William Gass - Middle C

She seemed so fine about the idea of being a granny that Joey wondered how she would feel when she actually became one, and the bell began its toll; for that’s how she’d go to the grave, as a granny, wrapped in a shawl of mother-love, smiling up through the dark box, the thrown dirt, the stone post, at the next generation as if she were fertilizing its future and content to be manure. Joey was reluctant to change the image of his sister he treasured and kept safe as though by a locket: her body in the air, legs wide, her open mouth shouting Rah! And in the background, bleachers loud with cheers.

[…………………………………………….…]

Sometimes, deep in the quiet shaded avenues of the stacks, Joey would lean against a row of books on finance or fishing with another in his hand that he meant to shelve and give daydream time to his desires, a rather new thing with him, since he hadn’t thought a great deal about his future before. During so much of his past he had been helpless and in the hands of fate or strangers, always leaving wherever-he’d-been behind and taking a bus or a train or a steamship into some unwanted shelter or unknown port, inevitably changing his name and his nation, his language, his church; only the dry bagged sandwich or the thin soup and its tin spoon the same, his groaning mother carrying him like another sack, his sister eyeing his every forkful as though it should have been hers, and he eating with a reluctant show of hunger as if his food had been previously chewed by another set of teeth.

To his surprise, books had been a bigger stimulant than music when it came to fanning his fantasies, and when he put it that way—“fanning his fantasies”—he realized the image had its origin in an illustration taken by his memory from a Rubaiyat — of a sultan at ease in his harem — a picture that for him had Hazel holding a huge frond above her own broad person. He had imagined once a Christmas tree decorated with strings of variously sized — though all small — lights that would compose a score when read in a spiral around its branches—“Heilige Nacht,” perhaps — a ditty tuneful, seasonal, and trite. He thought something like that was what astronomers must do, singing the night sky’s song, their instruments like flutes through which far-distant spaces blew.

He had it in his head that he ought to complete his father’s business — to escape the world’s moral tarnish — because his father had most certainly failed, leaving his family in the lurch, running off with money he rightly should have spent on his kin. Of course there were extenuating circumstances, there were always those, in particular the fact that when he did disappear he had not been his real self but a Raymond Scofield, one of his characters of concealment. Abandonment, as well as the other charges, had to be lodged against this impersonation not its impersonator, just as you wouldn’t arrest the actor who played Hamlet for the death of Polonius. In that case, though, the murder being made up, villain and victim invented, blame would have to be imaginary, too. Perhaps it was — all of it — theatrical. And the notices of harm that cluttered the papers were like reviews, recounting for people who hadn’t been there what had happened in the play. “When I murdered my wife I was not myself.” So all the world is a stage. That had come out of his book of quotations. Well, it was the library’s book of quotations, which he must remember to return before the Major sensed its absence and accused Miss Moss of its detainment.

But if all the world were a stage, what was backstage, what lurked in the wings, and where were the actors and the actresses when they weren’t on, and why did everybody talk all at once, and the people playing at war shout their lines while the people playing at peace were trying to read theirs, and why were only some shows sold out to an audience more often than not anxiously fanning their faces and drinking booze, because wouldn’t they be participants, too? And would there be music coming from the pit? Backstage, to be sure, was a deity devising the lines, and a whole host of angels, devils perhaps, imps and fairies, raising curtains and dressing persons, contriving designs and prompting the forgetful. Every performance would have to be a play about a play within a play. It was a daze-inducing thought.

He did dream of strolling naked as Adam through a garden filled with music the plants made. No … rethink that … he would be more naked than Adam, leafless as a winter tree, untroubled by any companion, Eve or angel. Yes … he would be freestanding the way a column can’t be because a column implies a building — the ruin — of which it was a part. No … re … rethink … he’d have no navel … as naked as Adam after all … he’d be born without parents like a god, even speaking a language only he … only he … the Adam of this figment … understood. He’d be free to do whatever he chose to do, to his blame or to his credit, but he would be relieved of the burden of worldly opinion by the absence of any mouth from which even praise might issue. Joey, Joey had hoped, would become such a released Prometheus. He would grow old in these surroundings, unlike ivy but like oak, sustained by his own roots in a soil that was silent about its disposition. After all, he had no father; he had had no sister; his mother was becoming an exotic plant that he no longer was expected to water; except that the sister had come back to life in someone else’s service, and now his mother wanted him to shift the car she scorned into the sphere of her desires; by now the Major had him under her thumb; he was indebted to Miss Moss for help with things he should be ashamed of; and Hazel Hawkins took him for a laughingstock.

Yes. To be a good king you would have to forswear having subjects. The moment you moved to rule would be the moment of your undoing. Other people’s flaws — and flaws were the yeast that let their loaves rise — would weaken your will. They would oppose it; they would cajole, they would seduce it. They would want so much — for themselves, for their families, for their friends and all those who they believed wished them well. Be good — to me, to mine — oh great and perfect Being. Joey believed Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit only as a favor. I have taken a bite, just as you begged me to, but only to make you shut up, so hush and let me be thoughtful now, alone in the peaceful shade. But Eve was busy getting pregnant.

Finally (after a few weeks during which Joey’s blameless spirit grew a loincloth and knee-high stockings, and in an increasingly material form began to sit about like the most contemptible functionary), Joey readied himself for the first day of his employment as his mother’s chauffeur. He winced when he recognized the romantic source of the resemblance. At whose court was he expecting to appear? He did not own a hankie, let alone a scented one, and the language of its use was truly foreign to him. So were Adam and Eve. So was the society of sultans, fans, and Negroes. So was the cultivation of crops.

Nor did Joey quite understand his aversion to Debbie’s blessed event. Why had he hated the idea of her marriage in the first place? Why should he care if she reproduced her kind, or mind that their mother, whose love he should have expected to share with his sis but had never really had to, was so delighted by her role as a person of whom society unanimously approved. Perhaps it was precisely because of that approval. Still, Joey had not sensed much rebellion in his nature — a great deal of quiet grief, some self-pity, a touch of envy, and an attitude of passive endurance toward a wrongheaded world — yes — but … all right … some unearned feelings of superiority, which he had already decided he must mask … yes, but not as a reveler does at a dance, rather as a surgeon does, shrouding his mouth not his eyes, before he performs his rites.