William Gass - Middle C

Joseph made a sound that could have meant anything.

Got to squeeze your innocent face into that lower corner … tape over my signature with something the color of dirty dairy cream … to give you a nice blank space to sign. She tapped her index finger on the spot: Name and address are the difficult deal. Numbers, did you ever notice? if not, notice now. They lend themselves to defacements: the 1 to a 7, the 7 to a 9, the 9 to an 8 or a 3, whichever, or a 6 to an 8, alterations as easy as a sleeve’s. I ’s into T ’s, or O ’s into A ’s aren’t hard, like adding lobes to ears, but letters, on the whole, aren’t agreeable. We’ll remove and re-do them, pretend we can type. She gestured toward an ancient Underwood portable that stood in melancholy disuse upon a small metal stand in a corner facing the door.

While Miss Moss pondered the problems that attended these criminal proceedings, Joseph looked about, now with renewed interest. Everything seemed borrowed, nothing new. He felt a bit borrowed himself. On the edge of a very scarred old library table two vises — one small, one huge — were tightly clamped. They appeared to have been there a long time because the jaws bore patches of bare metal and there were dark dents where their present grips had bitten the wood. Between glue and paste pots, brushes, threads, and needles, pools of remaining varnish still glistened. He saw several weights retired from their grocery scale days, erasers sitting among grains of gum, a dry stamp pad, pens, inks, fat rubber bands, scissors in several sizes, a tweezers, too, as well as place-mark ribbons, rolls of Scotch and masking tape, a few scrappy endpaper pieces, and a teakettle clearly meant only for steam.

Miss Moss gently edged Joseph aside to remove two developer trays. She positioned his license next to hers on a sheet of bright white paper that nevertheless looked much used. Finding himself a chair length farther along, he counted a couple of clothespins that had been concealed by miscellaneous tubes and tins. At the table’s end, a number of Miss Moss’s ubiquitous rags had collected round a rather large roll of butcher’s paper. There a slightly nicked magnifying glass lay buried near a pair of once-white cloth gloves. At her request he rescued it from beneath a coil of navy-blue velvet ropes full of what he guessed, as he hefted them, were grains of rice. Or beans. Perhaps beans. I always know where everything is, she said as if reading disapproval like a headline from his impassive face. Those are pythons. You know, snakes. So soft. So Mus-cular. They keep your book gently open. Dis-tribute their weight. Joseph read the label of a tube of stuff meant for cleaning suede shoes.

His expression had meant to mask the bewilderment of ignorance, but he was also immensely reassured by what he took to be the residues of creativity: the way pots pans and dirtied spoons signified a whirl of mixing and a busy chef’s surety of measurement and touch. Miss Moss just needed someone to control and calm the fuss she made over the way Joey cleaned up after her. His mind traveled over lines noted down from recent books: all these happenstance arrangements needed a brisk dose of ship’s shape, bit of spiff and polish, weight upon the waters. Nevertheless, he had to admit, the place was spooky. At one corner of the ceiling a small cloud of cobweb had gathered. There was little natural light and what there was looked weary, as though it had traveled a great distance only to die on a cluttered bench.

I do miss riding the bus though, Joseph ventured.

Snake, please. Miss Moss held out a small white palm. I need a weight. Oil upon the waters — that’s it, he thought. Joseph handed her a length of velvet rope. He saw that each end was tied up in a knot by violet thread.

You see some interesting people on the bus.

Meet any? Miss Moss bent intently over her work.

One.

The air felt cool as a cave’s, their voices artificially resonant.

Who?

A teddy bear.

Ever have a toy you were frightened of?

Nooo … Never had many toys.

I was given a bulldog once with a black eye and big teeth. Scared me so. I was supposed to hug him. He was stuffed like a club. Hard as a ham-mer. I buried him in the backyard, I was so scared. These villainous magi wanted me to take bowwow to bed. I screamed, I was so scared. So I buried it in the backyard with a shovel I had for sand. But that bowlegged dog with a pirate’s eye still haunts me. To and in-cluding this day. Even this day. Even down here. Eventually we moved away from the house with its grave. We left that backyard in our wake, but the toothy bulldog followed me. He’s al-ways — good, that should do it — a-round, barking loudly though you can never hear him. “He who has felt such fear is haunted forever … by days that will not come again,” she suddenly half hollered. I bet the teddy bear was better company.

His mother — a great wide woman — was.

Mothers. I never liked mothers much, you know that? None of my mothers were … well — it’s done, and now you are a person to the world — very motherly. Take a card.

Joseph decided silence was the better speech.

I left your weight the same as mine. See. I don’t need weight now that I never drive. Because the cop that stops you always looks in the driver’s window where you’re sitting in your shame and guilt, and he can’t tell, not even if God were to ask him, how much you’re heavied. Of course … if he orders you to get out … the truth may get out, too.

Gratitude made Joseph brim over with that truth. It led him to overlook the misperceptions he had already encouraged: that he was Austrian, that he was a more accomplished musician than he really was, that he had graduated from Augs and done rather well there, when he had done rather poorly and dropped out. Or that he had friends like Chris the King of the tennis courts who would offer him their driver’s license to copy.

Joey rather liked buses, Joseph said. He had ridden on double-deckers in London during the Blitz. They bounced about quite a bit because of the shell — no — bomb holes … craters. Yes, he had endured the bombing.

Hid in basements, sought refuge in sewers, often in the Underground, where people held one another when the earth shook. Yes, he had been frightened by near misses and had seen people blown to pieces before his very eyes. And a piano, too, every key flung up in the air to fall like rainless music. He didn’t remember bus rides in Vienna, though — too young. But he could still recall vast parks. Vienna Woods — yes. Both cars and carriages. Vendors purveying ices and little cakes. “Purveying” was a new word Joseph was pleased to take for a walk. The sea voyage to America was worse than the Blitz because roaring storms bedeviled him and his mother the entire trip, the ship taking on water, whitecaps above the masts like angry spitting clouds.

Details filled in behind his recollections the way leaves blow into a hedge. Although Miss Moss led Joseph out of her office and returned him to his routines, he realized that he was welcome to rap at her door when down in her domain. He was also allowed to use her typewriter to compose a few letters of reference and a CV faithful to its form if faithless in everything else. She taught him a few tricks with inks. And how to steam off stamps and safely remove other sorts of seals.

Miss Moss admonished Joseph not to speak to the Major about his visit. He was to remain particularly mum about the ID and that she had showed him how to ink, Polaroid, or steam. Have you received the green glare of Major’s eyes? Joseph hadn’t. He rather thought her eyes … green in the import of them … I mean, green the way a fire burns. While Quasimodo plies his bells, Quasimama sweeps her keep, she said, adding mystery to mystery.