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

SO BEGAN THE FIFTH GRADE, Edwin’s last. And suddenly, as if resentful of Edwin’s recent affection for his old friend, his jealous book began to punish him cruelly, teasing him and tormenting him and mocking him and making him suffer such black despair, such crimson agony, as Rose Dorn had never inspired. Oh, she was a fiend out of hell, that book, a wicked fairy, an evil stepmother with a basket of poisoned apples; and he was so deeply in love, so deathly in love, that I feared for his health as I never had before.

His mysterious internal pains began in late September: he would walk to school stooped over slightly, holding one hand pressed against his stomach. Fits of violent vomiting soon developed which kept him out of school for ten days. His mother’s usual intense concern developed this time into something more serious: she began to suffer from sudden headaches, during which she would sit with a fist pressed against her wrinkled forehead. Dr. Blumenthal put Edwin on a special diet that seemed to work, for the vomiting stopped and the pains did not return; but for weeks Edwin’s tongue was coated with white, and he began to be persistently troubled by his bowels. All this I learned in great detail from Mrs. Mullhouse, who did not realize that she was imitating Mrs. Penn. Attacks of diarrhea alternated with attacks of constipation that sometimes lasted five days; severe attacks of indigestion left him prostrate and feverish. In addition to his other troubles, a urinalysis revealed an excess of sugar in his blood, as if his very corpuscles were degenerating. He was forbidden all sweets and forced to make do with Saccharine, which upset his stomach; and once a month he was required to perform the strange ritual of chewing on a special cube of wax, spitting repeatedly into a small vial, and presenting this sample of his saliva to Dr. Mullhouse, who mailed it away for analysis. Violent headaches woke him at night, and one day in class I saw him rise with everyone else at the recess bell and suddenly grip the edges of his desk, squeezing his eyes shut and bowing his head — the first of his dizzy spells.

But these violent and occasional afflictions caused him less suffering, I think, than the mild and unvarying underlying condition of intense nervous irritability. Bright light affected his eyes like flung sand; all noise tormented him. He said he was dying from lack of sleep because the attic made creaking sounds and the toilet gurgled all night long. Sudden sounds shattered him: we were standing on line one day, waiting to be let inside, when Edwin suddenly whirled around, his face filled with terror, because some clumsy fool had dropped a pile of books. Even his sense of touch underwent a change: he could not bear to handle grimy pennies or to run his fingertips along a dusty surface, for grime and dust affected his sense of touch the way the prongs of a fork scraped along a plate affected his sense of hearing. His very vision seemed to become infected by the general germ, for more than once as we passed some familiar and perfectly innocent mailbox or fire hydrant, Edwin expressed a sudden, violent revulsion, as if we had come upon the mountainous droppings of some enormous beast. Sometimes, leaning over a book in class, he would sit up suddenly with a startled expression on his face, having mistaken some spot in his eye for a crawling bug.

But even his nervous irritability was as nothing compared to the despair of spirit that emanated from him like an odor. In the Middle Years, Edwin once expressed a fondness for the cartoon fellow who walks alone under his personal raincloud, which rains only on him in a beaming world — an image that might serve as Edwin’s emblem during these black, bleak months. For the truth of the matter was simply that he could no longer progress with his book. This I gathered not merely from the stray moans and railings that had begun quietly in September and had swelled to a harsh sforzando by the end of October but also from the now distressing fact of his increased availability. No longer did he hurry upstairs when he arrived home from school, but lingered pitiably in the living room to talk with his mother or me. Meekly he asked Karen if she wanted to do a puzzle. He begged Mrs. Mullhouse to let him help with dinner and he asked me if he could see my photographs. He was feverishy impatient for the daily return of his father, for whom he fetched the black moccasins and chose a pipe from the metal rack. And now his earlier selfishness began to seem to me a strength he had lost; it was as if he were so weak that he could only be solicitous. Indeed the whole question of strength and weakness, in regard to Edwin, caused me no end of speculation. For if strength was the opposite of his present need for distraction, was it not also the opposite of his former grim obsession, which had about it some touch of desperation and fear? Was not strength rather calmness and relaxation, such as Edwin had experienced briefly after reaching that deceptive “point”? Or had his calmness been only a pleasant vacation in the midst of the long turmoil of his task? And was that “point” perhaps a deliberate illusion, imposed by some force within him that knew he must rest in order to gather his energies for yet sterner efforts? And was it possible that effort and struggle were themselves mere forms of weakness? And is it possible that a work of art is born not of strength but of weakness, of weakness trying to become strength, of weakness brought to such a pitch of frenzy that it becomes strength? But I fear this sudden gust of question marks has blown the reader’s patience away; and I hasten to return to the milder air of periods and semicolons.

Unfortunately for the more romantic members of my readership, Edwin’s heartbreaking physical condition was accompanied by a rather less endearing mental condition. A spirit of harsh contradiction began to prevail in him. He made cutting remarks about everyone and everything: he mocked little children, he railed at dogs, he lashed out against the wind. If as we drove to school some bright October morning I happened to make an innocent remark to Karen such as “Pretty nice day,” Edwin would say snappishly: “I hate nice days,” or “My Aunt Fanny,” or “Stupid sun. Makes me sick.” He seemed moderately unmiserable only on drizzly miserable mornings, when the gray light soothed his eyes and the general bleakness seemed a fitting expression of his mood; though even then, if I said anything at all, he would reply in a spirit of mockery and contempt. On the playground he liked to stand alone with one foot raised heel-first against the bricks, his hands in his pockets and his books in a pile beside him, while he surveyed the crowded playground with an exaggerated sneer. There were times, I swear, when he looked almost tough. Once as we were walking toward the back, a little bespectacled third-grader bumped into him accidentally, and Edwin, like a pale thin Arnold Hasselstrom, whirled around with clenched fists, saying: “Watch it, kid.” The little fellow, himself an Edwin, could barely hold back his tears.

It was about this time that curse-words began to make an appearance in my friend’s shocked vocabulary. “Hell” and “damn” were constantly on his lips, and on at least two occasions he actually used words so foul that I cannot, I will not allow them to besmirch this biography. In class he continued to receive 100’s and A’s, for by now good schoolwork was an unbreakable habit, but he was by no means a model student, and on his first report card Mrs. Kaplan gave him the first bad mark in behavior of his career. At times I thought of him as a frail hoodlum. At times, indeed, I was almost afraid of him.

It is now my unpleasant duty to report an instance of deliberate cruelty on the part of gentle Edwin, which the spirit of honesty forbids me to suppress. It was a bright, chill morning in early November. Edwin had been unusually snappish as we rode to school, muttering at the weather and sneering at happy little groups of first-graders. As we entered the playground, Billy Duda, passing with a group of younger friends, looked over at us and made a vulgar noise. Edwin glared at him with hatred but said nothing. As we stood on line, waiting for the doors to open, I overheard Mario Antonio say something unpleasant to Len Laska about Billy Duda. “Yeah,” said Edwin immediately, in his toughest voice, “he’s always askin’ furt. Somebody oughta give it a him.” Len Laska never cared for Edwin, but Mario Antonio and Edwin had retained for one another a kind of distant respect. Mario said: “What’d that — do now?” “Aw,” said Edwin, “he’s always botherin’ me. We oughta kill ’um.” At that moment Billy Duda, standing out of earshot at the front of the line, made a series of grotesque girlish noises, and laughed his loud unpleasant laugh. Mario stood still, listening without expression; then turning his head to one side, he spat onto the tar. “The saft,” he said, which for the edification of the genteel I translate: “This afternoon.”