Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright (Vintage Contemporaries)

Author:Millhauser, Steven [Millhauser, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307787385
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-03T20:00:00+00:00

13

TWO DAYS LATER Edwin again fell ill. This time the familiar cold was accompanied by a severe sore throat, vomiting, and muscular pains. For more than a week I was not allowed to visit him, though downstairs in the kitchen I followed the progress of his fever as it climbed steadily up through 101, 101½, 102, 102½, 103, 103½, reaching a terrifying 104 before stopping and slowly subsiding. Mrs. Mullhouse spoke of the “grippe,” a word that made me think of an eagle’s claw. My own concern was less for his health than for his exile: shut up in his room with a burning throat, peering out from between burning lids with burning eyes at a burning world, his whole delicate and burning body grown so sensitive with sickness that a light turned on in darkness affected him like a fingertip thrust into his eye, must not Edwin have experienced his banishment with an equal intensity of awareness? My concern was mistaken. Bursting with health and imagination, I failed to perceive that intense physical suffering constricts the imagination by reducing the universe to a throb of pain. Only with returning health would he suffer the difficult, the intricate, the robust torments of imagination.

During the first morning of his absence I saw Rose Dorn looking at me from various parts of the playground, as if expecting to see Edwin pop out from behind me; as she entered the class through the coatroom she glanced at his empty chair. During the day she looked at me from time to time, perhaps expecting me to deliver a gift, but she did not address a single word to me, nor did I offer any information. After a few days she ceased to exhibit even a remote curiosity. I myself was delighted, thank you, to have nothing whatever to do with her. My only concern was what to tell Edwin when the inevitable questions should arise.

Again the day came when I was allowed to visit Edwin. Again I climbed the carpeted stairs, bearing for some reason another glass of orange juice. Again I found his door closed, but not all the way, and again pushing it open with my foot I entered to see Edwin seated crosslegged on his bed, dressed in his purple bathrobe and looking up guiltily from a piece of paper which lay on a dark blue book on his pillow. He quickly whisked it out of sight behind him. I said: “Your mother told me to”

“I don’t want any stupid orange juice,” said Edwin.

I walked across the room and placed the glass carefully on top of the second gray bookcase, fitting it precisely over the faint ring the first glass had left. Turning I said quietly: “Orange juice isn’t stupid.”

“I don’t want any smart orange juice either,” replied witty Edwin.

I sat down on the bed under the map of the United States and waited. He was evidently in one of his difficult moods. I knew that if I said anything at

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