From the concrete tennis court the children of the Chinese cook were flying kites in the shape of birds and equipped with little whistles, so that they warbled plaintively in the wind. The cheerful quacking sound of Cantonese drifted down to Pete’s ears. Across the Pacific, he reflected, millions upon millions of such children had died already or were dying. Below them, in the Sacred Grotto, stood the plaster figure of Our Lady. Pete thought of Virginia kneeling in white shorts and a yachting cap, of the abusive eloquence of Reverend Schlitz, of Dr. Obispo’s jokes, of Alexis Carrel on the subject of Lourdes, of Lee’s “History of the Inquisition,” of Tawney in the relationship between Protestantism and Capitalism, of Niemoller and John Knox and Torque-mada and that Sister of Mercy and again of Virginia and finally of Mr. Propter as the only person he knew who could make some sense out of the absurd, insane, diabolical confusion of it all.
Chapter VI
SOMEWHAT to Jeremy’s disappointment, Dr. Obispo was not at all mortified by the information that his ideas had been anticipated in the eighteenth century.
“I’d like to hear some more about your Fifth Earl,” he had said, as they glided down into the cellars with the Vermeer. “You say he lived to ninety?”
“More than ninety,” Jeremy answered. “Ninety-six or seven, I forget which. And died in the middle of a scandal, what’s more.”
“What sort of a scandal?”
Jeremy coughed and patted the top of his head. “The usual sort,” he fluted.
“You mean, the old bozo was still at it?” Dr. Obispo asked incredulously.
“Still at it,” Jeremy repeated. “There’s a passage about the affair in the unpublished papers of Greville. He died just in time. They were actually on the point of arresting him.”
“What for?”
Jeremy twinkled again and coughed. “Well,” he said slowly and in his most Cranford-like manner, “it seems that he had a tendency to take his pleasures rather homicidally.”
“You mean, he’d killed someone.”
“Not actually killed,” Jeremy answered: “just damaged.”
Dr. Obispo was rather disappointed, but consoled himself almost immediately by the reflection that, at ninety-six, even damage was pretty creditable. “I’d like to look into this a little further,” he added.
“Well, the note-book’s at your disposal,” said Jeremy politely.
Dr. Obispo thanked him. Together, they walked towards Jeremy’s work room.
“The handwriting’s rather difficult,” said Jeremy as they entered. “I think it might be easier if I read it aloud to you.”
Dr. Obispo protested that he didn’t want to waste Jeremy’s time; but as the other was anxious to find an excuse for putting off to another occasion the wearisome task of sorting papers that didn’t interest him, the protest was out-protested. Jeremy insisted on being altruistic. Dr. Obispo thanked him and settled down to listen. Jeremy took his eyes out of their native element for long enough to polish his spectacles, then began to re-read aloud the passage he had been reading that morning, when the bell rang for lunch.
“ ‘It is to be found in the Mud,’ ” he concluded, “ ‘and only awaits a skilful Angler.’ ”
Dr. Obispo chuckled. “You might almost use it as a definition of science,” he said. “What is science? Science is angling in the mud—angling for immortality and for anything else that may happen to turn up.” He laughed again and added that he liked the old bastard.
Jeremy went on reading.
“ ‘August, 1796. Today my gabbling niece, Caroline, reproached me with what she called the Inconsistency of my Conduct. A man who is humane with the Horses in his stables, the Deer in his park and the Carp in his fishponds should show his Consistency by being more sociable than I am, more tolerant of the company of Fools, more charitable towards the poor and humble. To which I answered by remarking that the word, Man, is the general Name applied to successions of inconsistent Conduct, having their source within a two-legged and feath-erless Body, and that such words as Caroline, John and the like are the proper names applied to particular successions of inconsistent Conduct within particular Bodies. The only Consistency exhibited by the mass of Mankind is a Consistency of Inconsistency. In other words, the nature of any particular succession of inconsistent Conduct depends upon the history of the individual and his ancestors. Each succession of Inconsistencies is determined and obeys the Laws imposed upon it by its own antecedent Circumstances. A Character may be said to be consistent in the sense that its Inconsistencies are predestined and cannot pass beyond the boundaries ordained for it. The Consistency demanded by such Fools as Caroline is of quite another kind. These reproach us because our successive Acts are not consistent with some arbitrarily selected set of Prejudices, or ridiculous code of rules, such as the Hebrew, the stoic, the Iroquois, the Christian. Such Consistency is not to be achieved, and the attempt to achieve it results only in Imbecility or Hypocrisy. Consider, I said to Caroline, your own Conduct. What Consistency, pray, do you find between your conversations with the Dean upon Redemption and your Draconian birchings of the younger Maids? between your conspicuous charities and the setting of man-traps on your estates? between your appearances at Court and your chaise percée? or between divine service on Sunday morning and the pleasures enjoyed on Saturday night with your husband and on Friday or Thursday, as all the world suspects, with a certain Baronet who shall be nameless? But before I had concluded my final question, Caroline had left the room.’ ”
“Poor Caroline,” said Dr. Obispo, with a laugh. “Still, she got what she asked for.”
Jeremy read out the next entry.
“ ‘December, 1796. After this second attack of pulmonary congestion, Convalescence has come more slowly than before and advanced less far. I hang here suspended above the pit as though by a single thread, and the substance of that thread is Misery.’ ”
With an elegantly bent little finger, Dr. Obispo flicked the ash of his cigarette on to the floor.
“One of those pharmaceutical tragedies,” he commented. “With a course of thiamine chloride and some testosterone, I could have made him as happy as a sand-boy. Has it ever struck you,” he added, “what a lot of the finest romantic literature is the result of bad doctoring?”
I could lie down like a tired child
And weep away this life of care.
“Lovely! But if they’d known how to clear up poor Shelley’s chronic tuberculous pleurisy it would never have been written. Lying down like a tired child and weeping life away happens to be one of the most characteristic symptoms of chronic tuberculous pleurisy. And most of the other Weltschmerz boys were either sick men or alcoholics or dope addicts. I could have prevented every one of them from writing as he did.” Dr. Obispo looked at Jeremy with a wolfish smile that was almost child-like in the candour of its triumphant cynicism. “Well, let’s hear how the Old Boy gets over his troubles.”
“ ‘December, 1796,’ ” Jeremy read out. “ ‘The prowlings of my attendant hyaenas became so intolerable to me that yesterday I resolved to put an end to them. When I asked them to leave me alone in the future, Caroline and John protested their more than filial Affection. In the end I was forced to say that, unless they were gone by noon today, I would order my Steward to bring a score of men and eject them from my House. This morning, from my window, I watched them take their departure.’ ”
The next note was dated January 11, 1797: “This year the anniversary of my birth calls up Thoughts more gloomy than ever before. I am too weary to record them. The day being fine and remarkably warm for the Season, I had myself carried in my chair to the fishponds. The bell was rung, and the Carp at once came hurrying to be fed. The spectacle of the brute Creation provides me with almost my sole remaining pleasures. The stupidity of the Brutes is without pretensions and their malignity depends on Appetite and is therefore only intermittent. Men are systematically and continuously cruel, while their Follies are justified in the names of Religion and Politics, and th
eir Ignorance is muffled up in the pompous garments of Philosophy.
“Meanwhile, as I watched the fishes pushing and jostling for their dinner, like a crowd of Divines in search of Preferment, my Thoughts returned to the perplexing Question upon which I have so often speculated in the past. Why should a man die at three score years and ten, when a Fish can retain its Youth for two or three centuries? I have debated with myself a number of possible answers. There was a time, for example, when I thought that the longer life of Carp and Pike might be due to the superiority of their Watery Element over our Air. But the lives of some subaqueous Creatures are short, while those of certain Birds exceed the human span.
“Again, I have asked myself if the Fish’s longer years might not be due to its peculiar mode of begetting and bearing its young. But again I am met by fatal Objections. The Males of Parrots and Ravens do not onanize, but copulate; the females of Elephants do not lay eggs but bear their young, if we are to believe M. de Buffon, for a period of not less than four and twenty months. But Parrots, Ravens and Elephants are long-lived Creatures; from which we must conclude that the Brevity of human Life is due to other Causes than the manner in which Men beget and Females reproduce their Kind.
“The only Hypotheses to which I can see no manifest Objections are these: the Diet of such fish as Carp and Pike contains some substance which preserves their Bodies from the Decay which overtakes the greater number of Creatures even while they are alive; alternatively the substance which prevents Decay is to be found within the Body of the Fish, especially, it would be reasonable to guess, in the Stomach, Liver, Bowels and other Organs of Concoction and Assimilation. In the short-lived animals, such as Man, the Substances preventive of Decay must be presumed to be lacking. The question then arises whether these Substances can be introduced into the human Body from that of the Fish. History does not record any remarkable instances of longevity among the Ichthyophagi, nor have I ever observed that the Inhabitants of sea ports and other places where there is an abundance of Fish were specially long-lived. But we need not conclude from this that the Substance preventive of Decay can never be conveyed from Fish to Man. For Man cooks his Food before eating it, and we know by a thousand instances that the application of Heat profoundly modifies the nature of many Substances; moreover, he throws away, as unfit for his Consumption, precisely those Organs of the Fish in which it is most reasonable to assume that the Substance preventive of Decay is continued.”
“Christ!” said Dr. Obispo, unable to contain himself any longer. “Don’t tell me that the old buzzard is going to eat raw fish guts!”
Bright behind their bifocals, Jeremy’s eyes had darted down to the bottom of the page and were already at the top of the next. “That’s exactly what he is doing,” he cried delightedly. “Listen to this. ‘My first three attempts provoked an uncontrollable retching; at the fourth I contrived to swallow what I had placed in my mouth, but within two or three minutes my triumph was cut short by an access of vomiting. It was only after the ninth or tenth essay that I was able to swallow and retain even a few spoonfuls of the nauseating mince meat.’ ”
“Talk of courage!” said Dr. Obispo. “I’d rather go through an air raid than that.”
Jeremy, meanwhile, had not so much as raised his eyes from the book.
“ ‘It is now a month,’ ” he said, “ ‘since I began to test the truth of my Hypothesis, and I am now ingesting each day not less than six ounces of the raw, triturated Viscera of freshly opened Carp.’ ”
“And the fish,” said Dr. Obispo, slowly shaking his head, “has a greater variety of parasitic worms than any other animal. It makes my blood run cold even to hear about it.”
“You needn’t worry,” said Jeremy, who had gone on reading. “His Lordship does nothing but get better and better. Here’s a ‘singular accession of Strength and Vigour during the month of March.’ Not to mention ‘Revival of appetite and Improved memory and powers of ratiocination.’ I like that ratiocination,” Jeremy put in appreciatively. “Such a nice period piece, don’t you think? A real Chippendale word!” He went on reading to himself, and, after a little silence, announced triumphantly: “By April he’s riding again ‘an hour on the bay gelding every afternoon.’ And the dose of what he calls his ‘visceral and stercoraceous pap’ has been raised to ten ounces a day.”
Dr. Obispo jumped up from his chair and began to walk excitedly up and down the room. “Damn it all!” he shouted. “This is more than a joke. This is serious. Raw fish guts; intestinal flora; prevention of sterol poisoning; and rejuvenation. Rejuvenation!” he repeated.
“The Earl’s more cautious than you are,” said Jeremy. “Listen to this. ‘Whether I owe my recovery to the Carp, to the Return of Spring, or to the Vis medicatrix Naturae, I am not yet able to determine.’ ”
Dr. Obispo nodded approvingly. “That’s the right spirit,” he said.
“ ‘Time,’ ” Jeremy continued, “ ‘will show; that is, if I can force it to show, which I intend to do by persisting in my present Regimen. For I take it that my Hypothesis will be substantiated if, after persisting in it for some time longer, I shall have recovered not only my former state of Health, but a measure of Vigour not enjoyed since the passing of Youth.’ ”
“Good for him!” Dr. Obispo exclaimed. “I only wish old Uncle Jo could look at things in that scientific way. Or, maybe,” he added, suddenly remembering the Nembutal and Mr. Stoyte’s child-like faith in his medical omniscience, “maybe I don’t wish it. It might have its inconveniences.” He chuckled to himself over his private joke. “Well, let’s go on with our case history,” he added.
“In September he can ride for three hours at a stretch without fatigue,” said Jeremy. “And he’s renewing his acquaintance with Greek literature, and thinks very poorly of Plato, I notice. After which we have no entry till 1799.”
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan Page 21
