Middle C

by Gass, William H

But only sin in it?

  Who?

  Can there be salvation for them?

  I just said, young sir, that God is grace, only God is grace, only God can purify, only God can steer us aright. Your mind is a mess, Mr. Skizzen. To be outside our church is itself a sin.

  Oh.

  The very worst kind.

  Oh.

  For nothing we have done are we saved. God extends his grace—as I said—in a way most mysterious, for reasons incomprehensible—extends it—

  To Lutherans who have sinned.

  God helps them stay straight. Upright. I just said. Their faith is a sign they shall be redeemed.

  Keeping the faith must be hardest of all.

  Failing the faith is the one sin. Actually, God keeps the faith for us. As I said. We are weak. We are woeful. Yet he sees in us a solid vessel for true belief.

  But only some shall be saved?

  Some.

  Some. A few?

  A few.

  A remnant?

  “Remnant,” sir, is a Jewish word.

  Like “the chosen”?

  “Chosen” is another of theirs—yes—an arrogation, a word full of false pride, indicative of the devil. We, sir, are elected.

  Dr. Luthardt sounded neither weak nor woeful but triumphant, a solid vessel indeed. He sounded saved. The paper slid across the desk unimpeded.

  Another matter, Mr. Skizzen, remains.

  Sir?

  I understand you play the organ for us.

  Yes, sir.

  The rector pointed himself directly at Joey, though he was busily silent, as though adjusting his aim. For a terrible moment Joey thought he was about to say: And you have played your organ at Madame Mieux’s and come off on her colored silks and cottons.

  But now you play for Saint Agatha’s?

  Their organist—Mr. Tippet—is ill.

  You play.

  But he is nearly well again.

  Lutherans do not blend; we do not meld; we do not weave, Mr. Skizzen, you should know that. It is one of the sins—did I mention?—to mix our worship with sewer water.

  I didn’t—weave—whatever you meant.

  We do not dilute.

  I did not water down on purpose. I just played some hymns. Hymns they asked for. I could get you the numbers.

  Your mind is a mess, young man. Our denomination frowns on any ecumenical or interfaithless activity. That means we do not pray with others; we do not sing with others; we do not in any sense or in any aspect jointly perform or share our service with others. The word for your failure is “syncretism”—something you should have learned about by now and a very serious thing. You must reconsider your employment and cease your playing at once.

  Mr. Tippet is returning.

  All religions are not created equal. All but ours are sordid.

  God must have a reason for permitting other religions, mustn’t he?

  God’s reasons are quite beyond our ken. But hell will be filled.

  Catholics are Christians, aren’t they?

  Just barely. They maintain idolatrous ways. They worship images of Mary. Had you played for Mormons, for instance, Mr. Skizzen, you would have participated in heathenry and might have been expelled from the church. You must stop this ignorant mingling at once. And beg for forgiveness. Hope for forgiveness. Long for forgiveness.

  Mr. Tippet is returning. He is over whatever it was.

  And never accede to their blandishments again. How they blandish, those Romans. Luther wanted our sense of the sacred to serve us in the work of the world, while they—their priests—are one with the world, as-one-as one-into-one is one; they are a wholly worldly order—they want the work of the world to determine their sense of the sacred. Imagine.

  I didn’t know.

  Their priests smoke.

  13

  A ridge of pressure, the result of many questions, controlled the climate of Joey’s consciousness, and he felt his thoughts go dark and slumberous like a layer of low cloud. For several weeks his mind moved—larghissimo—like the slowest sections of symphonies. How often would an answer be repeated by the cello and like a rising woodwind exit as a query? He did not believe that Professor Ludens would have turned him in; he would not have remembered anything Joey said because he never really listened to anybody and interrupted every response that lasted more than a minute; but if it hadn’t been Ludens it had to have been a kid in the class—yet who? No one had seemed particularly devout or even interested in Luther, his concerns, or his causes. Most of them probably came from Lutheran households and were thoroughly tired of pious precepts by this time, though they wouldn’t have shrugged them off. Dogmas, tenets, creeds: they doubtless meant dates in church basements to them, hours of solemn Sunday services, and scheduled interruptions of life—little more. So who?

  Then what about the oddly long delay in tattling? Had that denunciatory paper sat in a basket awaiting the rector’s eye? or had news of Joey’s heretical organ recitals drawn a description of his muddled classroom comments from a sleeping file? Did the spy only recently report Joey’s behavior, which would be strange because the class on Luther had been a first-semester course, and Joey was well past that now; it was a period of his life so out of his own sight already, he couldn’t remember saying any of the things he was reputed to have said; he had no clear understanding of what they meant or what the issues were. It was silly beyond billy. The rector was the chief absurdity. Where had he come from? Who had seen him on the campus or even in the church? Like a circuit rider did he go from little Lutheran school to little Lutheran school and at each school briefly rector: sniffing for sin, calling kids on the carpet, reviewing accounts and recalculating the take, staring the faculty into a renewed submission?

  It occurred to Joey that during the years they lived in London, whispers of this sort might have started to surround his father, since it was certainly true that he had entered England under false pretenses, that he was really an Austrian, not at all a Jew, and might have been a spy. After all, there was no protection from gossip, from calumny. The most innocent act could create suspicion. Just a fortnight ago, Joey had walked into English class only to see, taped to the blackboard, his last pop quiz, and on it, in red, the signs “100%!” Miss Gyer rewarded the righteous with such announcements, but Joey never expected to be one of them; it must have been a bit of luck that got him to such an uncustomary percentage; the altitude made him breathe more quickly. But guys smiled or winked at him, and Joey had to assume they felt he had somehow cheated his way to perfection. They did not honor good grades—on the contrary—but they prized chicanery, and any successful dodge, so long as it did not threaten the curve, and Miss Gyer had no curves. She was a tall women made entirely of posture. The y in her name was her best feature.

  Perhaps his father began to feel beset. No matter what he did, it was misinterpreted. Gossip about him was spreading like a puddle of printer’s ink. If he innocently wins some money—what happens?—a chain made from the hiss of whispers begins to join one hundred ears, and he is said to be buying documents or going out with whores or plotting against the Jews some further harm. How would his wife know if such tales were true or even being bruited about, having had nothing whispered in her own ear? Joey felt compelled by precedent to believe that in some minds he was a foul defiler, in others a cheat, in still others a heretic, whereas he saw himself as merely a petty thief of seeds.

  Joey felt he could not help it. He began taking notes on the behavior of his fellow students in order to determine who the moles were who might be sending regular reports to the rector, not just about him but about anyone who spoke out of turn or recklessly, anyone who showed resistance or skepticism or disdain, anyone who could have weaseled his way into Madame’s pillow parlor to do a dirty, anyone who might have borne, as if on the air all the way from town, a reprise of the ho-hum hymn tunes he wheezed from the organ of Saint Agatha’s, a church that Joey was now finding out was Augsburg’s religious enemy. The transm
ittal of this musical information had to be the most mysterious snoop of them all.

  His mother—was she the leak?—was she the dripping tap? First, to a friend of hers at work. Drip. That friend, then, to a friend who happens to char at Augsburg or whose child is also a student at Augs. Drip. There must be a path of transit. Mother (with pride) to Friend: My son Joey is now the organist at Saint Agatha; then that Friend (idly) to Son or Daughter: Isn’t Joey Skizzen the organist at Augsburg? I hear he’s playing at Saint Agatha as well; next, that same Son or Daughter (without malice) to Pastor Ludens: I understand Saint Agatha is enjoying Joey Skizzen as much as we are; Pastor Ludens, finally (motive unascribed), to Rector Luthardt: drip ditto to downfall.

  THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT

  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

  What does this mean?

  We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.

  Clarice Rumble: she wasn’t uptight, not nearly stiff or stern or dogmatic enough. That was it: he should look for an arrogant, no-nonsense stickler. Chris Knox had a lean look, but it was from playing tennis. Becky Wilhelm was a pudding, puddings were often resentful and malicious, but she was too stupid to understand how to spell “theology.” Who …?

  Hey, this is only Joey, who sits in the back of the room with his mouth shut mostly, you are picking on …

  … maybe the guy with the green teeth and glasses, the double dork whose pencilitis drove everybody crazy: tap tap here, tip tip there, cleaning his nails with the sharpened end, chewing the eraser, rolling its yellow length between his palms as if he were an Indian making fire with a pointed stick. If not him, then …?

  It’s true, I make fun of other people, but only in my head, to keep my spirits up …

  … maybe Jackson Leroy. One of Joey’s stereotypes about Negroes was that they didn’t stoop, fink, snitch, or tattle. Or was it Leroy Jackson?

  Seek and ye shall find, but only in my mind … suppose the tattletale was me …

  Ah … Maurice. Maurice. Shorter than Joey. Nearsighted. Like Joey—little-nosed. Eyes that, when you looked at him, shifted into low. Picked his dinky. Seemed constantly uncomfortable. Sat in last rows. Near me. Maurice … something. A distinct possibility. Probably preferred Wagner to Berlioz. But he acted like a little sneak, not like an arrogant toe-the-marker.

  Clarice Rumble. Joey’s trouble was, Joey slowly realized, Joey’s trouble was that he was too busy dodging people to see them except as obstacles.

  He caught glimpses the way some people caught fireflies. When he recollected them their image relit for a moment. Clara. Clara Rumble. She wore pins: little pins celebrating Olympic sports, her father’s membership in the American Legion and the FOE, a yellow ribbon commemorating … who knew? reminding her of whom? When Joey, feigning admiration, or at least interest, asked her what loss the little ribbon stood for, she said she didn’t know, it was just part of her collection, except that right now it was for her dog … well, had been for her dog, who had wandered off, but, only the other day, had wandered home again. You don’t need to wear it, then, Joey said, sporting his own smile of sympathy a bit unnecessarily.

  They don’t let me wear jewelry, said she.

  The last months of Joey’s stay at Augsburg were ordinary and awful. Despite his fearful expectations, nothing happened. He heard and learned diddly, as if his fingers were always idle at the piano. The plans he had made, and was making, seemed unnecessary now that the campus had become rumorless and routine as drill. Two years at Augs were too many, although the availabilty of a piano and an organ had been a plus. Still, all he had discovered in that time was that he needed to master what might best protect him; he needed to have learning to hide behind; he needed to know a great many different things to shield his soul from Paul and Pauline Pry; particularly he needed to be conversant with various eras in history, periods of literature, and schools of music, because those subjects seemed to be within his grasp; and he had found out he was not going to fish anything basically beneficial from Augs’s comfortable little pool of banality and superstition. In fact, the place wasn’t even as restrictive and intractable as it should have been … in order to be genuine. As for achieving a reasonable level of religious fanaticism, neither students nor faculty were even fans of God; they just tuned in when a good game was on. They were too smug to be defensive or suspicious. The librarian cut dirty passages out of Chaucer with a razor and kept Rabelais, Baudelaire, and Lawrence locked up. That was the extent of it.

  Oh yes … there was the rector and his network of spies …

  But if Paul Pry were to open him like a tin, what sort of selves packed so closely would he see? The tin would be empty, not even oily, it would have a tinny sheen, and light would fly from it as a fly flies from disappointment—that was what he’d see. Not a single self or sardine. Well … not exactly. There had been an unprotected period … Joey had had quite a checkered past, a quite romantic former life in fact: an escape over many borders hidden in a womb, survival of the Blitz, ocean voyage, slow trains, bad buses … charity … dinky gifts … humiliation … ah … piano lessons. A tiptoe through the tulips. With Mom. During that time, he’d simply been who he was. Hadn’t he been? Hadn’t he been a habit hard to break?

  Becky Wilhelm was a whiz at checkers. She was studying how to be unattractive, so she went to a lot of socials where she played checkers with old men when no one else would, not even other old men. In that way the skill surfaced. She was mistress of the multiple jump, she told Joey proudly. Hey. Wow. He said. Nevertheless, she was a whiz. That she was a whiz was a surprise. Joey beat his soul up about that. Could he call his playing the playing of a whiz? Skizz izz not a whiz, he imagined he heard Chris Knox scoff. Knox had gone out for track—a hurdler, he claimed to be—but twisted his knee at a meet and had to give it up. It took him so long to rehab he lost his tennis stroke. At Augs, this was a serious loss, because a long time ago someone had decided that tennis was to be the college sport. They recruited tennis players who were all tall blond slim kids from Florida and California who looked good in shorts and their tanned cancer-inclining skin. God was a tennis pro, at least that was the suggestion of one Sunday sermon titled, he remembered, “Thirty Love.” Many mornings the thonk of tennis balls could be heard even in the quad, and the high mesh fences around the courts could be seen shining in the sun even some way off. Joey found the sport an anomaly at Augs until he learned that community colleges all over the country, most named honestly enough for their communities, were infamous for supplying prospective standouts in various sports with the decent scholastic records they didn’t have coming out of high school, so that after a couple of years they could enter the colleges and universities that had recruited them in the first place. Augsburg, through the coincidence of its name, became a feeder—as the word was. So Knox might be—might have been—a whiz, Joey didn’t know … didn’t want to know … and therefore Joey would continue to live in the dark and see folks as flickers of phosphorescence—alluring, amusing, whizzes—but briefly.

  When you’re young, time is a puzzle, like interlocking nails. You wonder what you ought to be doing or what the future holds or how things that don’t seem to have worked out will work out; and in such a mood, even when you are focused on the future because you are yet to get laid, to bloom, to beget, to find your way, to win a tournament, you nevertheless don’t detail far-off somedays in your head; you don’t feel your future as you feel a thigh … because the present is too intense, too sunny, brief as a sneeze, too higgledy-piggledy, too complete, too total a drag already, whereas there is simply so much future, the future is flat as the sea three miles from your eye while the beach you are sitting on is aboil with sunshine and nakedness. The future is constantly killing off the present by becoming it. The future is too—thank God—vague to deal with. The future may not arrive. Yet that is all
you value, all you hope for: fine future things; so you think, I’m not here at present; I’m just a movie made of slow-motion dreams; haven’t I always been, then and now? wondering about when: when the dust will settle and the sky clear, when I will hear cheers and I’m handed my trophy.

  Joey imagined that if old—when he would be old, if he could be old, because in his dream he was always dressed the way he was dressed when he dreamed—he’d wonder what his death would be: when it would arrive, how it would do him in, what he would be wearing: during the early hours of the morning? while sporting his only suit? lost in the ruins of the city? would he die from bawling through tired eyes? go like a bathtub blown through a once-fine view from an upper floor? fall from a break of a board? because death is nothing but detail—a little cough that causes your ribs pain—a siren that stirs you to sit up on your deathbed and regurgitate a ricocheting nail.

  So much time lost in thought …

  Maurice was Joey’s equal in suspicion. He realized at once that Joey’s sudden interest was a ploy, and he wasn’t particularly pleased to be in someone’s self-help program. Even standing stock-still, Maurice sidled—sidled in a circle—as if searching for the center of the sky. Did Maurice remember, for example, the assignment for Friday? Indeed, it would turn out, he did, but for another class. Was Maurice living in the dorm or did he commute? He didn’t live in the dorm, but he did sleep there sometimes. If you were waiting for the worm to turn, Maurice would keep you waiting until you walked off arm in arm with your impatience, whereupon, leaves eaten, the twig to which his freshly finished cocoon was fastened would sway a little in the wind. Joey completed his scrutiny of Maurice with grudging admiration, yet he didn’t mind he’d been outwitted—he didn’t care. Maurice’s motives were much like his own—not to be caught, not to be known, not to be disclosed.

  Joey asked himself whether he hadn’t cared for Mr. Hirk and found out that although he was grateful to Mr. Hirk, he was only connected to his ailing teacher through music, and that what he really cared for were some mythical singers with magical names and the thin long-ago sounds Joey could, with voice or fingers, never revolve so well around, though they were the center about which he turned, because he did so at a different speed.