William Gass - Middle C

In private they will wonder why anyone with Mr. Brightboy’s highfalutin Ivy degree would want to live in Meager, Pennsylvania, a.k.a. Woodbine, Ohio, or why such a hotshot is even bothering with them, or why she is or he isn’t married. Minority people are certainly a priority, but how will this guy, black as a burnt match, his wife, and three kids make out in a farm-fed white-bread town? They do tend to marry young, don’t they? After which the men abandon the family and disappear.

At Whittlebauer, for the above reasons, the president had taken over hiring. Even the janitors and the secretaries. The librarian, the bursar, and the registrar. The groundskeeper. The nurse. President Palfrey, former head of history at Hiram State Junior College, who had held a degree from Yale like a sandwich board in front of him for so long his nickname was “the End of New Haven Is at Hand,” actually wanted to attract the best people possible, assuming they weren’t remotely near his former field of competence; but he was hampered by the fact that the college gave minimal benefits and minuscule salaries; took notice of attendance at church; prohibited alcohol not only to its students but forbade it to faculty living within a fifty-mile radius; regarded smoking, card playing, and nonconjugal intercourse as subversive character flaws; certainly was not, as its president put it, “a dell for the frolic of fairies”; and could offer only such cultural excitement as the community of Whittlebauer provided, which was the county fair that yearly featured harness racing, hog calling, bake-offs, sheepherding, pie, jam, and livestock judging, bottle knocking, and the ring toss, as well as pony rides during the whole second week of October.

One-half of the student body — perhaps one might call it the upper half — was too devout to be taught; their minds were safe behind a moat of tradition; and the other half had been compelled to come to Whittlebauer by parents, usually alums, who wished to protect their children from the temptations of the world or, at worst, were trusting the college to reform, rewash, and restore these wayward children to their parents in a condition as swaddle soft and blameless as they were when babes. Of the holy half, the upper quarter disdained the delinquents and held themselves aloof, while the lower quarter was energized by missionary zeal and sought to save the sinners from themselves. When it came to the bottom of this body, a quarter of the forlorn were morose and otherwise indifferent, serving time like convicts made of solid sullen stuff, but there was a coven of Satanists — in effect — who loved nothing more than the seduction of the innocent and the soiling of the pure, through patty-cake and pot, mostly, not certainly by means of unsettling research, offbeat scholarship, or heretical thought. In short: the hoity-toity, the condescending, the morose, and the mischievous made up the student body.

This division, Joseph would eventually discover, was universal among men: the snooty upper crust, the missionaries in the middle, the downtrodden, and the criminals. There remained only people like himself — floaters, like those dots before the eye — much in the minority, who could be found, momentarily, anywhere, who seemed to signify a problem but who could not be pinned down and were eventually ignored.

The aforesaid president of the school was a jowl-shaking enthusiast and mother’s boy whose specialty was the cultivation of a secularized piety more sugary than any breakfast bun. His name was Howard Palfrey, and he forgave everyone everything, moist-eyed and caring, his voice afalter with feeling — mostly that of awe for the blessed of God or, conversely, pity for the piss-poor — and projecting, especially through his vowels, if not much sense, at least sincerity. The ditherers adored him; the sanctimonious wanted to wash his feet; but Palfrey was too modest and too cautious to allow it, consequently the fawners were permitted to fawn a few at a time and always head high, with cheek pecks, because Palfrey’s handshake was infrequent, woeful, and wet. A bachelor, he exuded need; he called for care: the inept shambly neatness of his clothing begged for a presser for his pants crease, a starcher for his shirt collar, a knotter for his tie’s bows, and for his sock holes, frayed cuffs, and sweater ravelings, he wanted a knitter whose needles were calming, quick, and restorative.

Howard Palfrey loved sinners, he loved their pitiful state; he sorrowed for them; he was sensitive, supportive, and sweet. Except when sin showed up in his students, who were to be steadfastly righteous or please him by leaving with all dispatch for the Ivy League’s devilish teachings and fleshy corruptions, an option he liked to believe was real from janitor to provost, not excluding himself, who could have been head of Harvard had he not chosen his present humbler and purer service. Businessmen, who privately thought him a fruit, saw what a success he was at drawing to his side widows still sanctified by their grief — women who, as he wept for their loss, he knew had wills he might rewrite and would, after a wait neither too long nor too arduous, be pleased, for the school’s sake, to execute.

He cast a spelll upon them, rattled their old bones, gave them leave to practice the safest sort of sex, the imaginary: Palfrey as the secret seducer in senility’s lascivious dreams. Joseph had laughed to see his additional l , for it was just right — Howard cast a spelll.

But he had never entranced Professor Skizzen, not even after promoting Skizzen to the chairmanship of a music department no larger or more distinguished than a trio of cacophonists. There was Morton Rinse, who played numerous wind instruments indifferently well — piccolo, fife, flute, and clarinet — Clarence Carfagno, who was the string man but did not pluck — neither harp nor harpsichord — and Joseph Skizzen, thought to be at his best with band music transcribed for a keyboard, who played the national anthem, the Grand March from Aida , and the school’s alma mater at various academic functions, as well as, in secret, with affecting hesitation, some of Liszt’s Mozart and Bellini transcriptions.

Morton Rinse had impressed Skizzen with his wit and way with words during the first weeks of Joseph’s howdydos. Morton offered the following judgment of the skills of Clarence Carfagno as a musician: Clare has three quarts of vinegar in his basement, so he calls himself a wine merchant. Of the cantankerous schooner-shaped librarian, Hazel Hazlet, Morton observed that her very face was a breach of the peace. If not the most politic of things to say to a newcomer about some of those to whom he has newly come, Skizzen thought them shrewd as far as he could tell, and cattily put. Rinse had a reassuringly jaundiced view of the world — he wore, he said, liver-colored glasses. Actually, he wore worsteds and wide ties and showed far too much cuff.

Morton was as thin as his flute and seemed shiny, as though he had had his chin and cheekbones polished. Not only did he have a characterization for every colleague, he believed data were trumps and delivered obscure information as if he were betraying secrets, not quite in a holy whisper but in a slightly lowered voice, entre nous . The best time to visit Haigerloch is at Whitsun when the lilacs are in flower. He would then put on an expectant look as if awaiting confirmation or enlargement. Naturally Rinse could recite the names of all the antique instruments. To Joseph’s considerable surprise and subsequent consternation, he knew who had established the two-hand-and-foot “sock” style on the hi-hat cymbal. He also appeared to be a specialist on the size, age, and quality of German organs and organ lofts and assumed that, since Joseph had played that instrument at his school, he would be eager to know details an ant might overlook if, as it always turned out, he wasn’t familiar with them already. My God, Skizzen thought, am I to pass my life among this lot?