Admittedly, something about the paper was familiar. But the lines were too orderly for Skizzen unless he was copying a final draft onto a clean sheet. The paper was a bit brittle. Cheap. He did borrow the school’s stock. But only occasionally. The Major had warned him how readers left all sorts of things between the pages of their books. She said: Shake them. Hold them upside down and shake. A toothpick may fall out. This book, though, had an already shaken spine. Had someone hid a message or simply marked a place with whatever was handy?
How totally appropriate to this blissful moment its title was, Joey thought, still breathing heavily from his search, and from his hurry home. My God, he still had his position, his house, his good name and station. At least, Professor Joseph Skizzen did. Just as it had seemed about to be taken from him, and Miriam’s garden wrenched from her while she held it to her breast like a grandchild. How cruel that would have been on top of everything else: a loss of face, of future, of income, then of one’s beautiful creation. O but he had pulled it off. Old fat Hursthorse may have been caught and possibly hung out to dry, who knew what Palfrey had in mind; but he, Professor Joey Joseph Skizzen, the pianist, composer, scholar, teacher, had prevailed. O now he would stride the length of his classroom like the head of a marching band, and he would teach these kids a musical thing or two. He might let on about his true thoughts, as well, if he could get clear what they were, he’d been so long in his roles, his postures in the world.
He’d have to keep his guard up, maintain the caution appropriate to an animal in the wild, no doubt about that, but every moment he lived now he cemented his presence to this agreeable place: he fastened his figure to an airmail stamp. What did these lines say?
“This is the way …”
He didn’t want collegiate rowdy, he wanted home sweet home; he wanted drink to me only with thine eyes; he wanted red sails in the sunset, which wasn’t in the book. He wanted no hymns either though the book was full of them. God was always getting the applause. A show of hands for Joey the music professor! Then something odd occurred to him: the makeup of that committee was strange. Where, in an ethics investigation, was the parson, the Sunday sawyer who hung on Palfrey’s every non sequitur, a yea verily man if ever there was one? He’d appoint no lawyer, Palfrey wouldn’t want to take a chance on someone in town. Those people blabbed as regularly as the chapel’s bells. Joey began to dance, something he called “twist that torso.” Or: the President Palfrey waltz.
This is the way … this is the way we way we … flop our mops … blow our tops … learn the ropes … tell old jokes …
Miss Moss warned him not to read what he had found. The Major urged him on. Go ahead. I dare you. But it must be out loud. Miss Spiky laughed at him but her bear turned his head away in shame. Why in the world … all that love for a tubby little bear … why? He had not needed to give up his seat on the bus. There were plenty of seats. She — Hazel — had chosen to sit beside him … all of her — heavy arms and heavy hips. The road was slowly filling with snow.
How totally appropriate to this blissful moment was the labored screed he held off mouthing as though it were the last chocolate in the box. So what if one of him had done it. Bless this blissful moment, O hurrah for his team. Perhaps he could now enlarge upon his Viennese years — oh carefully, oh cautiously, memorizing, scrutinizing, taking notes; and perhaps he should let his hair grow, get a new cap. Miriam didn’t care for clothes anymore, just equipment: knee pads, trowels, a little bench to carry about and kneel on. To pray to her god the garden. Saved through her son’s sacrifices. Made possible, she would have to admit, by his gift of seeds and security: this house she now disdained and ignored, it was its land she loved and labored in. Miriam filled no rooms with light, sweet air, or vases filled with blooms. After they had gotten their starts, most of her plants grew up every year in the garden, giving their color to each passerby. Flowers were meant to live and die where their roots did, Miriam repeatedly claimed. Like them, she was meant to remain in Austria at her family farm. Beneath her skirt she hid something called “roots.” “This is the way we wash our clothes …” soften blows … count our toes …
Our house rises from this ground too, shouldn’t it be allowed to flower? Joseph could hear her laugh at “our.”
He scarcely remembered his return down that familiar path from the college, he flew along so fast, his limbs elastic. How many knew the satisfaction that occupies the soul when the labors of a lifetime — yes, it was true, labors of a lifetime — have been justified. His worries were never needless, and even after this terrible threat has been removed, and its terrible scare survived, he must tread cautiously down a trail of traps; nevertheless, he felt ensconced, glued in place, a piece upon the board that refuses to be moved, though knights die beside it.
The authorities had never caught his father either. His father had received an unexpected benevolence after several years of trial and suffering, just as Joey had now gone scot-free in following his father’s lead. “Scot-free.” Why does one say “scot-free”? What was this poem doing here? Perhaps, like Schubert, he would set it to music, over and over again. The same song. Only faster and faster. This is the way we cheat at play … he felt an anger that was normally foreign to him, and he read aloud, as if in his attic, as if he knew the words that were coming. How did that academic bunch, as though hidden in dark gowns, dare to inflict their ignorance upon him, their incompetence, their hypocrisies … employ travesty after travesty … because that meeting was a comedy … it had worried him so … a joke … with its situation, its load, its cock and snapper too.
The Faculty Meeting
This is the way we smirk and sigh, lurk and spy, favor buy,
this is the way we smile and lie
to prepare for the faculty meeting.
This is the way we bluff our way, fluff our way, gruff our way,
this is the way we puff and bray
throughout the faculty meeting.
This is the way we cheat and bleat, bow and scrape, preen and prate,
this is the way we obfuscate
during the faculty meeting.
This is the way we wash our hands, beat our bands, call our clans,
this is the way we hatch our plans,
at the faculty meeting.
This is the way we tip our hat, smell a rat, bell the cat,
this is the way we take a nap,
in the midst of the faculty meeting.
This is the way we clear our throats, burn our boats, turn our coats,
this is the way we change our votes,
in the faculty meeting.
This is the way we hatch our plots, cast our lots, pick our spots,