The Sound of Hirsch

it was at the beginning of his freshman year when, under "roommate preference," he wrote "human"

Hirsch begins every semester with a trip to the University Housing Office looking for half the rent, half the cooking, and conversation -- a roommate. Something alive between me and the walls -- a buddy. Anyone, if it's not a fraternity fink or a fag, is all right. But life is various, and I make mistakes. The worst was the pink, meechie little kid, an old man at 19, weak, bent, shuffling around in slippers, nailing things down and looking at me from angles with his rat eyes. Quiet! So quiet I can't remember the sound of his voice, or anything he said, not even his name. A long name. It went for days, that's all I remember: Jeremy William Chalmers Dewdrop. Endless. "My name is Paul Hirsch," I said out loud, "what's yours?" He whispered, "Jeremy William Chalmers Dewdrop." Who the hell could hear him? But I figured to see it on the mailbox so why press. We found a four-room apartment; separate bedrooms, a kitchen and living room. Very lucky in this town; most students have to share a bedroom.

On the second day, I stepped out for a look at the mailbox. His name was under mine. Small, he wrote it. He must have thought hawks delivered the mail, or maybe the shuffler didn't receive any. I don't remember. There could have been eensie beensie mail hidden by dust in a corner of the box. He didn't make himself felt, and the way it looked, the world treated him in kind.

All right, I thought -- he moves and makes little noises. Enough. I even thought this Pinky might be what I needed. A roommate with minimal identity might be perfect for my junior year, a time of intense intellectual growth. A time when he mumbled and paced, this Hirsch. He looked in anguish at the mirror, and talked -- long talks on Hegel, on Hume and Berkeley -- searching for the look and sound, the style of Hirsch, the philosophy major, and when I discovered riches, I took them to Pinky. "Hear me out, roommate. Hear the sound of Hirsch." It was fine. The two of us -- Hirsch and Pinky -- fine, maybe brilliant. I even told him that I liked his style, his simple presence. I said I liked the general quiet, and the way he had of never discussing his own major -- engineering, I think. In fact, I liked his whole attitude toward school: fundamental, down to earth, like a man with a job. In the morning, he just made himself a bowl of cereal, picked up some pencils and notebooks, clipped his slide rule to his belt and shuffled out.

He came and went, did his small, regular things, and never complained. Once, maybe once, Pinky complained, but nothing specific was said. Nothing, in particular fact, was ever said until it was total. That's it, total. The whole thing is no good. Between you and me -- no good. It reminds me of a girl whose name I can't remember. I used to see her a lot; never exclusively, but a lot. I told her she was dumb, and she sighed. I told her she was ugly, and she sighed. For months I betrayed her with other girls, and when she found me out she did nothing. Maybe a look, another sigh -- I don't remember, but essentially, it was nothing. One day she said, "So long, Hirsch, I'm getting married to a person." It stunned me, this girl, but I laughed. I betrayed her some more, and I used to call and let her know she had horns. When she said she wouldn't see me, I laughed. A few weeks later, for a joke, I proposed. Honor, obey, cherish, better or worse, who cares. She hung up. That's a meech par excellence. Not a word, not a sound of complaint until the final No, the ultimate-obscene-everlasting Nay.

I know I'm something to complain about. Hirsch is not oblivious; he knows he sleeps in chairs and doesn't make his bed, and doesn't pick up his clothes, and eats too much and talks too much and belches. That's Hirsch, no lie, so what. The roomie doesn't like it, arrangements are possible. If it won't impair my integrity, I'm willing to change. And if not, I'll skip out, or the roomie can. Skip, trundle, flee -- no grudge, no regrets. But a word must first be said. Hirsch reads books, not minds, and he can't know if Pinky is upset if Pinky doesn't move the skinny lips and make sounds louder than what only a bat can hear. It's happened before that someone complained to Hirsch:

My first freshman semester, I lived in a dormitory double with Horace MacDonald, the football player. He was all right, this MacDonald -- he let you know his view of the world. I come banging in when he's sleeping, he says, "Hirsch, baby, don't come banging in when I'm sleeping." That's MacDonald. A couple of words and Hirsch was aware. I come banging in a second time, he said it a second time. The third time, he said, "Hirsch, you could wake me one night and get your head busted off." Big, this MacDonald, a forearm the size of my calf. It was a privilege, a pleasure to live with him. I started leaving my shoes in the hall outside and coming in slowly and very quietly. I came in one night while he was listening to the radio. His back was to the door. When he turned -- something made him turn -- he screamed. "Hirsch, announce yourself from now on."

I began whistling. I took my shoes off and whistled when I came down the hall. The other guys on the floor used to come out of their rooms to watch. No inconvenience. Hirsch adjusts -- only say a word.

But I shouldn't compare this with Pinky. The situations aren't analogous. Before we even met, I knew it would work out well between MacDonald and Hirsch because I had asked specifically for a Negro on the dormitory application form. Where it said "Roommate preferences?" I wrote "Human," but then I realized what the question really asked -- bigot preferences. Immediately, I crossed out "Human," and wrote "A Negro." And that's what I got -- MacDonald.

All right, this MacDonald. A man with a sense of reality. No super-hypo-psycho-involuted-sensitivity crap to be discovered in that man. A whole human: a body and words. I'm almost glad they asked bigots for their preferences. While chatting one night, I told MacDonald what I wrote. He started laughing and laughing. Terrific humor in him. I laughed, too. He said, "You're funny, Hirsch. A Negro. Imagine." We couldn't stop laughing, me and MacDonald. He was the only Negro in the dormitory with a white roommate. The social retardedness of this university is hard to believe.

After my freshman year, I tried living alone. But four walls -- they don't make a buddy for Hirsch. So, until Pinky, I had a simple solution -- grab a roommate to keep them off. I know what this means -- it means a few square yards within which Hirsch and some party heretofore unknown, bearing alien and conflicting ticks, gamble on proximity for a semester. However, make rules, work out a schedule, agree to do or not to do certain things, and life becomes mutually possible -- even if there are certain things about which nothing can be done. For example, my belching is an integral thing, a part of me, built-in, undeniable. Take it or leave it, Hirsch belches. So did Collins, a 30-year-old graduate student I lived with at the end of my sophomore year. I could be plunged in sleep under oceans, multitudinous deeps of mindless oblivion, and old Collins still found my ear. I would wake to his sound and watch him rise, jerked up sitting in his bed with belches, his head and neck snapping as if he were trying to spit out a snake. I would sit up, too, in terror. He never woke. When finished, he just lay back, and I twitched until I could sleep again. But let the man belch, I said, and never a word to Collins. And that wasn't the worst. I used to read late at night, and the only warm room was the bedroom. Collins said he didn't mind the light. A good man, this Collins. I sat near the foot of his bed, the light falling over my shoulder, onto the book, and onto his bed. It smashed him in the face, but Collins didn't mind. Now and then, if I looked up from the book with an idea, I would look right into Collins' blazing face, long and bony, shining with peaceful sleep. Gratifying, a face like that; a symbol of endurance. It gave me the will to go on reading. Then, very late, three one morning, I looked up with an idea and Collins was looking back at me with one eye. The other was still closed in sleep. I looked at the eye. The eye looked at Hirsch and I lost what I had in mind. I moved my foot to the right. The eye rolled after it. I moved my foot back. The eye went back. I lifted my foot and waved it in the air. The eye went wild pitching around, chasing the foot. I shut off the light, shut my book, and went to bed. I lay there wondering what to tell Collins, but what could I say? -- "Sleep with a patch on your eye." I never said anything. From then on, I just went to sleep whenever he did.

Hirsch, The Tolerant -- a reasonable man. He studied philosophy. During the time of Pinky I had courses in Hegel, Kant, and the British empiricists. I was reading around the clock, gorging the mind with reason. I was giddy with the truth. I staggered like a drunk, bombed on heavy prose.

To Pinky, who was so regular, my hours must have been strange. Amazing, the regularity of Pinky. Every night after dinner, he shuffled into the bathroom, and I set my watch when he flushed the water. Then he went directly to his room and sat bent over math books and graph paper, in one hand his slide rule, in the other, a sharp pencil. He had at least 200 pencils, every one very sharp. He used them to print out his important lists -- the list of phonograph records he owned, the list of shirts, pants, coats and ties he owned; his dozen books, his 20 magazines, his combs, brushes, tie clips and every other tangible his in the room got listed: "Tie: blue field, red and green stripe, hand-blocked imported challis; Beau Vine Bros., Michigan." The lists, he nailed inside his closet door, and other things were nailed neatly to the top of his desk -- a small white pad, a cardboard box of paper clips and a little box of nails. On the table beside his bed he had a Bible, opened flat with the covers nailed down so it wouldn't slip off and fall to the floor. Nothing moved in Pinky's room except Pinky and the face of his clock, and nothing left it except Pinky, some occasional clothes, notebooks, pencils and his slide rule. I thought about nailing a couple of his shirts and ties to a wall, but I don't like to irritate people with dumb jokes.

The one thing unrecorded and moving in the room was Hirsch, but I was a transient phenomenon, like weather in the state, unpredictable, and I didn't come to stay. Just now and then, taken with an urge to talk, Hirsch appeared. That's when Pinky found time to sharpen pencils. I paced beside the desk and sounded myself out on Hegel, listening to Hirsch regurgitate and refine the reading, and letting Pinky bask in metaphysics while the little guy bent over a pencil and a single-edged razor pushing peels off the wood and scraping meticulously at the graphite. Hirsch talked, and Pinky sharpened until the point was right and good and true. Then he put the pencil on the desk and began sharpening another. He laid them at a right angle to the front edge of the desk, one pencil absolutely beside the next. It looked nice, an unbroken belt of pencils going from one side of his desk to the other. Once, while Pinky was at school I went into his room and pushed a couple of pencils out of line. Absolutely no malice intended. I happened to be alone in the apartment with nothing on my mind. A sort of random movement will grab the limbs in such moments. After pushing the pencils I noticed a sheet of paper beneath them. It was a note from the Dean of Men. Pinky never told me that he might lose his scholarship because of bad grades. I hadn't even known he had a scholarship to lose. But then Pinky never told me anything. He must have nailed the note there to keep himself diligent when he worked. Good idea, I thought.

At dinner, I mentioned seeing the note, and gave him a few study hints. He applied himself hard that night. He locked his door. He didn't even answer when I knocked, and his light showed until very late. He began keeping his door locked during the day, too, figuring, possibly, that nothing he learned in the room would be able to escape.

No lock on Hirsch's door. If shut, still to the merest touch it flies, exposing a bed, two chairs and a desk loaded with books. These dominate a terrain of scattered clothing, shirts, pants, jackets and a carton of sweaters. A mess, yet Hirsch never even lost a sock. At times, I may think so, but a quick search under the bed and there it is, tangled with underwear, sneakers and a camera, a lovely Argyle. Once a month, I sweep up the clothes and take them to a laundry. "Boil it," I say. "Use acid." When, during midterms, I was too busy to get that done, Pinky started closing my door, too, and leaving the windows inside wide open. Very nice, a room full of dead leaves and sparrows. A hint for Hirsch. I understood. I swept the laundry into a consolidated fungus bundle and right out that weekend. "Boil it," I said. "Send me a cable when you're finished."

Not a word from Pinky, but at least a hint. Hirsch accommodated, and life went on. No hurts, no anguish, just on. Pinky and I went to classes, then home, then study. Except for my club meetings and girls, that's all there was.

I saw a lot of girls that semester. Pinky was seeing one. Maybe he was studying too hard for more, or maybe he felt committed to this one, a fat girl with about 20 more pounds than Pinky had. Once in a while he made a telephone whisper, laid down the receiver and left the apartment. An hour or so later he came back with her. Never a (continued on page 84) Sound of Hirsch (continued from page 82) word to Hirsch, they just swept into his room, the door is locked, and shortly it begins: "God, no, don't, yes, yes, no, yes, God, oh God, James, James, James," or whatever his name was.

No hello, no goodbye, and the door is locked. But Hirsch too had spells of insulation. At dinner every night, I tended to lose Pinky. I eat myself deaf. Not instantly, but gradually I gorge deep into oblivion. The brain filters down with the food, and both become null in the winding sack. Admittedly, my fault: never hear a thing when I eat, and then I go blind. It begins when the sound of dishes and silver, running water and the refrigerator door wakes me from my afternoon nap. I'm starving. Out of bed. To the kitchen. Good Pinky is fixing dinner. "Great stew, great," I say, having tasted it earlier when I returned from school. "That's a genius stew," I add, reeling to the table. He senses urgency in the air, flings together a salad and sets it down. "All right, this salad. All right." Pinky watches. I scoff up the oily grass. "Classic salad. Only way to have it. No garbage, Just lettuce. Stew there?" He looks into the pan, and shoves around in the sauce, looking, looking. "Mushrooms?" I ask. "I left a few on the bottom. Great idea, the homely mushroom. Genius." He sits opposite me and picks at his portion of the stew. Very listless type, this Pinky. I eat, eat. A lot of noise in my head. I eat the noise and I'm deaf. Can't hear what's happening outside, but Hirsch hasn't yet lost complete contact. Eyes, two of them right in my head. They see Pinky not eating, watching Hirsch.

An hour later I'm in my room, stunned; no recollection how I got there. But something begins to return: in the moments following the meal, there was a curious suspension. Time had stopped like muddy water in a hole, and Hirsch lay on it like a crust. In fact, Hirsch sat: slumped, perspiring, spreadlegged. He saw things slowly: an empty plate, a knife, two knives, glasses, and there -- Pinky -- wavering to and fro. Air pierced my nostrils as if through tiny" fifes. The nose, I thought with fright, no good for breathing now. Use the mouth. A girl said once, "I' see that you breathe a lot through your mouth." This girl was a great critic of Hirsch. "What do you mean, you see?" I asked. "Well, then, not see. Hear, I mean. But sitting beside you in a movie, is like sitting beside a panther," she said. Fortunately, I never invited her to dinner; for her it would have been like sitting beside a man in an iron lung. But Hirsch must breathe, and Pinky took the opportunity then to clear the table. Not always, but sometimes after a big meal, I felt a needle in such unnecessary and inconsiderate dedication to movement; and then Pinky began washing the dishes. Here, memory cringes, emits a shriek like the rush of water and banishes the world. Hirsch faints.

I noticed the watching. I noticed the locked door, and the innocent sadism committed in the name of Cleanness. These, I felt, were small ways Pinky had for communicating with me. And that is all: Hirsch does not luxuriate in revolting analyses of his roommate.

Not for Hirsch this universal, psychomongering disposition to insult privacy -- neither the privacy of others, nor his own. When Hirsch has a feeling, he doesn't ask himself why he has it; and he doesn't ask why he doesn't ask. Hirsch has too much to do: books to read, papers to write, meetings to attend -- the Philosophy Club on Monday, the Young Associates of Labor on Tuesday, and the Social and Political Scientists, Historians and Economists Club on Thursday. The meetings keep me in touch with the Real World, and I attend regularly. Unfortunately, girls at the meetings are ugly, but sometimes on a Monday comes a beautiful dope for the word on logical empiricism; or Thursday, one comes mad for culture change in Africa. Hirsch takes a seat beside Miss Monday. He clears his throat:

"Logical empiricism bespeaks bourgeois decadence, putrefaction of the Western mind."

She grins. Hirsch repeats the point:

"It is no more than the gangrenous effusion of a morbid middle class."

She looks grave. Dimly, she senses the presence of an idea, and looks with serious attention at Hirsch, a man of knowledge and opinion.

Or, perhaps, Hirsch hears out the one on Thursday. "Mau Mau?" I gently inquire. "You're versed in Mau Mau? Then tell me what you know about kinship patterns. Please, tell me." Hirsch waits through her silence, lets her feel what it is to know nothing about kinship patterns. Then, succinctly, he puts it to her: "That's the clue to Mau Mau. Nothing else. You know what I mean? I mean you're ignorant."

Information, logic, social truth, Realpolitik; it's the sound of Hirsch. Realpolitik sledged right between the gorgeous eyes and they blink for Hirsch, and they drop like twilight, like a bleeding cow on mushy knees with the hammer still ringing damage to the brain. I get seized. The voice rises, fills halls and rooms with songs of truth. My women go sounded, soundly enriched. Pinky can testify; he heard lectures coming from my room all semester. The whole Hirsch, I contend, is a service to guts and brain. And the service is appreciated: my shirts are gratefully ironed, my papers are typed for me. There are pieces of Hirsch all over town. None are named Eurydice, but still a veritable Orpheus, this Hirsch. The name itself flies hot in the women's dorms: "Hirsch." It's more than a name. It's a force slammed on bathroom walls: "Beware the Hirsch." No loss. Slander in women's places never made a Hirsch go lonely. She said this, she said that, who cares? Don't tell me, don't even tell me. Instead, say to him, to Pinky the shuffler, "If Hirsch is truthful, nod your head twice, if false, nod once." Two Pinky nods. But specifically, an anecdote:

Once, very late, a strange one knocked at my door. (Eh, Pinky? Two nods.) "Hirsch," it said, "you, Hirsch?" Never in my life had I seen this girl. She said, "I'm a sophomore and I heard -- that is, I was told -- you might help me in Philosophy 31." Green eyes it had, green eyes round and a green sweater big with philosophy. (Pinky, Pinky my witness -- was she regal, was she unspeakably lovely in green? Two Pinky nods.) "I'm not good at Philosophy 31," she said, "so I was told to look you up. My roommate -- Linda Glass? -- gave me your address." (Gentle Pinky, did the roommate of Linda Glass leave in the morning sounded, seized with Philosophy 31? Two nods. What I ask is: Did they themselves seek out Hirsch? Two nods.)

But I'm an advocate of privacy. Hirsch's roommate entirely enjoys absolute indifference, secrecy and freedom. No intrusions physical or mental. Pinky wants Fat Girl, that's Pinky's business. Hirsch here, is Hirsch sans eyes, ears and mouth, a cipher, a negligible presence. In personal dedications, the roommate is man-alone. However, should the roommate want to talk to him, Hirsch transmogrifies, stands instantly available -- a pillar of sympathy and reason. "Sure, friend. Put on the coffee. Let us hear you out. I'll give you my opinions of Fat Girl." But Pinky never wanted, so Hirsch never opined. A rigid protocol obtained, a fine discretion. Pinky came home, went to his room and sharpened pencils. He locked his door.

I was reminded of the pink goldfish I had when I was a child. "What," I asked myself, "is the meaning of this little fish?" When I put my hand inside the bowl and flicked the fish, nothing changed. It was meaningless, that fish. I climbed onto the table the bowl rested on, and I peed into it. The fish looked at me, a meaningless look, and then dropped dead. But now it meant something. I could point my incipient philosophical finger and say, "Dead. Dis is dead."

If the shuffler had arrived in the (concluded on page 207) Sound of Hirsch (continued from page 84) apartment dead, and then become what I lived with, a pencil sharpener, I might have seen that he had meaning. The same had he dropped dead one day. But he didn't. I had to wait:

One night during dinner near the end of the semester, I happened to glance up deaf, innocently munching a chunk of bread. Pinky was looking back at me across the table, but not as usual. Pinky was looking at me and giving me the finger. Me, it was for -- for Hirsch, that finger.

I watched. The two eyes in my head watched. I watched him get out of his chair giving me a hard one, holding up his middle finger quivering like a hummingbird. The pink eyes scrunched tight. Slits of mean. It lasted a long time, and then he trotted past and into his room. The door is shut. Locked.

I thought, take a long walk, Hirsch. A nice night for a walk. Skip out. Flee. Halfway through the living room, I stopped and turned. I looked at the door to his room. Something walked Hirsch toward that door and then he listened. Very quiet wood, that door. I touched it and gave a gentle push. Right, it was locked. I said, "Roommate, what's going on?" I gave the door a harder push. Locked, that door. Remarkable, I thought, and started to leave again. But again Hirsch stopped and glanced at the door. Pine wood, four vertical panels and a brass knob. Behind it, invisible to Hirsch, was a meech -- Pinky of the obscene finger. I said, "Roommate," and stepped close to the door, "Hirsch is sorry."

Is sorry? All right, I thought -- Hirsch is sorry.

"A thousand pardons. You hear?" Nothing. Not a shuffle.

"Hirsch is penitent. Forgive. Forgive Hirsch, the penitent. Make a noise in there."

I listened. No noise.

"Make a tap with a pencil. Say something. Hirsch is sorry, really sorry."

The door moved. A fingertip came out. Then another fingertip. I crouched to look at them. A flicker of eye looked back at me through the crack, and the fingertips waggled. Hesitantly, I took them, just barely touched them, just sweat on sweat. They moved up and down. Pinky wanted to shake. I shook them. They slipped away and the door shut. That was it. I could go and I did.

• • •

But I was seized and dumped into an unfathomable and hideous depression. Books were impossible. Food repelled. Sleep refused me, or it struck like a bludgeon. It shattered me, this sleep, like a fall down stairs. The girl in green said, "You? You, Hirsch?" I, Hirsch, moped in the night like Steppenwolf.

And each day was more uncertain than the last. Bright, indecisive, they collapsed at twilight and lay there, lingering, ambiguous, unhappy twilights. They didn't know who they were, these days. "I'm chill winter." "I'm flashy spring." "I'm a little of both, who knows? Don't ask, in a minute I'll skip out, flee." A lie. They hung back, flaunted time, stayed on like a stink.

Malaise, it beat like wings in the hollow vault of Hirsch. If I opened a book, my heart began fluttering. Headaches, I had, and a rash. Then visions, wild, illogical visions. "Roommate," I screamed, and ran to his door. But when he didn't open it, I still think he listened. "Hirsch has a way of destroying Hegel. Hear me out. Henceforth, just mention the name and people will laugh hee-hee on Hegel. And not just Hegel; the British, too, hee-hee. The French, I'll finger to the very quick."

And then came a toothache. A molar of rot struck connections with an eye and an ear. Pain blossomed on a dozen nerves, and half my face ballooned. Half blind, half deaf, Hirsch marched in that apartment, careened through rooms. I bashed walls. Hirsch in the mirror, saw me agonized beyond belief. The moon was in my mouth. And then, then the meechie face trailed me, peering up, curious, concerned. I turned and squinted down. His feet were there, white, quiet and flat in slippers -- one, Curious, crept a tentative toe before the other, Concerned. I nearly charged to kill. "No man is an island? My ass," I yelled. He trotted away. "A man with a toothache is the very Isle of Pain, the Isle Remote-Inaccessible." He shuffled up to offer aspirin. "No," said Hirsch. "No, nothing. This pain is wipe-out pain. This is ur-pain, the pain of beginnings and endings." I stomped away from the offer of that Pinky hand, and the next morning a dentist pulled out the tooth, right out of my head. No tooth. No pain. Good man, that dentist.

I came back better than new, a happy Hirsch, and lo! nailed upon his door, he saw a poem. Little writing with a sharp pencil. Not bad:

A gong banging inThe chamber of his tooth:Oh, pain, Oh, ruthless song.

Then dentist say, "Decay,The tooth must out."Oh, mouth, Oh, ravaged mouth.

Soon, the hair must go.Another tooth. Hirsch walks slow.A grave will listen,A grave will have his woe.

Quiet in the earth he'll hum,And there he'll rot,Like a tooth in a gum.

To the roommate of Linda Glass, I read this poem and I laughed. And she laughed, and she arched like a bow for the arrow of truth. Relieved of rot and pain, Hirsch shot to kill. No poem, but his view of life rang half the night in that apartment: "Hirsch," she said. "My all. My all in all. Hirsch. Hirsch. Hirsch."