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

One afternoon after walking home from school with Edwin, I changed into my playclothes and discovered to my annoyance that I had to perform for mama a number of lengthy, disagreeable, and unnecessary tasks. At last I hurried across the back yard to Edwin’s. I rapped; no one answered; and as usual I let myself in. As I passed through the kitchen I heard through the open basement door Mrs. Mullhouse telling Karen to pass the clothespins (in the winter Mrs. Mullhouse dried her wash on clotheslines strung across the cellar). I passed through the living room, climbed the carpeted stairs, and came to Edwin’s closed door, on which I vigorously knocked. There followed a longish pause, broken by faint movements. Then “Come in,” said Edwin, without enthusiasm, and I opened the door.

Edwin was seated on the near side of his bed with his back to me, looking at me over his left shoulder. On the bedspread before him lay the top of a familiar picture puzzle (Queen of the Seas. Over 375 Pieces) showing a three-master with puffed white sails plunging on dark blue water under a light blue sky. Beside him stood the green folding table, which held in its center an open Parcheesi board. On the board lay two red dice with white spots, one blue dice-box, two red pieces on the opening red space, one red piece on a nearby white space, one red piece on a white space on the other side of the board, one yellow piece on the opening yellow space, and three yellow pieces waiting to begin. To the right of the Parcheesi board lay the gray bottom of a puzzle box filled with a jumble of pieces on which could be seen an occasional bit of light blue sky, an occasional bit of dark blue sea. To the left of the Parcheesi board lay the black plastic Viewmaster and a scattering of slides in blue-and-white jackets. On the bed beneath the map of the United States were several rows of overlapping comic books; on the top rim of one of the two long pillows lay a black plastic dart with a pink rubber tip. On the far side of the bed sat a shoebox filled with marbles. On the far side of Edwin’s bed sat Arnold Hasselstrom.

“Oh,” said Edwin, lifting the top of the puzzle box from the bed and revealing, beside a brown leather sheath, a shiny hunting knife with a wavy black handle, “it’s only Jeffrey.”

SO BEGAN THE ILL-STARRED FRIENDSHIP between Arnold Hasselstrom, that disobedient boy, and obedient Edwin. Opposites, they say, attract, and I would let it go at that if it were not for my suspicion that a more subtle combination of forces was here in operation. Unlike Arnold Hasselstrom, Edwin was incapable of saying “no” to a teacher, of openly and flagrantly disobeying authority — though perhaps “incapable” is a misleading word, since defiance would never have occurred to him. Obeying the sometimes unpleasant commands of grownups was a fact of life for Edwin, like being thin. And just as thinness had something to be said for it, although sometimes he longed for physical strength, so obedience was not without its advantages, although sometimes he may have longed for an impossible absolute freedom. But freedom was precisely the boon of obedience. Arnold Hasselstrom, who refused to obey commands that he disliked, was continually clashing with grownups; he had less freedom than anyone I have ever known, for he was always staying after school, going to the principal’s office, losing privileges, and in general being watched and criticized and scolded and hounded by a whole army of suspicious adults. Edwin, who did whatever he was told, was left pretty much to his own devices. In this sense his obedience was perhaps not entirely virtuous, and resembled, in fact, nothing so much as disobedience. For the goal of disobedience is freedom; but the goal of Edwin’s obedience was likewise freedom. And so although it is true that Edwin was an obedient boy, the very opposite of an Arnold Hasselstrom, still there was something cunning, something rebellious, something disobedient about his obedience.

They were soon fast friends. Or at any rate Arnold Hasselstrom became a frequent visitor at Edwin’s, not only after school but on the weekends as well. My concern over possible bad influences made me anxious to be present at these meetings, despite the sense of strain I could not help noticing when all three of us were together. Let me say it at once: Arnold Hasselstrom did not like me. I, for my part, returned his feeling a hundredfold. Yes, I hated Arnold Hasselstrom: hated his dark humorless visage, his narrow almond eyes, his large brown hands that seemed awkward except when they were formed into fists; hated his habit of looking at me with an intense lack of expression that suggested to me the deliberate suppression of a sneer; hated above all his presence in Edwin’s house. To my dismay, Mrs. Mullhouse took an immediate liking to him, referring to him first as “that quiet boy” and later as “that poor boy”—this last a reference to the fact that he lived with his grandmother, his mother being dead and his father (according to the newspapers, a sheet-metal worker and hunting enthusiast) having disappeared. He for his part seemed to take a fancy to Mrs. Mullhouse, and often when I entered the kitchen I would find him sitting at the table watching her load wet clothes from the washing machine into a wicker basket while Karen tried to unclench a playful fist that he had made especially for her. He was quite a hit with Karen, whom Edwin increasingly ignored; she was delighted by a certain trick he had of placing his palms together with the fingers spread, bending down the two middle fingers, pivoting his hands around those two fingers, and at last wiggling the two middle fingers back and forth on opposite sides of his interlocked hands. He performed this trick grimly, without a smile; but at these moments his intense lack of expression suggested the deliberate suppression of a smile. The pleasure he took in the company of Mrs. Mullhouse and Karen did not, however, extend to the company of Dr. Mullhouse, whose seriousness and whimsy both made him ill at ease. Seriousness for Arnold Hasselstrom was always a prelude to punishment; humor was a form of ridicule. Indeed he mistrusted all speech, which in his experience was a form of attack consisting of commands, criticisms, refusals, penalties, scoldings, challenges, insults, curses. Words, for Arnold Hasselstrom, were the sonic equivalents of blows.

And so he spoke very little to Edwin, in bursts of three or four words; his dark silence thundered in the room, drowning all talk. We played Parcheesi until I was bored to tears. Arnold Hasselstrom was fascinated by the game, and once when Edwin tried to teach him Monopoly, to Edwin’s great embarrassment he proved unable or unwilling to learn. I noticed with distaste that Edwin quickly adopted Arnold Hasselstrom’s method of shaking the dice. His own method was a long humorous excited shake of fist or dice-box accompanied by a hum or prayer, a shake from which the dice came spilling unexpectedly and usually from a great height, so that they bounced and danced and sometimes fell onto the floor; while Arnold Hasselstrom’s method was a short plain serious shake, which ended with the dice rolling down the broad slope of his extended fingers, whose tips touched the board. And I noticed how, in order not to seem boastful, Edwin imitated Arnold Hasselstrom’s way of counting out each space as he moved a piece, instead of adding up the numbers in his head and moving instantly to the proper space.

Parcheesi was not their only pastime. It was Arnold Hasselstrom who inspired in Edwin a passion for bubblegum cards. One day he spread out on Edwin’s bed five long rows of his favorite cards. They had titles like Trapped, Village Attack, Bombs on Target, Dry Landing, Tanks Are Coming, The Enemy Falls, Push to Pusan, Night Bombardment, Torpedo Away, Red Sniper. I have one before me now, called They Won’t Stop. It shows a crowd of advancing soldiers carrying long rifles with bayonets; in the center a shirtless man leaps up in the air as three parallel white lines strike him in the chest. At the top of the picture is an explosion colored brown, red, and yellow. Three men on the left are bent over, and a man is lying on the ground with blood all over his arm. On the back of the card (“No. 28 in a Series of 152”) are the words: