Middle C

by Gass, William H

  But Father thought, I imagine, that London would be a safe and civilized place, that England would be accommodating and out of the reach of brutes; he couldn’t know that bombs would follow and fall upon you.

  Where was his foresight then, Joey, where was all of that moral wisdom he was full of when it was really needed for his family? Didn’t he know—he was just a fiddle-playing fellow—didn’t he know that trouble follows and falls upon Jews, that as soon as he pinned that silly hat to his hair the cooties were collecting? Jews are the wind that lets evil in; Jews have brought damn bad luck from the beginning because they crucified Jesus, not a chance for them after that.

  Mother, you and Father weren’t Jews for very long.

  Rudi was denounced, that’s why we weren’t Jews for very long.

  But he never planned to stay Jewish, to …

  He wanted me to wear a wig, to call myself Miriam …

  You still do—call yourself Miriam.

  The USA, too, they preferred us as Jews; they wanted no Austrians in their country; they processed us the way I box up rubber dishpans.

  It isn’t so bad here, is it? decent enough?

  My hometown town was a town; there were mountains, a river, good bread; these towns are chicken coops; these towns are slower than ooze; they have no inner character.

  You mean no binding beliefs, Mother, don’t you?

  No binding beliefs, that’s right.

  Just like parochial Catholicism, Mother, like anti-Semitism, Mother—they bind more than sheaves.

  Joey, you are American and have no convictions.

  I was almost arrested.

  But not convicted.

  I was blamed. A blame not unremembered, Mother. Anyway, Joey said, it’s the binding I can’t bear—the joining, the brotherly embrace—because if one anti-Semite is a curiosity, three in a room are a zoo, and any more than that are a plague.

  Joey, what do you see in Jews they shouldn’t be singled out?

  Not any more than in anybody.

  Still, she said, someone should be singled out.

  Then let it be your Jesus. He wanted to be singled out.

  Ach, you have gone so far to the bad in your beliefs …

  In my disbeliefs, dear, little and light like puffballs from the cotton trees.

  Dandelions, you mean, Miriam said with satisfaction, and they’re weeds.

  So, Mother, why do you think he left us?

  For none of the usual reasons.

  You mean he didn’t leave us for a woman?

  Not for a woman, not for a life of crime, not for freedom from his duties.

  You’re sure?

  He wasn’t a man’s man or a ladies’ man; he was a soft sweet steady man; we held hands; he didn’t walk fast; a lot of the time he smelled of ink, not bad; but then he changed, became an actor on the stage; we weren’t who we’d been to him, or he to us either, because he became afraid, and we were safe in the theater, maybe, he thought, because the audience was going to play out the tragedy, not the actors; anyway, we were better off being somebody else—imagine, Joey—being somebody else.

  Maybe, Mother, it was money.

  Gelt? why?

  I mean, maybe he was ready to go off a lot of times, just as he left your land for England it seemed all of a sudden, but maybe, the way he thought about it, it had been in his mind for months or years, he just hadn’t known what to do till he found out how the Jews were leaving, and maybe he took us with him because at first when the wanderlust overwhelmed him he didn’t know it was so private a feeling, so personal a journey; he didn’t know that taking us made his hope impossible to realize like trying to fashion a fresh look to surprise a mirror while still wearing the same old hat and coat; so naturally when he ran away to England he took us with him only to find out after he’d been there awhile that it was the family all along he was running from, not Jew haters, not Germans, but the hat, the scarf, the dog, the coat, the sound of some voices—you know—always there, the same voices saying the same things in his ear, maybe, and then money all of a sudden came along, fit in his pocket like a bar of candy, so he could completely and entirely go, do what he’d always wanted to do, leave his self behind like a footprint in the snow … where they have real snow … in Austria.

  Miriam sat with her arms over her eyes, the worse to see the world, the better to see the past.

  Your father didn’t leave you, Joey, or your sister either; he left me, left me and my soap smell, just because he was unhappy with himself, sleeping, eating with a disinfector, working at a stupid lowlife job with lowlifes coming and going in and out of his own lowlife life, nothing to go to work for, nothing to brag about to the boys, nothing to come home to but a sterilized room in a cinder-block building near a neighborhood where he’d be snubbed every day he was seen, a no-account squalorman himself because he worked in a betting parlor, and lowlife, too, because of me, a laundry lady, the lowest of life, washing dirt off the dirty drawers of dirty people, tired in our legs and in our hearts, when he knew, Joey, what he’d done, how he’d pulled us up out of our own earth so that now we had nowhere to grow, nowhere to flourish, losing our looks, our youth, our energies, our dreams, for nothing, in order to live in other people’s catastrophes as if they were summer camps for the city poor.

  Guilt is very Jewish, Mother.

  Die Schuld … no … not me … now Jews do nasty naughty things and are as black with Schuld as a stove with soot and still go on burning with their business as if they had no more breast to beat. The guilt goes up the flue. Schuld bore your father down, Joey, I could see his knees in a bend like an old bow that can’t return to straight, nor did I help him with his load because I added to it every day, I complained whenever I saw him, back turned or not, dressed or not, asleep or not, I said I am not a Jew, Rudi, I want to go back to Graz, the war is over, there’s no reason to remain here, in this country where people ski down the slopes of their noses, in this ruin of a city, in this mountainless town where every window’s broken and they boil only big roots.

  How could Father disappear so … like a smoked cigar?

  Your father didn’t smoke, Joey, he was a good man in his habits, he didn’t overdrink either, or pinch bottoms.

  He gambled.

  Oh, that was a shock, when they told me, because he never bet even on a fight among roosters.

  Well, he bet on the ponies one time, Mother—and won—it must have felt as though he’d been touched by the gods.

  He never said a word, he never showed me a happy face, all that time while he must have been waiting for his forgers to forge a passport for him, steal a vehicle permit, make a birth avowal—whatever it was, his money, his winnings—what do they say?—burning a hole in his socks, he never let on to anybody that he’d bet or, having bet, that he’d won, or having won that he was going to leave us like we were not people but a place, like Graz, an embarrassment to him—old ways, old folks, old days—those of us he’d said he loved and held tight in a dark Tube—a cellar that shook as if it were solid but not solid enough—a piece of us broke off like shaken brick—he wasn’t solid enough—he divided himself from his family and sailed away as if we were the shore and he a so-long ship.

  We can’t be sure of that, though, Mother.

  I should have known, I should have known, because Rudi changed; he, who was soft like a patch of moss, grew hard and harsh as bark; he’d glare at me full of rage all up in his face; not that he ever hit me, but where a smile once went the boils of a pot were; and there was anger also in his throat, his eyes; his eyes never brimmed anymore or went wide to take things in; his silence scared me into silence, too; I couldn’t say a clear word.

  He changed before he won his bet, you mean, not after?

  Rudi thought of himself as a prophet, not as a modest decent printer with a wife who let him do what he wanted with her, to be happy in her arms, and calm after, snoring as softly as a purr.

  Father just disappeared, Mother, that’s all anyone k
nows: he was here, he was there, then he was nowhere at all.

  They told me—the police did—that he was seen collecting his bet, so we know he had some money on him; then they told me—those detective men—that one of the crooks—those counterfeiters of Canadians the police had taken in—admitted selling Rudi a passport as well as a black-market steamship ticket, and another officer later told the father—

  Him?

  • about a license, Joey, the father guessed it was, that Rudi had also wanted.

  He?

  • the holy father, yes, he liked my round face, I think.

  • So Rudi had the money, the passport, and the ticket …?

  • Das Gelt—der Passkarte—der Zettel … he had them while he was living with us still and sometimes kissing me on the mouth.

  Of course, Mother, the police didn’t pursue the matter very energetically, did they?

  If there was ever a false-paper man, Rudi was it, or rather Fixel was, the slyboots he became, so of course officialdom did little, after all who were we? unwanted emigrants, driven from our land our living and our loves by Evil, Evil that couldn’t have a capital large enough in father’s old print box to stand for it and consequently had to be let in and cared for like a stray font, but then … because we were Jews, that is, Persecuted People, and so on, and were bedraggled, misspoken, confused … because we were Jews and therefore the subject of jokes and other forms of embarrassed amusement …

  You were too young, Joey, to ever wonder how much or how little Joseph Skizzen was Yussel Fixel, but it was a lot harder for Trudi Skizzen to become the Dvorah of that name; your sister suffered, I can tell you, having to answer to Deborah Scofield, too, before she came to rest on Debbie Skizzen.

  Now that she’s married to Roger, Mother, she has his name, so she’s had to change again.

  That’s the way it should be, Joey, as it was long ago set down; the one time a woman gained was when she gained a name, just as you will give a girl yours and lighten her load in life, because I know, I have been a girl born Rouse, a wife who was Skizzen, then a widow called Fixel, and I know it is easier, it is better altogether, to be married and settled and fruitful and safe, as the Lord’s will is spelled out by the church. Because a girl, Joey, is searching for her real name; the name she is born with is only her maiden name, a name for someone so far unrealized; and I, stupid unfortunate that I am, I thought I had found in Rudi my real name, the name I would lose my flower under, the name I would enable him to pass on through you and you through another—and so and on—it would be proof he was here on this earth and had done God’s good bidding; that was my duty and my hope, that the Skizzens would fill out, fatten, and come to be people that would be noticed, that pride could be taken in …

  When Father took his name away from you, it was like being divorced, wasn’t it, Mother? I mean, you were no longer a Skizzen.

  Yes … yes … and I never married Herr Fixel, who was he? had I said vows to him? hung on his words, cooked his food, swept his house, had I? no, I had a stranger in my arms, shaming me in front of my husband.

  And you weren’t a Rouse either, Mother, because you were no longer a maiden.

  Oh, Joey … you are making me sadder by the minute.

  Debbie married a Boulder.

  Shut up, smartie.

  Father went to Canada, you think?

  He went to hell.

  He might have meant to send for us after a bit.

  Oh yes, a letter all smoky like ham would arrive to say please join me in the flames; oh sure, many times he told me how he’d won some money, how he’d got a ticket and a passport, and how he’d send for us as soon as he got to Halifax or as soon as he’d found a job or as soon as he’d made a million and had a mansion with a long yard and a dozen dogs; oh sure, I should dream it, of the many times he told me, many times till I got a sore ear from hearing how he’d won some money, how he’d got a ticket, how he had a passport, sure, if he’d done these things he’d certainly tell his wife of them, tell her and tell her till her ear withered at the root, I sure should dream it; so he can’t have got to Halifax, can he? he can’t have found a job, can he? he can’t have made a million, can he? and since he didn’t really consult me about calling myself sappy names, wearing a wig, and traipsing to London with nothing but a belly swelling for my luggage, why should he start now by asking me how to spend his winnings—I should dream it—for an instance, to rent an apartment with windows, with a bath, with a pair or three of beds, please, with a stove—that would be nice—with a picture of a town in Austria on one wall? or how about a family rate on train tickets home? sure, I should, I should dream it.

  Maybe he didn’t want to argue with you, Mother; he knew you’d be upset if he left you with us in London to fend for yourself, and he knew he had only one chance and one ticket …

  Joey … rails ran across France then, rails ran through the mountain passes and through tunnels into and out of the mountains, rails ran along the Mur, through forests of fir trees, because the war was over, the sirens had hoarse throats, all the bombs they’d dropped on one another had gone plode, and so we could have traveled home together, because there were no more warplanes, no more lights fingering the sky, no more Nazis; it was, we used to say when we slunk from our underground huddle, the large lot of us, and looked to see if our rubble was still standing, we used to say that the sirens said—the sirens said, All clear.

  12

  Although Joey’s management of the organ was improving by pipes and bellows, and he had overcome his aversion to the swelling pedal, things were not going well for student Skizzen. He was not performing so badly in the classroom as to be threatened with failure, or acting so mischievously otherwise as to be in danger of expulsion, but—as he dimly feared—he was about to fall from a high pile of pillows. Madame Mieux had let it out that her softpuff collection—whose existence she had kept secret—well, somewhat secret—and whose value she lovingly inflated—had been defiled—that was her word—defiled by a person or persons unknown, though that person—to which persons unknown immediately shrank—would have had to have been a male and was probably a student, most likely a pupil—that was her word—in one of her classes—one for beginners, she let on to an intimate, supposing she had any.

  Whispers were the favored mode of this story’s transportation, and it was thus innuendoed that some small number of pillows collected by Madame Mieux had been … well … semenized; thereby desecrating not only those most immediately affected but, in her heart—through her affection for them—the whole lot. There were in the world, she knew, bad boys; but had she harmed any of them? possibly by giving one of them an unacceptable grade? nor did it appear that the soiled cotton silk or satin could be safely or even somewhat successfully dry-cleaned on account of the intimate relation of cover to stuffing prohibiting their dismantlement without considerable damage. Semen stains, some said, were indelible. Certainly irrevocable. And evidence in court. Though Madame Mieux denied it, there were worries that she had been assaulted, even raped, that an assignation had gotten—this part was accompanied by giggles—out of hand, when it was the story itself that was now in a runaway mode: how had the pillows been abused? had she not recognized their attacker? were there reasons why these three or five, pink or violet or puce or candy brown, dinky, medium, or grandiose puffins had been chosen for contamination rather than dozens of others? did a fetishist inhabit the college like the bats they had in the attic of Assembly Hall? or was anyone who collected pillows to be considered similarly afflicted, so that the crime may have been one of passion, pitting a male pillow fetishist against his swansdown-fixated counterpart? was there perhaps a scene stitched, printed, or embroidered on one of them that enticed an attack?

  All because of Hector Berlioz and his trombone thing? He should never have gone into the lady’s lair, but, after all, he hadn’t committed any sort of crime, and he had, readily enough, reversed even his innocent course; he had not, for example, thrown himself onto
a heap nearby her recumbent form—he could no longer utter or even think Madame’s name—although she had, by her own sprawl, suggested it: Make yourself comfy, hadn’t they been the words she’d used? and hadn’t the Madame been inhaling weed? the odor in the room wasn’t incense, it was what he’d been told was the smell of pot when he’d smelled it on another occasion. She had on her face a large loopy grin and over her arms loopy sleeves and around her torso a loopy wrap, the actual wrap of it a bit loose. So Joey had, quite properly, bolted, hardly inhaling the entire time. There were washes of silk and satin foaming up against the walls. He’d nearly tripped making his way out. Had he fallen he’d have drowned and/or suffocated.

  Had he fallen anyway? There were some who wondered about that. Joey began to receive stares, and he felt he might be the subject of unseemly gossip. Perhaps it was his guilty conscience—a condition that exasperated him further because he believed he had done nothing wrong but bolt like a scaredy. He searched his heart for hidden longings and found none. An inventory of his daydreams came up empty. A minor social gaffe should count for nothing, no more than dandruff on the shoulder of a dark suit, and the momentary embarrassment he had suffered should suffice for punishment.

  He was, however, haunted by the concerto he hadn’t heard. Poking about in a few books turned up nothing by the name “concerto” and nothing that might resemble something written for a band instrument whose social status in the world of instruments stood only a few notes above the saxophone. Had he been conned by Madame, lured into her pillow parlor on altogether false pretenses? In class (classes he now prepared for with sweaty desperation) she was as coolly indifferent as he was, carrying on with the other students in her usual loud and quirky manner, while he continued to ignore his classmates entirely, perhaps maintaining a distance that was more carefully policed, and an atmosphere more densely anxious, than usual.