William Gass - Middle C

There is a story there, Mr. Skizzen, with a moral. Or an immoral — haha. I am in good spirits. Whittlebauer is in good spirits.

A Mr. Kleger, it was, wasn’t it, sir?

You are right, Rinse. Miss Gwynne … It is the Welsh blood, you know. Can’t otherwise account for it. She’s married now.

How so?

To that Kleger fellow. Herbert Kleger, that’s it. Married his pupil. There was hanky-panky, sir, you can believe me, and it reached the Columbus papers. He accompanied her right up to the altar. And a child should be along any day now.

Well, that’s news.

Kleber — Kleber — never liked the fellow, though he was said to play well. So you were to — well, you should have accompanied her. Why didn’t we do that?

The piano wouldn’t have accompanied us.

Ah yes, of course. Did we ever get the damn thing to play?

Clarence?

?

Mort?

?

What, Mr. Skizzen, is your principal area of interest, Professor Rinse asked after enduring his own silence. You realize that we are a small department and must cover the musical globe.

Well, sir, I have many interests, modern music most of all, I suppose. While studying in Vienna I became fascinated with the work of Arnold Schoenberg, especially the pieces he composed during his transition from tonal to atonal music. I am about to publish a piece on Style and Idea .

Professor Carfagno cleared his throat. Everyone paused to listen. This throat is going to kill me, he said, between moments during which his face turned an unaccustomed color.

Clare, you should have that looked at. You can’t help the chorus with a throat like … Lozenges. At least lozenges.

Frederick Delius, Joseph was in a hurry to say. I like his music, too.

Oh yes, delicious.

Perfectly charming.

Though his C-minor piano concerto isn’t much, Joseph dared to add. I’ve heard some say so.

I didn’t want you to think I was stuck in the present.

Oh, no. All the great music, Professor Carfagno said, has already been composed.

So then when did you leave Austria for America? Morton Rinse leaned forward as if this question had particular importance.

My mother and I — oh, and my older sister, I have a sister, not musical — we fled to London on account of the Nazis.

Ah, yes … the Nazis. The three interrogators nodded sympathetically.

Terrible!

Awful!

Monstrous!

Oh, yes, hideous creatures in red armbands and black uniforms.

And your father, poor man, playing second fiddle … well, not precisely that but—

He couldn’t leave his seat in the symphony. He sent us away to safety. Not sitting in a first seat broke his heart. I cannot imagine what losing his second seat would have done.

I see. Devastating.

Yes indeed. Calamitous. It would be—

I quite understand the struggle in his soul. And then?

I studied some with the great Raymond Scofield. But only a little. Because of the bombs — V-shaped rockets, you know.

Terrible!

Awful!

What a time!

I thought the rockets were round. Pencil-shaped and pencil-pointed. No? Thermos bottles hurtling through the sky.

They had V-shaped fins and they growled.

Ah …

Then after a bit we were able to get passage to America.

Oh yes, the government had quite a plan for rescuing you people, and relocating them. So, here in Ohio?

Yes, sir, they relocated us all right, but not because we’re that sort, because we’re not. We were under the influence — no, inexact — there was a welfare organization — well, my father was influenced by Luther, and he opposed the Anschluss —I mean my father opposed it. My mother comes from a good Catholic family, but later she sort of veered toward Presbyterianism—

Ah … Howard Palfrey’s eye lit with approval bordering on hallelujah. A happy veer!

It looks like it. Anyway, we never saw or heard from my father again. After our perilous journey to England. Hiding in cellars from every sound. Living on rinds.

How distressing!

So sad! What a diet!

For your father, such a loss! no doubt his seat in the string section, too.

I like to think, when I hear recordings now, that I hear his instrument in among the rest.

A charming idea. Though you couldn’t actually do that, could you? I suppose not. Nothing will bring them back — our lost ones — because why should they wish to leave Elysium and return to our sordid world with its secular vices and cheap popular enthusiasms?

I think you should understand, Clarence Carfagno dared to say, that European — that is to say, Germanic — methods of instruction do not suit American students very well.

Yes, Clare, you are so correct. Too harsh a hand when one longs for the loving touch, the understanding ear, the — were you struck?

Wha—

In your Viennese institution, were you flogged — those dire old days are gone — were your hands hit or were you berated for idleness in front of the class?

Oh dear, no, oh no, never was any such force employed, though my teachers were stern and strict and expected the fullest effort in all we did. The great Gerhardt Rolfe could freeze you with a look, and sometimes described your playing with considerable scorn, but he never stooped to violence.

His reputation has carried across the seas.

Oh yes, his name is a magnet of respect.

His teachings are indispensable to our profession. How many books did he write, all told?

I hadn’t been aware he’d written any. He said, you remember, the beauty of music is offended by words.

Oh yes, words don’t quite come up to it.

My favorite of his extraordinary maxims is: The notes of the piano ask nothing for their hire and pay nothing for their keep.

I quite understand.

One would rather love that.

I could use such thoughts in my next address, which is, by the way, to the State Board of Education.

That Rolfe was quite a guy.

I’d love to see his CV.

After four years and two publications, the college offered Skizzen a house. That meant a home for Miriam, with a side yard that went on till it reached the outskirts of Forever or otherwise met an inviting fork in the road, one tine of which led straight to the college, whose peaks and spires could be seen from the main porch, while another went slowly west along the brow of the college hill. A professor of bacteria (the students had so named him) had retired and left town, so the big gothic shambles stood (if “stand” was the right word for what it seemed to be doing) empty except for some meager furnishings dating from before Christ or during the residence of Frederick Maine, its first owner. When students referred to a large building on the campus as “Old Main” they thought it was called that on account of its size and age and former function, but it was really named for one of the college’s earliest donors, a wealthy farmer who lived in a wraparound — which is how locals referred to any house with a nearly circumnavigating porch.

Miriam moved them out of her ivy-covered cottage (or die Bretterbude , as she commonly called it) with remarkable alacrity, delighted that their belongings, which were beginning to elbow them out of two of its five stunted rooms, disappeared into their huge new dwelling without a sign of crowding. The house had a cavernous basement with rough dark damp stone walls and an attic that ran for a long way on empty, as dry as its counterpoint was wet, both attic and basement as bleak as uninhabited country, both inviting adventure and boasting an atmosphere of mystery. Miriam greeted her cellar with a cry of joy. I can winter over! I can winter over! And Joey believed that it was the new house with its dark battery-lit cave, its porches and wide side yard, that transformed her from an idiosyncratic and bungling amateur into a master gardener. This time, she promised, she was going to do it right. No more of that gottverlassen alyssum! No more military marches, rather beds that gracefully swelled as if they were buds themselves, a garden with the contours of the soft-lobed white-oak leaf.