Читать онлайн «Middle C»

Автор Уильям Гэсс

Also by William H. Gass

FICTION

Cartesian Sonata

The Tunnel

Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

Omensetter’s Luck

NONFICTION

Life Sentences

A Temple of Texts

Tests of Time

Reading Rilke

Finding a Form

On Being Blue

Habitations of the Word

The World Within the Word

Fiction and the Figures of Life

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2013 by William H. Gass

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gass, William H. , [date]

Middle C : a novel / by William Gass

p.     cm.

“A Borzoi book. ”

eISBN: 978-0-307-96226-3

1. Music teachers—Fiction.    2. Self-presentation—Fiction.    3. Austrians—Ethnic identity—Fiction.    4. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction.    5. Psychological fiction.    I. Title.

PS3557. A845M53 2013

813′. 54—dc22                2012017087

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket design by Gabriele Wilson

v3. 1

For Mary

never more so

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

A Note About the Author

When I am laid in earth,

may my wrongs create

no trouble, no trouble

in thy breast.

Remember me! remember me!

but ah! forget my fate.

—HENRY PURCELL AND NAHUM TATE,

Dido and Aeneas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earlier versions of some chapters in this novel have appeared as fictions in Conjunctions, a magazine for whose loyalty I am deeply indebted through all of its history and much of mine. “The Apocalypse Museum,” in no. 37, 2001; “The Abandonment of the Family,” in no. 40, 2003; “The Piano Lesson,” in no. 44, 2005; “A Little History of Modern Music,” in no. 47, 2006, as well as in The O. Henry Prize Stories, 2008 (New York: Anchor, 2008); “Garden,” in no. 49, 2007; “Professor Skizzen Gets the Word,” in no. 53, 2009. I have pilfered a few lyrics from some old-time tunes from a quaint book called Songs That Never Grow Old by Anonymous (New York: Syndicate Publishing, 1909).

 … it repented Jehovah that he had made man …

1

Miriam, whom Joey Skizzen thought of as his mother, Nita, began to speak about the family’s past, but only after she decided that her husband was safely in his grave. His frowns could silence her in midsentence; even his smiles were curved in condescension, though at this time in his absence, her beloved husband’s virtues, once admitted to be many, were written in lemon juice. He had a glare to bubble paint, she said. Her recollection of that look caused hesitations still. She would appear alarmed, wave as if she saw something gnatting near her face, and stutter to a stop. Joey was helped to remember how, at suppertime, for only then was the family gathered as a group, the spoon would become still in his father’s soup, his father’s head would rise to face the direction of the offending remark, his normally placid look would stiffen, and fires light in his eyes. His stare seemed unwilling to cease, although it probably was never held beyond the lifetime of a minute. But a minute … a minute is so long. Certainly it continued until his daughter’s or his wife’s uneasy expression sank into the bottom of her bowl, and the guilty head was bowed in an attitude of apology and submission.