Dates. He posted Tchaikovsky’s dates. Oops. Wrong decade. He wiped the mistake away with the side of his left fist. Aware of what he’d done, Skizzen tried to rid his hand of chalk by rubbing it on a cuff of his coat. Then he dropped the piece he was holding in a trouser pocket. A bit of discreet riddance. Let’s try to get on. Think nothing of it. Say nothing about it. As he took a step, he felt something run down his pants leg onto the floor. And then, starting nervously, he stepped upon something that caused a sound of crushing to come from his heel that had to be admired by the toe. Miriam hadn’t repaired that hole in his pants pocket. Don’t look down, you’ll fall. Ignore it as you would a smart remark. Skizzen thought that by the time he strode to the other side of the room he might have an idea. Vengeful grains of chalk remained stuck to the sole of his shoe; they squealed when he walked; and, though he dare not look down, were probably leaving lines on the floor. All I need, he managed to say, is to write out the bass part.
Joey dared not look at those rows of grins. He pretended to be contemplating the lawn outside. He remembered nothing of what he was supposed to say. A man with a red kerchief wrapped around his head drove a mower closer and closer. Bless that man with the red kerchief. Bless that grass, all noisy mowers. He said: How can we be expected to speak of music with racket like that in our ears. It’s dis-tracting. Skizzen slowly wiped his chalk-covered fingers on the front of his shirt. Turning back to the class, he put a forefinger in his mouth and made a face. Then what did he hear?
Applause.
36
From the same post that delivered the professor’s daily New York Times—three days late but with admirable regularity — he received a valentine. Out of an envelope whose lacy getup made him reluctant, he withdrew a handmade watercolor that his past identified at once as by the brush, hand, and careful purpose of Miss Moss. The realization produced only apprehension, since his mother had celebrated the holiday’s sentimental occasion weeks ago with cupcakes and a cartoon movie chosen to amuse Nephew. Perhaps Miss Moss’s wall calendar still hung open at February, as he had once observed. The card was built like a triptych. You saw, first, a bright red apple out of which someone very hungry had taken a bite, although tooth marks were not visible. The apple, when you opened the cover, was sliced to disclose a length of worm as wet and dirty as might please a bird. On the left side was a hand-printed greeting: EAT THIS APPLE ADAM. On the right was a message in bright blue ink: Dear Joey: I am being poisoned by the Major. I shall soon die. Good-bye. Not immediately, but after a brief bemused study of the image, Joey guessed that the biblical serpent was represented by the worm. Across the bottom from side to side, in the smallest of hands, but clearly in the same one, was written: I have stuck a pin into her quim. Though thin as a slot, the pin went in. I thought her dead but she is not. Who would miss that mean old twat? He could not acknowledge the words his eyes at first fled over except with a shiver of aversion. This was followed by a rereading that incomprehension and disbelief prompted, and to which a prolonged hiss of disapproval put period. I do not know what this portends, Joey said almost audibly, as if whispering an aria. He had almost immediately broken out in something. It appeared to be a sweat.
First there was fear, fear of the sort he would experience at any reappearance of his past, especially a piece torn from one of his months in Urichstown: a fear of old unaccountable angers, and the possibility that at any moment he might be unmasked by the simplest mischance. Even the Scarlet Pimpernel was eventually found out. Joey did not take Miss Moss’s contention about the Major seriously — at least not in terms of its reality — but as a concern of Miss Moss’s, he knew the threat was worrisome enough. He was certain, too, that some Raggedy Ann had received a puncture wound, with serious intent to harm.
Of no minor seriousness was the knowledge, verified by Joseph’s repeated examination of the evidence literally at hand, that what had seemingly delayed this letter was not an incorrect address or a redirected journey to his present residence from an earlier one or a passage through the slow-motion screenings of his college, because its labels were all in order and, from what its postmark said, the apparently laggard valentine had been recently mailed, so that it had, like cupid’s reputed arrow, delivered itself with promptness to its target, stirring his heart, if not with love, with love’s equal — alarm.
Then another memory arrived like a late guest — one Joey had allowed himself to forget. Just the other day — no more than a week ago, it was — perhaps two … Joey thought he saw the thin carrot-topped back of Castle Cairfill sauntering along Main Street as skinny as you please. Joey jumped into Schafley’s shoe store like a frightened bunny and then had to pretend he was considering a purchase. He didn’t know his shoe size, but he knew he had a hole in his sock large enough for the flight of a heel. Cairfill had been suspected of theft … back when? Cairfill had failed to return several volumes on fencing … was it fencing? so unlikely … but what was likely anymore? Gossip said Cairfill had been caught playing naughty games with girls. So unlikely. But what was … likely? — what was … Caz doing? — these days. How might he have greeted the scoundreclass="underline" Well, if it isn’t … Good gracious, it’s … ’Pon my word, where did you pop from? Wait a minute! It was Joey who had been accused of stealing. Shame reddened one cheek, anger the other. To think he had been suspected if not accused! Police had come to his mother’s house, bursting with impatience; they had rummaged in his bedroom closet, annoyed by their defeat. Even for a moment, his mother … might have doubted … She was certainly angry about the fuss.
Skizzen had never fooled with the surfaces of his pupils either, or with that French teacher — horrid notion — though some people might have gotten ideas. Suddenly he had a picture of the Major thrusting a foil through the chest of a rag doll. The doll screamed, Mum-eee, Mum-eee. And bled ……………………… red thread.
Women. Joey and Joseph and the professor were vexed. Major, Miriam, Miss Moss, Debbie Boulder, Miss Spiky, Madame Mieux … Women. It wasn’t fair. There were only three of him. Mieux and Marjorie, Miss Moss and Miriam … MM and MMM.
The professor had been putting off the thought, even when it followed him home like a stray, that someday his real-life history would be exposed. While sauntering happily along he would stumble over something, the most unexpected thing, a small stone in the road, a buckeye that turned an ankle and overthrew a throne. Or a gust would blow a tattered poster from a public wall to reveal Skizzen with his head mummified in swathes of toilet paper, but otherwise, skinny-naked … then the wind would blow again to disclose a skull covered with shreds of newspaper, a hair of headlines … before his exposed figure became a boney bust of death with teeth made from yellowed piano keys … His heart beat against the nature of what his imagination dreamed: the professor should be shown to be a smiling boy, sweet-featured, a bit coy, modest about all things, quiet, unobtrusive, innocent, though not naïve, and although young and small and weak, fixed in a determination as strong as those of religious faith: Humanity, thou shalt not enmesh me in your horrible history! The sweet smile was supposed to stay until it became the last bonbon in the box, and the rest of his ideal qualities had been eaten by enemy eyes.