Middle C (50 page)

Skizzen’s career hung in the balance. He thought he had lost some students because of an obsessive use of clichés, common sayings that he adopted to hide what he knew was incompetence. And he stole opinions from any book that lay open. He really had to stop describing music as food for the gods or boasting, on Mozart’s behalf, that the little brat was penning symphonies at the age at which the rest of us were struggling to learn our sums. His point was: music is easy; see, a three-year-old can play, a five-year-old compose; but his pupils thought what the hell they had no chance. Then, instead of trying to encourage them to admire nobler things, Skizzen would scoff at genius. After all, what else could Bach do beside fugues?

The young professor never took the right tone with his material because he didn’t know the right tone to take. You have no tone, he scolded himself. You have no real beliefs. Of what, about your subject, could you say you were sure? if you were put to the lie-detect? if you had to swear before a court? Perhaps you could believe with some confidence that, although Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn were both more prodigious talents than even Mozart or maybe John Stuart Mill, their careers were made of promises they didn’t wholly fulfill. But what sort of promises did the cliché require? that they would surpass Liszt. In what? In his sum of seductions? In the length of his trills? Skizzen’s native skepticism was no help either. His students simply were discouraged by it. They
couldn’t handle opposing points of view or any war of wills. All the same, Skizzen did believe music was easy. He had learned to play the piano by ear, and that showed he had promise, didn’t it? but he could only play honky-tonk and pretend it was Chopin. Though he had skills, these tiddlywink abilities would never pay the bills.

If you are terrified of being a bore you probably are a bore and terror should be on its way. But Skizzen had become bored by himself, even alone in the urinal, so what must he be to others? Was terror transferable? He believed it was—contagious, like panic. There were books that argued for it. If you could not hear what you were about to play before you played it; if you could not measure the intervals to come, had no grasp of the constellations that notes and not-notes formed; then fear would fill your fingers as though they were sucking straws. When he faced his first class, he heard his words toddle from his mouth, their sense of conviction tied to a string for handy retraction. He would look in wonder at his notes, notes both musical and expository, that suddenly meant nothing to him. Now, of course, he could pronounce his judgments with the bully’s bluster—“Wagner has taught the tuba’s pomposity to the flute”—and he could formulate intimidating opinions—“Late Liszt is as atonal as autumn”—that meant nothing whatever; but it took Skizzen five years to get glib. He had to forget how he mucked about at the keyboard, didn’t have his material in hand, couldn’t teach the sea to roil or trees to leaf. He had to believe in his brilliance, he told himself with some sternness: Be proud of your knowledge, and confident about your mastery. Let superior assurance win the day. Ah, he immediately thought, there you go, winning the day. You must stop seizing or winning or greeting or wasting the day. You must be original even while sucking on an orange. But, when he tried to hear in his head the sound of a conch shell blown like Poseidon might toot it on a stony beach, the best he could do was imagine a whistle that signified to a grateful group that gym was over. Everybody got to shower.

He took hold of a stick of chalk, pulled it from the pack, and held it like a cigarette to steady his nerve. “I’ll smoke it later.” The chalk absorbed the sweat of his palms and then emitted a terrible squeak when rubbed across the slate. Did he remember how to spell “Tchaikovsky”? Tchaikovsky, he said, steadied his head with one hand when he conducted so it wouldn’t fly off. His head, not his hand. Skizzen knew how
the conductor felt. The conductor felt his head was a hat. Maybe it was the composer who worried about brisk winds and the conductor who kept a tight hold on the brim. Skizzen heard some signs of amusement from the boys in the back. In fact Tchaikovsky gripped his chin and waited for wobble. Sometimes, when Horowitz played, members of the audience climbed up on their chairs to watch his fingers run an octave like a deer. Skizzen found he felt better if he turned his back to the students and spoke to the board. Well, what was he going to say about Tchaikovsky beyond that joke? That his symphonies were soap operas?

Dates. He posted Tchaikovsky’s dates. Oops. Wrong decade. He wiped the mistake away with the side of his left fist. Aware of what he’d done, Skizzen tried to rid his hand of chalk by rubbing it on a cuff of his coat. Then he dropped the piece he was holding in a trouser pocket. A bit of discreet riddance. Let’s try to get on. Think nothing of it. Say nothing about it. As he took a step, he felt something run down his pants leg onto the floor. And then, starting nervously, he stepped upon something that caused a sound of crushing to come from his heel that had to be admired by the toe. Miriam hadn’t repaired that hole in his pants pocket. Don’t look down, you’ll fall. Ignore it as you would a smart remark. Skizzen thought that by the time he strode to the other side of the room he might have an idea. Vengeful grains of chalk remained stuck to the sole of his shoe; they squealed when he walked; and, though he dare not look down, were probably leaving lines on the floor. All I need, he managed to say, is to write out the bass part.

Joey dared not look at those rows of grins. He pretended to be contemplating the lawn outside. He remembered nothing of what he was supposed to say. A man with a red kerchief wrapped around his head drove a mower closer and closer. Bless that man with the red kerchief. Bless that grass, all noisy mowers. He said: How can we be expected to speak of music with racket like that in our ears. It’s dis-tracting. Skizzen slowly wiped his chalk-covered fingers on the front of his shirt. Turning back to the class, he put a forefinger in his mouth and made a face. Then what did he hear?

Applause.

36

From the same post that delivered the professor’s daily
New York Times
—three days late but with admirable regularity—he received a valentine. Out of an envelope whose lacy getup made him reluctant, he withdrew a handmade watercolor that his past identified at once as by the brush, hand, and careful purpose of Miss Moss. The realization produced only apprehension, since his mother had celebrated the holiday’s sentimental occasion weeks ago with cupcakes and a cartoon movie chosen to amuse Nephew. Perhaps Miss Moss’s wall calendar still hung open at February, as he had once observed. The card was built like a triptych. You saw, first, a bright red apple out of which someone very hungry had taken a bite, although tooth marks were not visible. The apple, when you opened the cover, was sliced to disclose a length of worm as wet and dirty as might please a bird. On the left side was a hand-printed greeting:
EAT THIS APPLE ADAM
. On the right was a message in bright blue ink: Dear Joey: I am being poisoned by the Major. I shall soon die. Good-bye. Not immediately, but after a brief bemused study of the image, Joey guessed that the biblical serpent was represented by the worm. Across the bottom from side to side, in the smallest of hands, but clearly in the same one, was written:
I have stuck a pin into her quim. Though thin as a slot, the pin went in. I thought her dead but she is not. Who would miss that mean old twat?
He could not acknowledge the words his eyes at first fled over except with a shiver of aversion. This was followed by a rereading that incomprehension and disbelief prompted, and to which a prolonged hiss of disapproval put period. I do not know what this portends, Joey said almost audibly, as if whispering an aria. He had almost immediately broken out in something. It appeared to be a sweat.

First there was fear, fear of the sort he would experience at any reappearance of his past, especially a piece torn from one of his months in Urichstown: a fear of old unaccountable angers, and the possibility that at any moment he might be unmasked by the simplest mischance. Even the Scarlet Pimpernel was eventually found out. Joey did not take Miss Moss’s contention about the Major seriously—at least not in terms of its reality—but as a concern of Miss Moss’s, he knew the threat was worrisome
enough. He was certain, too, that some Raggedy Ann had received a puncture wound, with serious intent to harm.

Of no minor seriousness was the knowledge, verified by Joseph’s repeated examination of the evidence literally at hand, that what had seemingly delayed this letter was not an incorrect address or a redirected journey to his present residence from an earlier one or a passage through the slow-motion screenings of his college, because its labels were all in order and, from what its postmark said, the apparently laggard valentine had been recently mailed, so that it had, like cupid’s reputed arrow, delivered itself with promptness to its target, stirring his heart, if not with love, with love’s equal—alarm.

Then another memory arrived like a late guest—one Joey had allowed himself to forget. Just the other day—no more than a week ago, it was—perhaps two … Joey thought he saw the thin carrot-topped back of Castle Cairfill sauntering along Main Street as skinny as you please. Joey jumped into Schafley’s shoe store like a frightened bunny and then had to pretend he was considering a purchase. He didn’t know his shoe size, but he knew he had a hole in his sock large enough for the flight of a heel. Cairfill had been suspected of theft … back when? Cairfill had failed to return several volumes on fencing … was it fencing? so unlikely … but what was likely anymore? Gossip said Cairfill had been caught playing naughty games with girls. So unlikely. But what was … likely?—what was … Caz doing?—these days. How might he have greeted the scoundrel: Well, if it isn’t … Good gracious, it’s … ’Pon my word, where did you pop from? Wait a minute! It was Joey who had been accused of stealing. Shame reddened one cheek, anger the other. To think he had been suspected if not accused! Police had come to his mother’s house, bursting with impatience; they had rummaged in his bedroom closet, annoyed by their defeat. Even for a moment, his mother … might have doubted … She was certainly angry about the fuss.

Skizzen had never fooled with the surfaces of his pupils either, or with that French teacher—horrid notion—though some people might have gotten ideas. Suddenly he had a picture of the Major thrusting a foil through the chest of a rag doll. The doll screamed, Mum-eee, Mum-eee. And bled ……………………… red thread.

Women. Joey and Joseph and the professor were vexed. Major, Miriam,
Miss Moss, Debbie Boulder, Miss Spiky, Madame Mieux … Women. It wasn’t fair. There were only three of him. Mieux and Marjorie, Miss Moss and Miriam … MM and MMM.

The professor had been putting off the thought, even when it followed him home like a stray, that someday his real-life history would be exposed. While sauntering happily along he would stumble over something, the most unexpected thing, a small stone in the road, a buckeye that turned an ankle and overthrew a throne. Or a gust would blow a tattered poster from a public wall to reveal Skizzen with his head mummified in swathes of toilet paper, but otherwise, skinny-naked … then the wind would blow again to disclose a skull covered with shreds of newspaper, a hair of headlines … before his exposed figure became a boney bust of death with teeth made from yellowed piano keys … His heart beat against the nature of what his imagination dreamed: the professor should be shown to be a smiling boy, sweet-featured, a bit coy, modest about all things, quiet, unobtrusive, innocent, though not naïve, and although young and small and weak, fixed in a determination as strong as those of religious faith: Humanity, thou shalt not enmesh me in your horrible history! The sweet smile was supposed to stay until it became the last bonbon in the box, and the rest of his ideal qualities had been eaten by enemy eyes.

Suppose Skizzen were the one who remained; suppose he were the aftermath, the
i v e
of “survive.” He had finally unlocked the word! Properly rearranged, it read: “I’ve served.” The laugh that fled his throat left it sore. He sat for some time in a silence scoured by that passage of amusement.

What he really wanted the world to see, were his lifelong ruse to be discovered, was the equivalent of Moses’s tablets before they got inscribed: a person pure, clean, undefiled, unspoiled by the terrible history of the earth. So he could rightly say to his accusers (and accused he would be): When you were destroying yourselves and your cities, I was not there; when you were debasing your noble principles, I was not there; when you were fattening on lies like pigs at a trough, I was not there; when you were squeezing life from all life like water from a sponge, I was not there. So see me now! Untarnished as a tea service! I’ve done nothing brave but nothing squalid, nothing farsighted but nothing blind, nothing to make me proud, yet never have I had to be ashamed.

My father’s son! After all … after all … I
could
be proud.

Yet Joey had been ashamed just now. Or was it just Professor Joseph Skizzen? He had been for a moment uncertain. Yes, it was the prof who had faltered.

Many of his colleagues had seen a travelogue about turn-of-the-century Vienna at the local cinema and began to ask Joseph about it: where a certain square was, relative to his lodgings; had he sat in the pews of the cathedral; whether he had known this man about town or another; had he ridden on the Ferris wheel that had been erected in the Prater, or enjoyed a Sacher torte at the Sacher Hotel? And, of what, exactly, was such a cake made? These questions had quite unnerved him. He said, truthfully, that he was too disturbed by the past to discuss its leaner features. Since that moment of emergency—heavens, it was some years ago—Professor Skizzen had taken care to read up on the period of his residency. Now he knew all the names of Vienna’s points of interest and a bit of the bios of its main men. And of what a Sacher torte is made: chocolate cake and marmalade. As the thirties there drew on—which meant the deepening of his civic reading—he felt he could occasionally catch something of what his father had said he smelled: the aggressive odor emitted by an increasingly fragile smugness—in sum, rudeness heated to the degree called brutality.