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

Closing the door softly behind me, I walked on tiptoe over the blue linoleum with its white leaves and stepped onto the bright red rug before Edwin’s bed. His dark blue slipper-socks with the soft leather soles lay crumpled at one side, revealing part of a white Indian and part of a white horse. On a brown chair behind his head stood a solitary glass of water, its surface dulled with dust. The pale hand over his chest, like his armor of books, rose and fell softly as he breathed. As I stood looking down on him, the very picture of tranquillity, the memory of our first meeting stirred in me, and I could not help thinking that his appearance had improved. The early plumpness had stretched into thinness, as if he consisted of a single lump of modeling clay that had been pulled slowly by invisible fingers; but his features still retained the roundness, almost the chubbiness of his babyhood. Indeed that little round nose and little full-lipped mouth would remain with him to the end, clashing with his slender neck and tapered fingers, as if Nature had not been able to make up her mind. As I gazed on him thus, remembering old times and scenes, a sudden fancy took me. Bending quietly over him, I stretched my mouth into a monster’s mouth, I screwed up my nose into a monster’s nose, I stared ferociously and held up my hands like claws, waiting patiently for the pale eyelids, already trembling, to open slowly over the dark shining eyes.

THAT SPRING EDWIN INVENTED A GAME. I shall record it here, not for its own sake but because of its connection, as it seems to me, with his later delight in the art of artifice, and more immediately with a small, inconspicuous, but tremendously important event that took place in my presence on the occasion of Edwin’s fifth birthday.

Until the black Studebaker appeared, in the Middle Years, Mrs. Mullhouse shopped at the red grocery at the top of Robin Hill Road; but once a week she rode with mama to the big glass supermarket in the center of town, accompanied by myself and Edwin. He looked forward to these weekly shopping trips with an eagerness bordering on frenzy, and not simply for the sake of the peanut machines, not simply for the sake of the silver carriages, not simply for the sake of the rows of cold cereal stretching into the distance and towering overhead in a blaze of color and a promise of masks or prizes: he looked forward to the trips also for the sake of the numbers.

He had noticed them on his first visit, sitting under the boxes in a long metal band, but it was not until his second visit that he discovered they could be moved with a finger. Mrs. Mullhouse had forbidden him to remove anything from the shelves, but the numbers were not on the shelves and he did not remove them. The shiny white squares, each with its shiny red numeral, slid smoothly along the metal band, bumping into the next numbers and carrying them neatly along. Sometimes he could push as many as six together before hitting a snag. His goal was to push all the numbers down to the end, where they formed a long beautiful number. One day as he was working his way past the cookies into the canned fruit, a man in a white apron seized his arm. After that, Mrs. Mullhouse forbade him to slide the numbers. But she did not forbid him to move the numbers in such a way that they seemed never to have been moved at all; and so, carefully and secretly, in dread of the men in white aprons and with a dizzy sense of excitement, Edwin pushed the 7 of 27 against the 3 of 31 to form 731 and the 1 of 731 against the 2 of 29 to form 129, leaving 73 in place of the original 31, and then he pushed the 9 of 129 against the 2 of 23 to form 923, leaving 12 in place of the original 29, and so on, now working among the sad cans of asparagus and yellow beans, now among the gay boxes of detergent, looking carefully both ways before each change and sometimes requesting me to guard one end of the aisle. At first he delighted in the most radical changes, and although at this time he was able to count with certainty only to 29 and could add and subtract only to sums of 10 and 12, nevertheless he knew that 73 was a long way from 31 and that 93 was even further away. He enjoyed watching people say “My God, seventy-three cents for a lousy box of graham crackers,” or “Hey, what’s going on here, hey, that can’t be right.” But soon he tired of such crudities, and began to concentrate on changes of two or three cents, which almost no one noticed. He was never caught, but one day he lost interest and never gave the numbers another thought.

Edwin never learned what happened to Abdul the Bulbul Amir because Mr. Mullhouse could not remember the end of the poem. He always stopped at the same place, smiling happily over the last line, and apparently quite indifferent to the fate of the hero. He called it the most magnificent piece of poetry ever to issue from the mind of man. Often that spring, on rainy afternoons, Edwin would look up from his book in the corner of the couch while I sat at the other end of the couch and Karen played with her dolls in front of the fireplace, and barely able to suppress the excitement in his voice he would ask: “Daddy, could you say Abdul the Bulbul Ah Me?” Sometimes Mr. Mullhouse would refuse, shaking his head impatiently or pleading weariness, whereupon Edwin would plunge into abysses of silent grief; but usually his father would take the pipe from his mouth, place his book over his thigh, and shift his position so that he was facing Edwin, and raising a forefinger for attention he would recite:

“The sons of the prophet are hardy and bold

And quite unaccustomed to fear.

But the bravest of all is a man, I am told,

Named Abdul the Bulbul Amir.

If you needed a man to encourage the van

Or harass the foe from the rear,

Or storm a redoubt you had only to shout

For Abdul the Bulbul Amir.

There are heroes aplenty and well known to fame

In the army that’s led by the Czar,

But the bravest of all is a man by the name

Of Ivan Skivitsky Skivar.

He could sing like Caruso both tenor and bass

And perform on the Spanish guitar.

In fact quite the cream of the Muscovite team

Was Ivan Skivitsky Skivar.

One day this bold Russian he shouldered his gun

And with his most truculent sneer

Was looking for fun when he happened to run

Into Abdul the Bulbul Amir.

Quoth the Bulbul, ‘Young man, is your life then so dull

That you wish now to end your career?

Vile infidel know, you have trod on the toe

Of Abdul the Bulbul Amir.’

Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty chibouk

And shouting, ‘Allah Akbar!’

With murderous intent he feloniously went

For Ivan Skivitsky Skivar.

They fought all that night ’neath the pale yellow moon,

The din it was heard from afar.

Vast multitudes came, so great was the fame

Of Abdul and Ivan Skivar.”

And stopping there, he would say, beaming: “The poet was very proud of that line. He got ’em both in.” Edwin had at first begged his father to continue, but Mr. Mullhouse had raised his eyebrows and turned up his palms, saying: “I wish I could remember.” Soon Edwin stopped asking, and after the recital Mr. Mullhouse would put his pipe back in his mouth, lighting it with a new silver lighter that shot out a flame, and return to his book.

Edwin’s fifth birthday was memorable in a number of ways, not the least for its avalanche of gifts. Edwin received among other things an easel and watercolors, a palisaded fort with little rubber cowboys and Indians dressed in colorful costumes who could be mounted on shiny plastic horses, a year’s subscription to Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories, and a wind-up shooting gallery with a row of moving tin ducks and a black plastic pistol that shot rubber-tipped darts. I gave him a magnificent two-volume Child’s History of the World, which he opened upside down and pretended to read eagerly for two seconds. Grandma Mullhouse baked a tall sagging cake with orange icing; when she cut into it there was a clinking sound, and several cuts later she removed from the cake a doughy teaspoon. Edwin was delighted. After the party Mrs. Mullhouse and Grandma worked in the kitchen while the rest of us retired to the living room. Mr. Mullhouse sat in his chair with his leg hooked over the side and became immersed in Edwin’s comic book while Edwin wound up the shooting gallery and watched the yellow tin ducks sailing along and dipping out of sight. After a while Edwin asked his father to say Abdul the Bulbul Ah Me, and Mr. Mullhouse gave a spirited recital, sneering truculently in the proper place and shouting “Allah Akbar!” so ferociously that Mrs. Mullhouse called from the kitchen to see if anything was the matter. After the poem Mr. Mullhouse returned to the comic book but Edwin sat very quietly on the floor, staring at the dark leaf-swirls. Karen was clapping her hands nearby in a pile of ribbons and wrapping paper and I was examining the maps in volume 2 of A Child’s History of the World. I was less distracted by Karen’s mild racket than by Edwin’s turbulent silence. Beneath that cool exterior I thought I detected a madness of excitement. I tried to catch his eye but either he cunningly avoided me or else he was wrapped in a thick fog. It was with relief and a certain thrill of presentiment that I saw Edwin rise at last to his feet, walk over to Mr. Mullhouse, and tug his father’s sleeve. “Mmmm?” said Mr. Mullhouse, not looking up. Then looking up when Edwin again tugged his sleeve he said: “Mmmm?” Edwin said: