Because this rustic buzz is as regular, dare we say, as clockwork; it is only half an accident, like those noises that Cocteau wanted to include in his conception of Parade—you know this ballet? … hands. They included the clacks of a typewriter, the stutter of Morse code, and a few wails out of sirens leased from the police, as well as the hoot of a railroad train, but Diaghilev killed each of these radical suggestions—shall we show hands for him? … who, you say? … a Russian, good guess … that’s all you have? … so, no applause from up here. Sweet sweet deity, why have you put such ignorance into this world?
With this question I conclude my little history of modern music.
26
The autumn months marched into winter like a misled army into Russia. Joseph was now in excellent hillshape since he regularly walked to work, his Bumbler’s rear wheels firmly blocked by two bricks where they sat on the steep slope of Marjorie’s driveway just beneath the stare of the small square windows that crossed the face of his garage. Joey’s routines established, he began to take in the town, to enjoy the slopes he strode or rode on. Some mornings mist collected above the creek like another stream, and he would gaze upon the tops of trees as if he were one of the local birds looking for a place to light. He liked to imagine he was living among some Alpine foothills, in an Austrian town where armies of the Crusades had camped, or legendary royalty had trouped, on their way to Vienna, say, or rested on their return, burdened with booty, from the straits.
[…………………………………………….…]
Fencing lessons?
Yes, Marjorie said. Three books on fencing are missing from the stacks. They haven’t been taken out—not officially anyway.
What a memory!
I remember because we had a kid here—skinny kid with lots of stiff hair—who was giving fencing lessons—thin as a foil and just as devious, I don’t doubt—who kept borrowing them—hardly usual takeout fare—but it was a way of impressing young ladies, I suspect. As far as I know they were returned. Perhaps you might see if they have been captured by the clinic.
The clinic?
Miss Moss, Miss Moss. She secretes them. Books vanish from view as if borrowed by a ghost. The way the dimes did during the twenty days.
Joseph had finally decided that he was somehow expected to understand this mysterious phrase, and he feared that if he admitted ignorance it would be held against him.
Ah, he said. The twenty days. And if they are very ill?
The books? If ill …? That will be the end of my interest.
On weekends Joey drove to Woodbine to visit with his mother who had filled the room that he and his duds had formerly occupied with plants she wished to rescue from the threatening frosts. Saturday night now, he bunked with a ficus, a gardenia, and a Norway pine. One evening, after they had dined on Würstelbraten, in an expansive mood no doubt encouraged by one of his favorite dishes, Joey tried to describe the rocky but happy relation he enjoyed with his “three ladies,” but realized almost at once that he wasn’t clear himself about what it was.
He did worry about Miss Moss, who seemed a bit rickety to be climbing the steep slopes to wherever she lived, because windy wet weather had covered the walks with slick leaves, and in the winter—a few brief snowfalls had announced it—Joseph figured even he would need the equivalent of climbing gear—ice ax and crampons—to rappel those snow-smothered paths every morning or, in the late afternoon, to ascend once more the icy flanks that were their streets. Still, it was a healthy way to live. Joey drew the crisp air into his lungs the way householders let cleansing breezes into their bedrooms.
Never mind about me. Miss Moss dismissed herself with a wave of carbon paper. I am used to the winters. I am used to the Major. I have a cane with a spike on it. I know how to scale these ignorant pavings. The city salts them, and the salt eats your boots. So don’t buy yourself expensive ones. But then you haven’t any money, have you? I imagine you live on sweet cookies and milk. Or treacle at the bottom of a well.
Joseph tried to chuckle and managed a rhetorical cough. I guess they are good for the tummy. He eyed her waiting stacks of patients while wondering what treacle was. Nothing on fencing in any of the piles. Joey remembered one thin devious red-haired kid who he felt had a … what?—rap sheet—a history of making trouble, but that would be too … too … Miss Moss was looking at him crossly, so Joseph worked on a show of indifference. On behalf of that appearance he decided to say: You’ve got quite a crowd of clients.
So the Major sent you.
What? the Major? … sent? I wouldn’t say sent … how did you—?
“Client” is her word. She sent you. To the clinic, she calls it, the sick bay, she says, the hospice, the ER, the laboratory. To spy. She insists I steal stuff. I am supposed to pretend that a book needs repairs, and then I squirrel it away down here. She says I stole dimes from the overdues—nickels and pennies, too.
I can’t imagine Miss Bruss would say that.
Well, on your imagination … work.
[…………………………………………….…]
It took strong healthy winds to pull the mud-brown leaves from their noisy crowds in the oak trees, and Joseph was fascinated by the way in which they whirled off toward the valley, spinning and dipping until a cul-de-sac captured them or a little windless area let them land at last on a distant road or lawn, each leaf having fled the consequences of its shade, each note running from its sound. He would watch one leaf setting out and try to guess where it might go, but he had no success whatever. They spiraled out of sight and were swallowed by sullen skies. Autumn leaves had inspired so many poems and pop songs, too. Dead leaves, Joseph thought, shuffling through them as he walked to work, people say dead leaves, but what is really dead about them? He was lonely. That was his cruel epiphany. These leaves chatter like monkeys in their trees. He realized it with a pang that was more immediately painful than its cause. They flutter just as moths do in the least breeze. Lonely, lonely. It bore repeating. Once they leave their tree they grow lonely as they once grew green. Blown about because they no longer have any connections. Some pretend to be children chasing one another through the streets. Nevertheless, loneliness made him observant. Leaves do seek piles, and they speak like crumpled paper to the feet that crush them. As if he and his own shed skin might be conversant friends. Joey imagined himself a released leaf. Wasn’t it his dad’s design to become disconnected? Loneliness should be a sign of success. He thought of edges brittle as old paper, of veins brown as dry creeks, of mottled liverish patches on his mother’s aging hands. He remembered them to be juicy in their youth, flesh that insects would choose to chew. Now they huddle in every hedge and hollow where they pretend to suffer the damp anxieties of impoverished refugees. Like me. He said that out loud. And watched his breath dissolve.
[…………………………………………….…]
Portho? him I haven’t hide nor haired. The Major excluded him with a wave of her pencil.
Portho is not likely to challenge you again—not anytime soon.
Portho knows I always forgive him.
Oh, have you had run-ins before? … with Portho?
He isn’t important. Not that no-account. Not Portho.
[…………………………………………….…]
He remembered having to memorize in school “If I could ever be the last leaf upon the tree …” Unlike the initial robin or cuckoo of spring, no one ever noticed when the first twig lost its cover or, during an attack, some unnerved soldier initiated the retreat by dropping his weapon and turning his back. Indians, he’d read, buried their dead on elevated platforms as if they were already halfway to heaven. The sun would bleach the bones the birds cleaned. Skulls could be used to frighten trespassers, he supposed, or warn of their owners’ magical powers.
Fluff from the cottonwoods, as well as those released by milk- and bindweed packets—perhaps the souls of the Indians, too—sailed in the same errant way, scuddin
g along like bits of cloud or bobbing gently at even the rumor of a wind, until suddenly a stave of locust fronds would spin like a dancer down the side of the sky and cause clusters of those seeds to waver out of the way like pedestrians maneuvering a congested walk.
[…………………………………………….…]
Miriam said that she had read in the Woodbine Times of the death of an old and much-beloved professor of music. She thought the college would surely be looking for a replacement. Joey should let them know he was nearby and available. Joseph tried to explain to her the absurdity of her suggestion, but Miriam just grew angry and started blaming him for a lack of ambition. This failure was soon attributed to his runaway father and then, after a moment’s reflection, pinned to most men because most men lived on the love of women like weevils in a biscuit. To conclude, she said: Debbie phoned; she phoned on that damned funnel. Really? Joey was surprised. It seemed to him that Debbie had run away as effectively as their father. Miriam’s glower was replaced by a gleam. Your sister is pregnant. I’m going to be a grandmother.
[…………………………………………….…]
On days of calm, Joseph watched white coils of smoke rise slowly from the coal fires still popular in a town so close to the mines. They were soothing, the way they grew, as if to hurry anywhere would be simply gauche. All over hillside, in icy air, the gray soot steamed straight as a palm until it cooled and gradually smeared the upper sky. The world was coming down with the cold.
Yes, there were so many causes for everything that nothing could be conjectured with any certainty. The apparently hollow firmament was a rush of rivers, streams, creeks, trickles of air, and frequencies of transmission, the earth itself was quietly shifting in its sleep, and through uncountable homes and firesides shivers of pleasure or apprehension were vibrating like the strings of an instrument. At twilight the intensity of every color became an outcry, and a step on the street an announcement as leaves rushed to be crushed by someone’s feet. Every evening, Joey watched the lights come on in much the same order: first in the house with the widow’s walk, then in the yellow cottage and the hired rooms of the bed-and-breakfast; door lights were notes in an expectant score, kitchens warmed the lower floors, while late at night bathrooms played at shining like a second sky. Yet the general scene was solemn, silent; the world went about its customary affairs as it had in other ages, other times. On the page of a picture book there could be peace.
[…………………………………………….…]
You will never gain weight, Joey, even if I were to put you to bed and feed you Würstelbraten by the fat forkful, Miriam said. You’d kick the covers and fever your fingers pretending to play the piano.
If the sausages you thread through the beef were the size of Faschingskrapfen, I wouldn’t need to sit stiller than my chair. Joey used the German to please her. She believed immobility encouraged one’s body fats to cool.
Joey, you ought to practice curling up in cold weather like the squirrels and bears do. For Christmas I will fry you some fritters if I can find a brick of white lard, but here … in this country …
Goose grease, Mother, Joey said, is the answer to everything.
Ach, who can afford a goose … in this country … it is chickens, chickens, chickens. Frozen in bags. In plastic. Their guts in cellyphane like gumdrops. Here everything is plastic, my job is plastic, spoons are plastic. They pretend they’ve made them from beans. Lieber Gott … raincoats are plastic. Old days, we had deer from the woods, ducks from the lakes, grouse, is it? sheep. We had geese.
You had plenty of chickens, too, Mother, didn’t you? dirtying the yard.
What would you know? hah! Britisher! we had chickens, but never chickens, chickens, chickens.
Well, dear, anyhow, the Braten was delicious.
It was all right, though the gravy could have used a plop of yogurt. Still, in this country …
[……………………………………………….]
Miriam was somewhat reconciled to the fact that her son had a job in another town, though she frequently complained of his absence and his enslavement to civic virtue, since Joey had presented his occupation as a kind of social work, a contribution to his adopted country. To Miriam they had been kidnapped by Arabs, held captive in a leaky hold, and were now slave labor. It was Joey’s fault his poor mother had to be picked up Sundays like the sickly were and driven to mass. She believed that he had not tried hard enough to seek better-paying employment and accused him of finding a position that allowed him more leisure than work. I don’t have enough education to get a good job, he told her repeatedly, but I shall remedy that in time, he assured her just as frequently. He now had a diploma that awarded him a bachelor of arts and another that gave him a music degree, though he thought that he would save such good news and make her a gift of it later. Then she would praise him and wonder how he did it—to be so busy and still devoted to his studies. He worked, he drove, he could go into debt because he had what they called a charge account: that seemed to Joey quite sufficient for the present. And in contrast to the way he spent his time at college, now he only listened to what he liked, read what he liked, looked at what he liked, consequently he had the skills he was willing to have and knew only what he was willing to know.
Weekend had followed weekend with happy monotony until at last Miriam, who had kept her news in her purse for two months, as she confessed, told Joey he’d be—what was it?—an uncle. He hated the funnel then as much as his mother did. And the smug look of pregnant women. The contented pride contained in Debbie’s swollen sweater. He could see Miriam skewering the roast and then slowly patiently pushing sausage into the soft holes she’d made in the meat and feel his own belly swelling—not with sympathy, not with something he’d eaten—milk mit cookies—but with a kind of living wind, a palpable pushy balloonishness. Entire buildings, his car, his library, grew larger; their sides bulged with unwanted life. And now, Miriam said, I shall need to go out—go out often to the country—to see her. To see how she is faring. To hear first movements. To feel the child kicking. To press the button and touch the baby through her mommy’s belly. To press the button like you’ve come to call. It is all recovered to me now, you and your sister, how it felt when I was walking with you all the way to England, leaning back to stay upright, you, Joey, heavier than groceries. So your car needs to sit nearby me, Joey, and you can’t live at the dark bottom of a funnel either, nein to that because now I must get out in the country to see Debbie and the baby, since she has been such a stranger to us, gone as if to another part of the world, across seas of soybeans and fields of potatoes. It’s only a few miles, Joey said. That’s far if you’ve got to walk. That’s far if you’re a granny.
She seemed so fine about the idea of being a granny that Joey wondered how she would feel when she actually became one, and the bell began its toll; for that’s how she’d go to the grave, as a granny, wrapped in a shawl of mother-love, smiling up through the dark box, the thrown dirt, the stone post, at the next generation as if she were fertilizing its future and content to be manure. Joey was reluctant to change the image of his sister he treasured and kept safe as though by a locket: her body in the air, legs wide, her open mouth shouting Rah! And in the background, bleachers loud with cheers.
[…………………………………………….…]
Sometimes, deep in the quiet shaded avenues of the stacks, Joey would lean against a row of books on finance or fishing with another in his hand that he meant to shelve and give daydream time to his desires, a rather new thing with him, since he hadn’t thought a great deal about his future before. During so much of his past he had been helpless and in the hands of fate or strangers, always leaving wherever-he’d-been behind and taking a bus or a train or a steamship into some unwanted shelter or unknown port, inevitably changing his name and his nation, his language, his church; only the dry bagged sandwich or the thin soup and its tin spoon the same, his groaning m
other carrying him like another sack, his sister eyeing his every forkful as though it should have been hers, and he eating with a reluctant show of hunger as if his food had been previously chewed by another set of teeth.
To his surprise, books had been a bigger stimulant than music when it came to fanning his fantasies, and when he put it that way—“fanning his fantasies”—he realized the image had its origin in an illustration taken by his memory from a Rubaiyat—of a sultan at ease in his harem—a picture that for him had Hazel holding a huge frond above her own broad person. He had imagined once a Christmas tree decorated with strings of variously sized—though all small—lights that would compose a score when read in a spiral around its branches—“Heilige Nacht,” perhaps—a ditty tuneful, seasonal, and trite. He thought something like that was what astronomers must do, singing the night sky’s song, their instruments like flutes through which far-distant spaces blew.
He had it in his head that he ought to complete his father’s business—to escape the world’s moral tarnish—because his father had most certainly failed, leaving his family in the lurch, running off with money he rightly should have spent on his kin. Of course there were extenuating circumstances, there were always those, in particular the fact that when he did disappear he had not been his real self but a Raymond Scofield, one of his characters of concealment. Abandonment, as well as the other charges, had to be lodged against this impersonation not its impersonator, just as you wouldn’t arrest the actor who played Hamlet for the death of Polonius. In that case, though, the murder being made up, villain and victim invented, blame would have to be imaginary, too. Perhaps it was—all of it—theatrical. And the notices of harm that cluttered the papers were like reviews, recounting for people who hadn’t been there what had happened in the play. “When I murdered my wife I was not myself.” So all the world is a stage. That had come out of his book of quotations. Well, it was the library’s book of quotations, which he must remember to return before the Major sensed its absence and accused Miss Moss of its detainment.
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