Middle C (53 page)

Visits of son with mother were easy, generally pleasant, when Joseph was a student at Augsburg or working in Urichstown, but now, with Debbie pregnant, Miriam’s affections, formerly pointed at him, had been recompassed. And his usefulness around the house had been put to the test, another exam on which he’d performed badly, having no gift with the pliers or the wrench, and his experience as a handyman limited, when a small boy, to banging against a heap of concrete a shovel whose flat wide blade was expressly made for shifting rubble into trucks and wheelbarrows. It rang like a dinner gong and would be, in short order, taken away from him. The noise is too much like my hunger, his father would say to him, trying to be jovial. Joey did not understand the connection, even now.

After its second rising, Miriam rolled her doughnut dough slowly, lifting the entire mass from time to time so that the softer sides would sag back toward the center and folding its edges in the careful way Joseph folded up his copy of the
Times
. For
Fasching
she added a bit of beeswax before fast-frying the floating balls in a very hot pot of pure lard. It wasn’t long before the dumplings took on the color we call gold. His mouth didn’t water when he thought of how they smelled or how they tasted, but his soul yearned for the agreeable times these preparations brought back, because the kitchen was really the heart of any house. He would sit quietly on a stool in the warmth of its occupants and marvel at the magic his mother made.

The house would have enjoyed the company and function of three substantial fireplaces had Joseph been able to persuade them to draw properly; however, as it stood, they smoked like Mrs. Harley Stuart. Of course, had they drawn with relish, and greedily eaten the woodpile already in place, Joseph would have been expected to replenish the supply
without hurting himself on the blade of an ax. Although fresh fuel might be a necessity, his injury would be a certainty. So while Joseph felt the behavior of the fireplaces to be quite benevolent, Miriam found them cruel and obstinate. She never failed to exit their rooms without an insult.

Joey had always admired, and desired to possess, even to be, one of those little boxes that swallowed still smaller ones of the same species until almost nothing was left to be the last bite eaten but a grain of atmosphere. The result of this clever storage would be a cube of cubes, secretly multiplying, at least mathematically, and kept, in Joey’s case, in a cigar box papered by exotic young women in hoods for hats and plastered with official seals that proved someone had paid an appropriate tax just to open it. But with his new residence’s gothic vastness confronting him, at first he could not successfully cope. Counter to everything he had heard about romantic styles of building, this house did not seem willing to contain a series of secrets in descending sizes. Everything one did or privately thought stood about like the furniture for sale at Mr. Hursthouse’s shop. There were closets galore; there were back stairs, attic stairs, and a stairway that took you to the cellar; but there were no secret spots where mirrored evaporations might take place or dark corners where bad behavior might go to hide, be by curtains engulfed, or in crawl spaces lie concealed. Perhaps if he were still twelve, the house would feel, by turns, surprising, sinister, and melancholy, but now that he had reached the last cruel stages of his thirties, the college’s loaner was repeatedly threatening to creak (and in that way verify its age), to leak (and in that way call out for repairs), to squeak (and in that way complain of its neglect), to crack and break (and in that way give evidence of its abuse).

Joey had initially looked forward to carrying plates of succulent sausage and creamy potatoes, sauerkraut, or—most particularly—Wiener schnitzels the size of a breakfast pancake, golden like a pancake, too, with three or four thin slices of lemon languishing on top, from a—to be sure—ancient kitchen into a dining room so woodworked it astonished its chandelier; but Miriam had—in effect—announced an end to her stretch of mothering in this life and made it known her present baby had been the unintended consequence of—okay—her son’s gift of seeds, whose subsequent plants had spectacularly surrounded their
cottage, slowing most cars and stopping some, and that she would now expend most of her nurturing energies in gardening, because—even Joey would have to admit it—their new yard, though oddly shaped, was the great grand thing about their borrowed house, and it simply yearned to be farmed.

Joseph had his own field to plow. The idea of a museum that would remind its visitors of the vileness of mankind—not its nobility and its triumphs but its vulgar greed, stupidity, and baseness—had taken hold of him; but he was already realizing that many aspects of its subject would have to be left for others, since there were facets of human behavior so persistent and enduring as to defy any enclosure: daily criminalities, vandalism, elementary embezzlements (from local banks, charities, or schools), small-money muggings, corrupt police, neighborhood whoring, disease, drugs, drunkenness, the theft of cars, break-ins and home invasions, every family’s choice of its method of administering cruelty, the repetitive landscape of the obscene, going postal while in possession of guns. If Joseph were to include everything that counted toward his general indictment, he would have to pitch the entire daily paper into his disgrace case: just look at this … and this … and this … and this … and this …

38

The Catacombs contain so many hollow heads:

thighbones armbones backbones piled like wood,

some bones bleached, some a bit liverish instead;

bones which once confidently stood

on the floor of the world:

footbones anklebones shinbones,

bones a boneless mind moved many times

from its home in another bone;

a bone where it lived without being anywhere,

without misplacing the eyes in their eyeholes

or the nose in its slit or any ear’s aperture either;

these skulls had a hollow in their hollow

right where the brain brimmed.

Somewhere nearby, Paris built those bridges

for the river to run under;

there were riveted towers and girls with likely limbs,

and all those trees, all those flowers,

streets, sky shops, and sidewalk vendors,

filling the head where the brain brimmed

without spilling a drop.

What a lot, what a lot of bones

dug up from their last homes:

coffins caskets boxes catafalqued

hearsed or wagoned to the grounds they’d go in.

Dug in, dug down, but not for long

—as afterlife goes—before being dug up again;

so many many bones where high-rises are wanted,

where houses libraries turnarounds should be,

more bodies coming all the time,

each one with thighbones armbones backbones

arranged like furniture in a well-kept flat:

ankles knuckles elbows knees

none of them—footbones anklebones shinbones—

what they used to be,

but roughly like the Great Lakes,

where they’re supposed to go,

now needing lowering away into a sea of soil.

Down down down down

into a ground groaning with the dead,

crawling with cadavers corpses stiffs,

and a lot of rot a lot a lot;

so dig them up, sort them out:

armbones headbones toebones ribs

into armpiles headpiles toepiles cribs,

washed with a strong hose—hosed—

down down down down,

and then left out to dry—

catch some rays, eat some sky—

because we don’t want wet bones in the Catacombs.

It’ll be damp enough down there:

down down down down

in the tunnels we’ll have runneled for them

where they’ll be piled as high as the heads

of the tourists who are bringing their bones

down down down down

to see these bones through eyes,

eyes set properly in their sockets

just to see, only to see, not to smell

wet earth around them: heavy deep odiferous dirt.

Down down down down

all those steps, those stairs

lit by yellow light, lit by bulbs in pairs,

into halls which hold the transferred bones:

dongbones ballbones bustbones,

on and on and on and on and on,

sorrowbones terrorbones bitterbones,

liverish in the light, gray in shadow, offwhite;

tempting the memento mori in us

to pilfer one, an armbone maybe,

pop in purse, stick in sack, slip under shirt,

look good on mantel coffee table desk:

chitchatbone talebone pickbone

wishbone tomorrowbone smightbone,

one’s own homebone,

and treasured chest.

After all those upstep stairs

up up up up up up up up up up,

toward day’s light, let us rest awhile,

with the dead awhile

and try to smile the way they smile.

Up up up up to smile into fresh airs

a show of teeth, sigh of relief,

where the flics are waiting

at the backdoor, the exit of the Catacombs,

to peer into your purse, look into your bag,

pat your ribcage breastbone neck

in case your cunt conceals a bone,

or the boner’s in your pocket.

They must fish in them for that:

to retrieve your souvenir of death Almighty,

return it to its pile stack proper aisle;

for these bones have another body now,

the body of the buried they belong to—

long long long long to—

down down down down—

through the comb like teeth,

straw in a broom,

teeth in a comb,

in a comb,

a comb,

comb.

Professor Skizzen thought it should be sung. He planned to compose some music. If only he knew how.

39

The Bumbler coughed but caught fire anyway. Like the shadow of a cloud, a moment of sadness, brought on by nostalgic thoughts, passed over Joey’s other, more energetic, even malevolent, plans; yes, the way the shadow of the car passed over the road when the car was running smoothly; and its passage softened his anger toward the old heap, because, right now, its existence was a nuisance. This was going to be, Joey vowed, the Bumbler’s last voyage. Miriam was in her own foul mood. She yelled orders at him as though he were refusing to wear
his overcoat or go quietly to the dentist. The Rambler is out of commission, Joey lied. Do you want to spend the money it will take to get it fixed? His mother cursed in German as if he could not possibly understand ………
Verstehen?