William Gaddis - J R

— That’s supposed to be that boy J R, said Wotan sidling up, wiping both hands on a fox tail. — He’s only being it to get out of gym anyway, this here little dwarf. He don’t even have a costume yet.

— Well… where is he! Find him!

— He was reading the paper over at that window.

— He was in the front office, I seen him when I went to the girls’ room playing with the telephone in there.

— I got a cold, that’s why my eyes look like this, said Wotan with a rheumy stare that sent Bast up the aisle and out the pastel hall, looking in doors till he reached the last one: there in a swivel chair a boy sat, back to the door, his cheerless patterned sweater of black diamonds on gray hunched over the desk, and a hand with a pencil stub rose over one narrow shoulder to scratch where his hair stood out in a rough tag at the nape.

— What are you doing in here! Playing with the…

— Playing? The chair lurched, then swung round slowly as the boy recovered the wad of a soiled handkerchief from the telephone mouthpiece as he hung it up. — Boy you scared me.

— Scared you! What are you doing in here, aren’t you in this rehearsal? What are you doing here playing with the telephone…

— Playing? But no I was just… it rang. He reached for it.

— Give me that!

— But it’s probably…

— Here!… What? hello?… Miss Flesch here? now? No, I haven’t seen her all morning, she… Me? Bast, Edward Bast, I’m… What do you mean are we ready? Ready for what… The telephone pressed at his ear, Bast stared blankly at the boy’s foot twisting under the chair’s pedestal, the seam split up the back of the sneaker, and abruptly put out his hand to stop the repetition of the chair tipping forth, and back, and the boy shrugged, recovered a grimy envelope with figures penciled on its back to stuff it, with his pencil stub and wadded handkerchief, into a pocket, looped a knee over the chair arm and began to wedge the toe of his sneaker into a desk-drawer handle. — You mean right now? today? Of course it’s not ready today, no. No, and listen. An old man just showed up here with a saxophone, he… what? What class in music therapy, where? Hello? Hello? He banged down the telephone, swerved the chair round to face the door saying — Come along, and was almost out when it rang again. — Give me that! he said catching his balance. — Hello? Who? No… No he’s not and what’s more this telephone is not… what? He banged it down again.

— Why’d you want to do that? the boy came hurrying out ahead of him. — It was just…

— Come along! Bast pressed him down the hall, eyes on the shoulders narrowed in a shrug and held there by the sweater, which was too small. — You’re supposed to be up on that pile of chairs in back, Bast pursued him down the aisle — while the Rhinemaidens swim around down in front, do you know your part?

— He don’t even have a costume yet grumbled Wotan, drooping in the lee of the piano like some lost sport sulking in a corridor of prehistory.

— And hunch down up there, Bast called after him. — You’re supposed to look small, like a dwarf.

— He’s already littler than us, Wotan obliged, swelling. — He’s only in sixth grade which that’s why he could be in it to be this here little dwarf which he’s only being it anyway to…

— Get up on the stage, out of sight. Now, we… Bast halted. Behind him the saxophone wavered tentatively around C-flat. — Wait a minute! Where is it! That paper bag that was here on the piano.

— You always carry your money like that?

— It’s not mine, that money. It belongs to Mrs Joubert’s class. Where is it!

— Hey, see? here? a Rhinemaiden giggled from the stage. — See? Like for the Rhinegold, with real money so we can really pretend, see?

— That one’s my type, the saxophonist confided over Bast’s shoulder as he sat to the piano. — Maybe you can… but he was cut off as Bast came down with an E-flat chord that sent the boy scaling the peak of the stacked chairs and the Rhinemaidens wriggling and howling by turns below, arching limbs and brazening impertinent bodies in what quite rightly they believed to be lewd invitation, whispering, perspiring, cowering to the blast of the Call to the Colors obliterating a brief saxophone chorus of Buffalo Gals while, in sinister pianissimo, making good use of his unimpaired hand, Bast echoed the Ring motif oblivious, staring, up into the stage illumination on the dwarf’s uncostumed threadbare scaffolded above the caterwauling, and he pounded an open way for his desperate crew through the rhythms of the Nibelungs, hand drawn up in twinges each time a finger struck among those sharp cadences teeming with injury.

— Look! Who’s that up in the back there, came in a stage whisper.

— The lights, I can’t see nothing…

— It’s that fruit Leroy.

— He’s too little, it’s that Glancy.

— Running…

Faster, Bast played now as though hurrying to catch a train, straining toward the crescendo of its arrival till this, with pain that streaked to his elbow sharp as the chord he struck, was all he heard, and the cry of the dwarf was lost, — Hark floods! Love I renounce forever!… lost, if it was ever made at all, the figure running down the aisle reaching the piano as it crashed with the Rhinegold motif that brought the pile of chairs cascading to the stage and scattered the Rhinemaidens in disheveled pursuit of the dwarf, who seemed indeed to know his part, and had got off with the Rhinegold.

— I told you…! shouted Wotan bursting out into the sun, bearing down on the only figure in sight who watched this extravagant onslaught without alarm; but all they wrested from her was the change purse, its nickeled clasp worn down to brass from being closed, and opened, and closed, opened now and on dead leaves at that, flung back to the ground indistinguishable from the leaves they trampled, drawing up in garish clumps of recrimination.

— Where’d he go? that lousy little…

— Look!

— Look out!

Gravel sprayed them from the drive.

— In the car, that’s Mister Bast. They’re chasing him in the car.

— Whose? Driving…

— Glancy. That big lardass Glancy…

— It wasn’t either that’s deSyph, that old junk heap that’s deSyph’s… and they drifted off to tell, over groundswells of lawn heaving with the slow rise, and fall, of light broken by the gentle sway of trees on winds bearing news, from higher up, of a used car sale blown down on retching waves of the tune Clementine to the wailing counterpoint of the saws in Burgoyne Street, where the used car plunged among the dangling limbs.

— The lesson’s all set up, the visuals everything right from the teacher’s guide… and the brief prospect of a straightaway freed his hand from the wheel to turn on the radio. — The script that’s her script and that book, that’s to pretend like you’re reading it it’s a prop…

— But this money, the boy who ran off with that paper bag we were using it in the Rhinegold rehears…

— You don’t need it no, for the Mozart that Rhinegold bag it would throw off everything the testing, the whole…

— It’s not that it’s the money, it’s the money…

Steel teeth overhead shredded a descending bloat of Clementine as the radio warmed to Dark Eyes, and the driver shifted in a seated schottische overshooting a turn to the right. — My wife will help you out don’t worry, she’s waiting for us I already called her and I told you about the singalong, don’t forget the singa…

— But then maybe your wife could…

— Help out yes she has a resource program on right after, she’s in the arts too maybe you know her? B’hai, folk song, preColumbian sculpture… he cut short with a grimace that might have been merely the effort of swerving to a halt at the door where he promptly resumed the catalog in introducing — my wife Ann Mister Bast, she had the Senior Citizens’ class in clay sculpture too, the ones with arthritis here, wait! don’t forget the script… before leaving Bast in a spray of gravel, where Mrs diCephalis took his hand and kept it.