And then there was up-down, back-forward, and right-left, the three dimensions in space; and Wynken, Blynken, and Nod; and the Three Wise Men, Whozit, and Whatzis-name and Melchior; and Peter, Jack, and Martin, the three brothers in Swift's Tale of a Tub; and Peter, Paul, and Mary; and the Kingston Trio; and Friends, Romans, Countrymen, which was not only a triad, but a progressive triad, one beat, two beats, three beats, one, two, three, just like that, and she would definitely cut down on the diet pills.
Polly Esther finally put a record on the stereo, turning the volume down to low so as not to waken her lover in the bedroom.
She picked the Hammerklavier sonata, not out of coincidence or propinquity or even synchronicity, but just because it was her favorite of Beethoven's piano pieces. It was her favorite because she couldn't understand it, no matter now often she played it. It was the musical equivalent of a Zen koan to her, endlessly fascinating because endlessly enigmatic.
The stark, discordant opening bars drove all wandering threesomes out of her mind, narrowing her attention to Ludwig's urgent if incomprehensible universe of structured sound. She was swept into it again, as always, swept along by emotions so deep and yet so austere that nobody has ever been able to name them. Once she had invited the world's three most admired concert pianists to a party, just so she could ask each of them, privately, what they thought the Hammerklavier meant. As she expected, she had gotten three wildly conflicting answers. Another time she had ordered every book in print about Beethoven from Doubleday's on Fifty-third Street at Fifth Avenue and looked up Hammerklavier in the index of each. She got forty-four different opinions that way.
The music hammered and surged along, carrying her through pain and frustration and loneliness to land, again and again, at things beyond such simple feelings, things that she sometimes felt were extraterrestrial or non-Euclidean or somehow beyond normal human perception. There are some kinds of knowledge, Ludwig had once claimed, that can only be expressed in music, not in any other art, not in science or philosophy. This was the most arcane of such knowledge, Ludwig's most intimate secret, and maybe you weren't entitled to understand it until you had been to the strange dark places of the psyche out of which he had created it.
It was the childbirth process, of course-and Polly Esther did not consider it a miracle that Ludwig could understand that, he was so obviously bi, at least empatheti-cally-the labor pains going on and on until the act of creation seemed impossible, you would never get there, and yet somehow even in the blocked hopeless feeling you were getting there; and it was all the terrors of his childhood, all those cruel beatings by his alcoholic father, remembered and not forgiven, never forgiven; but it was also that cold, analytical, almost scientific side of Ludwig, remorselessly following his experiment to its inexorable conclusion: he had discovered or rediscovered that the piano is, among other things, a percussion instrument and he was following the logic of that insight, as he followed every musical idea, to wherever it led him, to whatever abyss.
And, after thinking all that, Polly Esther knew she still didn't understand the Hammerklavier; but as it banged and howled to its defiant conclusion, she got a flash of one aspect she had never registered before. It was the last scene of Papillon, when after twelve years of horror, Steve McQueen finally escapes from Devil's Island on his homemade raft of coconut shells and floats off into the Atlantic, as Ludwig floats off at the end of the Hammerklavier, shouting to the hostile sea and the indifferent sky:
"I'M STILL HERE, you sons-of-bitches!"
And, after that, Polly Esther was cleaned out, drained, purified; no more triangles haunted her. She turned off the stereo, yawned contentedly, and padded back to her bed.
Her lover was still sleeping, twisted around in the covers so that her right leg stuck out, decorated with goose pimples from the cold air. Polly Esther rearranged the bedding to cover the girl, and climbed in beside her, hugging her tenderly once, but not enough to waken her. Then there were only a few remembered bars of the Hammerklavier and one more trio drifted up (Wyatt, Morgan, and Vergil, the Earp brothers), and then Polly Esther slept.
PART ONE
COMING TO A HEAD
Art imitates nature.
–aristotle
Nature imitates art.
–oscar wilde
WHAT-ME INFALLIBLE?
The first entry of sin into the mind occurs when, out of cowardice or conformity or vanity, the Real is replaced by a comforting lie.
–pope stephen,
Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas
Dr. Dashwood, as usual, began Friday by scanning the mail. The first letter said:
THIS IS AN ENTIRELY NEW KIND OF CHAIN LETTER!!!
We represent the Fertilizer Society of Unistat. It will not cost you a cent to join. Upon receipt of this letter, go to the address at the top of the list and Burger on their front lawn. You won't be the only one there, so don't be embarrassed.
Then make five copies of this letter, leaving the top name off and adding your name and address at the bottom. Send them to five of your best friends and urge them to do the same. You won't get any money, but within five weeks, if this chain is not broken, you will have 3,215 strangers Burgering on your lawn. (Here Comes Everybody!)
Your reward next summer will be the greenest lawn on the block.
DO NOT BREAK THIS CHAIN! Everybody who has broken it has within five days suffered acute, prolonged, and inexplicable constipation which responds to no known laxative and requires, in each case, intervention of the apple corer or its surgical equivalent.
Dr. Dashwood made a mistake. He assumed this was another hoax by the enigmatic Ezra Pound.
Polly Esther Doubleknit was a devout Roman Catholic and went to Confession that Saturday.
"I did a naughty-naughty with a Secretary again," she said.
"How shocking," said her Confessor in a profoundly bored tone. "Was she cute?"
"She was an absolutely adorable little blond creature."
"I hope you both enjoyed yourselves," said the priest. "But why are you telling me about this hedonic little escapade?"
Polly Esther whispered, "I guess I feel guilty. I was raised Baptist, you know."
"But you're a Catholic now," the priest, Father Starhawk, said. "And as a convert, you probably know the theology better than people who were born into it. Now, tell me: What is a sin?"
"A sin," Polly Esther recited promptly, "is to knowingly hurt a sentient being."
"Except where it would be a greater sin, a greater hurt, to refrain." Father Starhawk went on. "That's why it's no sin to kill a virus, remember. Now, did you hurt your cute little blond playmate?"
"No, of course not."
"Did you make her happy?"
"I think so," Polly Esther said wistfully. "She wants to see me again Monday night."
"Then I think you made her happy," Father Starhawk said. "How many times did she reach Millett?"
"Six or seven, I think."
"Then I'm sure you made her happy," the priest said kindly. "As a mere male, I must say I envy the female capacity for multiple Millett. Now, obviously, your little party with this Secretary was not harmful, but joyful. So it was not a sin, but the opposite of a sin, a work of virtue. And you know the teachings of Moral Theology well enough to understand that, so why are you wasting my time?"