William Gaddis - J R

While with the effort of being contested from the other side by the robust emanation from the simmering tenderloin he’d got the door closed against its pursuit and set off on his own where Stella moved over the grown grass with the assurance of a nurse up corridors as though she’d brought the indoors with her, past the invalid trees and that horticultural Laocoön of honeysuckle, grape and roses, pausing inured at an excruciating attempt by Japanese crabapple to espalier its unpruned limbs against the studio’s shingles to call — this way…? and then lead on, returning his eyes to her sawing haunches rounding yew overgrown at the brick terrace that fronted the place against the lowering threat of oak. He fumbled the beer can, digging in pockets. — But it’s open…

— Open? the door…?

— Here… She thrust a thigh against the heavy door pushing it in on its hinges, showing the neatly broken pane with a thrust of her elbow, crushing glass underfoot with her entrance, asking — is there a light? and as surely finding the switch, dropping the heavy shadows of overhead beams down upon them, bringing the brooding outdoors in, paused, as he came up short behind her, apparently indifferent to the lingering collision of his free hand in its glide over the cleft from one swell to the other brushing up her waist to the elbow, where only the tremor of uncertainty in his grasp moved her on into the vacant confines of the room to murmur — it needs airing…

— That’s the, it’s damp yes it’s the stone floor, he came on off balance as though trying to get around her, gesturing the beer can at chance meetings of beam and scantling that niched the walls haphazard — it used to be a barn it’s, they say it was the first wet wash laundry on Long Island it’s always been a, breaking in who would break in…

— But nothing’s missing?

— That’s not the…

— Or broken…? she’d paused at the piano, came around to open its keyboard and tap C — they didn’t run off with this…

— It’s not funny it’s, wait! behind you my phonograph, is it still there? he came toward her all motion, provoked no more than a drop of her hand to switch the thing on sending its arm moving over the turning record with an ominous assurance taken up, as she turned, by strings foreboding in a minor key. — That’s not the point! if nothing’s gone or broken it’s the idea of somebody in here somebody I’ve never, I don’t even know, it’s like finding somebody’s broken into the one place I, where nothing happens, where I work where nothing else happens can’t you understand that! he came on loudly against the rising threat of strings sundering the eaves above — do you think music is just, composing do you think it’s just writing down notes? he brandished the beer can at the studio windows — just part of, of all that out there…? and the strings receded quelled by plaintive oboes seeking dialogue, severed by the stab of C under her finger.

— Is this F-sharp? she ran a finger along the stave, bent closer, struck it turning him on his heel as her left hand rose to bracket C two octaves down in tremolo.

— No wait what are you…

— All the spirit deeply dawning in, is this what you’re working on?

— It’s no it’s nothing! he pulled the pages from the rack — it’s just, it’s nothing… and left her standing, the strings patterning their descent in the slope of her shoulders to remain there, as she bent to close the keyboard, in the remnant of a shrug.

— They told me you’ve been teaching Edward, is it…

— Well I’m not! he’d dropped the pages in a chair behind him, sat on its arm clutching the beer can — I was but I’m not I, something just happened something as stupid as this, this breaking in here… he withdrew his foot abruptly, raised his eyes to her ankles’ approaching amble, turn and pass toward a bull’s eyed door beyond the fireplace.

— What’s in there… she found the switch and snapped it, peering through.

— Nothing just, just papers, programs old scores what’s…

— Uncle James’? he worked over here?

— Well he, of course he did yes I, because it’s one place it’s the one place an idea can be left here you can walk out and close the door and leave it here unfinished the most, the wildest secret fantasy and it stays on here by itself in that balance between, the balance between destruction and and realization until…

— He said this? Uncle James?

— What?

— From him, it just sounds quite romantic… she’d snapped the room beyond back into darkness and came from behind him with that ease of drift that brought his eyes up once she’d passed, — his music’s always so…

— Well why why shouldn’t he have said that something like that he, that he could come back the next day a week a month later he could open the door and find it here this same unfinished vision here just like he’d left it, this same awful balance waiting undisturbed just like he’d left it here to, to tip it and, the gray days I’ve come in here and built a fire to shut it all out so I could work those summers I, I haven’t even seen you since those summers…

— You can’t stay here though can you… she turned from the empty black of the fireplace — working? You couldn’t stay anyhow…

— What?

— With no heat here?

— With, here? I, I don’t know I…

— And if you’ve…

— I said I don’t know! he was up, took the steps after her she’d turned toward the stairs as counterpoint wove the strings toward extinction, — Stella…

— What happened.

— That you, just that you’re really standing right here in…

— No your music… she turned her head, caught his breath on her cheek — what happened to…

— No that’s what I was trying to find something like the, like Beethoven took Egmont his incidental music for Egmont I tried to, I found that long poem of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall of Tennyson’s I remembered it from school and I’ve been trying to work out something like, it’s something like an operatic suite that part you picked up there that line, those lines that open trust me cousin, the whole current of my being sets to, is that what you…

— No just that record, I thought something had happened to it.

— What the, that? that record?

— What happened. It just stopped.

— That it’s nothing it’s just a practice record it’s, that’s where the solo comes in the D-minor concerto without the piano part I thought you meant my, what I’m working on I…

— I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.

— Well why shouldn’t I! what’s, why shouldn’t I talk about it…

— I don’t really know, Edward. What’s up there.

— The what?

— Up there, upstairs…

— Up, what! did you hear something?

— No, no I just meant what’s up there… she nodded up to shadows where the strings lurked again in ambush for their solo antagonist — up on that balcony…

— Nothing just, just the same things papers, old letters scores piano rolls wait… he came after her, after the mounting insinuation of her thighs’ rise, rest, and rise in the ravening ease of her climb caught that suddenly off balance where she stopped half turned on the landing and he caught at the rail, at her waist where he’d run head on and a hand of hers caught his with the beer can and steadied him, held him off there with no way to know if her glance had missed the knotted length of rubber stretched like a dead thing on the stair. — Wait! wait if, if somebody’s up there… he stooped to snatch the thing up and force it into the beer can’s cleft crowding her on, — if they just did it…

— Did what Edward, if who…

— No no broke in I mean if, if they just broke in and they’re still up here, hiding…