzy distinction of being the only one. Now, that is what this Madame strives for in her creations.

Miss Toklas notwithstanding, I have noticed that GertrudeStein tends to avoid the company of women. Tiresome, GertrudeStein thinks. During the Saturday teas, the door of 27 rue de Fleurus is opened to both men and women. Only the women, though, are taken for a tour of the apartment, a forced march that ends in the kitchen, Miss Tolkas's balmy lair. The same tea and cakes are served here as