Middle C (35 page)

I have heard it said: All dead are identical. Do not choose but one to mourn. Broken toys are broken toys, and useless legs aren’t legs.

Thus Bruno Schulz—born an Austrian, raised a Pole, and about to become a Gentile—though a freethinker—died a Jew. Shot in the street. Who, do you suppose, picked up, dusted, carried off, broke, greased, ate his loaf of bread? Hands? Hands now. Please show.

Cassandras have been misunderstood. They bring good news. That is why they are not believed. It is the liars who promise us salvation. We believe them
.

23

Joseph brought his first paycheck home as if it were a turkey. He opened a bank account, acquired a credit card, and bought Miriam a shiny trowel to poke into her compacted yellow clay earth. Marjorie
Bruss had recovered her equilibrium after losing it during the Portho incident, though the process was more like finding your cat in a tree than discovering your keys at the bottom of a purse. Joseph and Miss Moss had reached, he thought, good terms, and he was teaching himself how to play the piano, as if he had never had a lesson, from a small series of books he had found in the library, one that was entitled
Theory and Technic for the Young Beginner
. He sat in his garage of an evening and thought, This is my room, my place, my lamp and chair. And nobody knows I’m here. Which wasn’t altogether true. He was also delighted because he was driving a car without knowing how to drive and playing the piano without knowing how to play and generally living free of what others might think and see. It was true that the Bumbler was in such sad shape it sometimes drew remarks, and Joey would have to remedy that, but, on the whole, he had to applaud his degree of disappearance. His job, his car, his clothes, his room were part of a cordon sanitaire of which any diplomat might be proud. Here we go round the mulberry bush, he sang, so early in the morning.

Indeed, the air had a clean blue chill in it. Then Portho accosted him as he was turning up the walk to the library’s entrance. Mister, sir, the bogey beggar man said from beneath the bill of his red
BEER
cap. You strike me, sir—no, you do not strike me, sir, of course, you are a gentleman who would not raise a hand—you seem, yes, to be—to me to be—a sensible and caring person, and might have a bit of change weighing in your right pants pocket because I have observed that you are right-handed and would put a quarter now and then down there without thinking, naturally enough, where you should put it. Had it been winter, Joseph’s shoes would have frozen their soles to the bricks. Astonished, he thought: I am being panhandled. Then he thought: Beards moisten the mouths they encircle. Portho had very wet lips. His words seemed very wet. Joseph would not have recognized the voice. Though hesitant, it was clean firm smooth. He shook his head, ashamed of his flight and ashamed of his shame. He was annoyed, too, because this man had spoiled a good mood and a lovely morning.

I’ll tell you something true, something true will only cost you a quarter. Joseph might have continued on up the library steps if he hadn’t suddenly realized that Portho’s voice did not seem to be the same one that had protested his expulsion from the library. Where was the man who
mumbled? That lady—your leader—that leader lady screamed, Portho said with the earnestness of a boiling pot. That lady didn’t shake me awake the time, you remember? when there was all the fuss. She’s done that before—shook me, I mean. This time she screamed me awake. She screamed in my ear. I yelled, sir, but she screamed. That’s my secret, the truth. Have you ever been screamed? Gave me an earache. Now I think, to be fair, you owe me a quarter.

The tone, the diction, the manner, the wet words, were unfamiliar. Sparrows, hidden in the boxwood hedge, continued chirping. Joseph put a quarter in a mittened paw. And how had Portho known he was right-handed? The man had seemed the opposite of anyone observant. Portho normally slipped inside the library to get warm. Then Portho slipped inside a magazine to nod off. All this was customary. But perhaps only in cold weather. It wasn’t cold, early in the fall, but to receive that quarter a mitten was extended. Miss Moss had also insisted it was the Major she had heard. Was there such a thing as supporting—cor rob bor ay ting—witnesses? This was confusing. Inside, he hung his jacket on a hook and felt hung there himself.

Marjorie might have screamed because Marjorie had gotten fed up sitting at her desk to oversee a library full to overflowing with nobody, nobody but a snoring tramp. Marjorie might have screamed because Portho’s nose, his roaring mouth, made the sole sound in a library otherwise silent as a tomb, with only the
tick tick
of her pencil stick to mime the clock. Marjorie might have screamed because Portho wasn’t weary, hungry, cold, or lonely but drunk and smelly instead, defaming the purpose and position of the library as a public institution. Marjorie might have screamed because she wished to summon someone from somewhere, raise a ruckus, wake the silent books from their dull mortuary shelves. Marjorie might have screamed because she had already told Portho a dozen times not to doze, not to snore, not to smell up her house … Joseph went over to the stamp-out table and said hello and good morning to Marjorie.

Both hello and good morning to you, too, Joseph, she said, as chirpy as a sparrow in a boxwood hedge. He wanted to say—but he didn’t say—he said that the sky was as clean as a scrubbed plate. Good boy, she said, now go and get some sorting done. We’ve been given eight boxes by the kid who lives with old lady Lawrence. I don’t have a notion what’s
in them. What do old ladies read these days, he said as if his feet were frozen to the pavement. Find out and then tell me, tell me, tell me true. Marjorie smiled her wide smile of see you soon.

Joseph realized that he had been enlisted—enlisted for a cause—by Portho—for Portho’s cause—at a quarter. Judas needed more. Was he to forsake his—what did beard-mouth say?—his leader, for a quarter? Did Portho want him to put in a good word? did he merely want to get even? or see justice done? the truth known? It could hardly have been to clear his name. Though he had used some tones of respect—some “sir”s—in his approach. In the middle of Joseph’s wondering came another: why was he chewing a cud so lacking in nourishment? It was an insult to have been asked for a quarter, an insult to have yielded one. Admittedly, the expulsion was no slight concern to Portho who no doubt would need refuge from the coming snows. Joseph reminded himself that it was always interesting to open strange boxes of books. You could never be sure what might be inside. Sometimes a stuffed animal. Portho was a mystery, too. So, after all, was Skizzen’s father. Joseph really didn’t know why people did things. Were they keeping their counters clean the way he was? Perhaps homelessness had been his father’s aim, free of precisely the cards of identity that Joseph had just acquired and was enjoying in a condition of self-congratulation—when the supplication came. Maybe he should have confronted this man, said to him, I understand that you are trying to embarrass me into giving you money, but what have you done to deserve anything from me? why are you due even a penny from my pocket? because you have suffered something from me? so have we all, all suffered something; the very air is full of poison, everyone has losses, has been bullied, has been forced to feel ashamed, has been beaten or is a beater, starved or indulged, until our souls are bent out of their shapeless spiritual haziness into a hard shard. Except the sparrows who continued to shuffle while hidden in the hedge.

A moist mouth is not a proper state for a man’s mouth. Joseph slit the tape down the length of the flap where the box was sealed. Suppose he carried a knife—Portho—suppose he carried a knife. A knife fashioned from razor blades, blades wedged in the crack of a stick. A sudden slash followed by a lifetime of disfigurement, a lifetime of sympathy, a lifetime of pity. Pity even from people passing on the street. Joseph withdrew a volume an inch and a half thick. It said it was a biography of Anton
von Webern. The front of the dust jacket didn’t give him a clue to the nature of this person, though a picture showed an intense sharp-featured head with rimless glasses, thin lips, tight tie, lots of brow, an unashed cigarette, sour expression. In his other hand Joseph raised up a volume bound in lipstick-intense red cloth. It called itself
An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music
. More rapidly, he pulled several volumes out until it became clear that this box was packed with books on modern music. Joseph began to feel an unpleasant physical excitement such as the apprehension that customarily preceded his first descent on a playground slide.

Could this be an old woman’s reading? Joseph selected a book about a musician named Boulez who was pictured on the cover conducting with his fingers. He could no longer breathe easily when the pages fell open at a passage on the composer—for it turned out Boulez composed as well as conducted—a passage that described the artist’s search for a father, a search that dominated his life. Moreover, he learned of the Frenchman’s admiration for the subject of another of these books—an Austrian—an Austrian, Anton von Webern. Joseph read with thirsty eyes. Names he had not known before streamed by as if celebrating his ignorance, and paragraphs debating the primacy if not the tyranny of technique alarmed him, he knew so little about it, had so little of it. How could a score appeal to the mind, yet outrage the ear? How could one consider singing an equation? A entire generation of artists and composers were quarreling about chance and order while agreeing that whatever resulted, all the old ways had to be cast aside the way you would a wife who has put on weight and shopped unwisely. Composers were advised to depart from the “tonal world,” as it was rather grandly put, by trashing all the old rules and regulations, seeking fresh sounds with special machines, and composing with rests rather than notes. A quote from the great man himself, which Joseph happened upon, indicated that Webern had once written a quartet in C major but bragged that the chosen key note was invisible and called the feat “suspended tonality.” Another writer blamed “the crisis” (Joseph knew only that it was “dire” and “severe” and “catastrophic”) on Abstract Expressionism, a combination of words that, to Joseph, created a label whose meanings went together like ornery dogs, and was, in any case, about painting, so let the painters keep their dogs from quarreling and let the composers pet their cats in peace.

But every few pages old friendships broke apart like snapping twigs: Stravinsky was praised past the passing clouds, or he was a treasonous reactionary fit only for shooting against a wall. Schoenberg was dead alas or a case of good riddance (though of course he was quite alive); no, he was dead because he couldn’t compete with music that was being made by jazz musicians and alone beloved by the people; no, he was dead because he was impure and neglectful of rhythm. How was that possible, Joseph wondered, trying to breathe unevenly.

So you have decided to use the library rather than work for it, the Major said, with a smile like a slice of lemon. Oh, I am so sorry Miss Bruss, I got caught up in these books and lost all sense of time. It’s “Miss Bruss” now, is it? Joey cowered by the boxes. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realize. These boxes are full of amazing things. As far as I can see, Miss Bruss observed, you’ve only opened one in the time you lost, which has been two hours. Yes, sorry. These can’t be an old woman’s reading, though. Suddenly Miss Bruss endeavored to be jaunty: Why not, pray tell, pray tell me true? Well, they are all about modern music, and they look difficult to me. Older women do not have the wit of young men, the finer interests? she pursued. Well, it just seemed to me unlikely—here—in this town. You have spent much time in New York City then, more than two hours even, to see us as the dull tips of the sticks? Joey said nothing without meaning to. First Portho, now this, he thought. Caroline Lawrence came back to her hometown to live after her husband, who was a violist in the Philharmonic, died, Miss Bruss said tonelessly. So the Major probably knew what kind of donation she was getting, after all, Joseph thought, without then daring to pursue anything quicker than his own panic. He managed to remain as still, though, as a library lion. Miss Bruss went away when her shoes did. And Joseph went on with the boxes of books as if unpacking them were everyday business.

Joseph remained at his post two hours past his appointed time so the muted tones of twilight were beginning to sound in the woodwinds when he opened Miss Bruss’s front door. It occurred to him that he had a key, but he took small pleasure in it. On the left of the entry was a door for which he had no opener but its knob, and he went through this to the garage—his haven—like a cautiously driven car. Joseph threw his coat on the bed as if he were throwing himself there and said Wha … to a plate of cookies. Does this mean I have been forgiven? He bit into
one. They were thin and wore pale yellow with a nice brown rim. Um. He let the crumble slowly sog. Buttered saliva. It also meant that the Webern biography his coat had been concealing could not safely stay in his possession. Why hadn’t he noticed that his own door had no lock? Marjorie might come and go like one of its numerous drafts. Joseph had debated the ethics of his theft while sorting the contents of the other cartons—all musical. Who would ever feel the cost of an unknown loss? he was needier and could give it a better home; he worked for so little the book was nearly his due; and he could take it back anytime if he changed his mind, as he very well might.

Standing next to the cookies like a sentry was a glass of milk. What was the matter with him? why hadn’t he seen it as soon as he saw the cookies? He had let Portho sneak up on him. And the Major, too. Had he grown dense as it seemed to him his sister had, so consumed with her own few plans, her body and her boyfriend, that she saw little else and cared even less for her loss. The milk was still cool. Good heavens the Major might pop in anytime then. And she would see how low the level of the milk was, and if any cookies remained, and the uncataloged volume that nevertheless belonged to the library wherever he hid it, thief of words that he was. Joseph looked around without any real confidence, crumbs in the corners of his mouth. He put the book back beneath his coat. He had been so eager to get to his room and read about Webern, said to be a innovative influence, and now the bio had to lie concealed like the lie it was a party to.