William Gass - Middle C

I’ve asked — I’ve asked this man to leave.

From Portho a grimace as tortured as a shout. My goodness! Joseph said, a little late with his question: Did he just begin to yell like this?

Portho yelled again, but it was the size of a cough.

We can’t have extemporaneous noise like this, sir, not in the library. Readers will be disturbed.

Aint nah peeple, Joseph made out.

Just get this man out of here, Joseph, just get him out. The first thing is out. Out for you, mister, you miserable man! You ungrateful piece of waste!

Unhand this woman at once, you varlet, Joseph half shouted himself.

Gonne donne nonne hands on her.

You shall have to go, varlet sir, at once. Joseph endeavored to push between the two combatants, though without enthusiasm. Portho at that moment seemed vile, composed of filth and froth and frightening behavior. Had it not been Marjorie in this encounter (or maybe his mother or maybe maybe Miss Moss) he might not have had the will. But he did not touch Portho, he was afraid to do that. He slid like a thin book between them.

Don’t touch him, he’ll scream again. I shook him awake, Marjorie said, still out of breath. That’s what set him off. He was snoring so.

Ah, you see, sir, sleep is normally silent, Joseph said in a far-from-resolute voice. If you are going to sleep noisily you’ll have to do it outside. Outside, sir. I believe it’s a nice day. Joseph would try later to forget how fatuous he was being (had been), but the effort would never succeed. The moment became a permanent embarrassment, a scar on life’s skin.

Portho was now still, arms limp, mouth slack. It was Marjorie who was growing shrill. Out, she was repeating. With an elongated O . Portho was passive. He was now an empty bottle in an empty sack. Joseph merely gestured like a waiter, and Portho shuffled away from Marjorie toward the door, allowing Marjorie to lower her voice, though the O remained sizable and replete with huff. Aint nah peeple. Bother nah, Portho managed. But he went. To Joseph’s immense relief, he went meekly out the door, pushing through it himself, and stepping slowly down the front steps in his absurd huge tennis shoes like a figure in a silent movie. Marjorie still leaned back against the rim of the library table as if she were being pushed, her face pale but with a hint of yellow in it like a page from an old book.

You are my hero, she said after Joseph reached her side. Joseph held her then the way Miriam had sometimes held him. His own blood began to return from wherever it had hidden. He thought he was embracing her, but when he relaxed his grip, he realized that Marjorie was enfolding him, cheek to chest, her hair, redolent, no doubt from overheated temples, yet fragrant in a light way like stationery that’s been stored with a sachet, muffling, veiling his face.

Joseph sneezed. So they had to part. Sorry, he said, sneezing again. Tickle …

Bless, Marjorie said, even more briefly than spelled.

Ah …

Allergic. You’re allergic to me.

No … ah … no … He sneezed. Your hair … my nose … tickled.

Well, back to your basement or wherever you were, she said. Our little excitement is concluded. He won’t be back, I’m sure. Thank you for your help.

Oh no. I did nothing. You had matters in hand. He—

Screamed. It wasn’t I who screamed like that, I can tell you. I shook him a mite. Put a hand I need to wash, oh dear yes, on an arm — his arm — and shook him just a little, he was snoring so, I never heard the like. And he screamed like a bird in the night. He—

Inspired, Joseph took her in his arms again. Poor dear, he said, moving his head out of the way of her hair, which wasn’t easy. He felt her soften. My hero, my young hero, she said.

They stood together until they both became aware that Miss Moss was nearby. You screamed. I heard a scream, Joseph and I heard it. Joseph, you left me like an antelope from a lion. A scream like that — in a library — quite curdles the blood.

I did not scream.

I heard one.

It was Portho, Joseph said. His knee was beginning to hurt.

It was a woman’s scream.

Yes, but Portho made it. Marjorie hardly raised her voice. Joseph’s knee was throbbing like a thrummed bass.

Miss Moss was sure she had heard the Major playing Lady Macbeth. What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? she said in a firm theatrical tone, as if in character.

Joseph was nonplussed. His knee was speaking to him in Dutch. That was how his mother described her aches and pains: her joints were jabbering in Dutch, a tooth was yelling in Dutch, her stomach was mumbling in Dutch. Marjorie had clearly reentered her cool mood, a mood that hadn’t been far away. Joseph was as silent as anyone who knows they are socially inept, but he felt gratitude when Miss Moss receded. Marjorie walked briskly by to reach her desk, where she was immediately busy, stirring her affairs; these were apparently steaming like a pot. Joseph looked around at table, chair, and radiator in case something required a tidy; however, all was as much in order as ever. He tried to pull a pant leg past his knee but couldn’t, and the cloth when it rubbed over the spot where he’d had it knocked was excruciating. Despite the pain he limped from the library without a word of triumph, need, or farewell, except that he could still hear Marjorie through the open entry. She had recovered her aplomb but now was losing it again. Var let, she managed between fresh hilarities. Var-let, oh my, oh me, un-hand, oh no, un-un-han … ha ha!

Joey climbed the hill to his car, complaining to the slope as he strived to conquer it. He cursed his keys before he rolled the Rambler to the street — they never fit the first time — and weaved his way to Woodbine. Miriam would be shocked at what he’d done to himself, but also curious and solicitous. While he drove he rehearsed his story, divided nicely into edifying anecdotes: prestos with adagios after them, bright panels companioned by pastels more suitable on pajamas.

For a fake, this is an utter flop, Miss Moss said with a smile that suggested she would be happy to help Joseph improve the quality of his counterfeit — at the least raise its grade from an F to a gentleman’s C. Because this, she said, holding the offending document by the tweezering tips of her nails, is the license of a loser.

The Bumbler and its presumptuous driver had suffered some near misses over the weekend when Skizzen had driven it to Woodbine in what had become his routine line of duty. He had nearly rear-ended an Amish wagon while cresting a hill, and the scare had opened him like a tin. Later, Joseph had taken a turn too fast and found himself riding the berm. It prepared him to confess his crimes and face jail. Luckily, the expulsion of Portho, a shabby instrument of Satan, from their run-down Eden, as Miss Moss, in inflated tones, preferred to describe the encounter, had apparently made “the dweller in the cellar” more approachable, though Joseph thought Portho’s departure was scarcely sun enough to soften her. Whatever her reasons, Miss Moss had evidently decided to let Joseph admire how her deft fingers flew when she made some basic book repairs; and it was during these demonstrations that he had complained of the car’s erratic behavior and mentioned his fear of being pulled over by the state police, whose eye for the flimsy fob-off driver’s license he carried (and a “permission” they would surely demand he produce) might be sharper than any of the more casual cops from town. Miss Moss had asked to see the offending document whose clumsiness richly amused her. It was a state that Joseph had rarely seen. However, here, in her workroom, she no longer seemed to be a skittish spinster; rather she resembled a competent craftsman, diagnosing difficulties, choosing treatments, dabbing on glues with confident swipes, or even sewing up spinal wounds with surprising dexterity, applying healing oils, and squeezing books in padded vises as though they were patients instead, needing traction.