Of course, Mother, the police didn’t pursue the matter very energetically, did they?
If there was ever a false-paper man, Rudi was it, or rather Fixel was, the slyboots he became, so of course officialdom did little, after all who were we? unwanted emigrants, driven from our land our living and our loves by Evil, Evil that couldn’t have a capital large enough in father’s old print box to stand for it and consequently had to be let in and cared for like a stray font, but then … because we were Jews, that is, Persecuted People, and so on, and were bedraggled, misspoken, confused … because we were Jews and therefore the subject of jokes and other forms of embarrassed amusement …
You were too young, Joey, to ever wonder how much or how little Joseph Skizzen was Yussel Fixel, but it was a lot harder for Trudi Skizzen to become the Dvorah of that name; your sister suffered, I can tell you, having to answer to Deborah Scofield, too, before she came to rest on Debbie Skizzen.
Now that she’s married to Roger, Mother, she has his name, so she’s had to change again.
That’s the way it should be, Joey, as it was long ago set down; the one time a woman gained was when she gained a name, just as you will give a girl yours and lighten her load in life, because I know, I have been a girl born Rouse, a wife who was Skizzen, then a widow called Fixel, and I know it is easier, it is better altogether, to be married and settled and fruitful and safe, as the Lord’s will is spelled out by the church. Because a girl, Joey, is searching for her real name; the name she is born with is only her maiden name, a name for someone so far unrealized; and I, stupid unfortunate that I am, I thought I had found in Rudi my real name, the name I would lose my flower under, the name I would enable him to pass on through you and you through another — and so and on — it would be proof he was here on this earth and had done God’s good bidding; that was my duty and my hope, that the Skizzens would fill out, fatten, and come to be people that would be noticed, that pride could be taken in …
When Father took his name away from you, it was like being divorced, wasn’t it, Mother? I mean, you were no longer a Skizzen.
Yes … yes … and I never married Herr Fixel, who was he? had I said vows to him? hung on his words, cooked his food, swept his house, had I? no, I had a stranger in my arms, shaming me in front of my husband.
And you weren’t a Rouse either, Mother, because you were no longer a maiden.
Oh, Joey … you are making me sadder by the minute.
Debbie married a Boulder.
Shut up, smartie.
Father went to Canada, you think?
He went to hell.
He might have meant to send for us after a bit.
Oh yes, a letter all smoky like ham would arrive to say please join me in the flames; oh sure, many times he told me how he’d won some money, how he’d got a ticket and a passport, and how he’d send for us as soon as he got to Halifax or as soon as he’d found a job or as soon as he’d made a million and had a mansion with a long yard and a dozen dogs; oh sure, I should dream it, of the many times he told me, many times till I got a sore ear from hearing how he’d won some money, how he’d got a ticket, how he had a passport, sure, if he’d done these things he’d certainly tell his wife of them, tell her and tell her till her ear withered at the root, I sure should dream it; so he can’t have got to Halifax, can he? he can’t have found a job, can he? he can’t have made a million, can he? and since he didn’t really consult me about calling myself sappy names, wearing a wig, and traipsing to London with nothing but a belly swelling for my luggage, why should he start now by asking me how to spend his winnings — I should dream it — for an instance, to rent an apartment with windows, with a bath, with a pair or three of beds, please, with a stove — that would be nice — with a picture of a town in Austria on one wall? or how about a family rate on train tickets home? sure, I should, I should dream it.
Maybe he didn’t want to argue with you, Mother; he knew you’d be upset if he left you with us in London to fend for yourself, and he knew he had only one chance and one ticket …
Joey … rails ran across France then, rails ran through the mountain passes and through tunnels into and out of the mountains, rails ran along the Mur, through forests of fir trees, because the war was over, the sirens had hoarse throats, all the bombs they’d dropped on one another had gone plode, and so we could have traveled home together, because there were no more warplanes, no more lights fingering the sky, no more Nazis; it was, we used to say when we slunk from our underground huddle, the large lot of us, and looked to see if our rubble was still standing, we used to say that the sirens said — the sirens said, All clear.
12
Although Joey’s management of the organ was improving by pipes and bellows, and he had overcome his aversion to the swelling pedal, things were not going well for student Skizzen. He was not performing so badly in the classroom as to be threatened with failure, or acting so mischievously otherwise as to be in danger of expulsion, but — as he dimly feared — he was about to fall from a high pile of pillows. Madame Mieux had let it out that her softpuff collection — whose existence she had kept secret — well, somewhat secret — and whose value she lovingly inflated — had been defiled — that was her word — defiled by a person or persons unknown, though that person — to which persons unknown immediately shrank — would have had to have been a male and was probably a student, most likely a pupil — that was her word — in one of her classes — one for beginners, she let on to an intimate, supposing she had any.
Whispers were the favored mode of this story’s transportation, and it was thus innuendoed that some small number of pillows collected by Madame Mieux had been … well … semenized; thereby desecrating not only those most immediately affected but, in her heart — through her affection for them — the whole lot. There were in the world, she knew, bad boys; but had she harmed any of them? possibly by giving one of them an unacceptable grade? nor did it appear that the soiled cotton silk or satin could be safely or even somewhat successfully dry-cleaned on account of the intimate relation of cover to stuffing prohibiting their dismantlement without considerable damage. Semen stains, some said, were indelible. Certainly irrevocable. And evidence in court. Though Madame Mieux denied it, there were worries that she had been assaulted, even raped, that an assignation had gotten — this part was accompanied by giggles — out of hand, when it was the story itself that was now in a runaway mode: how had the pillows been abused? had she not recognized their attacker? were there reasons why these three or five, pink or violet or puce or candy brown, dinky, medium, or grandiose puffins had been chosen for contamination rather than dozens of others? did a fetishist inhabit the college like the bats they had in the attic of Assembly Hall? or was anyone who collected pillows to be considered similarly afflicted, so that the crime may have been one of passion, pitting a male pillow fetishist against his swansdown-fixated counterpart? was there perhaps a scene stitched, printed, or embroidered on one of them that enticed an attack?
All because of Hector Berlioz and his trombone thing? He should never have gone into the lady’s lair, but, after all, he hadn’t committed any sort of crime, and he had, readily enough, reversed even his innocent course; he had not, for example, thrown himself onto a heap nearby her recumbent form — he could no longer utter or even think Madame’s name — although she had, by her own sprawl, suggested it: Make yourself comfy, hadn’t they been the words she’d used? and hadn’t the Madame been inhaling weed? the odor in the room wasn’t incense, it was what he’d been told was the smell of pot when he’d smelled it on another occasion. She had on her face a large loopy grin and over her arms loopy sleeves and around her torso a loopy wrap, the actual wrap of it a bit loose. So Joey had, quite properly, bolted, hardly inhaling the entire time. There were washes of silk and satin foaming up against the walls. He’d nearly tripped making his way out. Had he fallen he’d have drowned and/or suffocated.