The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1
Page 36
I’m passed by a car with three old ladies in hats.
I’m passed by a car with the back full of musical instruments.
Passed by a car with kids who wave at me and shout, “Hello, Johann Sebastian Bach” or something similar. At least it sounded like that to me. (All us Bachs have sharp noses, square jaws, sensitive lips and a slightly German accent.)
Passed by four or five red Volkswagens, two from Michigan.
Passed by a well-dressed Negro family in a big white Olds from New Jersey. (I wrote a tune for race relations before I left this morning. Also a tune for peace, but my father never bothered with any of the wars around him. Maybe he was thinking: One of these days it’s going to be two hundred years from now and more, and my oldest son is going to lose a lot of my manuscripts. )
I’m passed by a police car with two cops in cowboy hats.
There’s that old man again in the ‘61 Ford.
Albany, Schenectady, Canajoharie…
All us Bachs are ectomorph.
Fourth Howard Johnson’s
I see the old man’s ‘61 Ford in the parking lot. (Dad, I think I loved you, too, but not in the same way you loved me.) I sit across the counter from him and give the sign. He may have long hair and maybe needs a bath, but basically he’s a Concerned Citizen who won’t even throw a candy wrapper out the car window. I tell him my name is Billy Bach (my father called me Friedy) and that I will be known as the son who lost his father’s manuscripts, who cut them up and sold the signatures, who once signed his own name to one of his father’s compositions. I tell him I will be known as the Bach who, as they said, “Gave up his post and lives without any position,” “consumed by a profound and incurable melancholy,” “dissolute” and all that word implies, but I tell him I did fairly well up to a point.
Herkimer, Utica, Oneida, Canastota…
A man goes by in a silver Phantom Rolls-Royce.
The radio (local cultural station) is playing Bach (J. S., though there really was a time when they would much rather play one of us younger Bachs or Haydn).
Deedle, deedle, deedle, deedle, deedle, deedle, deedle…
Letter To My Father From A Concerned Citizen
Dear Mr. (J.S.) Bach:
A journey into the far reaches of sound is not enough these days. There are things of a much more pressing nature, more fundamental, more vital than music can ever be. Worry no longer about the conditions and qualities of the pipe organs in your environs. These are petty things. Persuade yourself to have a commitment to (at the very least) a clean environment. Also a concern for overcrowding. Overpopulation, of itself, causes pollution. One must advocate and practice birth control of every and any method in spite of some dangers, and, let me say here, twenty children is more than your share, even though only nine (among them one mentally deficient) survived past childhood. And you might have more consideration for your wives, of which you had two. Also, if you wanted to be fair to women, you might at least have listed the names of your daughters in your family tree and said whether they were musical or not.
Your name is a household word. Use your great influence for social causes. bach for the two-child family. Write peace marches, fugues for black people, ecological scherzos, music to be danced to at the end of the war.
“Oobadoobadooba,” Bach sings, and writes the beginning of a reply: “Most noble, steadfast, and most learned, also most wise sirs” (Bach really wrote this) :
“The special and most gracious confidence of which your Honors have most kindly consented to give me evidence in the letter delivered to me makes it my duty not alone to express here with my most humble obligation, but also to exert every effort to show by deeds how I make it my greatest pleasure, Most Noble and Most Wise Sirs, to show you herewith my devotion. But since this is an affair that cannot be set in motion at once…” etc. (Bach really did write this.)
The concerned citizen doesn’t know why not and writes another letter about priorities, dates it March 1740 and warns Bach there are only 230 years till 1970.
Weimar
It snows in Weimar.
Bach in the snow?
Gray worsted cap?
It rains.
Bach walking in the rain, his umbrella isn’t blown backward in the wind and he doesn’t leave it in a corner trash basket because umbrellas weren’t used in Germany until the mid-eighteenth century and at first they were considered effeminate.
Bach walking fast in the rain, in a hurry to compose the next concerto, comes home wet but doesn’t change. Can’t eat a banana (introduced in Germany about 1850) and asks not to be disturbed till supper. “I have to hurry up and, as they said, ‘transcribe and enhance’ something written by Vivaldi (which I often did). This one will be for four claviers, the piano not being invented until 1728 and not improved until 1735 and not extensively used until much later. The early piano, by the way, sometimes had attachments to produce the sounds of bells and drums.”
Bach in jail.
Wanting to leave the duke of Saxe-Weimar’s service in order to take a better job. “… the quondam concertmeister and organist Bach was confined to the County Judge’s place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal…”
We were fighting Indians then.
AREAS SETTLED IN NORTH AMERICA IN 1700
(When Bach was fifteen years old)
Areas more than doubled when he died in 1750
Leipzig
Here is Bach then (J. S.), waiting around for the renaissance of polyphony, wanting to be rediscovered by Mendelssohn in 1833 though he doesn’t talk much about it, walking in the streets of Leipzig under linden trees in any kind of whether (it snows in Leipzig), drinking linden and camomile tea for his headaches, aspirin not being used until 1893. Not much oobadooba, deedle, deedle, deedle in those later years except for you, Bach, your sons and Haydn (1732-1809), though unknowingly, having already become the precursors of the Romantic, but you, Bach, going on putting little black dots on lines, engraving your own plates sometimes, saying, “Well, I have this lifelong habit of hard work…” and saying, “Oobadooba, beedle dee oten dee, I have to get up early and write this secular cantata before I go blind and have an unsuccessful operation on my eyes in which the anesthetic used undermines my health to such an extent that I never recover from it.”
Go on, sing now; you’ll never live long enough to see a pin-striped suit or Niagara Falls. You’ll never eat peanut butter or go through a revolving door. No Freud. No Chopin. No Picasso. No George Bernard Shaw. No instant replay, toilet paper, haiku or cowboy songs. No complete discography or disposable sanitary napkins (which only the unmarried women would need in those days, anyway). No Mexican sarapes. No Kleenex. No turtleneck sweaters.
Here is Bach, then, whose “dynamism is extraordinary,” says Wanda Landowska, whose “gait vehement, yet not feverish,” also she says, “he was counterpoint incarnate,” in spite of the three wars in which Germany was involved during his lifetime, north with Sweden, west with Louis XIV (over Alsace-Lorraine), south with the Turks, but he, you, Bach, went on writing things like “Liebster Gott, wann werd’ ich sterben?” and “Komm, du süsse Todesstunde,” and you were busy burying more than half your children in, it can be presumed, the perfectly orthodox Lutheran fashion.
(He was examined by Dr. Jo. Schmid and Dr. Salomon Deyling in 1723 and found to be theologically sound.)
(He also promised that he would, “in order to preserve the good order in the Churches, so arrange the music that it shall not last too long….”)
Bach’s Sex Life
Orthodox Lutheran.
Here is Johann Sebastian Bach, then, 1685-1750
(Voltaire, 1694-1778; he saw the start of our revolution)
Children of Maria Barbara, Bach’s first wife:
Catherina Dorothea 1708-1774
Wilhelm Friedemann 1710-1784
Johann Christoph 1713-1713 lived 0 days
and twin sister
Karl Philipp Ema
nuel 1714-1788
Johann Gottfried Bernhard 1715-1739
Leopold August 1718-1719 died age 1
Children of Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife:
Christiane Sophie Henriette 1723-1726 died age 3
Gottfried Heinrich 1724-1763 feeble-minded
Christian Gottlieb 1725-1728 died age 3
Elisabeth Julianna Frederica 1726-1781
Ernestus Andreas 1727-1727 lived 2 days
Regine Johanna 1728-1733 died age 6
Christiane Benedicta 1730-1730 lived 3 days
Christiane Dorothea 1731-1732 died age 1
Johann Christoph Friedrich 1732-1795
Johann August Abraham 1733-1733 lived 1 day
Johann Christian 1735-1782
Johanne Carolina 1737-1781
Regine Susanna 1742-1809
Is this any way to write a Saint Matthew passion!
George Washington was born in 1732.
He could have been one of Bach’s younger sons. We might have had more of a musical revolution if that had been the case. Bach’s youngest son, the so-called English Bach, was three years younger than George Washington and turned Catholic. (Powdered wigs were still in style.)
Haydn was also born in 1732.
Music, up to this time, is mostly two-part song form: AB, AB (as opposed to three-part song form: ABA), with mordents, trills, roulades, appoggiaturas. Much later they will compose things like the “Bell Song” from Lakmé.
Daddle ah ta, ta, ta, daddle ah dah…
“Sometimes we tire of the grandiose,”
wrote Wanda Landowska. Also,
“and if we lack air
in the thick
atmosphere
of exaggerated romanticism,
we need only
to open
wide
the windows…”
What I Said About Myself
I’m the eldest son of twenty children. I haven’t yet taken to drink. Mother wants me to learn about music and women. (Also my stepmother.) She wanted to be the mother of a man who would know what to say when a woman needed an extra word of love. She wanted to be the mother of a man with a less tentative approach. She wanted to be the mother of a man who is inwardly composed, outwardly energetic, and well known in musical circles. She wanted to be the mother of a son who would have a son named Johann Sebastian.
My half sister had a little boy named Johann Sebastian Altnikol but he died within a year. None of my other sisters ever married, consumed, as they may also have been, by a “profound and incurable melancholy.”
Auburn, Canandaigua, Rochester, Batavia, Buffalo…
If I have an accident at least it will be something.
I cross the Peace Bridge, but what’s in a name?
Bach, Bach,
Hole in his sock, If he’s (insert one) rhapsodizing, memorizing,
concertizing,
Make him stop.
Seventh Howard Johnson’s (open the windows)
Clam chowder, hot dogs, ice cream cones and coffee.
A telephone line to the dead from here. Concerned Citizen calls up Johann Sebastian Bach: “Hello. Is this Mr. Bach? We’re glad to have had you with us here on Earth for a little while.”
Bach (J. S.): “I do have one more little thing to say to the audiences of the future still listening in thirds, sixths and octaves to little slivers of music while many composers are making shapeless and inexplicable sounds on instruments yet to be invented: well, let them go on making funny noises.”
References
Landowska on Music. Collected, edited and translated by Denise Restout,
assisted by Robert Hawkins. New York: Stein and Day, 1969.
The Bach Reader. Edited by Hans David and Arthur Mendel. New York: Norton, 1966.
Bach. Eva and Sydney Grew. New York: Octagon, 1949.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and others.
Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974
Dog Is Dead
THE MATADOR has changed costume. Now he wears white silk with gold braid. He stands in the center of the arena.
“Let the moon make the first move, Veronica.”
Once, Veronica, running toward him wearing her yellow dress, looked like springtime when it was already October.
He waved to her over his newspaper and she ran on past. She had not seen him. Perhaps had not seen him. She might not have noticed him there, half covered by newspapers, where he had spent the afternoon watching people make love one way or another and in unlikely positions, his face turned from them, watching out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps she had not seen him except out of the corner of her eye as she ran on past that day wearing a yellow dress, but now he might lie under the bench instead of on it, and it is more likely he would count flies, dragonflies, having grown near-sighted. Would she notice him? Newspaper on stomach? His name is Nat. “Hello, Veronica,” but she ran on past.
He is thinking of all the things that can be touched, such as skin, scales, fly’s wing, oyster, eyeball, chicken feet, breasts and walnuts. Thinking: Nat and Veronica in the garden, in the bathtub, in the closet, in an old trunk, in the vestibule, running toward him in a yellow dress, holding up two fingers in some sign he has heard the meaning of once but has forgotten. Thinks (remembering the sign): That great cow was once queen of everything. And I will be the swan king, he thinks, and sit by the pool while Veronica sings, wondering: Anybody coming two by two yet? And: Are there any lovers needing encouragement? It’s my hand to help them on their way. Nat, with a daisy in his lapel, hat over his eyes, pin-stripe suit, thinks: I will keep them from giving up too soon. I will supply an incentive, lend them lubricants and comfort and know-how. Thinks: I will kick them on their way and lick them on their way and kick them out when it’s over, Nat matador, all in green satin this time, with the moon looking like a fingernail paring. Some say, “Dog is dead and Nat is under park benches again,” but he says, “Nat is remembering. Nat is facing his problems as a flower faces the sun,” and as a flower faces the sun, so Veronica turns toward the moon. Yellow dress seems white in this light. Turn around but don’t make any unnecessary moves, Nat is telling himself, and: Remember, it’s the free season, maybe time for the earliest clarinet of all and Veronica is singing and walking in a dignified way while some people stay in the park all night long even if the gates are locked at midnight, or because they are locked or, even if they are locked out, somehow they get in and are in there with Nat, maybe even in the park now with Nat who is always wearing a green tie in this weather with this sweater and with the moonish moon. He has been constipated for three days and thinks: One day I will lay the world itself as white as an egg, but it is Veronica, queen of the sea or of a tree who has the pregnant belly that is not really pregnant but only seems so, for Nat has not yet touched Veronica as if to touch an oyster or fly’s wing or eyeball. Here she comes now, but it isn’t the middle of the night anymore. Only noon. No moon. Nat waves to her vaguely. Perhaps he’s brushing at a fly on his New York Times. Perhaps she doesn’t see him, or sees him but doesn’t remember who he is. Her fingers make a sign, either consciously or unconsciously, that he has forgotten the meaning of. Should he get up and follow her? Veronica and Nat, then, would be someplace together. Nat and Veronica in the herb garden or under the lilacs or someplace in between, or on the very bench where he sits and reads.
But what if the swan king finds himself knee deep in the pond reaching for bread crumbs. Just so, out of the medium comes the thought as out of the water comes the bread to the beak of the swan or the hand of a man who has become a little bit too bald. Yesterday his face was pure. Now he knows (or suspects) all his own faults and his own fault and maybe how it happened that he should have followed her.
He thinks that he should never appear before her (or any of them) except all in white and on Saturdays he would wear a gold ring on his thumb. This might seem feminine but to Veronica being a woman is something she does every day. Her daily endeavor. It ha
s to do with running through the park in a yellow dress and singing her songs or a particular song. It has to do with hair, with lips, with hips, and with the birth of love or of love’s longing or of something simpler than love.
And what if a frog plops into the pond? What if Nat watches a wild goose fly by? Should he follow her? In the face of possible sore feet and bramble bushes and in spite of not remembering what the sign means and the endless possibilities of rejection? And what if she was motioning to the man behind him, if there was a man behind him, which there might very well have been? There might have been a man behind him that he hadn’t noticed just walking by at that moment. There might have been a dog or an old lady or a bird or a cat or a bullfrog in this weather and at this time of day there might have been any of these. At any given moment there might be any of these or a big man behind him with some weapon. Especially at night. Perhaps a handsome man. So that when the swan king makes his entrance into the park, timing it to coincide with the coming of sparrows, he may run across some drum major he hasn’t bargained for and other surprises, and yet what if he confines himself to the park and to one bar on Front Street?
Meanwhile he has spelled out veronica in little white stones in the pansy bed, thinking: But if you think I’m not the god of one kind of desire or hopefulness or hopeless here in the flesh in this park by moonlight on the bench after the gates are locked… if you think I’m not something still uncatalogued by science or anything else, then let the pigeons all flyaway from me with the coo of mourning doves and let me lose the walnut in my pocket, and if you can say, any more than I can say, that you understand the motives behind this desire, which I might say might have been caused by thus and thus and yet when I think of possible reasons I still can’t be sure which, if any of them, is the true reason, or which one or two the one or two reasons or even three reasons for this desire, so that I might be forever mistaken about myself just as you might be forever mistaken about me, never able to judge properly at all but only to present possibilities and yet all of us knowing that Nat could follow Veronica even without some reason for it. Except that she has passed him by, red cloak and all, and not answered his greeting. “Hello, Veronica,” he said, but she ran on past and now he only seems to brush a fly from his New York Times and reads that the temperature may dip to fifty-five. New moon on the twenty-seventh. Monday night. After hours. Park waking up now. This is the real beginning, in the moonlight, of all he’s ever thought of. In the center of the arena the matador (after hours for him, too). In the center of the arena, in the moonlight now because it’s later than it was. Now he wears a pin-stripe suit, a green striped tie and a shirt with a dirty collar and waits for someone else to make the first move. This is the real beginning, he thinks. Here. Motionless. The motionless beginning. The wind has died. Only the moon moves and veronica is written in white pebbles not far from where he stands. How long can he go on like this with no other reason except for the one right now and no other season but this one, a season for bullfrogs, and a reason to follow her in spite of a sign or because of a sign she is making with her fingers? What if Nat were transferred into the sky so that the moon might be his real antagonist and the sun become someone of whom he could say “I see myself in that man,” and then, if his name should be reversed, it could be said, as in syllogisms, all Dog is Nat, Tan is Nat, man is Tan and therefore Dog is man. Nat is thinking: If I could make it happen. Take off my hat and tie and make it come true.