Letters (32 page)

Upon his “cure” and discharge in 1931 from the Eastern Shore Asylum, Hector mounted at his dead twin’s head an unlettered, unpolished, rough-cut stone fresh from the packing case as in the old days, reasoning nicely that unfinished marble was more in keeping anyhow with Wilhelm’s terminal aesthetics. Konrad compared it to the Miller’s Grave in Old Trinity Churchyard at Church Creek, marked by a pair of uninscribed millstones.

Having laid waste without success, en route to this insight, a deal of granite and alabaster, Hector now turned like Bellerophon to laying waste his soul instead, and succeeded quite. He had become principal of Dorset High before his twin obsessions and nine-month “commitment” led to his suspension. Not even Andrea held his jealous furies against him, once they passed; all assumed it was the celebrated “twin business” had deranged him, with which the whole town sympathized. Karl’s exit, nearly everyone agreed, was merely diplomatic; he would return when Hector was himself again, and Hector would reestablish himself with the school board, which had charitably arranged an unpaid furlough instead of accepting his resignation. In the meanwhile—and more, one feels, from the frustration of his sculpting than from his passing certainty that he was not his new son’s father—Hector turned, not to alcohol or opium, but to acerbity, dour silence, and melancholia, scarcely less poisonous in the long run; and to business, which, whether or not one has a head for it, may be addictive as morphine, and as deleterious to the moral fiber. To the summer of his death, even after the manpower shortage of World War II returned him to the principalship of Dorset High, Hector’s passion turned from the firm back to his brother’s beloved marble, and back to the firm again; and he ruined both, but would abandon neither.

Yet most obstinate of all is brother Peter, because more single-minded. Not that he resembles the family (excepting Karl) in other respects. Short and thick where they are tall and lean, black and curly where they are blond and straight, slow of wit, speech, movement where they are quick, devoid equally of humor and its sister, guile—how did the genes that fashion Mensches fashion him? As probable as that a potato should sprout on their scuppernong arbor, or that the wisteria, gorgeous strangler of their porch, should give out one May a single rose.

“Our foundling,” Andrea called him, before such jokes lost their humor. And wouldn’t he stammer when that lovely indolent bade him sit and talk upon the couch whence she directed the Menschhaus! Wouldn’t he redden when she questioned him with a smile about imaginary girl friends! Go giddy at the smell of lilac powder and cologne (which Ambrose can summon to his nostrils yet), and at the kiss-cool silk of her robe! And if, best sport of all, she held his head against her breast, stroked those curls so blacker by contrast, and sang in her unmelodious croon “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” wouldn’t the tears come! Aunt Rosa would reprove her to no avail; Hector and Konrad would shake their heads and smile in a worldly way; Grandfather’s chuckles would grow rattlier and more thick until they burst into gunshot hocks of phlegm, and he would blow his great nose, he would wind his great pocketwatch with vigor to recompose himself.

Unthinkable prospect! Ambrose too would laugh until his jaw hinge ached and the belly muscles knotted; laugh and weep together at his brother’s misery, who longed to run but must embrace his adored tormentor. Her tease never worked with Ambrose: he would stiffen in her arms, tickle her ribs, mimic her words—anything not to amuse the company at cost of his dignity. But with Peter it never failed: even when he was in high school, vowing like his Uncle Karl to drop out and work full-time at the stoneyard, she could make him cry with that song for the sport of it, break him down entirely—then turn upon her audience for being entertained and declare, “Peter’s the only one loves me. He’s got a heart, he has.” Or, about as often, would push him away, almost recoil in mid-refrain as though from some near-human pet with whom she’d been disporting, and scold him for mussing her dress.

Ambrose, finally: is there a thing to him besides this familiar tenacity? Persistent amateur, novice human: much given to sloth and revery; full of intuition and odd speculation; ignorant of his fellows, canny of himself; moderately learned, immoderately harassed by dreams; despairing of his powers; stunned by history—and above all, dumbly dogged. His head holds but one idea at a time: be it never so dull and simple he can’t dismiss it for another but must tinker at it, abandon and return to it, nick and scratch and chip away until at last by sheer persistence he frets it into something fanciful, perhaps bizarre, anyhow done with.

Thus these Mensches.

For a time, though centered in a baby lying on the front-porch glider, A. was also what he compassed. How describe this. If for instance I declare that through a breathless August forenoon a cottonwood poplar whispered from the dooryard, dandled its leaves on squozen petioles when not a maple stirred, you’ll see past that syntax? Tree and baby were not then two unless in the manner of mouth and ear: he in the poplar addressed to him in the glider not truths but signs. Coded reassurances. Recognitions.

Ambrose ranged from crab to goat. Upon a wicker porch-chair, in shallow boxes seaweed-lined, olive soft crabs were stacked edgewise like crullers in a tray. One peered at A. from eyestalks; crab and baby bubbled each a froth, but as right and left hands may play together separately: one performer, one performance. Baby could not yet turn to see what bleated from a backyard pen, nor needed to. In those days crab did not leave off and goat begin: that odored nan, her milk, the child who throve upon it were continuous; Ambrose was not separate from things. Whisper, bubble, bleat made one music against a ground-sound at once immediate and remote: pulse of his blood, hum of his head, chop of his river, buzz of his bees, traffic on all his streets and waterways. Panambrosia. It was his lullaby, too; did it end when Ambrose slept?

That name was his first word: it meant
everything.
“Say Mama, Ambrose. Mah-mah?”

“Ah-bo.”

“There, he said it.”

“In Plattdeutsch yet.”

“O, did he tease the baby boy! Who’s this, Ambrose? Say Grandpa.”

“Ah-bo.”

Peter, four, taught him otherwise, with the aid of Aunt Rosa’s egg and their mother’s hand mirror, both smuggled one afternoon into the place where Ambrose napped. Egg was held briefly to baby’s eye; Ambrose became a green and rivered landscape which would with the cry
“Peter!”
give way to grinning brother’s face.

“Ah-bo.”

“Not Ambrose.
Peter!
Here’s Ambrose…” The green landscape would envelop all once more, give way now to the reflection of its viewer’s face in the hand mirror. “Ambrose!”

“Ah-bo.”

Laughter and laughter. Egg again then; again the earlier face.

“Peter!”

“Ah-bo.”

They played so until teacher, losing patience, found a forcefuller demonstration: went behind the crib head as if for hide-and-seek, and upon next removal of the egg, presented his own face upside down.

“Peter!”
that strange countenance demanded. “Peter Peter Peter Peter!”

Family history maintains it was some antic mugging of Peter’s, together with his scolding tone, frightened Ambrose. How so, when it had been his custom to amuse with every noise and grimace he could achieve? No, the mere inversion of features was no matter: right side up, upside down, Ambrose knew that face and called it by his all-purpose name. What it was, it was the eyes, that they seemed not inverted at all; it was that those eyes were
right side up still
in Peter’s face and were hence not any eyes one knew! Something alien peered out from Peter’s head; independent of eyebrows, nose, mouth, those eyes watched neutrally, as through a mask, or through peepholes from another world.

Tears dissolved all forms together. Ambrose’s shriek fetched grown-ups from below: Peter hugged his brother at once through the crib bars and joined the wail. Mirror and Easter egg were rescued, teacher was spanked, pupil comforted—who is said to have called Peter Peter from that hour.

As for the eyes. Whoso once feels that he has seen and been seen by them does not forget those eyes; which however, like certain guests we nourish with our substance, may be in time’s unfolding concealed or manifest, acknowledged or abjured.

Thus was altered Ambrose’s initial view of things, and thus he came to call by the name Ambrose not his brother, his mother, or his nanny goat, nor yet (in time) his foot, his voice, or his port-wine mark: only his self, which was held to be none of these, indeed to be nothing Ambrose’s, but solely Ambrose.

What the infant learns in tears, adult suffering must unteach. Did it hurt you, reader, to be born? Dying will be no picnic either.

Great good that lesson did: he was called everything but Ambrose!