Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel Read Free

upright on one of them. Between these, the concentric leaves or pages, thick as discs, came naturally to their broadest circumference in the central pages, declining at either end to the smallest, which were of about the size of a child’s phonograph record, or a modest lily pad. The gradual, elliptic curve of the page ends, or cross sections, was counterparted by that of the spine and covers, these shagged to a thickness too vaguely patterned to be called tooled, yet not coarse, as if the broad hand of its maker had sometimes dreamed of Florentine. It was a book made by a Brancusi, or else a very gifted aborigine. And he thought he knew what the leather was, of which its entirety seemed to be made. In his childhood’s home library in Wiltshire, there had been books and even other articles made of what had then been called Hungarian leather, alum leather, or plain “white leather,” this made, according to his grandfather, by a process called “tawing” that kept the natural color of the skin. In that library’s shelves of anything from early parish registers to proceedings of ecumenical councils, there’d been books which to a five-year-old child had seemed almost as large as this one and some of shape almost as queer. And as that child, he’d been bred early to the presence of a certain beingness that persisted through all their thicks and thins, from the quartos that could lame a toe, to the silk missal that lay on the table like a handkerchief. For all he knew, this one, when uncovered, might talk on tape, or hum in braille, or even shoot out some gamma or gas which would require a memorial service for everyone here—nevertheless, he still recognized that presence in it. It had the beingness of a book.
    And now to face the music, in more than one way. An hour’s introit, to allow people to gather, was standard at these nondenominational performances. His watch now said two-thirty-five. The invitations had said three. He would give them an extra fifteen minutes for latecomers. Turning to the panel, he flicked a switch, to quick disappointment. The place was wired, like any other, for Muzak, which now began its mindless brain massage. He sighed. He’d been asked to sit with that thing over there from the time it was moved here. It had been almost dawn when he had settled it in place here.
    Keep it company, she’d written, it’s quite a prize. Once the mechanism is moved, it must be allowed to regain equilibrium overnight, or for at least five hours, at a temperature of 71°.
    He’d kept it company; by God he’d slept here, on a couple of turned-down seats, going out like a truant for his coffee and a washroom shave.
    An hour beforehand, raise the temperature in the hall to 74.6°. Please be exact about that. Afterwards, you have only to lift the glass and it will function perfectly. Just give the crowd some music meanwhile. And there really ought to be a crowd, you know. I’d like about fifty. So invite perhaps a h undred. Any music will do. With the sharpest ear for the spoken word, she’d had no ear otherwise.
    Clearest of all, in the arrangements she’d foisted on him, was the evidence that she’d had absolutely no regard for what his feelings might be throughout them. Never had had much of course, at any time. As had been clear enough a year ago when they’d parted. Still, she might have remembered his severer musical tastes, and that it would have assuaged his feelings to—that he would have been happy to choose—Or had she known better how he, listening, was likely to memorialize her? Perhaps, with that sense of style which in women must be never wholly separable from intelligence, she’d known herself as not one best recalled in passacaglias. Listening—it was the “Vilia Song” beloved of Muzaks—he began to smile.

2. Soft Muzak
    A T FIRST GLANCE AN olive type but not really, she had what Linhouse’s grandmother would have called a georgette skin—pale, without oil, not thin—and her