William Gass - Middle C

Imagine, then, that we have our row: ding dong bang bong cling clang ring rang chit chat toot hoot. Now we turn it round: hoot toot chat chit rang ring clang cling bong bang dong ding. Next we invert it so that the line looks like the other side of the spoon. Hills sag to form valleys, rills become as bumpy as bad roads: hat tat chot chut rong rung clong clyng bang bing dang dyng. We are in position, now, to turn this row around as we did our original. Or we can commence the whole business, as Schoenberg himself does at the beginning of Die Jakobsleiter , by dividing the twelve tones into a pair of sixes. Thus the twelve tones are freed from one regimen to enter another. What has been disrupted is an entire tradition of sonic suitability, century-old habits of the ear.

Then come the refinements, for all new things need refinements, raw into the world as they are, wrinkled and wet and cranky. The rule, for instance, that no member of the twelve gets a second helping until all are fed. They have a union, these sounds, and may not work overtime. Compositions, too, will tend to be short. Audiences will admire that. For instance, Webern begins his Goethe song, “Gleich und Gleich,” with a G-sharp. Then follows it (please hear it with your heads): A, D-sharp, G, in a nice line before slipping in a chord, E, C, B-flat, D, and concluding F-sharp, B, F, C-sharp. You see, or rather, you intuit: four in a line, four in a chord, four in a line. Twelve in a row. Neat as whiskey.

What a change of life, though, is implied by the new music.

I hear a distant bell. It tolls the end of our unanalytic hour. The sound might have come from any bracelet in this room, from a bellflower that my mother’s grown, a garden row, or from some prankster in the classroom. Shall we include it in our composition, ignore it, or tell it to shush?

Because this rustic buzz is as regular, dare we say, as clockwork; it is only half an accident, like those noises that Cocteau wanted to include in his conception of Parade —you know this ballet? … hands. They included the clacks of a typewriter, the stutter of Morse code, and a few wails out of sirens leased from the police, as well as the hoot of a railroad train, but Diaghilev killed each of these radical suggestions — shall we show hands for him? … who, you say? … a Russian, good guess … that’s all you have? … so, no applause from up here. Sweet sweet deity, why have you put such ignorance into this world?

With this question I conclude my little history of modern music.

The autumn months marched into winter like a misled army into Russia. Joseph was now in excellent hillshape since he regularly walked to work, his Bumbler’s rear wheels firmly blocked by two bricks where they sat on the steep slope of Marjorie’s driveway just beneath the stare of the small square windows that crossed the face of his garage. Joey’s routines established, he began to take in the town, to enjoy the slopes he strode or rode on. Some mornings mist collected above the creek like another stream, and he would gaze upon the tops of trees as if he were one of the local birds looking for a place to light. He liked to imagine he was living among some Alpine foothills, in an Austrian town where armies of the Crusades had camped, or legendary royalty had trouped, on their way to Vienna, say, or rested on their return, burdened with booty, from the straits.

[…………………………………………….…]

Fencing lessons?

Yes, Marjorie said. Three books on fencing are missing from the stacks. They haven’t been taken out — not officially anyway.

What a memory!

I remember because we had a kid here — skinny kid with lots of stiff hair — who was giving fencing lessons — thin as a foil and just as devious, I don’t doubt — who kept borrowing them — hardly usual takeout fare — but it was a way of impressing young ladies, I suspect. As far as I know they were returned. Perhaps you might see if they have been captured by the clinic.

The clinic?

Miss Moss, Miss Moss. She secretes them. Books vanish from view as if borrowed by a ghost. The way the dimes did during the twenty days.

Joseph had finally decided that he was somehow expected to understand this mysterious phrase, and he feared that if he admitted ignorance it would be held against him.

Ah, he said. The twenty days. And if they are very ill?

The books? If ill …? That will be the end of my interest.

On weekends Joey drove to Woodbine to visit with his mother who had filled the room that he and his duds had formerly occupied with plants she wished to rescue from the threatening frosts. Saturday night now, he bunked with a ficus, a gardenia, and a Norway pine. One evening, after they had dined on Würstelbraten , in an expansive mood no doubt encouraged by one of his favorite dishes, Joey tried to describe the rocky but happy relation he enjoyed with his “three ladies,” but realized almost at once that he wasn’t clear himself about what it was.

He did worry about Miss Moss, who seemed a bit rickety to be climbing the steep slopes to wherever she lived, because windy wet weather had covered the walks with slick leaves, and in the winter — a few brief snowfalls had announced it — Joseph figured even he would need the equivalent of climbing gear — ice ax and crampons — to rappel those snow-smothered paths every morning or, in the late afternoon, to ascend once more the icy flanks that were their streets. Still, it was a healthy way to live. Joey drew the crisp air into his lungs the way householders let cleansing breezes into their bedrooms.

Never mind about me. Miss Moss dismissed herself with a wave of carbon paper. I am used to the winters. I am used to the Major. I have a cane with a spike on it. I know how to scale these ignorant pavings. The city salts them, and the salt eats your boots. So don’t buy yourself expensive ones. But then you haven’t any money, have you? I imagine you live on sweet cookies and milk. Or treacle at the bottom of a well.

Joseph tried to chuckle and managed a rhetorical cough. I guess they are good for the tummy. He eyed her waiting stacks of patients while wondering what treacle was. Nothing on fencing in any of the piles. Joey remembered one thin devious red-haired kid who he felt had a … what? — rap sheet — a history of making trouble, but that would be too … too … Miss Moss was looking at him crossly, so Joseph worked on a show of indifference. On behalf of that appearance he decided to say: You’ve got quite a crowd of clients.

So the Major sent you.

What? the Major? … sent? I wouldn’t say sent … how did you—?

“Client” is her word. She sent you. To the clinic, she calls it, the sick bay, she says, the hospice, the ER, the laboratory. To spy. She insists I steal stuff. I am supposed to pretend that a book needs repairs, and then I squirrel it away down here. She says I stole dimes from the overdues — nickels and pennies, too.

I can’t imagine Miss Bruss would say that.

Well, on your imagination … work.

[…………………………………………….…]

It took strong healthy winds to pull the mud-brown leaves from their noisy crowds in the oak trees, and Joseph was fascinated by the way in which they whirled off toward the valley, spinning and dipping until a cul-de-sac captured them or a little windless area let them land at last on a distant road or lawn, each leaf having fled the consequences of its shade, each note running from its sound. He would watch one leaf setting out and try to guess where it might go, but he had no success whatever. They spiraled out of sight and were swallowed by sullen skies. Autumn leaves had inspired so many poems and pop songs, too. Dead leaves, Joseph thought, shuffling through them as he walked to work, people say dead leaves, but what is really dead about them? He was lonely. That was his cruel epiphany. These leaves chatter like monkeys in their trees. He realized it with a pang that was more immediately painful than its cause. They flutter just as moths do in the least breeze. Lonely, lonely. It bore repeating. Once they leave their tree they grow lonely as they once grew green. Blown about because they no longer have any connections. Some pretend to be children chasing one another through the streets. Nevertheless, loneliness made him observant. Leaves do seek piles, and they speak like crumpled paper to the feet that crush them. As if he and his own shed skin might be conversant friends. Joey imagined himself a released leaf. Wasn’t it his dad’s design to become disconnected? Loneliness should be a sign of success. He thought of edges brittle as old paper, of veins brown as dry creeks, of mottled liverish patches on his mother’s aging hands. He remembered them to be juicy in their youth, flesh that insects would choose to chew. Now they huddle in every hedge and hollow where they pretend to suffer the damp anxieties of impoverished refugees. Like me. He said that out loud. And watched his breath dissolve.