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

A rather awkward silence followed. I sat under the Gulf of Mexico, scratching my legs, cracking my knuckles, and picking at the spread, while Edwin sat motionless in the center of his bed, his pale face colorless above his purple bathrobe, as if the blood of his cheeks had flowed into his robe. From time to time he sniffled flamboyantly. At 11:14 he suggested that we play another round of pick-up-sticks; I emphatically refused. At 11:16 he offered to give me a lead of 800; I rudely ignored him. Time passed, during which I wondered why no one suggested that we turn out the light and lie down. I was on the verge of suggesting that remedy, and indeed my lips were parted, when Edwin, annihilating a yawn, suddenly whispered: “The letter!” Springing from the bed, he began searching wildly among his shelves, muttering in his mother’s tone: “Oh where is that stupid pencil.” I had no idea what he was up to, and for a moment I had the odd sensation that he was mocking me in some elusive Edwinian way.

He found the stupid pencil on top of the chest of drawers. He found a piece of stupid paper under his stupid bed. Sitting crosslegged in the center of his bed, and placing the piece of paper on a large flat book, he began to write furiously. A few moments later he said: “How’s this?” and read softly: “To whom it may concern. I, Edwin Mullhouse, heretowith commit suicide. Yours truly, Edwin.” He looked up expectantly. I said: “Heretowith?” “Actually,” said Edwin, “I don’t like this stupid note.” He crossed it out violently and began writing again, while I cracked the knuckles of all ten fingers twice. “Listen,” he said, “how’s this. To whom it may concern. I, the undersigned, heretowith condemn myself to death by suicide at 1:06 A.M. on August 1, 1954. Goodbye, cruel world. Yours sincerely, Edwin A. Mullhouse, author of Cartoons.”

“You mean herewith, Edwin. Or hereby.”

“Wait a minute. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. To whom it may concern. I, the undersigned, heretowith blah blah blah author of Cartoons. Now listen to this, listen to this. P.S. Goodbye, life. I aspire to the condition of fiction.”

It was, I confess, the needed touch. I did my level best to persuade him that “heretowith” should be changed, and I am sorry to say that my advice was contemptuously ignored. Edwin, as I have had occasion to remark, had an unpleasant trace of vanity in him that was, no doubt, the natural green stain on the bright copper of his creative genius. As a result his final message to the world is marred by the embarrassing presence of a nonexistent word. It is really a shame. Edwin quickly copied the note onto a clean sheet of paper, and we were discussing where to put it — I was for placing it modestly on the rug beside his bed (where it finally fell), he was for fastening it to his body in some ill-defined fashion — when the sound of footsteps was audible on the stairs, and leaping up, and wildly motioning for me to crawl into my bed, Edwin dashed to the door, turned out the light, and dashed back to bed, where he lay breathing heavily in blackness.

The footsteps stopped before the line of light under the door. In a low voice Dr. Mullhouse said: “Shhh, they’re sleeping,” and his footsteps creaked away down the hall. Immediately Edwin began to snore loudly, inhaling with vulgar snorting sounds and exhaling with a whistle. At the second exhalation he exploded into giggles. In my tense agitated impressionable condition, I too exploded into giggles. The door opened, and Mrs. Mullhouse whispered angrily: “Hey you two, what did I” and suddenly she too exploded into giggles. And stepping into the room, and closing the door behind her, she began to tiptoe toward giggling Edwin, who trying in vain to suppress his mirth, burst into irregular wild ripples of giggles as slowly, slowly she stalked through darkness, until suddenly she whispered “Gotcha!” and Edwin burst into screams of wild laughter as the door opened and Dr. Mullhouse hissed: “Shhh!”

The departure of Mrs. Mullhouse was followed by some fifteen minutes of creaking footsteps, opening and closing doors, and hissing tapwater. At 11:47 by my greenly luminous watch the line of light under the door went out and a last door closed.

The room was dark but not pitch black. Beyond the closed black blinds of the double window I could see the dark hump of Edwin’s raised knees; and the dark head over the pale pillow was faintly visible beneath the vertical strips of polished black night at the edges of glass between the blinds. “Edwin,” I whispered. “Shhh,” he whispered, “they’re not asleep.” Minute after green minute I lay in black silence, listening to Edwin’s regular breathing; by 11:54 I wondered whether he had fallen asleep. Another minute, like a little life, completed its circle. And all at once, just like that, he began to chat quietly about one thing and another, saying “Remember the time?” and “Remember the day?” I, too, sweetly reminisced. It was as if we were five years old again, dear comrades rejoicing in our youthful adventures, fettered in friendship by the binding dark. Indeed I have often reflected upon the intimate quality of darkness, so different from the estranging day; and perhaps the reason is this, that with the fading of objects we lose our faith in the solidity of objects, so that a great dripping and melting takes place, stone flows into stone as mind into mind, our bodies themselves melt and drip away, and in the all-dissolving and annihilating dark, the daylit multiverse becomes a cozy universe at last. Some such sensation, short of thought, flowed in me as we softly spoke; oceans of green time flowed; and it was with a rude jolt that I heard Edwin suddenly ask: “What time is it?” It was 12:29 by my glowing dial, and Edwin whispered: “They’re asleep now.”

With a dark swish he flung the covers back. Rising darkly, he made his soft way across the room to the black chest of drawers, where he kneeled darkly five feet from my straining eyes. Slowly and creakily he pulled out the heavy bottom drawer. For a while he groped inside. Then slowly removing two black objects, and carefully pushing in the drawer, he returned to his bed and sat down softly. “Jeffrey,” he whispered. “Jeffrey.” With a dark swish I flung the covers back.

I sat down close to him in the middle of the bed. Sitting in Indian fashion, we faced one another nearly knee to knee. In the imperfect darkness I was able to distinguish his features faintly. “Hey,” he whispered, “how do you work this thing?” and handed me the gun and clip. “Careful,” he whispered. And although I had never held a real gun in my hands before, it seemed a mere matter of instinct to slip the loaded clip into the hollow handle. A dim memory from an old movie stirred; with some difficulty I removed the clip and examined the gun with my fingertips. I found the safety and quickly discovered its relation to the trigger. Setting it, and explaining the mechanism to Edwin, I was about to push the clip back into the handle when Edwin thrust his handkerchief at me, whispering: “Fingerprints.” For a moment I did not understand. Then with a wild, forlorn feeling, with a feeling of doom, of farce, of unspeakable melancholy, I realized that he wished to prevent a grotesque contingency. Carefully I wiped the clip and gun and then reloaded without touching metal. For indeed I had no desire that his suicide should be mistaken for murder. I then wrapped the gun in the handkerchief, preparatory to handing it back to Edwin; and only then, dear reader, did I suddenly feel the weight of the loaded gun pressing into my palm, and in a burst of lucidity I knew, I saw, I felt, that it was all horribly real, and that if I did not stop him, if I did not say something … “Edwin!” I whispered. “Hey,” he whispered, “don’t point that thing.” And angrily he seized the gun.