Middle C (45 page)

Professor Skizzen was a fretter, he just couldn’t help himself, and if he was not fretting about this, he was fretting about that, because, in his experience, when things were looking their best, the worst would infallibly happen; thus it was that when he thought that the human race would come a cropper, a result it deserved and would be a boon for the earth, he fell to fretting that such a benevolent catastrophe might not occur, and if it did not, such a disaster would be, among dire consequences, the most dreadful injustice he could imagine
.

Because Professor Skizzen, as he grew older and was more established in his work and community, found himself with increasingly large periods of time to spend as he pleased, he was now able to dream of improvising, while riffing the piano keys, a kind of music that would somnolize its listeners and render them serenely comatose until they quietly passed away from indolence and immobility, not having eaten any more of the earth’s provenance or ravaged another inch of its land or consumed, in their scurrying about, any additional portion of its minerals; but alas these lullabies were made of dream chords too immaterial even for angels to sound, and there was nothing to be done, not even in nightmare, to relieve the planet of its deadliest denizen—every man jack a ripper
.

Justice was never served, so why shouldn’t the race of men get away with their crimes, since individuals did, more often than not, and the idea that ultimately each one of us paid the piper (by burning in hell if not through some type of anticipatory suffering) was no more than a comforting fiction promulgated by the same criminals who gave us God and the Holy Ghost and who offer us a few paintings of their Christ on the cross or one or two smug-faced Madonnas as proof that men are on balance better than weevils and have their hearts in the right place (see the Sistine Ceiling or Chartres in the moonlight) (contemplate the advance of science or our voyages to the stars); or, conversely, those who tell us that HIV is a man-made epidemic designed by puritans ashamed of our fleshly sins to get rid of us, ironically through the very copulations by which we come to be; and that this effort, when you view it from the right perspective, proves humans to be humane after all, and that they are trying their best to cleanse the world of their company before they do it irrevocable harm; but their best will not be good enough because hermits, honest priests, and ugly virgins shall survive; fat Adams, thin Eves, shall take up nakedness as nature’s way, and, although they will look round then and see the world gloriously alive and lush and orderly, warning erections will not prevent the opportunity, and the formerly chaste will fall to fornicating with a glee the world before has never entertained
.

The Inhumanity Museum made Professor Skizzen think of death a great deal—no, rather, of the dead, of the dead in heaps, of the dead in holes, in the forks of trees, of bones in Catacombs, of a body left like the remains of a blown tire in the road, and how the body goes back to being a mere heap of stuff that might have some nutritional value to fungi. It made him think of bodies less alive than plant stems, less alive than leaves, or even streams, oak smoke, a breeze, except when the cavities are filled with little nibblefish, maggots, or a greedy eel, or when the body simply ascends as stench or turns into its underclothes; and he would now and then stand naked in front of the mirror in his bedroom door to wonder why he was standing there, why anything—his wardrobe, his bed—was there, why he was so thin and why he had let a beard appear—oh vanity! because he wanted to be thought idiosyncratic by his students—and why his hair was unkempt—oh vanity! because he wanted to be seen as quite a character on the campus; but so naked now he couldn’t look at everything that was shamelessly mirrored there disgracing any self he might have chosen as his public image; though in better moments he would argue that his reflection, apparently stripped of all subterfuge, was really a misleading appearance and not his real self, which was five foot eight and one hundred forty-two, muscular though not by much, absent his mirror’s identifying marks—for instance, the rough patch on his knee where he so often picked off scabs, and that small mole like a dot of dye on his chest—really bare of body hair and so utterly ordinary no attentions would be drawn to it even if it stood nude as a statue, loincloth unattached, in a public square
.

The evidence initially pointed in the direction of human extinction, but biologists suggested that, although no one would admire what they had become, a few, the most adaptable to execrable conditions (with their claws, fangs, and double stomachs), would survive
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A virus is the best bet. However, there are billions of people. A few of them are bound to be, by sheer chance, immune
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CON. No true human will survive—if any of us do—by being reduced to a species, by becoming a scarcely remaining member of a class the way there are some salmon left; because out of our species has emerged the individual like a flower from a dung heap, the self blooming as a unique person should, valued for her singularity, the quality of her consciousness, the gifts of her genius. This is our extraordinary, our miraculous achievement; it is the legacy of the great Athenians. When a genuine individual dies, he or she is not replaced. Every day, the individual has to be achieved anew. Appeals to the collective would return us to the evolutionary fold. It is true that the individual cannot survive alone; but what he or she needs is the help of other individuals not more loud-mouthed members of mankind; rather the community of those who are fully aware of the world. What a dream it was to imagine the universal kingdom of ends. That, Professor Skizzen would whisper to himself, is the moral imperative. It is totally impossible to realize. So Man may survive, after all, but only as a flock, a pack, a horde
.

PRO. But every snowflake is unique, it is alleged; every salmon, petal, pinch of dirt, is as different as Mondays in Montana, Tuesdays in Tucson, Wednesdays in Waco. Fingerprints, retinas, DNA: they distinguish us. Besides, we can find the world in a grain of sand
.

CON. Phooey to that hooey. Those distinctions disappear whenever we vote. Each of us becomes a number. The belief that we are special—you and I and he and she—is revealed as an illusion. Two thousand six hundred twenty-nine died in the April storm. Mud slides buried thirty-five. Shot while sitting on the porch swing, seventeen this summer. That’s the norm, the average age of, the median for … Six miners were found alive. When the ferry capsized twenty-one Chevys drowned. Twenty-nine million cans of tuna were returned to have their engines tuned. Last year at this time he was batting .334. When Charlie died three people noticed and one cried. Most men have no more than six different sexual relationships during their erectile lives. The tornado caused 18 million dollars’ damage. Christmas sales are up. The lottery pays 60 mil to anyone holding ticket number 8210759364. That’s my phone number at work
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PRO. Everyone I know is an unusual individual. Aunt Minnie does jigsaws for a living. She enters the most difficult contests under the stiffest rules: you cannot look at the completed picture or even learn its title; the edge must be completed first, not omitting the last, lost, little one; the fitting of forms must rise like flooding water from bottom to top, puddling is prohibited, etc
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CON. Harriet Hoff’s time of fourteen minutes fifty-nine seconds, during the 1995 finals, was better than Minnie’s by two minutes thirteen seconds. Women have won for the sixth straight year. Among the men, Frank Link had the best time but he still finished eighth
.

THE WORLD comes in 1,500 pieces. Of this puzzle we have 1,250 in stock. A few of the boxes have nothing missing. At cost: $2.73. At retail: $9.99
.

31

There were three sharp knocks, and Marjorie slipped in. She seemed zipped into a towel, her wild hair terrible to behold, and sat upon the bed with the familiarity of one who has made it. Joseph followed each movement, transfixed. White hands darted out of her sleeve like laboratory mice and just as swiftly were withdrawn. After a moment during which Marjorie inspected him for flaws, she rose and moved in his direction. Joey put down his milk. Good boy, she said. You deserve a nice surprise. To Joey no surprise was nice. The Major bent over, her palms shot forth and closed upon his cheeks. The holes in the sleeves
were great dark ovals now. Unhand me, Madame, you forget yourself, Joey said, frightened from the world into a novel; and Marjorie recoiled as though struck by the book from which he had unconsciously taken the phrase.
Un hand me
, she shouted.
Un hand me
, she repeated, with renewed emphasis. Next she screamed in his face at the point of his nose. As if blown by the noise, Joey backed his chair away, causing a plate of cookies to slide across the tiny table, overturning the glass of milk, and knocking a heavy history of music to the floor near which the equally startled stream of milk had commenced its spill. Her scream was as sharp and high as a child’s cry but lasted longer than the length of any blade and undulated as if made for a scary movie or the stage. Out of the room, whose door now stood open, Marjorie paused for breath before emitting a shriek that rivaled her first. Thoroughly frightened and utterly bewildered, Joey held one ear shut while trying to save his history. Finally he simply kicked the book to safety with a foot and released his ear, since the scream had wound down like the siren does for all clear. In the reverberating silence that followed, a few pellets of snow ticked the windows. He actually thought, Sleet; even: Oh dear. Finally Joey’s heart could be heard rising to the occasion.

After a pause to prepare his body for its next move, Joseph found a towel to mop up the milk, although one edge of the rag rug had done a good job. A door bang brought him to his row of windows. Marjorie, in her white scuffs and terry-cloth robe, was kneeling by the back bumper of the Bumbler. She removed the blocks from behind the wheels of his car, brushing the bricks away with a sweep of her hand. Then, after a pause and a faint squeak, the emergency brake failed, and the Bumbler accelerated awkwardly down the steep drive, careening over the curb and into the street, where it narrowly missed a parked car but struck a utility pole with such force the pole acquired a lean and the car a dent in its trunk that looked intended. Standing at her door now, Marjorie yelled, Good-bye, you ungrateful piece of waste, and disappeared into the house. The door shut with a slam that sung in his windows. At the foot of the drive, blocking half the street, the Bumbler sat in a pool of shade or a pool of grease; it was hard to tell because of the way the light had to fall now to reach the road.

Joey peered at his car in disbelief. That good-bye had been meant for him. What had he done, he wondered. Then—what had she? He could
not immediately find any meaning in this attack on him or his vehicle, but he knew he would have to leave at once, pushed into the cold and continuing sleet, evicted like someone who hadn’t paid his rent. Ah, but perhaps his rent had come due just now. His mind refused to proceed in that direction. Somehow—the thought fell into his lap like a dislodged book—it was Debbie’s fault. Fortunately he had very few things that he needed to gather. There were the documents that Miss Moss had helped him compose (those that they had done together as a joke), a knot of socks, and—lucky break—Miriam had most of his laundry. He had to get himself and that car on the road. Or off the road. Joey’s eyes fled around his former room. His first fear was not that he would leave something behind but that he would meet her in the entry, ready to rescream and recurse and recriminate. Ah … the key. Should he leave the key. He fished it from a pocket and put it down by the turned-over glass. Then he snatched it back again. Suppose the car would not start. What could he do then? Where would he go? He had a library key, too. If he left the one he should leave the other. Or should he keep both and—Joey was surprised by his own train of thought, as if it had burst around a curve into its station—haunt the stacks, sneaking in to sleep like Portho might have, and in future years, in cahoots with Miss Moss, to spook the Major, visiting his thin presence upon a section labeled
INJURED AND INNOCENT
.

Joey decided to retain both and later mail them to Marjorie in a jar of silverfish. All of a sudden his head replayed her most recent scream. Unhand me, Madame, had he said? In a desperate hurry now, he packed his few things in a pair of pillowcases he pulled from those on his bed. These, too, he would send back to the library unexplained. After astonishment, shock, and shame came rage like a wind that’s had a run from upriver. So what if he met her in the entry? she who said she was his friend, with whom he had shared amusing observations, and whom she had called “good boy” more than a few times; yet who had attacked him with unsheathed claws, causing him to knock over the milk, which was only a little milk after all, good to soften a butter cookie, and did no damage, but spill as in the proverb, which implied that shrieking about a little thing like that was unmannerly and, what’s more, pointless and could have the most inconvenient and unfortunate consequences.

And calling his car a … a piece of waste wasn’t a bit nice either, even
if it was a wreck, because after all it did its work and kept its promise to turn its wheels and keep to the road—he was through the entry, out the door—Close it closely, he advised himself, close it softly, no horrid slam such as he—the neighborhood—had already had to suffer, and he was oops … slipping a little on the curved and dipping sidewalk as he made his way down the rise, a sack on each shoulder—some Santa—why had it happened? but—another thought made its presence felt—sleet showered him like rice—if the car wouldn’t go for him now, it wouldn’t go for Miriam either, when she wanted to call upon the baby rising in Deborah’s belly and exchange recipes and give her daughter her gosh-darned advice. There is some sweetness in the sourest grapes.