As Joey became Joseph, his approval of his mother’s “put-a-plant” procedures weakened. He remembered how he had envied, at Christmas, those houses that sported a wreath, Santa’s face, or an electric candle in every window; but now he thought that you didn’t need to use something just because you had it, nor did he believe that dormer windows would threaten to shatter without a familiar seasonal icon pressed against their panes. Add-ons were also unnecessary. Every holiday, at least one new decoration—a lamb to feed upon the snow-covered front yard—would be purchased for display or a crèche built that would be embarrassingly incomplete without three wise men and one camel, adding to the expense of the season, or perhaps a glowing guide star at the top of a pole would be deemed essential as well as straw for strewing and carols piped through a cow; and then—if not on the lawn—on the ice-slick roof, Saint Nick with a fat sack would be peering down the chimney, his precariously overfilled sleigh about to be pulled into space by all those deer; inevitably lights would be flung over nearby bushes, or they would outline doorways, loop along eaves, climb appropriate trees, till every wall and corner was agleam with holiday gimcrackery got up or laid out with considerable effort and at appreciable cost, not to demonstrate religious zeal or seasonal joy but rather to advertise the householders’ vulgar predilections for excess.
Of a silent holy night the choristers sang, shivering and cherry-cheeked, on doorstep after doorstep down the street, spreading goodwill, gay on account of the birth of Christ, and in their songs promoters of peace; yet, in spite of that, enemies were everywhere, hatching their plots, spreading their poison like a plague; consequently they had to be attacked as you might an infestation of rats and slain like African enemies as if there were a bounty on each bone.
Miriam (whose educational level was low, and who rarely read much of anything because she preferred her childhood tongue and because her adopted language was largely verbal and so heavily accented it was hard to connect what she said with a printed version) did not this time allow these impediments to deter her from feasting on seed and tree catalogs, garden magazines, and glossy foldout ads that came like bluebirds unbidden in the mail. Loose snow might be blowing down their empty cold gray street and onto bushes bundled up in their own twigs, but Miriam had no eye, no nose, for winter’s dullness, because full in her face a glorious peony would be bursting or a field of daisies blooming yellower than butter or a vase full of tulips, vase-shaped themselves, held in her hands near her nearsighted eyes to direct their gaze and thus her vision, not to the past, where her memories usually possessed her, nor to the cold gray day outside, but to the sunny future only pages away when just these daisies would cover her head with sheep-shaped cloud and vivid sky.
When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on) … that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed, might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw how it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists, not gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it had been so infested, he worried that the race might … might what? … the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, body builders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved and saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop … the pop … the goddamn population.
Even a small order from a single catalog would bring dozens more to your door, since seed and plant companies appeared to trade mailing lists like stamps, and these glossy thick pamphlets and magazines were, in January, the lights of Miriam’s life. Every ripe tomato drew her gaze as though she were famished, despite her decision, taken almost automatically, to stick to flowers because of the squirrels. As a result of all this reading Miriam became knowledgeable about neck rot in onions and the use of apple maggot flytraps as well as the importance for vegetables of sulfur and manganese in the soil. She did not seem deterred by the sameness natural to repeated discussions of fire blight or thrips or the super-scented language used to describe the new flowers for the year, their familiar innovations and awards, reliability of germination, rapid growth, huge blooms, resistance to pests. Last year’s moonglow marigold may have been whiter than white, but this year’s version was even more so. Soon Miriam knew there were nematodes that would defend iris rhizomes from borers, insect barriers that have had excellent results when used against the flea beetle, and she would learn of a new variety of cucumber that bites its beetles back, even the spotted ones that spread bacterial wilt.
The garden was a place of battle. It was not only where campaigns against insects, disease, drought, wilt, and scald were hourly and repeatedly carried on but also an arena where flower was pitted against flower for water, food, and sun. Peace was largely an illusion, and health, prosperity, security, were as momentary as the cover of a cloud. But Miriam warmed to it, read about it over and over, so that her English, though in an odd corner of its world, greatly improved, and her interests—for instance, in soil makeup, drainage, hybrids, chemicals, birds, bees, butterflies, moles, slugs, and worms—widened and intensified. She knew that mealybugs were covered with a white powdery wax; she learned how to control pathogens such as, for instance, gray mold, bacterial leaf blight, downy mildew, scab, and pin rot; she could diagnose like a physician, prescribe like a pharmacist, and treat like a nurse; she knew in centimeters to what depth bulbs should be planted, what loved shade and muck and what sun and loam, how to improve the stickiest clay or give sand a sense of community.
She showed him an industrious ingenuity and meticulousness he had no idea resided in her. For instance, bulbs of various sizes and species were supposed to be dug in at different, and very specific, depths—too deep and their shoots would fall short, too shallow and they wouldn’t l
ast long in unfriendly weather—so she cut a number of dowels to the right lengths, then lettered, along the wood that was to stand above-ground like the warning flag for a gas line, the name of the variety she was going to plant, put a red line around each to indicate how deeply the planting should be, and inserted them into the hole being dug, to the depth marked, before following that with the bulb itself, now safely lodged in the right place. Miriam then resettled the earth and, with a cry of “There!” stomped upon it with a booted foot. She labeled peat-moss pots with tongue depressors, taller plants with lathes of suitable widths on which she clearly printed the appropriate names in black ink, easier to do than the dowels—though carefully, as a bow to her background, in the antique German style.
Joseph was impressed with her devotion but even more with its effects. Miriam began to reflect confidence in all her actions, because the world had been shrunk to the size of her garden, while the principles and problems of gardening became universal: the mantis wore the colors of its immediate locale, it knew how to wait, it seized its prey with a grace of movement equal to its surety and calmly ate its mate. Did so in Illinois as well as Ohio. There were deities in her realm, and Miriam was one. There were kingdoms, and she had hers.
The canola had to be applied in thin coats, and one day Joseph stood behind his mother in amazement while her small paintbrush flicked about its bush like an anxious insect applying the oil. She stood up with the ease of someone who kneels with regularity. Her color was good; she squinched, but her gaze was confident and direct; her weight was in her knees; she munched on certain leaves because they told her much; she drove her hands into the earth as though they had grown there; and she put more things up to her nose than a pup would, laughing with delight and recognition instead of wagging a tail.
Joseph Skizzen saw his mother’s life begin to flower as her plants bloomed, while his—which had drawn for so long a similarly upward line—was climbing around his obsessive sentence like a predatory vine thereby—since the two pursuits were so obviously connected—adding daily to his inhumanity collection. But there was nothing to be admired in the results of his revising, snipping, and arranging: if he were writing in ink he would have made a blot; if he were molding clay, it would resemble a turd; if he were playing notes, cacophony would be heard; if he were working with string, he would have made a knot. Standing in the midst of his damning collection, his former pride in it would arrive as a belch.
Short of breath though thin as a scissor blade, Skizzen puffed up the attic stairs. Because he ate so irregularly he was always weary. Once his mother had welcomed him to her table, but now only certain holidays were celebrated with feasts. Miriam seemed to think that, like the cottage, this was her house and that he was the kid who wouldn’t leave home but hung around Mom like a hungry pet. Instead of contriving to cook for himself, Joey had learned to unwrap. Occasionally, Miriam would call his attention to a leftover, but his mother often simply passed through the house at dinnertime with an apple in her mouth and snacked while studying a catalog covered with satisfied bees.
Meanwhile, Skizzen’s eyes had become dim reading books built of footnotes. His muscles were wasted, he was so sedentary, the stairs his sole exertion since he had given up most of his piano practice. His knowledge was still spotty but intense. He had no patience, no forbearance, no sympathies. His mirror mocked him, and he mocked his mirror. The dirt he dug in was as infertile as news—in fact, it was news.
Nevertheless what Joseph Skizzen regretted most was that he would die before the decision to end Creation had been made, before the disease of human life had mortaled even earth, and all the ores and salts and oils had been removed, fertility driven from the land, the juice of every fruit drunk, waters pumped and gulped and pissed, carcasses consumed; indeed, well before the last movie had cost more than the last buck so that debt was the best bet; before every particle and property of matter had disappeared into a knickknack, a floral garment, or ceramic mug and there was nothing but uncycled trash and even dumps were being dumped; because he would like to have looked out on it a little like God on the first day and observed the mess we had made of ourselves, and seen spread out over infinity a single placid sea of shit. He would have liked to be there at the end to find accounts rendered and justice done. There was supposed to be a Last Judgment, wasn’t there? Of course, he would not survive to see such. He would not be recalled to life, either, to enjoy the late show. Only Miriam’s daffodils would enjoy that. Even if his cheeks were powdered by a peony and he was made immortal, he wouldn’t see it, because there wouldn’t be any—any end—to have an end you would have had to have some shape in time. However, there was no beginning. No end. No middle. No knowing where you were. Meanwhile, waiting for the end, he just turned and turned in one spot like the point of a top till the slowing top began to waver, threatened to flop, whereupon a new asininity would strengthen his circuits and, though he stayed teetery, would keep him going.
Among professional students of the earth there has been a growing concern about the many threats to the continued existence of the human race, but among scholars whose field of expertise is man himself, the worry now is that human beings are becoming even hardier and will never go away.
17
The library brought Joey Skizzen happiness. It is true he had no instrument available to him now or place to play, though he exercised his fingers daily and caught every radio concert he could. Moreover he had learned to sing a scale built from each of the twelve tones, observing the pattern: whole whole half, whole whole whole half, humming to himself as he worked in the stacks like one of the seven dwarfs. On a piece of paper where he had inscribed a circle he put C where noon would be if this were the face of a clock; then he would write around the dial the sharps from one to seven and after that the flats counterclockwise from eleven back to five, just as Newman’s book on playing had taught him to do, by counting off perfect fifths. So his music was not utterly neglected.
Moreover, he read, rather systematically, every book on the subject in the Urichstown library, even the two on the guitar. To be sure, this was a modest number, but it was nevertheless many more than he had ever seen in one place before—shelves of opera synopses, opera gossip, singers’ and conductors’ bios and reminiscences (Caruso to Toscanini—alas, only the popular people), a little history, even some stage stuff. Ballet was less generously endowed: ballet plots, ballet dancers and their aching legs, their love-crossed lives, impresarios—bullies—as well as dancers (Nijinsky, Diaghilev and Balanchine, Gelsey Kirkland)—a little history, even less criticism, one Sert, which was really a surprise. Had the collection been tall enough to have a head, it could have been called top-heavy with performers (Beecham), rather than composers (Bloch), though the latters’ lives were spottily represented: Schubert not Schumann, Verdi not Bellini, Beethoven not Bruckner, Bach not Webern. As in all libraries, however, there were volumes whose presence was inexplicable. Though musicology was represented by Young People’s Introductions to the Orchestra and Old People’s Appreciations of the Classics, there was Schenker present—Schenker, of all people, Schenker, about whom Joseph hadn’t a notion when he first thumbed through the pages of Harmony, so his astonishment was entirely retrospective. There was Schenker and Schoenberg, there was Style and Idea. So if, by some standards, the collection didn’t amount to much, by Joey’s it was enough.
It almost painfully pleased his eye to run along the rows of titles, teasing his imagination with what really was a gesture, because it and longing were twins, and longing could not help itself, it had to experience the interiors of these volumes, again not as printed words upon a page but as words read, as heard, as realized, as conceived; and this building was so cozy, trim, and tidy, it was easy for Joey to feel the books were his; the small close halls made of shelves, the little reading room with its library table and its stately chairs were spaces in his new home where windows—casement windows—opened onto a side yard with great trees and forsythia yellower t
han a bonnet. He would indulge his fingers, letting them slide along the ends of books, as his eyes had, touching the titles, as if imbibing paper, cloth, and leather, feeling width, and with width, length, and with that, weight, and with weight, importance and ambition—a series of associations that did not always lead him astray.
Through his garage windows he could see his car. “His car”—it was a phrase he could not call customary. The car itself still scared him. Like being a grown-up with a tank full of obligations. Fortunately, he had little use for his vehicle. As it had sat, before its sale, it sat now. He knew it sat, and while it sat, it rusted. Already a ruin, it grew older out of enervation. Joseph had begun to assess the Rambler’s ailments, which were many, various, and apparently serious, but why should that surprise him, what did he expect for thirty-five dollars? Miss Spiky would probably have paid him just to drive it off the lot. The plastic upholstery had split. Only every other dial on the dashboard registered. The overhead light would glow occasionally, although there seemed to be no reason for it. The speedometer sounded as if it were grinding gravel. Yet this Rambler had driven him to Urichstown, and it had driven him back to Woodbine, too, though this time in another gear—he still wasn’t sure which—carrying him by the car yard in Lowell from which he had rescued its carcass and sent it into action to enjoy a last run of life if not a new one. Joseph had blown the Rambler’s horn (it awk’d) as he and his auto passed Miss Spiky’s place, out of thanks and in triumph, but he did not suppose she had heard him greet her or, if she had, cared to give notice. Anyway, he could not have seen her had her trailer been on fire because he wisely kept his eyes on the road, tense as most new drivers, even more ignorant, fearful of every curve ahead, of overtaking or oncoming cars—trucks were worst—trying to avoid clutch lurch and calculating how to steer and how to stop.
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