Middle C (61 page)

Mort said to Skizz: Boy, do I feel foolish. I was afraid I was going to be in the dock for something I did with one of our secs. A transgression just coming to light, a kind of bolt from the past. Pretty dumb, I guess.

That’s what happens when you carry around a guilty conscience. Even without reason, mind you.

Kit Carson said, to no one in particular: I thought Palfrey was going to carve me up. I was on the committee who let this guy perform his sleight of hand. He used his size like a chef with bacon. Mine was the only no vote. There was pressure on Palfrey from someone—maybe on the board or a rich alumnus—to hire this tub. Well, that’s over. What is a no vote worth around here?

Hazel sat inside her blouse. Her leaves were of the stillness one sees before storms.

Smullion was from science. He merely smiled.

And Skizzen made every elation wait till, out on the quad, he let his relief expire the way a champagne fizzes some delighted skips ahead of its wine.

45

Joey’s joy swept him up, bore him home, returned him to the nursery … the nursery he might have longed to have if he’d ever had one … A line that lived in the nursery—“Here we go round the mulberry bush”—took up an orbit about his thoughts as tunes do, penning them in the way he wanted his students to corral names for memory purposes. Mussorgsky! Ravel! Koussevitzky! But Joey had had his struggle with an obsessive sentence, and he didn’t want another tussle. He determined to play a few good old stompers, and that way drive the nonsensical strain out of hearing. He rushed about the house hunting for the place he had put
Songs That Never Grow Old
so he could claim the area as his territory, the way space was staked when he and Miriam, awed by the vast emptiness of the house, began playing the territorial game. He found the book resting tableside a single bed in what must have been a servant’s quarter. Then he thought: would a farmer, retiring from the
fields to a tiny town, have servants? Weren’t they an urban vice? In any case, why had he wanted to mark this spot? What did former occupants store up here? If this was to be a gold claim, it looked a washout. When he gave its back a negligent push, an awkward rocker, which had come with the house, squeaked like a frightened mouse. Ah-ha. Miriam was contesting him. He saw, on a windowsill, utterly out of place, an empty clay pot sitting in sundust. “The further into the self I go, the less and less of the self I know.” What was that from?

“Never grow too old to dream …” Joey seldom sang, but his voice sounded loud and harsh in this unpleasant room. There were no panels of animal-covered paper on the walls—leaping eagles or soaring deer—no sheep, chalets, no interlacing ivy, to entice anyone to hum an old favorite or prance to a frolicsome “here-we-go” romparound. He would remove his book and cede the territory. The dining room with its many wide windows was the real nursery in the house, and there Miriam tolerated ogling only if it was directed at the plants. Large cookie-deep trays of moist peat covered in Cling-Along crowded up against the windowpanes and soon made their own atmosphere, droplets clinging to the inside of the wrap the way water is drawn to plastic. At first the soil refused to stir. He could never catch a thrusting spear. One morning, the seedlings would suddenly appear, thin-stemmed, tiny, pale green against the dark dirt, a nub of leaf beginning, imperceptibly, to unfold. His fingers were too fat to work the rows. Miriam would warn him every time that these seeds had been scattered, not planted in lines; which left each barren patch still a possibility or an empty chamber. Chance was Lord. Why was that spot unwelcoming, Joey would ask. Wait and see … delicately … it may come … wait and see. Maybe a blade will be drawn. Who knows about those fickle primula …? A few more pushes, as the nurses always say, and perhaps we can persuade a nasturtium stem to show. But don’t play lullabies for these babies. They get no sleep. They have to come up for air. They have to leave their sheath. For them this dirt is deep.

As he raised the book toward eyes that now needed a little help, it came open upon a piano score for “Good-Night, Ladies.” From that opening a scrap of paper slid its yellowing self onto the tight coverlet. Upon this single leaf was carefully inked what appeared to be a poem. Joey felt an immediate pang of recognition. He immediately denied it. He had not written these verses, nor, out of embarrassment or shyness,
stuffed them away in this harmless old compendium … had he? He had never rested his eyes upon such a neat and centered sheet. Of course, in the past, he had picked about in this ancient volume like a hungry bird, without care or method, only curiosity and need. Then he wanted to know where Miss Gwynne Withers’s recital choices were. The book classified its contents for easier use under headings like
HOME SONGS, LOVE SONGS, HYMNS AND SACRED SONGS
. “Good-Night, Ladies” was called a College Song. Which meant it went with beer. On the folded paper, already turning color at the crease, there was a college song indeed, to be sung to the tune of “This is the way we wash our clothes …” It was titled “The Faculty Meeting.”

Admittedly, something about the paper was familiar. But the lines were too orderly for Skizzen unless he was copying a final draft onto a clean sheet. The paper was a bit brittle. Cheap. He did borrow the school’s stock. But only occasionally. The Major had warned him how readers left all sorts of things between the pages of their books. She said: Shake them. Hold them upside down and shake. A toothpick may fall out. This book, though, had an already shaken spine. Had someone hid a message or simply marked a place with whatever was handy?

How totally appropriate to this blissful moment its title was, Joey thought, still breathing heavily from his search, and from his hurry home. My God, he still had his position, his house, his good name and station. At least, Professor Joseph Skizzen did. Just as it had seemed about to be taken from him, and Miriam’s garden wrenched from her while she held it to her breast like a grandchild. How cruel that would have been on top of everything else: a loss of face, of future, of income, then of one’s beautiful creation. O but he had pulled it off. Old fat Hursthorse may have been caught and possibly hung out to dry, who knew what Palfrey had in mind; but he, Professor Joey Joseph Skizzen, the pianist, composer, scholar, teacher, had prevailed. O now he would stride the length of his classroom like the head of a marching band, and he would teach these kids a musical thing or two. He might let on about his true thoughts, as well, if he could get clear what they were, he’d been so long in his roles, his postures in the world.

He’d have to keep his guard up, maintain the caution appropriate to an animal in the wild, no doubt about that, but every moment he lived now he cemented his presence to this agreeable place: he fastened his figure to an airmail stamp. What did these lines say?

“This is the way …”

He didn’t want collegiate rowdy, he wanted home sweet home; he wanted drink to me only with thine eyes; he wanted red sails in the sunset, which wasn’t in the book. He wanted no hymns either though the book was full of them. God was always getting the applause. A show of hands for Joey the music professor! Then something odd occurred to him: the makeup of that committee was strange. Where, in an ethics investigation, was the parson, the Sunday sawyer who hung on Palfrey’s every non sequitur, a yea verily man if ever there was one? He’d appoint no lawyer, Palfrey wouldn’t want to take a chance on someone in town. Those people blabbed as regularly as the chapel’s bells. Joey began to dance, something he called “twist that torso.” Or: the President Palfrey waltz.

This is the way … this is the way we way we … flop our mops … blow our tops … learn the ropes … tell old jokes …

Miss Moss warned him not to read what he had found. The Major urged him on. Go ahead. I dare you. But it must be out loud. Miss Spiky laughed at him but her bear turned his head away in shame. Why in the world … all that love for a tubby little bear … why? He had not needed to give up his seat on the bus. There were plenty of seats. She—Hazel—had chosen to sit beside him … all of her—heavy arms and heavy hips. The road was slowly filling with snow.

How totally appropriate to this blissful moment was the labored screed he held off mouthing as though it were the last chocolate in the box. So what if one of him had done it. Bless this blissful moment, O hurrah for his team. Perhaps he could now enlarge upon his Viennese years—oh carefully, oh cautiously, memorizing, scrutinizing, taking notes; and perhaps he should let his hair grow, get a new cap. Miriam didn’t care for clothes anymore, just equipment: knee pads, trowels, a little bench to carry about and kneel on. To pray to her god the garden. Saved through her son’s sacrifices. Made possible, she would have to admit, by his gift of seeds and security: this house she now disdained and ignored, it was its land she loved and labored in. Miriam filled no rooms with light, sweet air, or vases filled with blooms. After they had gotten their starts, most of her plants grew up every year in the garden, giving their color to each passerby. Flowers were meant to live and die where their roots did, Miriam repeatedly claimed. Like them, she was
meant to remain in Austria at her family farm. Beneath her skirt she hid something called “roots.” “This is the way we wash our clothes …” soften blows … count our toes …

Our house rises from this ground too, shouldn’t it be allowed to flower? Joseph could hear her laugh at “our.”

He scarcely remembered his return down that familiar path from the college, he flew along so fast, his limbs elastic. How many knew the satisfaction that occupies the soul when the labors of a lifetime—yes, it was true, labors of a lifetime—have been justified. His worries were never needless, and even after this terrible threat has been removed, and its terrible scare survived, he must tread cautiously down a trail of traps; nevertheless, he felt ensconced, glued in place, a piece upon the board that refuses to be moved, though knights die beside it.

The authorities had never caught his father either. His father had received an unexpected benevolence after several years of trial and suffering, just as Joey had now gone scot-free in following his father’s lead. “Scot-free.” Why does one say “scot-free”? What was this poem doing here? Perhaps, like Schubert, he would set it to music, over and over again. The same song. Only faster and faster. This is the way we cheat at play … he felt an anger that was normally foreign to him, and he read aloud, as if in his attic, as if he knew the words that were coming. How did that academic bunch, as though hidden in dark gowns, dare to inflict their ignorance upon him, their incompetence, their hypocrisies … employ travesty after travesty … because that meeting was a comedy … it had worried him so … a joke … with its situation, its load, its cock and snapper too.

The Faculty Meeting

This is the way we smirk and sigh, lurk and spy, favor buy,

this is the way we smile and lie

to prepare for the faculty meeting.

This is the way we bluff our way, fluff our way, gruff our way,

this is the way we puff and bray

throughout the faculty meeting.

This is the way we cheat and bleat, bow and scrape, preen and prate,

this is the way we obfuscate

during the faculty meeting.

This is the way we wash our hands, beat our bands, call our clans,

this is the way we hatch our plans,

at the faculty meeting.

This is the way we tip our hat, smell a rat, bell the cat,

this is the way we take a nap,

in the midst of the faculty meeting.

This is the way we clear our throats, burn our boats, turn our coats,

this is the way we change our votes,

in the faculty meeting.

This is the way we hatch our plots, cast our lots, pick our spots,

this is the way we get our gots

by steering the faculty meeting.

This is the way we kiss an ass, lick a dick, turn a trick,

this is why we get quite sick

to learn what the dean is scheming.

So this is the way we’ll buck the trends, fake amends, forget our ends,

this is the way we’ll fuck our friends

by the end of the faculty meeting.

This is how our tenure concludes, in pissy moods and platitudes,

a career of complaint and attitudes

in the course of the faculty’s meetings.

This is the way retirement starts, with a chorus of jeers, and a volley of farts.

They’re the true heart of academy sorts,

who depart the faculty meeting.

This is the way to the grave we chose, the eyes we close, the nose we lose,

this is how each faculty goes,

when the worms attend our meeting.

Yes, Skizzen thought, my sentiments exactly. I cannot but agree. However there were a few words in among the rest like bugs waiting for a bite, that wouldn’t suit Schubert’s style. They certainly didn’t suit Joey either, but he wondered sometimes about his own blandness, reticence even, in a world of obscenities and curses. He refused to join them, but he had to admit that from time to time a loud “fuck you” might be just the thing. When he first encountered that overused word it had been splashed in red on a shattered wall. He still associated bad language with London. Miriam said she didn’t give a damn where they put such sentiments so long as they weren’t in German. For her, they had no weight as words in a foreign tongue.

How would he dare approach her with his plate of joy, so he could share his happiness with her without his information? Perhaps they could celebrate the occasion with a nice Austrian stew. After which they might tidy up the place. He would sit down at the keys of an evening, great music in both his hands, while a loving twilight tiptoed across the piano.