J R

by William Gaddis

  —So where’s the Rhinegold?

  —We’re pretending it’s on the table there, you’re all swimming around . . .

  —No like she means we can pretend we’re out here swimming like around this old table which we can even pretend it’s this big rock but there’s nothing on it, like there’s nothing which we can pretend it’s this here Rhinegold.

  Again he tapped the baton against the music stand.—The art department has promised the real Rhinegold for Friday, so today you’ll just have to pretend. Pretend it’s there shimmering and glittering, you’re swimming around it protecting it, but you don’t dream it’s in danger. You don’t dream anyone would dare try to steal it, even when the dwarf appears. The dwarf Alberich, who comes first seeking love . . . what’s the matter there?

  —Like if we’re all so beautiful who would want to love this here lousy little dwarf?

  —Well, that . . . that’s what happens, isn’t it. You don’t. You laugh at his . . . his advances, and that hurts him, it hurts him so deeply that he decides he’ll take the Rhinegold instead, so that he can . . . where is he now, Alberich the dwarf, where is he . . .? Bast rattled the baton briskly against the music stand, and a trumpet blast shattered the comparative quiet.—What was that!

  A salute stirred from the shadows in the wings.—That’s where I come in here with the trumpet when you hit that thing with your stick, answered a martial miniature advancing into the glare with a clatter of knife and ax, flashlight, whistle, compass, and a coil of rope crowding his small waist.

  —You come in when I point the baton right at you, and you come in playing the Rhinegold motif. Now what was that you think you just played?

  —The Call to the Colors, anybody knows that. Besides I don’t even know this here Rhinegold thing and my father said I probly should play this anyway because it’s the best thing I can play.

  —Well, what eke can you play.

  —Nothing.

  Bast rested his head on his right hand, weakly flexing his left and studying the gouge on its back as a smart slap of salute wheeled the trumpeter off in the general direction of Valhalla, and he gave them the key with a chord.

  —And like right here Miss Flesch said might be a good place for our specialty numbers, like we already have ballet tap and toe and if we’re on the school tv and all . . .

  —You . . . straighten that out with her.

  —She’s going to be here today?

  —That’s a good question, Bast muttered.—Has anyone seen her?

  —I seen her, came a voice from the wings.

  —This morning? Where.

  —No, last night in this green car parked up in the woods with this here . . .

  —That’s enough! Bast, and the crack of his baton, severed that response and the billow of tittering it rode out on, breaking against the banks of empty seats; he struck the chord and with the power of music set their brittle limbs undulating in unsavory suggestion, bony fronts heaving with nameless longing straining the garlands of streaked paper and seamed up remnants of other cultural crusades, here the gold fringe of an epaulette quivered, there a gold tassel shook as, revived by Bast’s flailing arm, the cry of—R H I N E gold . . .! filled the hall, brought up short by the Call to the Colors: down the keyboard Bast darted as though fleeing that, into the Ring motif, and now more faintly, the last to realize that the stage had been taken over by one enthralling bellow. Undismayed by lack of piano accompaniment, or now the peremptory rattle of the baton, this baying augmented as the apparition drew up at the footlights for breath.

  —She’s being Wotan, a Flosshilde offered in awe.

  —Wotan isn’t on yet. You’re not on yet! Bast shouted at this eruption freely adorned with horns, feathers, and bicycle reflectors, the helmet hung askew over a face where mascara awash in perspiration descended a bad complexion to streak the imbrications of silvered cardboard covering the padded bosom below. Simulated fox tails dangled at the flanks. The spear sagged forward.—I thought you all knew, there was to be no makeup until your actual performance, he said, and as Wotan obediently drew a glistening forearm across that face he looked away, noting apparently for the first time the epaulettes and gold tassels trimming jackets tailored to imaginary bosoms, the gold piped shorts cloistering assorted hams.—What’s that you’re wearing there? And you . . .?

  —She’s wearing her mother’s falsies in there, said one Wellgunde, delivering a Woglinde a punch in the bloated chest, bringing blushes and brays of laughter.

  —No, those gold tassels, those costumes . . .

  —We got twirling after.

  —You have what?

  —Twirlingafter! . . . he don’t even understand plain English.

  —That bulletin about your costumes. Did you read it?

  —We couldn’t hardly. You know? Like there were all those words in it which we didn’t have them yet.

  —What grade English are you in? What year?

  —English?

  —Like he means Communications Skills only we didn’t get those words yet, we maybe won’t get them till Language Arts even.

  —All right, all right, you can . . . take your places, Bast said, drawing both hands down his face in imitation of sepulchrous calm which promptly provoked—Uh, say there . . . from behind, and swung him round dropping his hands to face an elderly figure being weighed unsteadily forward by the saxophone strung to his neck.

  —Where do I sit?

  —Sit?

  —Up on the stage? or down here with you.

  —Sit? You’ve . . . come to watch?

  —Not today, no, today I’ll play right along, said his guest eagerly, fingers quivering over the keys of the saxophone.—Keep at it the doc told me last night, just keep at it and you’ll have the old muscular coordination back like a well-oiled machine in no time. You’re loosening up the old fingers yourself, eh? Your hand there? That’s a nasty one, he said with solicitous relish, drawing a folding chair nearer the piano.

  But Bast had escaped to the edge of the stage where he called in a choked tone—all right! the dwarf now, who is Alberich, the dwarf?

  —That’s supposed to be that boy J R, said Wotan sidling up, wiping both hands on a fox tail.—He’s only being it to get out of gym anyway, this here little dwarf. He don’t even have a costume yet.

  —Well . . . where is he! Find him!

  —He was reading the paper over at that window.

  —He was in the front office, I seen him when I went to the girls’ room playing with the telephone in there.

  —I got a cold, that’s why my eyes look like this, said Wotan with a rheumy stare that sent Bast up the aisle and out the pastel hall, looking in doors till he reached the last one: there in a swivel chair a boy sat, back to the door, his cheerless patterned sweater of black diamonds on gray hunched over the desk, and a hand with a pencil stub rose over one narrow shoulder to scratch where his hair stood out in a rough tag at the nape.

  —What are you doing in here! Playing with the . . .

  —Playing? The chair lurched, then swung round slowly as the boy recovered the wad of a soiled handkerchief from the telephone mouthpiece as he hung it up.—Boy you scared me.

  —Scared you! What are you doing in here, aren’t you in this rehearsal? What are you doing here playing with the telephone . . .

  —Playing? But no I was just . . . it rang. He reached for it.

  —Give me that!

  —But it’s probably . . .

  —Here! . . . What? hello? . . . Miss Flesch here? now? No, I haven’t seen her all morning, she . . . Me? Bast, Edward Bast, I’m . . . What do you mean are we ready? Ready for what . . . The telephone pressed at his ear, Bast stared blankly at the boy’s foot twisting under the chair’s pedestal, the seam split up the back of the sneaker, and abruptly put out his hand to stop the repetition of the chair tipping forth, and back, and the boy shrugged, recovered a grimy envelope with figures penciled on its back to stuff it, with his pencil stub and wadded handkerch
ief, into a pocket, looped a knee over the chair arm and began to wedge the toe of his sneaker into a desk-drawer handle.—You mean right now? today? Of course it’s not ready today, no. No, and listen. An old man just showed up here with a saxophone, he . . . what? What class in music therapy, where? Hello? Hello? He banged down the telephone, swerved the chair round to face the door saying—Come along, and was almost out when it rang again.—Give me that! he said catching his balance.—Hello? Who? No . . . No he’s not and what’s more this telephone is not . . . what? He banged it down again.

  —Why’d you want to do that? the boy came hurrying out ahead of him.—It was just . . .

  —Come along! Bast pressed him down the hall, eyes on the shoulders narrowed in a shrug and held there by the sweater, which was too small.—You’re supposed to be up on that pile of chairs in back, Bast pursued him down the aisle—while the Rhinemaidens swim around down in front, do you know your part?

  —He don’t even have a costume yet grumbled Wotan, drooping in the lee of the piano like some lost sport sulking in a corridor of prehistory.

  —And hunch down up there, Bast called after him.—You’re supposed to look small, like a dwarf.

  —He’s already littler than us, Wotan obliged, swelling.—He’s only in sixth grade which that’s why he could be in it to be this here little dwarf which he’s only being it anyway to . . .

  —Get up on the stage, out of sight. Now, we . . . Bast halted. Behind him the saxophone wavered tentatively around C-flat.—Wait a minute! Where is it! That paper bag that was here on the piano.

  —You always carry your money like that?

  —It’s not mine, that money. It belongs to Mrs Joubert’s class. Where is it!

  —Hey, see? here? a Rhinemaiden giggled from the stage.—See? Like for the Rhinegold, with real money so we can really pretend, see?

  —That one’s my type, the saxophonist confided over Bast’s shoulder as he sat to the piano.—Maybe you can . . . but he was cut off as Bast came down with an E-flat chord that sent the boy scaling the peak of the stacked chairs and the Rhinemaidens wriggling and howling by turns below, arching limbs and brazening impertinent bodies in what quite rightly they believed to be lewd invitation, whispering, perspiring, cowering to the blast of the Call to the Colors obliterating a brief saxophone chorus of Buffalo Gals while, in sinister pianissimo, making good use of his unimpaired hand, Bast echoed the Ring motif oblivious, staring, up into the stage illumination on the dwarf’s uncostumed threadbare scaffolded above the caterwauling, and he pounded an open way for his desperate crew through the rhythms of the Nibelungs, hand drawn up in twinges each time a finger struck among those sharp cadences teeming with injury.

  —Look! Who’s that up in the back there, came in a stage whisper.

  —The lights, I can’t see nothing . . .

  —It’s that fruit Leroy.

  —He’s too little, it’s that Glancy.

  —Running . . .

  Faster, Bast played now as though hurrying to catch a train, straining toward the crescendo of its arrival till this, with pain that streaked to his elbow sharp as the chord he struck, was all he heard, and the cry of the dwarf was lost,—Hark floods! Love I renounce forever! . . . lost, if it was ever made at all, the figure running down the aisle reaching the piano as it crashed with the Rhinegold motif that brought the pile of chairs cascading to the stage and scattered the Rhinemaidens in disheveled pursuit of the dwarf, who seemed indeed to know his part, and had got off with the Rhinegold.

  —I told you . . .! shouted Wotan bursting out into the sun, bearing down on the only figure in sight who watched this extravagant onslaught without alarm; but all they wrested from her was the change purse, its nickeled clasp worn down to brass from being closed, and opened, and closed, opened now and on dead leaves at that, flung back to the ground indistinguishable from the leaves they trampled, drawing up in garish clumps of recrimination.

  —Where’d he go? that lousy little . . .

  —Look!

  —Look out!

  Gravel sprayed them from the drive.

  —In the car, that’s Mister Bast. They’re chasing him in the car.

  —Whose? Driving . . .

  —Glancy. That big lardass Glancy . . .

  —It wasn’t either that’s deSyph, that old junk heap that’s deSyph’s . . . and they drifted off to tell, over groundswells of lawn heaving with the slow rise, and fall, of light broken by the gentle sway of trees on winds bearing news, from higher up, of a used car sale blown down on retching waves of the tune Clementine to the wailing counterpoint of the saws in Burgoyne Street, where the used car plunged among the dangling limbs.

  —The lesson’s all set up, the visuals everything right from the teacher’s guide . . . and the brief prospect of a straightaway freed his hand from the wheel to turn on the radio.—The script that’s her script and that book, that’s to pretend like you’re reading it it’s a prop . . .

  —But this money, the boy who ran off with that paper bag we were using it in the Rhinegold rehears . . .

  —You don’t need it no, for the Mozart that Rhinegold bag it would throw off everything the testing, the whole . . .

  —It’s not that it’s the money, it’s the money . . .

  Steel teeth overhead shredded a descending bloat of Clementine as the radio warmed to Dark Eyes, and the driver shifted in a seated schottische overshooting a turn to the right.—My wife will help you out don’t worry, she’s waiting for us I already called her and I told you about the singalong, don’t forget the singa . . .

  —But then maybe your wife could . . .

  —Help out yes she has a resource program on right after, she’s in the arts too maybe you know her? B’hai, folk song, preColumbian sculpture . . . he cut short with a grimace that might have been merely the effort of swerving to a halt at the door where he promptly resumed the catalog in introducing—my wife Ann Mister Bast, she had the Senior Citizens’ class in clay sculpture too, the ones with arthritis here, wait! don’t forget the script . . . before leaving Bast in a spray of gravel, where Mrs diCephalis took his hand and kept it.

  —In this way, she led him, raising the folds of a many-colored sari to pick her way over the maze of cables, into—an intimate medium, it really is, because when you look into the camera you’re looking each child right in the eye, she said flashing him a blacked sweep of hers over a shoulder.—When I’m on camera, I just keep repeating to myself I am speaking to a single child. I am speaking to a single child, over and over. That’s what makes it intimate . . . She stopped abruptly in the shadow of a stage flat so that he ran up against her and discreetly lowered his eyes from the caste mark that had begun to run on her forehead, past the distinct lashes, nose shadowed retroussé and white teeth, to come up short on a gape in the sari where her brassiere strap hung errant and anomalous.—I do my own makeup but these are my own eyelashes, I’m naturally dark, she said, taking his attempt to withdraw his hand as provocation to hold it in both of hers.—You see, I am a talented woman, Mister Bast, who has never been allowed to do anything . . . Somewhere a bell rang but she held him in an instant longer, with peristaltic reluctance let him slip away—in there, we’ll look in there first. It’s where the director monitors the programs.

  On the screen was Smokey Bear.

  ——pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste, the natural resources of my country, its soil and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife.

  —The youngsters find it reassuring, said Hyde looking up from Smokey Bear.—Like seeing a commercial.

  —Yes, in terms of implementing the study material, Whiteback continued as his guests came to rest on the small sofa under their litter of cameras, coats, pamphlets, brochures and notepaper,—into a meaningful learning experience . . .

  ——a series of collapsible pipes, called the intestines . . .

  —Thirty-seven thousand five hundred, came Pecci’s voice from the inner office,—for legislat
ive services rendered in conjunction with proposition thirteen on the referendum on pay subscription televis, you’d better call me back on this . . .

  ——of America, the free enterprise system, and man’s modern industrial knowhow, have forged a two edged sword which at one fell swoop has severed the barrier between . . .

  —What’s that?

  —The American flag, said Mister Pecci joining them, glittering at the cuff.

  —Oh, the film. It’s on film, a resource film on ahm, natural resources, Mister Hyde’s company was kind enough to provide . . .

  —What America is all about, said Hyde standing away from the set with a proprietary air.—What we have to . . .

  —To use, or rather utilize . . .

  ——like the iceberg, rising to a glittering peak above the surface. For like the iceberg, we see only a small fraction of modern industry. Hidden from our eyes is the vast . . .

  —Gibbs? Is that you? Come in, come in.

  —No, don’t let me disturb you . . .

  —Yes come in, we have some people here from the Foundation, Whiteback insisted.—Their Program Specialist Mister Ford . . . An arm rose from the clutter of cameras,—and Mister Gall here. Mister Gall here is a writer. Mister Gibbs here is the what you might call chief cook and bottle washer on our science program and . . . doing a fine job, yes. Mister Gall here is getting material together on the Foundation’s whole in-school television support program, Gibbs. They’re going to publish it in book form.

  —Bitten off quite an assignment, Mister Gall. I imagine you need all the information you can get, said Hyde abruptly threatening him with a thick brochure from above.—I just happened to have this research report with me. It’s a pretty good rundown of long-term operating cost estimates on closed-circuit cable setups, compared to what you run into trying to carry a full lesson load on open-circuit broadcasting. I picked it up to show the Senator here, Congressman, Pecci . . .