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

aaaaa (crying)

nnnnn (complaining)

kkkkk (giggling)

ggggg (giggling)

cheeeooo (sneezing)

hp hp hp (hiccuping)

haaaooo (yawning)

tatata (singing)

fsssss (drooling)

eeeee (screaming; singing)

b-b-b-b-b (unknown)

By six months (I was a year old and walking) Edwin had achieved more elaborate combinations:

kakooka

pshhh

dam dam dam

chfff (an early version of Jeffrey?)

keeee (accompanied by a grin and flapping hands)

kfffk

dknnnnz

shksp-p-p-p

kaloo

kalay

aaaaaeeeee (singing)

Some of his bolder adventures in the realm of sound were later suppressed by the polite requirements of civilized noise. I refer not so much to his intricate belches and exquisite winds as to his astonishing salivary achievements. How I long to convey to the adult reader his breathtaking combinations of the buzz and drool, his dribbles and drizzles, his bubbles and burbles — whole salivary sonatas enhanced by gushing crescendos and hissing fortissimi, gurgling glissandi and trickling pianissimi, streaming prestissimos, spouting arpeggios, those slurps and slops, those drips and drops, those spluttering splattering splurts of sputum and drippy splish-splashings of melodious spittle. Adult speech, Edwin used to say, is ridiculously exclusive.

The questing biographer gazes with fondness upon this slightly damp picture of brighteyed baby Edwin sporting among sounds, a happy porpoise, untouched by purpose, diving blissfully in the moneybins of language like a latterday Scrooge McDuck. Surely Edwin’s later and highly sophisticated delight in language may be traced back to these early months, when sound was not yet a substitute for things but rather a thing itself, the gayest of his toys: a toy that could be rolled and bounced and licked and swallowed and twisted into a thousand delightful shapes. In general, language for little Edwin combined the virtues of rubber dogs, rattles, and breasts. Later Edwin tried to recapture by a variety of methods this early experience of what I shall call the thingness of speech. Thus, extracting from the mahogany bookcase a fat volume which he said was written in Hebrew, he would open to the first page and begin reading very slowly in a voice as solemn and deep as possible:

Tiurf eht dna ecneidebosid tsrif snam fo.

Etsat latrom esohw eert neddibrof taht fo.

Eow—

losing control at “neddibrof,” gaining it at “taht fo,” and sputtering into helpless laughter at “eow,” which he pronounced in imitation of a rocket in a war movie: eeeeeeowwwww. And he would torment his mother, who was concerned for her daughter’s intellectual development, by speaking to eighteen-month-old Karen for hours on end in carefully enunciated nonsense syllables, to which Karen would respond as in a secret code in solemn or laughing nonsense noises of her own.

I should like to end this noisy reminiscence, which began so quietly, with a description of Edwin at his pre-language prime, at the age of six months. Dressed in a red t-shirt and baggy underpants, he is seated in the center of his playpen with his back to the fireplace, facing the inner front door (a glass door covered with venetian blinds and opening into a little front hall full of boots and umbrellas). To his right looms the piano, to his left stands the little oval table before the empty couch, over which one can see the top of the mahogany bookcase and the row of balusters disappearing diagonally into the ceiling. The narrow rugless passage between the couch and staircase leads to the open doorway of the vast invisible kitchen behind Edwin, where Mrs. Mullhouse is making clinking and whooshing noises. I am seated between the playpen and the piano on the dark brown rug with its dark green leaves, facing Edwin’s right profile. Through a brilliant sliver of window running along a venetian blind, I can see gleaming snowdrifts and a powder of blown snow under a blue sky. Inside it is summer. Through the upward slanting blinds of the room’s four windows, bright light pours. Bright light pours around the edges of the blinds, bright light streams from the kitchen archway, bright light presses against the house and passes through the icecold glass into the sudden warmth of the living room where, unstiffening, it glows and tingles and stretches and expands and fills the whole room until the frail walls are ready to burst with the pressure of the morning. The bright light polishes the corners of the mahogany bookcase, waxes the brass base of the piano lamp, fills a glass picture-frame brimful of shine so that the picture underneath is invisible. On the mantelpiece a large oystershell shows its rainbows. Reflections of bright water in transparent vases lie pale green and blue on the ceiling, and tremble as a car passes with clinking chains. An odor of tobacco lingers in the air and is traceable to a curving pipe lying in a deep ashtray on a lamp-table to the right of the inner front door, beside a brown armchair with white lace doilies over its shiny arms and a sagging cushion whose depression seems to hold an invisible Mr. Mullhouse. To the left of the door stands a tall carved chest whose top can open to receive shiny black discs. As I sit dreaming of the day when I shall be tall enough to look into the top, for even biographers dream, a sound seems to issue from the magic chest. The light buzzing or humming grows louder, as if a flock of locusts were approaching. Edwin grins suddenly, catching my attention; the sound leaps from the box to him, changing with his grin from nnnnnn to eeeeee. The eeeeee grows louder and switches to a giggling kkkkkk; bits of saliva appear at the edges of Edwin’s lips; he clenches and unclenches his little fists. He is tuning up for a soundfest. Silence, as Edwin used to say, puh-lee-az! A hum begins again, accompanied now by a plopping or flopping or flapping sound made by his fingers plucking his lower lip (a trick he learned from me). The plopping continues steadily against a changing background of nnnnnn, aaaaaa, eeeeee as he reaches a new theme, a series of sputtering explosions produced by the insertion of his tongue between his lips. The explosions lead to a series of loud clucks, quickly transformed into spluttering p’s; streams of saliva pour down, brightening his chin, darkening his t-shirt. The sounds become wetter and drop to a gurgle or gargle, rise suddenly to another grinning eeeeee which changes in pitch: eeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEE. He drops to a long pshhhhhhhhh, thinking. His little fists clench and unclench, his t-shirt is sopping, he raises his eyes to the ceiling and at last bursts into song:

keeeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaaa

keeeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaaa

keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

koooooooooooo aaaaaaaaaa

koooooooooooo aaaaaaaaaa

koooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The astute reader does not need to be told that Edwin has just composed his first poem. (Later he eschewed the blaze of improvisation for the steady warmth of patient toil.) His voice becomes louder, and rounding his lips he passes on to a rapturous French yyyyyyyyyyyy. The rich yowl rises to a magnificent piercing EEEEEEEEEEEE as Mrs. Mullhouse appears in the kitchen doorway. She holds a white dishtowel in her dripping hands. Her nostrils are dilated, her lips tense, her eyes filled with terror. Facing the other way, Edwin sings on, blissful, beslobbered, indulgent, exultant, indifferent.

MY HAND