Then why is—
Then why is his face still floating about the base of the dish, though it’s been emptied of soup and every other info?
… puff and bray … puff and bray … puff and bray …
Professor Skizzen is only a memory. He is a disguise. His nose, his cheeks, his eyes, are made of a broth that others spoon into themselves. Hear that sound as they suck in bits of carrot and some peas. So I pass into their lives. I become them. I contrive what they shall see: me me not I, no not I. I guess you have the right to devour me, because you have made me possible: you picked me out of a basket, a mere folder, a sheaf of assertions; you saw fit to believe each lying page; you gave me a contract; you seasoned me like a stew; and you gobbled up much time in my life — committees, classes, study, civic service; you ate with your eyes closed. If I am a fake, so are you. If I am ignorant of some things, you are unaware of more. To you, a counterfeit is more acceptable than a real bill, the shade of a shade more important than the tree.
… smirk … bluff … heat … wash …
You never liked Schoenberg. You play the piano as if your fingers were broken. You live with your mother. You read the wrong books.
Think of the hours I devoted to my other selves: how often I had to dodge dangerous questions; commit to memory enlargements of one myth or other, rehearse sequences, qualities, effects; practice timing as though I were playing a concert, disguise my incompetence in that regard; pick a professorial wardrobe, choose a cap, grow a goatee; keep calm in the face of disclosure, which I cannot say I am doing very well right now …
… cheat and bleat … bow and scrape … preen and prate …
Okay, fire Professor Skizzen, for he has deceived you; erase Joseph from your memory since he has surprised you; Joey will teach the class, meet alumni, attend meetings, earn the livelihood. I have no more “me.” I have my mother I must care for. You won’t find a trustworthier chap. She is the only M left in my life. When asked, I recommended to the Woodbine Literary Club the best books about opera, even though one of my colleagues, whose name I will protect better than he will mine, warned me that the club was but a coven of old hags. I talked to little clouds of high school students about coming to Whittlebauer College even though they would very likely be better off elsewhere. At committee meetings I nodded when it was hoped I would. I didn’t steal coffee cups from departmental offices, and I showed up for the stuffy lectures of dreary invitees; I made my bow before other notables and attended the performances of safely out-of-date plays. Oh, yes, and to chapel went I now and then, sober as the hymnal.
This is the way we smirk and sigh, lurk and spy, favor buy
this is the way we smile and lie
to prepare for the faculty meeting.
Oh dear, no, I can’t beg Palfrey to be kind. Joey must not soil himself with the academy’s hypocrisies. Your face, Prez, is not otherwise fat, but you have the jowls of a hound dog. Your handshake is an impersonation of a spit rag. You play with the emotions of widows. You constantly pretend to be concerned for the welfare of one, the forlorn status of another, and continually broadcast your love of the Lord, because that’s what you are paid to do. Why should I be singled out for scorn? I lie small-time. No door squeaks when I slide by. Whose life was damaged by my subterfuges? What harm did I do teaching music? Just a little art and less craft to enable my girls to pass a leisure moment of the day: such as a bit of knitting, threading a needle, brushing watercolor flowers into bloom, rendering a dear old tune. Yes … yes … I taught mostly future’s ladies. Ditto your classes in French. It’s said you love sinners. My small sins were made for forgiveness. Like forgiving a twenty-nine-cent debt.
Here, in this place, Schoenberg could not have begun the least measure of a career. Here, no one minds if you prefer Delius, a man who caught syphilis in Florida where he tried to grow oranges, and with whose work Thomas Beecham insisted on waxing the public ear. Once, when I pretended to be a fan, one of my colleagues, whose name I shall protect better than he will mine, followed me into this absurdity like an antelope fleeing danger with his flock, grateful to believe I had finally given up on Maestro Twelve Tones, because, had I maintained my interest, the copycat would have had to sustain his … an unpleasantly taxing fate. Was not my Delius period a generous gesture?
You never liked Schoenberg.
My life has been full of generous gestures. I never put myself forward. I loved background better than Romeo did Juliet. My opinions, sirs, were used merely to warn trespassers away. To secure myself from quizzers and their quizzes. Even so, with my colleagues I was able to play touché.
To steal cheap seeds. How low to stoop.
I must say the college is a lousy landlord. It let that small mansion become a big shack. You bribed me with its formerly grand piano. My mother and I are not responsible for the mess you might find if you ever examined the premises, for your neglect encourages ours. I could give you a list, given a little time, of the ways in which it’s wanting, the repairs that need urgently to be made. I can’t afford to make them at the salary I’m paid.
Your mother had to garden with a screwdriver and a spoon.
And the piano is a bad joke. Keys are chipped. One is silent. The rest are out of tune. I think faculty should be allowed to take recordings home. The library doesn’t carry Jacques Barzun’s book on Hector Berlioz. In the winter, the damn steam radiators clang and clatter in the midst of my class listening to “Clair de Lune.” By the way, you don’t have David Oistrakh’s violin version.
You never liked Schoenberg.
I did so. At least two-thirds of me did. That’s more than most people.
You hate humanity. You are an opponent of man’s natural way of life. What have you finally to say?
I don’t know if beauty is still possible in this world.
41
It was not strictly kosher, but Professor Skizzen managed to run off thirty copies on the college Xerox machine of the following list he had, over years, composed. Although he was, himself, in no hurry to advertise the existence of the Inhumanity Museum, in case of death or injury he might change his mind and allow a few special friends and respected visitors limited access. All of his careful notes, literally hundreds, were on small, easily filed, but not easily copied, cards. Whenever he undertook to classify all the ways human beings have killed or injured one another, he felt dizzy from the impossibilities that faced him. If wars were human necessities or at least habits of long standing, how could he call them unnatural, inhuman, or basically unethical. Could the inevitable be immoral? It would be like saying it was wrong to have two arms.
A SELECTION OF NEWS ITEMS ON 2 × 5 CARDS
416 b.c. Athens besieges the island colony of Melos, an ally of Sparta, during the Peloponnesian War. Melos is chosen for its particular weakness and to prove to others the power of Athens. The Melians refuse to surrender because it would look bad on their résumé (they were a shame society) and result in slavery for their citizens. The Athenians decimate the population by killing the men and boys, taking the women into service, and later repopulate the place with their own kind.