William Gass - Middle C

During the weeks following its appearance, the sentence had struggled to free itself from the entanglements of a professorial unconscious. Every morning before work, before beginning the routine of the day, the professor was compelled to mess with it. Like a cat kicking a sock stuffed with mintnip. It remained, after every assault — the sentence, the sock — somewhat shapeless. Yet maintained — the sentence, the sock, did — its former attraction. Or perhaps it was like sucking on a sick tooth. Though sucked, the tooth stayed sore. So kicking or licking it was an exercise he did routinely the way others jogged. Its words needed to be whelped because it was a serious sentence — not about companies colorizing fruit, not about academic worries, not about his dim — to him — and dubious past — yet a sentence that had to be made right somehow, properly completed, because it was never right when he read it, though what was wrong was never clear either.

His game of kick the can had come to be a coarser instance of a sock attack. The cans failed to rattle as noisily as they might have if kicked down a concrete street, but it was the best he could do under the present circumstances, and engaged another portion of his anatomy in a way that had to be healthy.

He hadn’t seen the sentence in his mind’s eye as though MENE, MENE had been written on one of thought’s walls; he heard it, yet heard it all at once, as if at a glance, the way he would study himself in his shaving mirror: one bit of face in focus, where the razor aimed, the remainder in the realm of the vague … yet there — though vague — certainly there — a dim presence.

Since he couldn’t be sure whether the sentence was a war wound or a tapeworm, he didn’t know what to do. Maybe rewriting was the wrong tack. Maybe he needed to find a context for it instead. Maybe it had been translated from the Austrian and begged to be returned to the language it came from. “The idea that the people might not persevere” was perhaps a better beginning. Not “the people” just “people.” The idea that we might lose the human race and come in last … the idea that our might was a Maginot, potent so long as unemployed — fearsome only of physique — as showy as a circus — no more serviceable than a costume — was … was unendur … insuff … and if … if fired like a battery of Berthas — our powers and our vainglory might explode in our — the shooter’s — face — as if … if our shell had been sent through the calamitous curve of a bent barrel …

The sentence had slowly appeared, gradually shaped itself, and as it had, so had the compulsion to perfect it overcome him, filled and overflowed him as if he were a tub. Enough, he had cried, yet there the flood came, out of nowhere, rolling down stairs like a rapids.

The thought that mankind might not endure has been replaced by the fear it may survive.

“Supplanted.” How about “supplanted”? The notion that mankind might not endure was after all a happy one, optimistic, hopeful, so it could hardly be described as worrisome or a cause for concern.

But it was not really a happy thought. Skizzen was saddened that one had to hope for humanity’s demise, for the wipeout of every man woman and child. And their goddamn sidewalk shitting dogs. And their insatiable greed. And the misused intelligence — caviar on cake, invention for invention’s sake. And their mountainous indifference. Horrendous cruelty. He was sorrowful. But we had done enough damage. Enough. We had done enough harm. Enough of us. Enough of this. Nevertheless, he was constantly compelled to recast the notion, to reconsider it, to suffer its shortcomings.

Moreover — now — his wrestle with the thought would be followed by a reverie on the catastrophes that could accomplish … could complete the idea, round it off: fire, flood, earthquake, howl of wind. Fog. A foul fog. A fog that knew no lift. Miasma for a million miles. A fog of farts from a billion bodies. Rancidities. Shit streams. Stack smoke. Cigarettes. Autocide. Sour breaths. Cook pots. Sweat glands suddenly unparalyzed. Rubbish rot. Microspill. Odors previously unidentified.

Puzzled by the onset of the sentence, Joseph Skizzen examined his memory and found that his recollection of its birth changed when he changed its wording. It appeared gradually but all at once — whole — like a ship or a plane approaching. Or it arrived in servings like courses at a dinner. When he read a score, he heard the music ahead of what he read. What would be, already was. Yes, he decided. It came into his consciousness like a familiar phrase of music.

There is no single sound for C major either. Mozart’s … what? thirty-something symphony is hardly a single sound. Enter the enemy — the diminished fifth — as in Der Freischütz . “Here it is,” Don Giovanni cries, shaking the hand of the Statue. Mephistopheles, as a woodwind, invokes the furies of fire: “ J’ai besoin de vous! ” Caspar calls for the Black Huntsman Samiel to appear, Alberich curses the ring. L’homme . The crack in creation. Listen to that: l’homme. Diabolus in musica . The Fall. The Flaw in the fig. L’homme .

The woeful hope that mankind might not endure has been succeeded by the miserable fear it may survive.

My. My woeful hope. Wan hope. Who else so hopes? L’homme . They love their lives. L’homme . Cling to existence however ruinous like the pin oak’s leaves through winter. They try to thrive. To multiply. To make murder a method of management.

Miriam became convinced that her husband was dead only when his image in her head no longer intimidated her. It was, she said, his Jewish look, since he hadn’t had it when he married her, or, at least, he hadn’t taken it out of hiding then to sic on opposing opinions like a bulldog on an intruder. Yet, if only an act, what a reality! She would quiz the sky: Who was he? and Joseph, now in his wiseass teens, would reply, Who is anybody? which would mightily annoy his mother, for she felt, in her world, you knew for a lifetime, and a lifetime before that, because you could perceive in the grandparents, provided you knew them, who someone was, and how they would be when good or bad fortune came; who would shovel when it snowed or cough when it rained; who sharpened the scythe before they swung it; who, when burlap bagged the apples, drank the most cider; and who would be a column and a comfort when sickness overcame your life and lowered it into the grave. He’s a steady fellow, folks said of steady fellowy sorts, as if there was nothing higher to be attained.

His Jewish look? Smelling the world, Joseph Skizzen could not do what his father had done to save them: become a Jew. The Jew had lost his oily ways, his oily skin, his oily nose, his oily eyes, and now looked just like everybody else. Jews drank like the Irish. The Jew was a Republican. He had abandoned the book and wore a rifle. Everybody was Israeli. Everybody had an uncle in the IRA or a nephew in the PLO or had arrived as cargo or had crossed a border in the dead of night. Equality had arrived. Nobody was better. We were all illegal. Nevertheless, enemies were atmosphere. Everybody claimed to have received, in his or her inherited past, a horrible hurt. This justified their resentment, though it was the resentful that had harmed them. Opferheit . Victimhood was commoner than any common humanity. Mutual suspicion and betrayal feuded men together. Exile was birth by another name.

The garden his eighty-year-old mother had made for him beckoned. There was a bench, a small clear pool bottomed by slate, shade so soft it seemed to surround him like cerements, iris as graceful as grace gets. Enjoy, he said to his conscience, take pleasure in the garden your mother has cultivated. Was it not Béla Bartók who heard birds deep in the woods, uncannily far, and smelled a horse in the exhaust of a motorcar? He watched the gently dancing points of the forget-me-nots: five itty-bitty blue petals that chose to surround a tiny yellow symbol for the sun. They skipped about the garden, their little blue dots like scattered seed. Out of bits and pieces, Skizzen could complete his mother’s bent blue-denim form behind the irises now voluptuously blooming: deep violet, royal purple, a cool blue so pale the petals seemed made of puffs of air. Later in the year, the red wild bee balm would replace it with butterflies. A garden was a good thing, wasn’t it? This garden was a good sweet place. Though his mother was ruthless with the weak. Nothing mimsy was tolerated, nothing was permitted to be out of place, nothing diseased or otherwise sick was allowed to live. Cleansing was continuous.