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EDGAR REPARING TO TAKE the National Writ?ers Examination, a five-hour fifty-minute examina?tion, for his certificate. He was in his room, fright?ehe prospect of taking the exam again put him in worlds of hurt. He had taken it twice before, with evil results. Now he was studying a book which tained not the actual questions from the examination but similar questions. "Barbara, if I dont knock it for a loop this time I dont know what well do." Barbara tio address her?self to the ironing board. Edgar thought about say?ing something to his younger child, his two-year-old daughter, Rose, earing a white terry-cloth belted bathrobe and looked like a tiny fighter about to climb into the ring. They were all in the room while he was studying for the examination."The written part is where I fall down," Edgar said morosely, to everyone in the room. "The oral part is where I do best." He looked at the back of his wife which oi him. "If I dont kick it in the head this time I dont know what were going to do," he repeated. "Barb?" But she failed to respond to this implied question. She felt it was a false hope, taking this examination which he had already failed miserably twid which always got him very worked up, black with fear, before he took it. Now she didnt wish to withe spec?tacle any more so she gave him her back.
"The oral part," Edgar tinued encingly, "is A-okay. I for instance give you a list of answers, I know it so well. Listen, here is an an?swer, you tell me the question?" Barbara, who was very sexually attractive (that was what made Edgar tap on her for a date, many years before) but also deeply mean, said nothing. She put her mind on their silent child, Rose.
"Here is the answer," Edgar said. "The answer is Julia Ward Howe. What is t..he question?"
This answer was too provocative for Barbara to resist long, because she khe question. "Who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic?" she said. "There is not a grown person in the Uates who doesnt know that."
"Youre right," Edgar said unhappily, for he would have preferred that the answer had been a little more recherche, ohat she would not have known the question to. But she had been a hooker for a period before their marriage and he could resort to this area if her triumph grew too great. "Do you want to try another one?"
"Edgar I dont believe in that examination any more," she told him coldly.
"I dont believe in you Barbara," he tered.
This remark filled her with remorse and anger. She sidered momentarily letting him have one upside the head but fear prevented her from doing it so she turned her back again and thought about the vaunted certificate. With a certificate he could write for all the important and great periodicals, and there would be some money in the house for a ge instead of what they got from his brother and the Unemployment.
"It isnt you who has to pass this National Writ?ers Examination," he shot past her. Then, to mol?lify, he gave her another answer. "Brand, tuck, glave, claymore."
"Is that an answer?" she asked from behind her back.
"It is indeed. Whats the question?"
"I dont know," she admitted, slightly pleased to be put ba a feminine position of not knowing.
"Those are four names for a sword. Theyre archaic."
"Thats why I didnt know them, then."
"Obviously," said Edgar with some malice, for Barbara was sometimes given to saying things that were obvious, just to fill the air. "You put a word like that in now and then to freshen your line," he explained. "Even though its an old word, its so old its new. But you have to be careful, the text has to let people know what the thing is. You dont want to be simply obscure." He liked explain?ing the tricks of the trade to Barb, who made some show of i in them.
"Do you wao read you what Ive written for the written part?"
Barb said yes, with a look of pain, for she still felt acutely what he was trying to do.
"This is the beginning," Edgar said, preparing his yellow manuscript paper.
"What is the title?" Barbara asked. She had turo face him.
"I havent got a title yet," Edgar said. "Okay, this is the beginning." He began to read aloud. "Iown of A--, in the district of Y--, there lived a certain Madame A--, wife of that Baron A-- who was in the service of the young Friedrich II of Prussia. The Baron, a man of unon ability, is chiefly remembered for his notorious and inexplic?able blu the Battle of Kolin: by withdrawing the n under his and at a crucial mo?ment in the fighting, he earned for himself the greatest part of the blame for Friedrichs defeat, which resulted in a loss, on the Prussian side, of 13,000 out of 33,000 men. Now as it happehe chateau in which Madame A-- was sheltering lay not far from the battlefield; in fact, the removal of her husbands corps placed the chateau itself in the gravest danger; a<s></s>nd at the moment Madame A-- learned, from a Captain Orsini, of her hus?bands death by his own hand, she was also told that a detat of pandours, the brutal and much-feared Hungarian light irregular cavalry, was ham?mering at the chateau gates."
Edgar paused to breathe.
Barb looked at him in some surprise. "The be?ginning turns me on," she said. "More than usual, I mean." She began to have some faint hope, and sat down on the sofabed.
"Thank you," Edgar said. "Do you wao read you the development?"
"Go ahead."
Edgar drank some water from a glass o hand.
"The man whht this terrible news en?joyed a peculiar status in regard to the lady; he was her lover, and he was not. Giao Orsini, sed son of a noble family of Siena, had as a young man a religious vocation. He had bee a priest, not the grander sort of priest who makes a career in Rome and i houses, but a modest village priest in the north of his try. Here be?fell him a singular misfortu was the pleasure of Friedrich Wilhelm I, father of the present ruler, to assemble, as is well known, the fi army in Europe. Tiny Prussia was uo supply men in suffit o satisfy this ambition; his re?cruiters ranged over the whole of Europe, and those whom they could not persuade, with prom?ises of liberal bounties, into the kings service, they kidnapped. Now Friedrich was above all else fond of very tall men, and had created, for his personal guard, a regiment of giants, much mocked at the time, but heless a brave and formidable sight. It was the bad luck of the priest Orsini to be a very tall man, and of impressive mien and bearing withal; he was abducted straight from the altar, as he was saying mass, the Host in his hands --"
"This is very exg," Barb broke in, her eyes showing genuine pleasure ahusiasm.
"Thank you," Edgar said, and tinued his read?ing.
"-- and served ten years in the regiment of giants. On the death of Friedrich Wilhelm, the regiment was disbanded, among other eies; but the former priest, by now habituated to military life, and eve<mark>..</mark>ful for it, enlisted uhe new young king, with the rank of captain."
"Is this historically accurate?" Barbara asked.
"It does not tradict what is known," Edgar assured her.
"Assigo the staff of Baron A--, and mu the tatters house in sequence, he was thrown in with the lovely Inge, Madame A--, a woman much youhan her husband, and possessed of many excellent qualities. A deep sympathy estab?lished itself between them, with this idiosyncrasy, that it was never pressed to a clusion, on his part, or aowledged in any way, on hers. But both were aware that it existed, and drew secret nourishment from it, and took much delight in the nearness, oo the other. But this pleasant state of affairs also had a melancholy aspect, for Orsini, although exerg the greatest restraint iter, heless sidered that he had, in even admitting to himself that he was in love with Madame A--, damaged his patron the Baron, whom he ko be a just and honorable man, and one who had, moreover, done him many kind?nesses. In this humor Orsini saw himself as a son of jackal skulking about the periphery of his bene?factors domestic life, which had been harmonious and whole, but was now, in whatsoever slight de?gree, promised."
Rose, the child, stood in her white bathrobe look?ing at her father who was talking for such a long time, and in such a dramatic shaking voice.
"The Baron, on his side, was not at all insensible of the passion that resent, as it were in a ?dition of latency, between his young wife and the handsome Sienese. In truth, his knowlbbr>藏书网</abbr>edge of their intercourse, which he imagined had ripened far beyond the point it had actually reached, had flung him headlong into a horrible crime: for his with?holding of the decisive troops at Kolin, for which history has judged him so harshly, was her an error of strategy nor a display of pusillanimity, but a willful act, having as its purpose the exposure of the chateau, and thus the lovers, whom he had caused to be together there, to the bloodlust of the pandours. And as for his alleged suicide, that too was a cruel farce; he lived, in a hidden place."
Edgar stopped.
"Its swift-moving," Barbara plimented.
"Well, do you wao read you the end?" Edgar asked.
"The end? Is it the end already?"
"Do you wao read you the end?" he repeated.
"Yes."
"Ive got the end but I dont have the middle," Edgar said, a little ashamed.
"You dont have the middle?"
"Do you wao read you the end or dont you?"
"Yes, read me the end." The possibility of a semi-professional apartment, which she had eained briefly, w<bdo>.9９liｂ?</bdo>as falling out of her head with this news, that there was no middle.
"The last paragraph is this:
"During these events Friedrich, to sole him?self for the debacle at Kolin, posed in his castle at Berlin a flute sonata, of which the critic Guilda has said, that it is not less lovely than the sonatas of Ge Philip Telemann."
"Thats ironic," she said knowingly.
"Yes," Edgar agreed, impatient. He was as vola?tile as pop.
"But what about the middle?"
"I dont have the middle!" he thundered.
"Something has to happeween them, Inge and whats his name," she went on. "Otherwise theres no story." Looking at her he thought: she is still streety although wearing her housewife gear. The child erfect love, however, and couldold from the children of success.
Barb then began telling a story she khat had happeo a friend of hers. This girl had had an affair with a man and had bee pregnant. The man had gone off to Seville, to see if hell was a city much like it, and she had spontaneously aborted, in Chicago. Then she had flowo parley, and they had walked ireets and visited elderly churches and like that. And the first church they went into, there was this tiny little white coffin covered with flowers, right in the sanctuary.
"Banal," Edgar pronounced.
She tried to think of another ae to deliver to him.
"Ive got to get that certificate!" he suddenly called out desperately.
"I dont think you pass the National Writers Examination with what you have on that paper," Barb said then, with great regret, because even though he was her husband she didnt want to hurt him unnecessarily. But she had to tell the truth. "Without a middle."
"I wouldnt have bee, even with the cer?tificate," he said.
"Your views would have bee known. You would have been something."
At that moment the son maered the room. The son manque was eight feet tall and wore a scrape woven out of two huransistor ra?dios, all turned on and tuo different stations. Just by looking at him you could hear Portland and Nogales, Mexico.
"No grass in the house?"
Barbara got the grass which was kept in one of those little yellow and red metal isters made for sending film back to Eastman Kodak.
Edgar tried to think of a way to badmouth this immense son leaning over him like a large blaring building. But he couldnt think of anything. Think?ing of anything was beyond him. I sympathize. I myself have these problems. Endings are elusive, middles are o be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
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