William Gass - Middle C

Marjorie might have screamed because Marjorie had gotten fed up sitting at her desk to oversee a library full to overflowing with nobody, nobody but a snoring tramp. Marjorie might have screamed because Portho’s nose, his roaring mouth, made the sole sound in a library otherwise silent as a tomb, with only the tick tick of her pencil stick to mime the clock. Marjorie might have screamed because Portho wasn’t weary, hungry, cold, or lonely but drunk and smelly instead, defaming the purpose and position of the library as a public institution. Marjorie might have screamed because she wished to summon someone from somewhere, raise a ruckus, wake the silent books from their dull mortuary shelves. Marjorie might have screamed because she had already told Portho a dozen times not to doze, not to snore, not to smell up her house … Joseph went over to the stamp-out table and said hello and good morning to Marjorie.

Both hello and good morning to you, too, Joseph, she said, as chirpy as a sparrow in a boxwood hedge. He wanted to say — but he didn’t say — he said that the sky was as clean as a scrubbed plate. Good boy, she said, now go and get some sorting done. We’ve been given eight boxes by the kid who lives with old lady Lawrence. I don’t have a notion what’s in them. What do old ladies read these days, he said as if his feet were frozen to the pavement. Find out and then tell me, tell me, tell me true. Marjorie smiled her wide smile of see you soon.

Joseph realized that he had been enlisted — enlisted for a cause — by Portho — for Portho’s cause — at a quarter. Judas needed more. Was he to forsake his — what did beard-mouth say? — his leader, for a quarter? Did Portho want him to put in a good word? did he merely want to get even? or see justice done? the truth known? It could hardly have been to clear his name. Though he had used some tones of respect — some “sir”s — in his approach. In the middle of Joseph’s wondering came another: why was he chewing a cud so lacking in nourishment? It was an insult to have been asked for a quarter, an insult to have yielded one. Admittedly, the expulsion was no slight concern to Portho who no doubt would need refuge from the coming snows. Joseph reminded himself that it was always interesting to open strange boxes of books. You could never be sure what might be inside. Sometimes a stuffed animal. Portho was a mystery, too. So, after all, was Skizzen’s father. Joseph really didn’t know why people did things. Were they keeping their counters clean the way he was? Perhaps homelessness had been his father’s aim, free of precisely the cards of identity that Joseph had just acquired and was enjoying in a condition of self-congratulation — when the supplication came. Maybe he should have confronted this man, said to him, I understand that you are trying to embarrass me into giving you money, but what have you done to deserve anything from me? why are you due even a penny from my pocket? because you have suffered something from me? so have we all, all suffered something; the very air is full of poison, everyone has losses, has been bullied, has been forced to feel ashamed, has been beaten or is a beater, starved or indulged, until our souls are bent out of their shapeless spiritual haziness into a hard shard. Except the sparrows who continued to shuffle while hidden in the hedge.

A moist mouth is not a proper state for a man’s mouth. Joseph slit the tape down the length of the flap where the box was sealed. Suppose he carried a knife — Portho — suppose he carried a knife. A knife fashioned from razor blades, blades wedged in the crack of a stick. A sudden slash followed by a lifetime of disfigurement, a lifetime of sympathy, a lifetime of pity. Pity even from people passing on the street. Joseph withdrew a volume an inch and a half thick. It said it was a biography of Anton von Webern. The front of the dust jacket didn’t give him a clue to the nature of this person, though a picture showed an intense sharp-featured head with rimless glasses, thin lips, tight tie, lots of brow, an unashed cigarette, sour expression. In his other hand Joseph raised up a volume bound in lipstick-intense red cloth. It called itself An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music . More rapidly, he pulled several volumes out until it became clear that this box was packed with books on modern music. Joseph began to feel an unpleasant physical excitement such as the apprehension that customarily preceded his first descent on a playground slide.

Could this be an old woman’s reading? Joseph selected a book about a musician named Boulez who was pictured on the cover conducting with his fingers. He could no longer breathe easily when the pages fell open at a passage on the composer — for it turned out Boulez composed as well as conducted — a passage that described the artist’s search for a father, a search that dominated his life. Moreover, he learned of the Frenchman’s admiration for the subject of another of these books — an Austrian — an Austrian, Anton von Webern. Joseph read with thirsty eyes. Names he had not known before streamed by as if celebrating his ignorance, and paragraphs debating the primacy if not the tyranny of technique alarmed him, he knew so little about it, had so little of it. How could a score appeal to the mind, yet outrage the ear? How could one consider singing an equation? A entire generation of artists and composers were quarreling about chance and order while agreeing that whatever resulted, all the old ways had to be cast aside the way you would a wife who has put on weight and shopped unwisely. Composers were advised to depart from the “tonal world,” as it was rather grandly put, by trashing all the old rules and regulations, seeking fresh sounds with special machines, and composing with rests rather than notes. A quote from the great man himself, which Joseph happened upon, indicated that Webern had once written a quartet in C major but bragged that the chosen key note was invisible and called the feat “suspended tonality.” Another writer blamed “the crisis” (Joseph knew only that it was “dire” and “severe” and “catastrophic”) on Abstract Expressionism, a combination of words that, to Joseph, created a label whose meanings went together like ornery dogs, and was, in any case, about painting, so let the painters keep their dogs from quarreling and let the composers pet their cats in peace.

But every few pages old friendships broke apart like snapping twigs: Stravinsky was praised past the passing clouds, or he was a treasonous reactionary fit only for shooting against a wall. Schoenberg was dead alas or a case of good riddance (though of course he was quite alive); no, he was dead because he couldn’t compete with music that was being made by jazz musicians and alone beloved by the people; no, he was dead because he was impure and neglectful of rhythm. How was that possible, Joseph wondered, trying to breathe unevenly.

So you have decided to use the library rather than work for it, the Major said, with a smile like a slice of lemon. Oh, I am so sorry Miss Bruss, I got caught up in these books and lost all sense of time. It’s “Miss Bruss” now, is it? Joey cowered by the boxes. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realize. These boxes are full of amazing things. As far as I can see, Miss Bruss observed, you’ve only opened one in the time you lost, which has been two hours. Yes, sorry. These can’t be an old woman’s reading, though. Suddenly Miss Bruss endeavored to be jaunty: Why not, pray tell, pray tell me true? Well, they are all about modern music, and they look difficult to me. Older women do not have the wit of young men, the finer interests? she pursued. Well, it just seemed to me unlikely — here — in this town. You have spent much time in New York City then, more than two hours even, to see us as the dull tips of the sticks? Joey said nothing without meaning to. First Portho, now this, he thought. Caroline Lawrence came back to her hometown to live after her husband, who was a violist in the Philharmonic, died, Miss Bruss said tonelessly. So the Major probably knew what kind of donation she was getting, after all, Joseph thought, without then daring to pursue anything quicker than his own panic. He managed to remain as still, though, as a library lion. Miss Bruss went away when her shoes did. And Joseph went on with the boxes of books as if unpacking them were everyday business.