William Gass - Middle C

Professor Joseph Skizzen had been apprehensive about the survival of the human race but now he was worried that it might, in fact, endure.

For the moment, there didn’t appear to be such a place. He knew these machines swallowed data, and that vaguely threatened him. No formal charges had been made, so Skizzen’s written defense was not yet needed, nor would it be very useful in his case to refer with such obsessive constancy to the evils that men do, when it was only his paltry transgressions that were at issue. Could Skizzen persuade his prosecutors to admit that his malfeasances were entirely precautionary — lies white as alabaster, or at least chalk — committed in order to prevent his own contamination and having, otherwise, no hope of profit. They were crimes only in his enemies’ criminalized eyes. Because he had lived apart from the system even when inside the system, it appeared that he had made the genuine less to be esteemed than the fraudulent; that his counterfeit bill would buy more than their good one. Well, that admission they would not make; it ate at their pride; it proved they were as fundamentally stupid as they superficially seemed to be; it made a mockery of their allegedly superior educational enterprise.

Any misgiving one might have had about the continuance of the human species has been replaced by serious concerns that it might muddle through after all.

So he was not one of them; he had not, as the common saying was, paid his dues; worse, he had surpassed them too easily. He, the least likely to succeed, the laziest boy in the class — the least eager, the least attentive — had solved the great conundrum, the most mysterious equation, the sphinx’s riddle; and they were angry, the way Cinderella’s sisters or Grimm’s evil brothers were, when the simpleton showed up with the solution. They were reluctant, but they had promoted him. It was grudging, yet applause was applause. They had accepted his advice; let themselves be led by an apparition.

Skizzen had to admit that his case would continue to worsen as the number and complexity of his fictions became known, and the machine would make record keeping simpler: he was not quite his alleged age; he did not know those he said he knew, only their secretaries, only by mail; he did not prefer the foods, the wines, the books, the music — even the music — he pretended to prefer; the habits he had were not his own; he frowned at what made him inwardly smile; he had taught his outer self to strut and curse while his private self cringed; his history was a forgery; his intentions could not be read; and when he said: I can play the organ, he meant: One day I will. In short, everything about Skizzen was askew.

His head was full of his own defense. In spite of himself, he rehearsed his forthcoming trial; he bore witness to his own worth; he thrust and parried, proudly protested, lamented and pleaded. Should he use this argument, try that twist, make this move, or exploit that? It was all, of course, done in the hopeless effort to blame his beliefs on the ghost of his father, to excuse his deceptions on account of lofty aims, and to explain his sure and calamitous demotion to his mom.

Analogies occurred to him that happily drew the mantle of malfeasance over others. For instance — if Mr. Mallory, the mountaineer (Joseph thought he might argue), had not belonged to the right clubs; if Mr. Mallory had not been schooled by pros; if Mr. Mallory had not made many preparatory climbs, defeating the most arduous Alpine peaks many times; if Mr. Mallory had instead used the wrong gear, unsportsmanlike aids, an ill-chosen route, and had made his ascent at the worst time of year; if Mr. Mallory had selected an inept partner in place of the redoubtable Andrew Irvine; if Mr. George Herbert Leigh Mallory had had fewer names; if Mr. Mallory had simply walked up one afternoon on his own despite the icefalls and blizzards that beset him: could the envious, quite in the face of these facts, deny that Mr. Mallory was at least a Climber deserving of a middle C, especially at the moment he stood in triumph on top of Everest where his heart would surely be heard when it howled at heaven, though, if truth be told, he was not one of the finer sort, a member of the best set. Would he still be unworthy of the honor due his feat if he were not one of the finer sort then, a member of the best set? should he not be warmed with admiration upon his descent despite not being one of the finer sort, a member of the best set? and his frosted face thawed by remedial ceremonies, although they’d have to be performed for someone not yet, not ever, one of the finer sort, a member of the best set? because he had achieved the peak; he had put his small flag in the obdurate ice; he had bested the best; and it would be only for him to say that his ascent had been a stroll in the park, that he had been grossly favored by fortune, and deserved none of his fame.

Of course Joseph Skizzen had not done anything comparable; he had merely obtained a post and eventually a professorship in this insignificant college called Whittlebauer by the dubious means of slightly squinked credentials. Notwithstanding his somewhat inaccurate résumé, he had done his job so decently he was widely admired and asked to piano at commencements, and on patriotic or religious occasions to tickle the ivories; he was also beseeched to speak at various women’s clubs, as well as now and then to offer some uplift to the Lions or cause Rotary to revolve; moreover, as a scholar he was held in the highest regard, for it was rumored that his several articles in important journals of music might be collected and published as a book, putting him high on the local hill of achievement from which there were naturally many who would be happy to watch him tumble, or even discreetly offer to push a bit if he seemed promisingly close to an edge.

Mallory died, they’d say, so we don’t know and cannot judge of his success.

Well, after achieving the peak, he climbed the skies.

And he is now the Man in the Moon, are we to suppose? Skizzen heard them reply … heard them reply … heard an echo among the mountains.

How happy the faculty and their dean had been when he had come to Whittlebauer as a young Turk, bringing to their small puddle, if not a large frog (such as Joseph Skizzen could have been had he puffed himself), then at least someone with news of the musical world (for instance, of Arnold Schoenberg, whose daffy ideas were all the rage). These notions might be tipsy-turvy to Skizzen’s two new colleagues, Morton Rinse and Clarence Carfagno, but even they had to be happy at the school’s hiring a young man already proficient in six instruments, learned in musical history, an Austrian actually, and with enviable experience in the classroom as well as someone with solid publishing promise.

There are few faculties, especially those of any college with a religious affiliation or one located in some dime-sized Toonerville, that honestly desire to hire staff whose degrees are more esteemed than their own or whose skills are likely to be more proficient than theirs or whose reputations may cast any kind of shadow, even though their protestations while serving on the search committee will conceal (without success) their fears and their intentions. In solemn session, behind fiercely cherished closed doors, they will find faults — with any candidate who is forced on their attention — cracks so minute only the eyes of a smidge could see them; they will be unsure of the lady’s suitability (she will be too young or too old, too homely or too pretty — she’ll be married in a minute, knocked up within a week, and borne off by her husband to hostess tea parties in Shaker Heights); or they’ll be smugly undecided about where the new fellow will be in his work twenty years hence (is there any honest future in Willa Cather studies?); they will wave the flag OVER-QUALIFIED like a military banner, be convinced the spouse will hate the school, his neighbors, and the town, and that both will gallop to greener pastures before a year is out, citing several precedents such as Professor Devise and his titillating daughter; they will be disturbed by what seems to be an absence of the proper faith in Mr. Brightboy’s background and be instead rather high on Mr. Dimbulb, whose dossier is superlative and whose letters, especially the one from Professor Dormouse, incline their fog to drift in the pip-squeak’s direction.