My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates
Sometimes Darian brings Woodcock musical compositions of his own. Woodcock is charmed by these, if baffled. The musical scores are neatly written in ink, with no erasures or emendations; they are pastiches of Mozart, Chwatal, Meyerbeer, Bach—but very oddly designed, and in the playing illogical to the ear. Woodcock’s response is always, “Promising, Darian! Very promising. But you should know, son, to save yourself grief, that the great music for the piano and organ is European, and has largely been written by this time in history. American music is ‘popular’—for childlike tastes exclusively.”
Darian broods, and gnaws at his lower lip; seems about to protest, but finally does not. Yet he continues to write his queer little compositions and to show them, bravely, or perhaps boldly, to the bemused Woodcock.
5.
It is forbidden to inquire of (Death) . . . for Father, as Katrina warns, is not on friendly terms with (Death); and she has not the time.
Yet it isn’t forbidden, in fact it’s greeted with delight, when Darian composes a lovely little dirge for Old Tom the barn cat when he dies; Darian leading the funeral procession playing a flute while Esther shakes a strip of tiny bells, and Katrina herself carries the body wrapped in red silk and placed in a box, to be buried at the edge of the churchyard. Father, who loves all things theatrical, puffs on his cigar and applauds—“Bravo! That’s the attitude to take, my dears.”
It is forbidden to inquire of (God) . . . for Father, as Katrina warns, is not on friendly terms with (God); nor has she had much encouragement along such lines.
Yet it isn’t forbidden to Darian and Esther to attend Sunday school and church services at the Methodist Church, where kindly Reverend Woodcock is minister; nor is it forbidden, so long as Father doesn’t explicitly hear of it, to Darian to hike to the far side of Muirkirk to attend prayer services at the Lutheran church, and at the Episcopal church, and, several miles beyond, the clapboard Church of the Pentecost, where the smiling perspiring Reverend Bogey leads the congregation in song, in hand-clapping and foot-stomping—“What a Friend I Have in Jesus,” “When I Looked Up, and He Looked Down,” “This Little Light of Mine.” Darian listens, enthralled. His heart beats rapturously. Almost I could believe in Jesus my savior, the music was so joyous.
6.
What a handsome, mysterious couple: is the young woman—Millie? And the brown-skinned man—Elisha? Millie with her hair elegantly braided and an ostrich-feather hat on the plaited crown, laughing at their amazed faces, leaning out of the two-seater motorcar to greet them Why, don’t you know who I am? Your own sister who adores you? Come give Millie a kiss! Two kisses! And there beside her is a man they can’t at first identify though surely it must be Elisha, who else but Elisha, yet looking so much older than his age in prim wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a humble cloth cap and plain drab-brown clothes, and his hair gone gray and his shoulders stooped . . . is it Elisha? Esther has jammed a finger in her mouth, blinking, shy and indecisive, Darian is a little more confident, even as Father gives the game away striding down the walk roaring with laughter, and the brown-skinned man leaps out of the driver’s seat of the motorcar with the agility of an acrobat, tosses away his wire-rimmed glasses and cap and flashes his dazzling Elisha-grin reaching for them. You! Darian and Esther! Don’t you know your own brother ’Lisha?
THE CATECHISM OF ABRAHAM LICHT
Crime? Then complicity.
Complicity? Then no crime.
No crime? Then no criminal.
No criminal? Then no remorse.
All men are our enemies, as they are strangers.
Brothers and sisters by blood are brothers and sisters by the soul.
Do you doubt, children? You must never doubt!
To doubt is to already lose The Game.
Covet where you wish, but never in vain.
Would this earthly globe were but the size of an apple, that it might be
plucked, devoured!
(By one who has the courage to pluck, and to bite hard.)
You cannot measure a live wolf.
Past?—but the graveyard of Future.
Future?—but the womb of Past.
It is never enough to have confidence in oneself; one must be the means of
confidence in others.
The first refuge of the clever man is God—their God.
The final refuge of the clever man is God—our God.
Never discover a strategy if another can be made to imagine he has
discovered it.
The world has been divided into fools and knaves?—yes, more precisely into
fools, knaves, and those who so divide the world.
To penetrate another’s heart is to conquer it.
To penetrate another’s soul is to acquire it.
Pity?—why, then cowardice.
Remorse?—why, then defeat.
Guilt?—the fool’s luxury.
A gentleman will not soil his gloves, but will soil his hands.
A lady will not reveal her secret, except for the right price.
To us who are pure, all things are pure.
No success without another’s failure.
No failure without another’s success.
To feel another’s pain is defeat.
To turn the other cheek, a betrayal.
In Aesop, the foolish vixen boasts of her numerous progeny and challenges the
lioness how many offspring she has had. The proud lioness says, “Only
one—but a lion.”
The Game must never be played as if it were but a Game.
Nor the Game-board traversed as if it were but the “world.”
Out of Muirkirk mud, a lineage to conquer Heaven.
To suck marrow, children, is our nourishment.
To such marrow, yet be heaped with gratitude.
Yet never seduced, children, by the music of your own voice.
Control, control, and again control: and what prize will not be ours?
Die for a whim—if it is your own.
Honor is the secret subject of all catechisms.
For where there is love there can be no calculation.
For where there is calculation there can be no love.
And where The Game is abandoned, mere mortality awaits.
“As above, so below”—all on Earth is ordained.
And where ordained, blameless.
For, children, I say unto you—
Crime? Then complicity.
Complicity? Then no crime.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness becomes light.
“THE MARK OF CAIN”
1.
A day, and a night, and no word from Thurston. And no word from Harwood. And Abraham Licht hid the dread in his heart. Thinking, As I am a man, I must accept disaster no less than triumph.
Thinking, One day I will record it all. My Heart Laid Bare; a Memoir of Abraham Licht, American. I will shrink from no fact however shameful. I will speak in frank, forthright language. I will spare no one, especially not myself. A posthumous work perhaps. The royalties to go to my children. Not a pseudonymous work, for I am a man of pride. What I have done, I have done. What has been done to me, I have also done.
Yet not knowing how swiftly disaster would sweep upon him, though he prowled the marsh, sucking at his cigar for courage, rehearsing certain dramatic scenes of the memoir. And then there came a time when the family was in jeopardy, owing to a stupid blunder of the least talented of my sons . . . .
PAST NINE O’CLOCK of a warm, sulfurous midsummer evening, and the family still seated at the dining-room table; Abraham Licht at the head, and Katrina in her apron close by; little Darian and Esther allowed up past their bedtimes yet another night (for this was still a time of celebration); Millie’s beautiful face aglow in firelight, and her hair no longer plaited but cascading over her shoulders; and Elisha, buoyant Elisha quite the dandy in a wing-collar shirt, tieless, his handsome face gleaming in firelight as for the benefit of Darian and E
Elisha, basking in the family’s attention, said, frowning, “The man was said to be a gentleman, despite being Ne-grow. Apparently such is possible. De facto, it is not only possible, but is. So he would not have asked a thing of you, Millie.” Saying to Father at the head of the table, “Isn’t it true, Father, the Black Phantom robs only those who deserve to be robbed?”
Abraham Licht said, with satisfaction, “Certainly. But there are many so.”
“Many so!”—Elisha grinned, and clapped his hands.
At this point Darian asked innocently, “But how do you know who deserves to be robbed?—how can you tell?”
All the adults laughed, though not cruelly.
“Yes,” said Esther, anxiously, “—how can you tell? And do you shoot them? Is there a gun?”
“Why, Esther, what a thing to say,” Abraham Licht exclaimed, not knowing if he should laugh, or frown, “—what a thing for a sweet little girl to imagine. Who has been talking of guns?” (In fact, Elisha had been talking of the gun the Black Phantom had used, demonstrating how it must have been brandished—according to accounts he’d read in the papers.) “Who has been talking of shooting? Unburdening fools of their excess cash is a very different matter from shooting them; for, after all, not even a fool deserves to be hurt. You can argue that a fool deserves our protection. A fool, like a sheep, is to be cherished.”
Elisha said, continuing his own line of thought, “It is a tricky procedure, Darian, and Esther, for the problem lies in the fact that, of so many who deserve to be robbed, which in the United States of the present time is a considerable number of ‘the wealthy’—the ‘ruling class’—only a small percentage ever are robbed; there are not enough trained robbers to execute the task. Mainly, these individuals are the ones who do the robbing. Not at gunpoint but through ‘business.’ So there’s injustice. There’s disproportion. Of the hundreds of persons at Chautauqua Falls who richly deserved to be robbed, only three were robbed. That’s unfair!”
Again, the adults laughed. But Darian and Esther only glanced worriedly from face to face, their eyes ringed in fatigue from the late hour, and so much excitement in the normally quiet Muirkirk residence, and this sense of—what?—playful confusion, a complex and protracted joke or game they could not comprehend? Unfit for The Game. Seeing Darian’s hurt, baffled expression, Millie leaned over to kiss him, saying, “Don’t mind, Darian, if they tease. They are always teasing. One day, just you wait, you will do the teasing.”
Since Millie’s arrival home she’d been impressed, as she said several times, by her youngest brother’s “prodigious gift” for music. She believed he should be trained professionally, brought to New York City and enrolled in a music school. Why, he might be launched upon a stage career as a sort of music-genius Tom Thumb—“Audiences would adore him.” (Abraham Licht did not like this idea at all. Tom Thumb, he said, was a genuine midget—“And my son, I hope, is a normal child.”) In any case, Millie said, she’d heard many professional pianists who played no better than Darian, and many who played much worse. And Darian would be only ten years old, and could easily pass for seven or eight. “I could present him on stage. I have just the idea for candlelight, and his costume,” Millie said.
(On the first evening of Millie’s and Elisha’s arrival home, Darian had played the spinet for them, in the parlor; a number of the compositions Reverend Woodcock had assigned him, and Bach’s “Inventions”; on the second evening, at their request, he played one of his own compositions—“Welcome Home.” This was a strange piece with lengthy arpeggio flights, a crashing of chords up and down the keyboard, spirited, yet solemn; noisy, yet subdued; clearly, Millie and Elisha didn’t know what to make of it, any more than Father or Katrina knew, but they applauded enthusiastically just the same. On the third evening, Darian played another of his own compositions, titled “Now We Are Happy,” this time on a harmonica and an ingenious foot-operated drum of his invention, while Esther stood beside him humming several eerily high-pitched notes, wordless. In contrapuntal design rivalrous melodies rose and fell, rising out of nowhere and trailing gradually into silence . . . as if the final note could not be found. “Darian, how strange! How wonderful,” Millie said, vigorously applauding, though with doubtful eyes, “—but when you begin your stage career, you know, you will have to play real music, by real composers. Music that pleases the audience’s ear, not just your own.”)
Next day, to his relief, Darian was taken aside by Father, who told him to pay no attention to Millie. “The girl means well, of course. But things come so naturally for her, as for Elisha, she confuses you with herself; she imagines that a career as a musical ‘Tom Thumb’ would suit you, as it might have suited her. But don’t worry, son, your father doesn’t intend to expose you to the rigors of any profession, at least not without your consent, and not for a long time. For I’ve promised your mother . . . I am a man who does not go back on his word.”
2.
And then, Harwood arrived home.
They were seated in the cozy firelit dining room at the old oak table, the only table in the world, as Abraham Licht said, at which he felt entirely safe, when suddenly there was a noise outside, at the rear of the house, and a pounding at the door, which Elisha leapt up to open, for the Licht residence was the only residence in Muirkirk in which doors and windows were customarily locked, and, there, looking exhausted, starved—there was Harwood, staggering into the kitchen.
Staring at Father. His wild bloodshot eyes fixed upon Father.
As if no one else was in the room, only Father.
And Father on his feet, shocked by Harwood’s appearance; not, at first, moving to him.
Harwood stammered he’d come a God-damned long distance on foot.
He’d had, he said bitterly, some God-damned bad luck.
Not his fault. None of it. Thurston was to blame—partly. And Father’s “cousin” who’d betrayed him, in Baltimore.
Didn’t want to talk about it right now, God damn.
No he wasn’t injured.
No not sick.
But tired.
And starved.
God-damned starved.
Elisha would have helped his brother to the table but Harwood shrugged away from him, began eating while still on his feet, by hand; poured himself ale, which he downed like a thirsty horse, in prodigious quantities. In stunned silence, the family stared at Harwood. Father was still on his feet, and fumbling to relight his cigar. The younger children weren’t certain—at first—that this disheveled man was their brother Harwood, except his voice was Harwood’s, and that angry mirthless laugh. His beard had grown out like a porcupine’s quills, there was something mashed and furious about his mouth, his left eye was bruised and swollen, he’d sat down at a chair Katrina had provided for him, and was eating, head lowered toward his plate, warmed-up supper which Katrina placed before him, with that look of fearful affection she’d directed toward Harwood since boyhood; as if, of Abraham Licht’s progeny, Harwood was the one fated for hurt, both to commit and to suffer. Yet, unlike his brothers, Harwood paid the old woman little heed, and seemed scarcely to know whose hands fed him, so long as he was fed.
Elisha regarded his brother with an expression of disdain: they were not
But Harwood, eating noisily, biting off the heel of a loaf of bread with his strong teeth and washing it down with a large mouthful of ale, only shrugged.
Still, Millie persisted. For Father’s silence unnerved her.
Asking Harwood what news he had of Thurston, and Harwood now glanced up at her, and scowled, saying he hadn’t seen Thurston in a long time.
Since March, maybe.
Maybe February.
“Why ask me of Thurston?—I don’t know God-damn nothin’ of Thurs-ton.”
Chewing as he spoke, sarcasm like pulpy food in his mouth.
Millie began to say, hadn’t he just now spoken of Thurston?—blaming bad luck on Thurston?—but, seeing the blood-blackened look in her brother’s face, shrank back in silence. A pretty fair-haired princess of a girl is no match, even in Muirkirk under Father’s watchful eye, for a “roughneck” American youth like Harwood.
Still, Abraham Licht had not spoken.
For he knew. He knew. He knew. Owing to a stupid blunder of the least talented of my sons . . .
Harwood, seeing how everyone watched him, with a bold, fearful look at his father, began to snort with laughter, saying maybe Thurston eloped with his fancy lady, maybe they were on their honeymoon, sailing the high seas to Baby-lon, or Mad-a-gask-kaw, wherever you go on your honeymoon, maybe nobody would ever hear of Thurston again: how’s it Harwood’s fault?