Ida a Novel (20 page)

Ida
A Novel

Chapter one.
Good-by now.

It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked as if she was tall young very young not sixteen yet and tall very tall as tall as any one.

Ida was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday.

Ida knew another Ida who was thirty and had a blind dog who was born blind and his name was Iris.

It is true Ida is a woman you can generally tell by their name. Ida is and was a woman. Once in a while she knew all about something and when this happened everybody stood still and they did look they looked out of the window.

She that is Ida hesitated before eating. It was dark in the morning.

Ida always talked not very much but she did always talk unless she was alone and she was never alone not even when she was waiting. Ida can wait long enough. Which Ida had done she had waited long enough and what she had to have had begun. Ida did not know just what she had to have until she had it but when she had it she had to have it.

IV
A plan.

Woodward was the man he was soliloquizing. He was saying I have known and if I know I have admired the ones I have known and if I have admired the ones I have known I have looked like them. Woodward never sighed. He had not known Ida and he had never sighed. He soliloquized. This is what he said. I do not mean said Woodward as he soliloquized, I do not mean I when I say I I mean I do not know how much I feel when once in a while I have never come to know Ida. I can know about Ida analyzed Woodward, I do not think about Ida because as I am very busy and thinking does not take very much of my time I do not think about Ida. I do not think said Woodward that is I do not feel that I do not like thinking. All this interested Woodward in Ida. He had not met Ida very likely he would never meet Ida. He might have tears in his eyes not Woodward not Ida at not meeting Ida. He said to himself Everybody talks about Ida but I do not talk about Ida nor do I listen when they are all talking about Ida, I am thinking of another person said Woodward to himself not any one I could possibly think would be at all like Ida not at all like Ida.

And that was the way it was.

Chapter V
It was.

If Ida was on the front page of the newspaper Ida was Idle.

Ida and idle both begin with I but Ida was not idle nobody ever is, if they all talk about what everybody does nobody is idle.

Woodward and work both begin with w and that does make them welcome.

Work and we both begin with w and that does make them welcome.

It almost does seem that Ida and Woodward would meet but they will not. Woodward will not meet Ida and Ida would not meet any one who came to where she then was. Very likely Ida is not anxious. Woodward is.

Chapter VI
Is.

There is a place called Bayshore and at Bayshore there is a house and this house is a comfortable house to live in. Ida was living there.

Like everybody Ida has lived not everywhere but she had lived in quite a number of houses and in a good many hotels. Believe her. She liked it at Bayshore. Bayshore did not belong to her but she belonged to Bayshore.

Chapter VII
Bayshore.

Ida had a little white dog his name was Iris. Iris is the name of a flower it might be the name of a girl it was the name of a little white dog he jumped up and down. Bayshore was not near the water that is unless you call a little stream water or quite a way off a little lake water, and rocks beyond it water. If you do not call all these things water then Bayshore was not at all near any water but its name was Bayshore and it was in the country where there are vipers only most of the time nobody sees them. Ida almost did not nor the little white dog Iris but on the path there must have been a yellow viper and as Ida watched the little dog Iris jump up and down bouncing like a ball she must have stood on the tail of the viper because she felt a sharp thing that was not like a sting on the side of her foot and as she stooped to look she saw something disappearing, she did not think it could be a viper but she looked down and took down her stocking she was wearing stockings while she was walking and there were two sharp little marks and she remembered that she had read that that was what a serpent’s bite looked like.

Therefore she went on meditating and then as she went on she met some woman who belonged there, Ida of course did not, and Ida said to her could I have been bitten by a viper, yes said the woman not often but it does happen, well said Ida what shall I do, better go and see a doctor, so Ida went back to where she had come from and pretty soon she found a doctor and he said oh yes and injected a serum into her, it did not hurt her but it made a big red patch where the sting had been, it will make another one where the poison has been stopped higher up said the doctor and it did. Some one said sometimes the big red patch comes back every spring said some one they knew some one to whom this did happen but this did not do this to Ida. Then there was the dog Iris he had not been stung by the viper. (YCAL 27.552)

Certain of these passages are in the novel’s final version, such as “Ida hesitated before eating” and “Very likely Ida is not anxious,” but Woodward loses his status as potential companion to Ida, and the viper episode morphs into
Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights
.
³
Around the time that Stein was working in these first two notebooks, she also drafted some episodes on loose sheets of paper. Here are excerpts from four of them:

Ida Isabel lived with her aunt. It was her aunt’s house. Ida had a poodle whose name was Love. She often talked to him she also often went out with him and when they did once when they went out they saw a man holding a cat which had gotten caught and hurt badly by a hay mower and the man did not want to kill it but he felt he had to. And once they saw a big bird flying high and being attacked by little birds. [. . . They brought the big bird to the ground and] began pecking at his head one after the other of them until the big bird fell down dead. (YCAL 27.539)

I am going to have a sister a sister who looks as like me as two peas (not that peas do) and no one will know which is she and which is me. I tell you my Love I am going to have a sister. / This idea kept running around in the head of this young girl until she really thought she was two and that the other sister did not want to stay at home all the time and so she went out. (YCAL 27.539)

Woodward was away, away from Belvedere. His wife and daughter and his son they were old enough to be called. [. . . He] called them upon the long distance telephone, he said I am away from home. He was. He never went home again. [. . . ] His wife divorced him, but and this was natural enough he was good friends with them with his wife and his daughter and his son. / And so he went out into the world. / Ida. (YCAL 27.539)

[Woodward] was born in Kansas [. . . and] a good many knew his name [. . . but he] was never more there. [. . . Gradually everybody knew that Ida was there and] it relieved everybody of their gloom. [. . .] Woodward looked at anybody who knew him but Ida did not. (YCAL 26.535)

Stein then turned to a third notebook and started with the by now well-used chapter title:

Good-by now.

Positively, can you go on doing what you did do. This is what Edith said to William. Naturally they were talking about something. So then they broke into poetry.

At a glance

What a chance

——————

That they need

What they have

——————

And they have

What they are

——————

And they like

Where they go

Which is all.

After a while

They stopped it.

——————

So then poetry having been spoken Edith and William went on talking. (YCAL 27.545)

This chapter, with changes, makes it to the final version (see 64). Then, after three more paragraphs with Edith and William and a few more lines of poetry, the narrative starts over: Stein copies and expands on the nine-chapter narrative of the second notebook, and then adds nine new chapters (more on these in a moment). So after the Edith-and-William episode, the third notebook begins again:

Chapter one.
The story of Ida.

Ida it is true Ida is a woman you can generally tell by their name. Ida is and was a woman. Once in a while she knew all about something and when this happened everybody stood still and as they were standing they did look and as they did look they looked out of the window. (YCAL 27.545)

This chapter begins as the second notebook did, except the first five sentences are missing (“It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked [. . .]”). Stein uses sixty sheets (both sides) of this third notebook and leaves the last half blank, until the very end, where—voilà—we find the five sentences. At some point she changed her mind about their value and made sure they remained in view for later drafts. Indeed, opening the fourth notebook we see those sentences again, and while episodes in the third notebook often expand on those in the second,
⁴
the fourth presents the familiar opening chapters in truncated form. As Stein moved from one notebook to another, the act of copying drew her into the landscape of the text as it had been and she was readied for a new surge of attention:

Ida A novel.

Chapter one.
Good-by now.

It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked as if she was tall young very young not sixteen yet and tall very tall as tall as any one.

Ida was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday. That was so Ida.

Chapter II
Sight Unseen.

Another Ida who was thirty and had a blind dog who was born blind and his name was Iris.

She that is Ida hesitated before eating. It was dark in the morning.

Ida said I am like a dog I am affected by the tones of their voices and not by what they say.

Ida always talked not very much but she did always talk unless she was alone and she was never alone. Ida did not know just what she had to have until she had it but when she had it she had to have it.

Now you know all about Ida.

Chapter III
Now and then.

There is a place called Bayshore and at Bayshore there is a house and this house is a comfortable house to live in. Ida was living there. Believe her. She liked it at Bayshore. (YCAL 27.547)

To understand the evolution of
Ida
, we need to know the order in which these drafts were written. At the same time, a later draft for Stein did not necessarily supersede an earlier one—there was a nonlinear aspect to her rewriting process. For instance, if we jump ahead for a moment to the third stage (winter 1939–1940), we see the reappearance of a passage which had been dropped (
Figure 4
). Stein may have simply recalled the passage and inserted it. However, given her habit of review as she worked on this novel, it seems more likely that she double-checked what she had written against the fourth notebook in this first stage (late 1937 or early 1938), which reads, “Well what did he know. He knew Ida. Hell yes he knew Ida. He never went to Bay Shore but then why did he know Ida. Well and listen. Of course he knew Ida” (YCAL 27.547), and made the change. As we saw above, fidelity to an earlier draft was evident in the case of the “missing” five sentences, and here it is again.

Back in the third notebook, following the expanded version of material from the second, Stein wrote a lengthy narrative involving Ida and a Spanish refugee, Harold: “[H]e was the only man among all those Spaniards the rest were women and children they had come out of the city that was bombarded and they had a long trip and nothing to eat [. . .] he had come dressed as a woman” (YCAL 27.545). By implication, we understand that Ida was then living in England and Harold had escaped his country’s civil war (1936–1939), assimilating with a new, English name. This topical reference, as well as the commentary on political turmoil and its identity effects (“every day Harold and Ida met and when they met Harold said I am a Spaniard and she said you have no country now and he said Harold said I have no country now because nobody has a country now”), appears in this notebook alone—none of the Harold narrative appears in
Ida
.