Middle C Read Online Free PDF

is supposed to say, sighing as she eyes the full fan of delicacies the cookies form on the plate being held out to her. That cocked the pistol, it was the setup, he explained. Excuse me, her hostess then says, you’ve had five, but take another, who’s counting? That, Miriam instructed the priest in her turn, was the clincher, the blow, the snapper. She remembered, and her voice was full of satisfaction. The joke, he said, was clearly not Catholic.
    The priest could hear how Miriam’s heart remained faithfully beating in her husband’s chest, and perhaps it was then that he decided to desist from his social attentions and help her as her confessor should, instead of watching her face in wonder as he might the moon. Miriam must join her husband in America, retie her family ties, and give the absconder one great big surprise. Because Raymond Scofield had obligations: he had mouths to feed, children to raise, and a wife to instruct. The trouble was, no one knew where he was, who he might be at the moment, or whether he was even alive.
    Oh, how I wish we were ordinary, Dvorah wailed whenever she was given the opportunity. Couldn’t we be common? just plain people? normal even? Only in Austria, her mother always answered in tones of such triumphant outrage that Dvorah shut up and went into a sulk so severe a little wailing would have been a comfort.
    The magic formula that determined Miriam’s frequent appeals to numerous authorities went this way: Miriam and the children needed to join her husband and their father, whom she retained in his role as a Jew for strategic reasons she saw no advantage to mention. Reuniting families was a holy and patriotic duty. So Miriam and the children, now some years later, set sail for the New World, perhaps not as their husband and father had, in flight from a contaminating present, but to secure a past that had seemed to Miriam to have been at peace. This world may be new, she told Debbie and Joey, but we shall remain as we were, as old as an Alp. Remember that.

3
    The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure .
    Joseph Skizzen caught himself looking at the sentence as if he were seeing his face in his shaving glass. Immediately, he wanted to rewrite it.
    The fear that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by the fear that it will survive .
    Now he saw that the balance of the first fear with the second was too even—what did one say? Steven—even steven—so he gingerly removed a small amount of meaning from the right pan. This move saved the first “that” at the expense of the second.
    Skizzen swung his foot at the soda can but missed it.
    The fear that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by the fear it will survive .
    Was it fear, or was it merely worry; was it the sort of anxiety a sip of sherry and a bit of biscuit should allay? He liked the words “might” and “race” where they were, and “succeed” was sufficiently ironic to make him smile, though mildly, as he was at heart a modest man, though not in the realm called his mind.
    How could he have missed? The can was in perfect position. A remedial kick struck the tin a bit high so that it clipped the top of the target box at the other end of the attic.
    The first “fear” was a fear all right, but a fear measured by the depth of concern inside it and by its abiding presence, not one of surprise or sudden fright as at a snake or burglar in the night; whereas the second “fear” was a fear like that for death—the ominous color of a distant cloud. Nonsense, he shouted. Professor Skizzen spoke harshly to himself—to his “you”—as he was frequently forced to do, since his objectified “other” often required correction. You are thinking nonsense again! You are a dim head! A buffo boy! A mere spear bearer! Hecould shout quite safely. Even when practicing to be an Austrian whose small mistakes might be endearing—“spear” instead of