Middle C Read Online Free PDF Page B

“cup bearer,” for instance. His secrets were safe. No one would hear him. He could kick the can like a kid on the street. Mother lived like a toad in the garden, far away and well beyond the house’s walls, among bushes, behind the red wild bee balm, and was somewhat deaf to boot. So he shouted at himself, as if he were a bit deaf too. Well, he must be deaf; did he listen? Did he heed?
    What he hated most was fetching the missed shots back to their launch site.
    The comparison with death was incorrect—inadequate—inaccurate, because the fear in question was for life itself—life—human life was the threat: multitudinous, voracious, persistent, pitiless as a plague … of army ants … Japanese beetles … of locusts, the insect Joseph Skizzen thought we most resembled; yes, it spread itself out, life did, and assumed the shape of a swarm. We devoured one another, then the world, and we were many … many; we darkened even the day sky; our screams resembled stridulations. The professor could have howled like Mr. Hyde. There he was … there … seeing himself in his shaving glass. He took inadequate aim. He altered, yet he remained he . Austrian to a T. Mustached. Goateed.
    One’s concern that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by the fear it will survive .
    “One”? A word that distanced responsibility. A cowardly word, “one.” Why not another number? Why not the can in a corner pocket? “It” … “it” was the concern of not one but three monkeys, or was “it” that of “sixty-five”? “Five hundred thirty-two citizens of Oakland, California, said they were worried that their neighbors might survive the next fire.” A cowardly word, “one,” because it refused to choose: anybody, whoever, what’s the diff? Okay, so perhaps write “our worry” instead. What did the pen—the page—the sentence think? Yes, the difference between “concern” and “worry,” “worry” and “fear,” “fear” and “apprehension,” “anxiety” and “unease,” must be respected—represented.
    Professor Skizzen made his way slowly toward the north end of the attic where cans that missed their cardboard goal could be found. On theway back he would imagine he was a damp dog and shake his sentence free from his wet ruff. Then he would kick that damn thing through the wall.
    If “one” was merely an elision whose omitted matter might be restored, would sense be thereby achieved? By substituting “Someone’s concern that the human race …”? perhaps “Anyone’s concern that the human race …”? or “No one’s concern that the human race …”? Absurd. Absurd. You will never understand this language. Skizzen spoke aloud in his own space. You will never understand this language, even though it is your nearly native tongue.
    The dent in the side of the can fit his shoe. He had nearly kicked one curve through its converse. There were two others, somewhere, under the slanting roof. Now and then their bruised aluminum would wink.
    One’s worry that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by the fear it will survive .
    Not yet. “Worry” was the wrong word. Too busy. Too ordinary. Too trivial. White rabbits worry. White rabbits dither. White rabbits scurry. Moreover, “our” was the opposite of “one.” “Our” was complicit and casually cozy. Who else has had this problem? This worry? Is it widespread enough to justify “our”? Possibly only Professor Joseph Skizzen owned up to it. The professor wasn’t wide; was short, slim, trim, fit, firm of tummy; wore a small sharp beard upon his chin below a thin precise line; and was quite noticeably alone in his opinions.
    “Concern” suggested a state maintained with some constancy in our consciousness like low heat under a pan. When we worry, our thoughts rush hither and yon and then thither again like Alice’s rabbit. But when we are concerned, our thoughts sit quietly in a large chair and weigh the seat,