Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

More fun than the camera itself were the black-and-white photographs that emerged mysteriously every few weeks from a brown cardboard cylinder tied with white string. Edwin pulled the string; the tight cylinder expanded slightly, as if it had been holding its breath; and slipping off the string his father began to unwind the blotter roll slowly along the kitchen table, asking Edwin to hold down the end. “Nnnn!” said expressive Edwin, if ever I tried to help. The brown cylinder was white inside, and as his father slowly rolled it back Edwin waited for the bright white edges of the first pair of photographs to appear. After the pictures were selected for the album (Edwin was allowed to keep the remaining pictures, which he added to his collection of timetables and seed packets), Mr. Mullhouse brought out the dark green papercutter with the silver blade. Placing a photograph carefully at the edge, and frowning at us, as if he believed that only the threat of punishment could prevent us from thrusting our hands beneath the blade, at last he swung down the handle with a magnificent sound that was a mixture of scissors and crunched snow.

Later Edwin helped to paste the pictures in, bringing the brush swiftly down onto the white back of the photograph that lay on an open newspaper, placing the photograph carefully in the center of the black page, pressing down firmly with the side of his fist so that the rubber cement oozed from the sides, and rubbing the sticky wet cement up and down with a finger until little sticky rubbery balls were formed, which could be brushed from the page.

It was about this time that Edwin was given a Viewmaster. I myself, I must confess, never cared for those gaudy and unconvincing views. But Edwin would spend hours staring at shiny three-dimensional scenes from Cave of the Winds: Colorado, or Glacier National Park: Montana, or Desert Scenes: Arizona, or Woody Woodpecker in The Pony Express Ride. He rather enjoyed closing first one eye and then the other, in order to see the slight difference between the two nearly identical pictures — the sole result of a patient explanation by Mr. Mullhouse of the principle of three-dimensionality, during which Edwin had nodded in an enthusiastic hypocrisy of comprehension. He also enjoyed holding up the round, notched reels to a light or window, where he studied them without the machine, in two dimensions.

Comic books, cameras, photographs, Viewmaster reels — such were his simple games, but what omens for the omniscient biographer!

That winter Edwin discovered icicles. Mr. Mullhouse was photographing them and they grew everywhere. Dressed in a new blue snowsuit and a new blue hat with furlined earflaps and a chinstrap that clicked shut at the back of his jaw, Edwin tramped about the yard in search of icicles. A thick jagged icicle came out of the drain; medium-sized icicles hung miles overhead, under the roof; miniature icicles grew on the branches of the hedge and the twigs of the peach trees. There were icicles under the kitchen windowledge, icicles on the white swing, icicles under the roof of the chicken coop; and rows of icicles, like transparent clothespins, hung from the clothestree ropes. One bush in front of the house was abloom with icicle-flowers, hanging in bright transparent clusters. Edwin wanted to dig up the icicle-bush and put it in the refrigerator with the ice cubes, where it would never melt away, but Mr. Mullhouse said he was damned if he was going to serve flowers in the gin. Besides, he would take its picture, which amounted to the same thing; and there is in fact a photograph of the icicle bush showing Edwin bent over as if to sniff a flower (the boot-toe in the left-hand corner is mine). But Edwin wanted the icicle itself — a statement that sounds rather like an epitaph.

He was well aware of the mortality of icicles, for when the sun shone like a summer sun out of the rich blue winter sky he could see the icicles dripping down from the kitchen windowledge onto the brilliant white shingles, leaving ragged gleaming lines of wetness, he could see the icicles dripping from the clothestree ropes and the bars of the icy swingframe, he could see the icicles dripping from the gray back steps and the gutters of the garage and the roof of the chicken coop, and if he listened closely he could hear the dripping of a thousand icicles, splashing onto the woodpile under the kitchen window, splashing onto the cement mound that held up the clothestree pole, falling softly onto the snow and making black pitmarks, he could hear the music of a Peter-and-the Wolf orchestra of icicles, icicle flutes and icicle oboes, icicle violins and icicle bassoons: a fragile glittering transparent world of icicles, melting, falling, dissolving, dripping away. On the shady side of the house the icicles hung hard and frozen, but they were less lovely than the sunny icicles, shining with dissolution.

Pierced by the sadness of icicles, Edwin determined to rescue one and keep it forever. Searching carefully among the icicles of the steps, the swing, the clothestree, the chicken coop, the bushes, the windowledge, and even the shining peach trees, at last he found a perfect icicle, round and clear and tapering to a perfect point; and breaking it carefully at the root he hurried inside and placed it in the freezer between the icecube trays, warning his mother and father never to touch it and receiving their solemn promises. Day after day, twice a day, Edwin opened the freezer door to check his icicle; it lay on its side in bright perfection. One day he noticed with horror that his icicle was sticking to the icy bottom. Very carefully he worked it loose, leaving only a faint flaw, and quickly added a piece of waxpaper for his icicle to rest upon. Thereafter everything was perfect.

But it snowed again. For three days and three nights the sky was a rippling curtain of snow while the wind howled and the attic made creaking sounds; the flames in the fireplace leaped crazily, blown by the wind. On the fourth day the sun came out. Edwin’s back yard was smooth and white and shining, though the front yard was pockmarked with dogtracks and spotted here and there with yellow stains. After the snowplows came, the snow was heaped higher than Edwin on both sides of Benjamin Street. The world was full of snow and icicles; there was more snow than earth, more snow than air. Mr. Mullhouse had finished with icicles and had begun to photograph snowy hydrants and snowy cars; he was especially fond of snow heaped over shiny fenders, with one corner of a license plate sticking out. Edwin and I made snowforts and shouted at the yellow snowplow with its tilted sneer. There was snow wherever you looked, day after day; day after day the pale sun shone helplessly on a white world. One day Mrs. Mullhouse said: “Edwin, do you still want that old icicle?” and Edwin said: “No, I’ll get a better one later.” “Thank God,” said Mrs. Mullhouse, turning on the hot water, “I was afraid to breathe in there.” That afternoon we climbed snow mountains and looked for buried hydrants in the snow. The days grew cold and gray, and we played inside, making puzzles on the oval table near the couch or playing with the Erector set in Edwin’s room. Then it rained, turning the snow to slush, and a false spring followed, melting all the snow. And again it snowed, and again the sun came out.

One day Mr. Mullhouse took Edwin and me on a long bus-ride to a dark stone building. In a vast brown room that reminded me of the waiting room at the railroad station, except that you couldn’t make a sound, books in brown bookcases rose to the ceiling, row on row. There was a special room for children, where on long brown tables large white books lay open or stood on end. At first Edwin failed to understand that he could take as many as he liked: he thought he had to buy them, as in a toy store; but when he understood, he began feverishly choosing book after book, placing them in a towering pile at one corner of a table, until Mr. Mullhouse said that he should take only six and come back next week for more. Edwin finally chose seven, and as we rode home in the bus he read aloud eagerly, making up everything.