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

Our third visit to Penn was more successful by far; little did we realize that it would be our last. The next week Mrs. Penn called to say that Penn was “indisposed,” which I took to mean “indisposed to see anyone.” The very next day, however, she called again, inviting us for the evening. Mrs. Mullhouse fretted and made faces but at Edwin’s earnest entreaty finally agreed to go; it was the end of August, Kindergarten was only ten days away, and perhaps she thought that school would put an end to the Penn foolishness. In a way she proved right. But that evening Penn was in wonderful form. Edwin and I used to have a joke about Penn: we imagined him improving steadily as the night wore on, until at about 3 A.M. he became the most civilized person on the face of the earth. At 7 P.M. that evening he was well on his way. The cartoon wall, undiluted by sunlight, glowed in the full splendor of its lamps, and Penn himself, wearing a bright red shirt with white buttons, seemed positively to glow. For the first time since we had known him he asked us about ourselves. Edwin declared that he was going to write a book. It was the first I had heard of it, and I think I would have been a trifle hurt if I hadn’t suspected him of inventing his future on the spot. What else could you do, faced with that blazing wall? I myself announced with a chuckle that in that case I was going to write a book about Edwin. The ways of fate, Edwin once said, leaving the sentence unfinished; and I can see why. The ways of fate … At any rate, Penn then asked us if there was anything we should like to see; and Edwin expressing an ardent interest in EDWARD PENN’S COMICS AND STORIES, Penn brought out a whole drawerful of pads and proceeded to flip and explain, accompanying several with an elaborate series of sound effects, including a whale’s hearty laugh and the delicate sneeze of an eel. Later he told us about his early life: the endless series of white hospital beds, the long hours with nothing to do, the early passion for sketching, and the blossoming of his special talent under the skilled eye of a neurosurgeon whose brilliant cartoons of hospital life had appeared in nationwide magazines. The three stamps, when they came, produced this time a singular effect. Reaching behind the chest of drawers, Penn brought forth a red broom-handle with a brass ring at one end, and climbing up on the metal table he bumped the ceiling three times. Then leaping nimbly down — yes, actually leaping down — he proceeded to march highsteppingly up and down in front of the cartoon wall, holding the broom handle like a flute and emitting distinctly flutelike sounds. This sudden display of boyish humor endeared Penn to Edwin and me forever, allowing us to forgive, finally, his cruel turnabout. For if we never saw him again after that night, it was because Penn never was in the mood for another visit. Evidently he was a boy of sudden passions and sudden coldnesses, and perhaps he simply closed to us, forever, after that night; but sometimes I wonder whether he feared the tremendous flow of energy that is generated by a vital friendship, and hoped by a violent act of severance to save himself for his art. So that perhaps he was capable of true friendship after all, but sacrificed it on the altar of a higher purpose. Edwin called daily for nearly a month, and each time Mrs. Penn said the same thing: he was indisposed. Finally Edwin became caught up in preparations for Halloween and simply stopped trying. He never asked Mrs. Mullhouse to call again, nor did Mrs. Penn call herself. As for me, I felt from the beginning that the vital exchange should be between Edwin and Penn; I simply came along for the ride, a smiling intermediary, watching like a hawk. By Christmas Penn was little more than a summer dream. One day in the Middle Years Edwin and I took a long walk and found his house, but the Penns were no longer living there. Through a dusty cellar window we saw that the curtains had been taken down and the walls painted brick red. A shiny green pingpong table stood in the center of the old den, and in place of the chest of drawers there now stood a little blue stepladder, three steps high, with an orange paddle lying on top, leaning on a bright white pingpong ball.

When we left Penn that evening he accompanied us to the foot of the stairs. The visit had clearly tired him; tiny drops traced an outline over each sharp eyebrow, and at the side of his neck a pulse beat visibly. Under both eyes lay shadows like faint bruises. He was not reluctant, this time, to see us go. Indeed he did not repeat his former invitation to come again. Did he know already that he would never see us again? Possibly. More likely he was simply thinking of his work: of the night, already deprived of two fine hours, racing toward conclusion; of his exhaustion and agitation, which would prevent both his working well and his sleeping at all; of the empty pages yearning to be filled; of new maps, new universes; of the real world waiting to reclaim him after his restless dream of Edwin and me. As we reached the top of the stairs, Mrs. Penn opened the door; the sudden brightness of the kitchen hurt my eyes. That, no doubt, explains my curious sensation as I looked back down into the darkness for a last goodbye. For Penn, like the Cheshire Cat, seemed to have faded almost completely away; and I saw in that darkness only the vertical row of white buttons on his shirtfront, glowing like miniature moons, and the lone button of a single cuff, raised under an invisible wave.

Ah, Edward Penn, where are you now?

EVERYONE SEES THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY, said Edwin, but nightmares are pretty much the same. It is to a recent nightmare that I owe the following description of Franklin Pierce Elementary School. A long brown high-ceilinged corridor stretched endlessly into the distance. The floor was covered with several inches of water that soaked into my socks and pantscuffs. Children were standing in rows on both sides of me with their faces pressed against the walls. I advanced eagerly but with great difficulty, as if against a tide, and at last the row of children on my right was broken by a door. I looked in and saw a vast room filled above the level of the distant windowsills with abandoned brown desks. The desks lay twisted among one another in a dark jumble, and as I crawled painfully over them on my way to the far windows my hands and knees became covered with a sticky black substance. Several desks lay upside down on the top of the pile with their black metal bases thrust up and sharp silver screws sticking out. I was trying to get to the windows but a hill of desks rose in front of me and as I tried to crawl over it they kept on falling and tumbling toward me like the boulders in a movie landslide, clattering down at me and bouncing over me as I pushed my head and arms into dark crevices for protection. Somewhere at the side of the room was a space I had not noticed, and there a tall lady with white hair walked along a blackboard, drawing wavy musical staves with a wire chalk-holder that held five pieces of shrieking chalk whose ends kept shattering in white chalk-clouds. I was trying to seat myself at a tilted desk at the top of the pile but my leg was caught and I had to twist it back and forth very carefully as if I were removing a Tinker Toy stick from a Tinker Toy wheel. At last I worked it loose and squeezed myself into the desk, which was tilted forward and to one side so that I had to grip the top tightly to keep from falling. The dark surface was pockmarked with little grooves that were filled with ink or grime, and at one end of the empty pencil trough sat a round black inkwell whose top was flush with the surface. I was trying to get the desk open but it seemed to be stuck, and as I tugged and pulled, always in danger of tipping over and falling onto the sharp screws and edges below, the tall lady with white hair stood with her arms folded across her chest, tapping her foot and watching me. And as I tugged and pulled I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was to open that desk and see what was inside, and yet I had to because the tall lady was watching me, and as I tugged and pulled I saw oozing from under the top a gray rubbery substance like rubber cement. The lady with white hair was watching me, she was tapping her foot faster and faster and at last began to come toward me, I was sitting in a vast windowless room filled with neat rows of empty desks, outside wailed a distant train, and as a white-haired man bent over me the top of the desk came suddenly open though still joined to the bottom by long sticky strands of rubber cement, and inside I saw, lying among yellow-edged pencil shavings and pieces of crumpled tissue paper clotted with mucus, a little baby lying with a blanket up to its chin, its face sheeted with gleaming blood or slime.