Middle C

by Gass, William H

  What he had done, of course, was embarrass Madame M, and Joey was not wholly convinced that she had it coming; perhaps she had been an innocent, too, extending her hospitality to a student, willing to take some of her private time to expand his musical world, only to be rebuffed by his childish flight, and rudely, too, without so much as a lame excuse. Certainly he could not put a word to what he feared was about to happen when he weighed himself upon a pile of pillows beside her, had he done so; nor could he confide the affair to his mother, who might have a description in two languages readily at hand and a willingness to redden his ears with her recital. If his skills in most things were rudimentary, and his knowledge of facts and theories spotty, his acquaintance with such a sordid world was indirect, dim, and skimpy. He had no lengthy register of quirks, for instance, to which he might turn, a catalog of eccentricities in which he might find Joseph Skizzen’s reluctance to reveal himself listed alongside men who wore corsets under their suits or women who rolled down mountains of pillows … while smoking … the forbidden weed. With a groan he curtailed his imagination lest he begin to see Madame’s breasts blend into the pile.

  Suppose she had said: The pillows are more fun if you’re naked.

  His first thought had been that Madame had made this foul business up and was, out of revenge, whispering it in Francophile corners; however, it was possible that someone else had actually done the dirty deed, and it was Joey’s own ineptness that was making him self-conscious and ashamed. Joey was perhaps not the only student she had lured into her delinquent rooms where she had, after some Debussy, made who knew what sort of indecent proposals, or perhaps the stains on the cushions were the consequence of one such invitation being actually taken up. He drew the curtain on any enactment of that possibility.

  Suppose she had said: These pillows have an interesting history.

  It came to Joey with the force of a revelation and remained as a conviction: this poor Skizzen had to have an education. Joey needed to become Joseph. In self-defense. This was not something Augsburg Community College was prepared to accomplish or encourage. His classmates did not stimulate him: their interests remained coarsely commercial, socially commonplace, and daintily divine. Every gesture they made in his direction turned out to signify a seeyuhlater. Joey was asked if he played bridge, and when he replied that he preferred chess (though his knowledge of either game was minuscule), he was invited to join the chess club. The very idea of belonging to a club made Joey nervous, and, since he could not in any case play, he told the club president that he’d given the game up because he realized he cared for it too much, a confession that got him tagged as an ascetic and admired for a life that was perceived to be austere instead of simply empty.

  The faculty had some dogged enthusiasms, but they were really not well informed; how could they be when the administration’s expectations were as low as their own, and they worked for salaries that an organ-grinder’s monkey would refuse. The Salvation Army had a better stock of books; he could not afford to buy even the texts Augsburg’s instructors assigned anyway; and there was no library worthy of the name in the dinkyville where he and his mother lived. Nevertheless, he could not continue careening from author to author, book to book, subject to subject, and period to period, especially—what was most confusing—bouncing from work to work and composer to composer like a golf ball in a parking lot. He had recently dragged himself through These Twain and A Laodicean without realizing that Arnold Bennett was minor and Mr. Hardy’s A Laodicean obscure. When at last he had puzzled out the meaning of this awkward title, a project that had taken far more time and effort than it should, its significance seemed clear enough; however, it was the length of the line of relations involved that surprised and admonished him: a wealthy city in ancient Asia Minor named for the wife of the second of thirteen kings, Laodicea was chastised in Revelation (which he made a note to read) for its lack of commitment to Christianity, the city’s name appropriate to the charge because the water in its aqueduct, unlike the hot springs that fed nearby Hierapolis, was lukewarm or tepid; hence Hardy’s use of it to describe his heroine’s inability to choose between a modern man of good sense and a suitor who represented the romance of the past—condo or castle were the alternatives. In the end, she accepts the former while still wishing the latter were the former. Joey felt the novel did not live up to its author’s massive reputation; however, he was also impressed by the vast areas of ignorance that were not likely to be rumored, Joey was still so young, nevertheless gaps that were not likely to be removed or even reduced. Saint Paul had apparently written a letter to the Laodiceans, although now the letter was lost, and in a.d. 60 an earthquake had shaken the city, but not its pride, for it had refused Roman help in rebuilding. Was this sketchy bit of information relevant to the events of the novel, because the question of whether a castle should be rebuilt or replaced was central to it? Joey had played the piece, but he had not heard all the notes.

  Because it was a school presumably built to teach and to observe the tenets of the Lutheran branch of Protestantism, Augsburg Community College was a quiet, placid, unassuming snare for the unwary; a snare for the unwary because its Lutherans did not believe they were merely a branch with its bark but the roots of true belief itself, the trunk the twigs the leaves as well—the earth that held the tree, the water its roots drank, the sun that fed its leaves, the air that trembled them; it was a snare for the unwary because it was more than a cause, it was the corrective of the cause, the righting of a course gone awry, a cleanser for a soul that had soiled itself, a savior of the Savior; it was a snare for the unwary because it was a church that opposed the power of the church, a clergy that resisted the powers of the clergy, a group that dissolved groups into holier members; it was a snare to snare the wary as well as the innocent, to entrap both informed and tenured dupes and naïve unprepared waifs and bumbling chumps like Joey, because they might believe that fellow Lutherans were as one—united—in their love of God and that the church and its clergy would find it quite impossible to be tyrannical, vengeful, obsessed, nitpicky, and absurd, when in fact there was no one Lutherans hated more than Luther, other Lutherans, and themselves, who once had been unwary, who had since been duped, and now were snared.

  Members of the Catholic church in town, into which his mother now and then wandered, were accustomed to the sounds made by their ill-tempered organ and to the complaints of their bad-tempered organist; however, when Mr. Tippet fell ill they wondered of Miriam whether her son, Joseph, so well named, might be available to play at a few of their services. They recognized that he had schoolboy duties at Augsburg, but perhaps, for the short while they envisioned Mr. Tippet to be incapacitated, her son could squeeze in some hymns for them. They would be grateful for Joseph’s help and could pay him with gratitude and a sum just short of insulting.

  Joey was happy for this excuse to visit his mother, whose cooking had improved remarkably since he had started attending Augsburg. On Sunday evening she would serve him gedünstetes Kraut to which she would add grated apple and Würstelbraten, each slice shot through with rounds of sausage, a dish she liked because it extended the service of the beef. Then they would talk about old times if Joey was unable to steer her away, about the food she fancied from her childhood, such as Steirisches Schöpsernes, a mutton stew served by her mom with horseradish and plenty of potatoes, but now and then there would be events at school he could introduce to their conversation, and lately some chaff concerning the row of white ageratum that had suddenly appeared in a line along their front walk. Miriam had chiseled out a furrow with a screwdriver, thrown in some of her birthday seeds, and to the amaze of her eyes saw plants pop into view.

  This surprise, he told her, reminded him of one he’d just had with a Thomas Hardy novel that he had read with some pleasure to be sure but not without suffering a number of disappointments along the way. However, certain facts about its composition had come to light with a similar bright suddenness: namely that Hardy was ill
in bed—in a town called Tooting—wonderful name—no, no, it was Upper Tooting—he was ill in bed with a urinary infection—he was sometimes almost delirious—he was ill in bed in Upper Tooting dictating the first draft to his wife—well, Hardy was actually lying on an inclined plane with his head lower than his pelvis the whole time—the whole time was almost six months—compelled to complete the book despite his pain because he felt bound to honor the date for its publication in Atlantic Monthly—a magazine, did Miriam know? called Atlantic because it came out simultaneously in New York and London. Naturally, the novel would have its ups and downs. It was remarkable it had gotten written at all—well, dictated, then revised. Moreover, he had learned that Henry James—was Miriam familiar?—had also dictated some of his last works to a typist—his novels were serialized, too—though James wasn’t in anything like the same pain, just getting on and disappointed by the world …

  Miriam did not see any connection between Joey’s tussle with Thomas Hardy and the delight given her by ageratum popping up in a nice regimental line along their walk—or her walk now—who would have guessed? She was even a little tiffy about it. The packets had turned up in a drawer just as her need to plant their seeds somewhere had accidentally appeared. She was a bit ashamed of so whimsical an impulse and remembered her implement with good humor—a screwdriver, who would have guessed?—yet here they were—these little button-shaped flowers—as if stolen from a nosegay. One plant, which hardly interrupted the run of white, was—well—purple, she guessed, a black sheep.

  Joey found it quite amazing that a man should lie on a board for weeks, even months, making up a novel in his head; it wasn’t like music, which always signaled the next step to take and stuck to your memory as naturally as taffy to the teeth. Miriam had just shoved the dirt back over the seeds with the side of her foot and then stepped on the place to tamp it down. Joey thought that maybe he’d read Far from the Madding Crowd next—didn’t Hardy choose strange titles?—and such descriptive names, too, so appropriate as to be odd—quaint to a fault—he’d looked into this novel about the crowd, leafing about a little, and seen Mr. Oak mentioned, Farmers Boldwood and Poorgrass, Bathsheba in front of Everdene. Could you take Boldwood and Poorgrass seriously? Miriam had been very encouraged by her success with the trim; it was more fun than she’d expected, and she planned to put in more—at other edges—since Joey had given her only seeds from short plants.

  The kraut was red as a red wine, with a soft broad leftover taste. Joey could understand how it had become a comfort, not only taking his mother back to her farmhouse childhood but also soothing her tongue from a run of bad words and steering her thoughts from complaints. If Mr. Tippet cultivated his condition perhaps Joey could earn enough to buy some Berlioz, or maybe a hoe for his mother if she was going to dig in the yard. He did worry a little that they might want him to play difficult pieces that he had no previous knowledge of, but Joey remembered the tawdry services he had attended and believed the priest would just say “play” the way he said “dominoes.” Luxury lace is next, Miriam said. What’s that? What it says on the package. White, too. She looked, shook the packet—Alyssum, she said. Do you ever see pinks? Did she know he had pilfered them, Joey wondered, beginning to blush—I’ll … I’ll poke around.

  Joey wheezed his way through several Sundays of early mass and shook off effusive compliments; meanwhile, at the other pole of performance, he managed to snitch some dianthus from a potting tray where there was a loose pile of seed packets still, and dwarf marigolds, too. Rakes, hoes, spades leaned against the shed wall tempting him into significant dishonesty, but he refused to surrender another inch of his already abbreviated virtue. The trips to and from school were a nuisance, but various parishioners did drive duty for him, full of curiosity about Augsburg and its quiet ways. Joey made up a life that was regular and serene yet far more interesting than the one he knew, since this college’s life seemed to have no real qualities at all, and his only anecdote was one he dare not tell on himself. He stayed at his mother’s over Saturday nights now in order to make early mass and be driven back to Augsburg for elevenses. More than once his chauffeurs observed with amusement how late Protestants slept in.

  The grass in the Augsburg quad, the college catalog said, was the same grass that had spread its welcome across the colony’s common in its first days; and the main hall, of limestone and granite, had stood nearly two hundred years of student food and student chit and student chat and student sing-alongs at lunch on Sunday when visitors were frequent; moreover the light that fell through the chapel’s glass to stipple the floors and pews had fallen every day in the same way since the glass had been installed with evangelical ceremony and in exultant sunshine; so that when you walked beneath its principal line of stately, though now infected, elms, you heard in the moving leaves the hum of history, indeed history was where you were headed, for at the heart of the school, in the center of its campus, a large door, said to have been rescued from an abandoned Catholic church, had been stuck in a hunk of concrete that represented stone, and upon its crackled panels had been pinioned a symbolic copy of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in the shape of windblown bronze leaves.

  Mr. Tippet had warned of his recovery and incipient return, so Joey’s month of work was nearly over when Joey was notified that the rector of Augsburg Community College was anxious to see him. Joey was scarcely aware there was a rector or any sort of pooh-bah higher than the dean or the chaplain who tended to preside over the school’s Sunday services. As a student he was in good standing, though not quake resistant, and he felt his organ playing, admittedly pissy at first, was now at least adequate to the four square tunes he was expected to perform. Surely, rumors about Madame’s defiled pillows could not have reached the rector’s distant ears, however large they might be. So Joey was at a loss.

  He went without evident anxiety up a staircase protected by mahogany rails. A door on the first landing displayed a plaque below its frosted window that read DR. GUNTER LUTHARDT, RECTOR, splayed out in old German type. The name and title were gilded, but much of the gilt was worn, as though Dr. Luthardt had been in his position longer than paint; indeed he might have been there since the building was built for all Joey knew, and this time Joey’s considerable ignorance about everything near and far dismayed him, and he felt a flicker of resolve. Dr. Luthardt had black hair and a deep dark suit, and he was sitting in a high-backed dark chair in front of a window heavily draped, so his very white face glowed like a malignant moon. This effect was doubtless aimed at. His eyes were small and his lips were as thin as the edges of a letter slot. Through this slit his voice emerged like a blade from a block; its speech seemed to glint, although you couldn’t see teeth; it hadn’t a hint of accent despite the rector’s formidable look and Dutchie name.

  Mr. Joseph Skizzen—Dr. Luthardt appeared to be looking at a piece of paper held just above the top of the desk—it has been reported to me that in a session of Lutheran Studies during your first semester here, you said that—ah—you wrote that—from what you’d read Martin Luther seemed awfully eager to get God on his side, and that’s why our namesake decided to become a monk … as a bribe—as you put it—to bribe God with his good behavior.

  Gee. I don’t remember.

  By becoming a monk in a monastery—it was reported to me—a monastery supported by a church that Luther later decided wasn’t worth much, and no place to go or be if you wanted to get right with God—

  I just thought …

  Since the church—what else is written here?—wasn’t right with God either—

  Well, I guess I meant …

  So his choice of monastery—hence his choice of church—to honor with his piety was the choice of the Devil’s as it turned out—

  Dr. Luthardt’s voice came at him like something swung, and a corner of Joey cringed—and a sign he was a sinner not a saint. What do you say to this, young sir, that has been reported to me?

  I don’t … he was more Catholic than most
before he became a Lutheran. He was scared … his horse was frightened by a bolt of lightning, so he promised to behave … to be a monk … but the monks weren’t going to heaven just for beating their chests … Joey received the rector’s look like a slap to his face. I don’t remember what I said, he said.

  You knew well enough then, didn’t you?

  We are all sinners, sir, aren’t we?

  Some of us sin more than others; some sins are small as rice, and some are more sizable; some sins are momentary as a sneeze, some are lifelong; some sins are made worse by their situations and surroundings, but others shrivel and become limp; some sins are normal and occur in the course of things, while some sins are aberrant, outlandish, and perverse; yet God can grant grace to the worst of us, forgive sins both grand and grisly; but for those who wallow in the wickedness of sexual desire, or sin outside the true church, there can be no salvation.

  I suppose so, sir.

  Suppose so …?

  Suppose no salva—

  Martin Luther was clothed in the grace of God; and when God chose him to become a monk he did so—you know very well and should have thought very long about it—in order that Luther should eventually learn the extent of the moral diseases that infected the Catholic church, and consequently be motivated to make his great protestation, for what do you think would have come of us had he not left the law and its secular license for the cell and its sacred walls?

  Sort of a spy, then?

  Of course not. He was aware of the maxim: Know your enemy.

  And for those who don’t sin outside the church …

  What?