by Max Shulman
Having snared a faculty of 135 luminaries, Virgil then proceeded to gather a student body worthy of sitting at such illustrious feet. Toward this end, he scattered full scholarships like autumn leaves, and in short order he enrolled twelve hundred undergraduates with straight “A” averages and glasses.
On the evening of the second Wednesday in September, just one day before the fall semester officially began, the new members of the Acanthus faculty were invited to the common room for an informal get-together co-hosted by the president of the college, Virgil Tatum, and the chairman of the board of trustees, Jefferson Tatum.
The common room was beamed and paneled in oak. At each end was a massive refectory table on which long-stemmed glasses and crystal decanters of sherry were arrayed. A generous scattering of leather couches and chairs provided seating. The end tables were numerous, sturdy, and stacked with learned journals.
One hundred and thirty-five teachers were present in the common room, eddying sluggishly as people do in the opening minutes of a party. Against the wall stood the co-hosts, Virgil and Jefferson, together surveying the assemblage. Virgil’s face was filled with pride, Jefferson’s with open apprehension.
“What’s the matter, Pa?” asked Virgil. “Nervous?”
“Me? What for?”
“Well, meeting all these strange people for the first time—”
“There now, boy, you have spoke the truth,” said Jefferson. “Strange is just what them people are. Never saw the like. Where did you find such a mess of loony-birds?”
“It wasn’t easy,” said Virgil.
“Couldn’t have been.”
“Hush,” said Virgil. “Here comes the first.”
Approaching was a tweedy apparition named Professor Joel Kane, a milky-pale, unshorn man who, though not yet thirty years old, knew more about Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy than Wordsworth had known himself. “Evening, Prexy,” said Kane.
“Evening, Kane,” said Virgil. “I’d like you to meet my father.”
“How do,” said Jefferson and grasped the professor’s hand.
Two tears popped into Kane’s eyes and rolled slowly down his cheeks. “How do you do,” he whimpered.
“Help yourself to sherry, Kane,” said Virgil.
Kane bit his lip, nodded gratefully, and scurried away.
“What the hell?” said Jefferson, dumfounded.
“Pa,” said Virgil, “this is not an Elks convention. Watch those manly handshakes.”
“Maybe I ought to curtsy,” said Jefferson.
“Evening, Prexy,” said a newcomer, a round, pink, elderly, bald, twinkly man with suede patches on his elbows.
“Evening,” said Virgil. “Pa, I’d like you to meet Professor Linden-Evarts.”
Jefferson took the professor’s hand, gave it a delicate press, returned it carefully, and said, “How do, Mr. Evarts.”
“That’s Linden-Evarts,” said Linden-Evarts. “With a hyphen.”
“Fine,” said Jefferson.
“You might say,” continued Linden-Evarts with a merry chuckle, “that almost everything about me is hyphenated. Some call me a sociologist-historian. Others say that I am an anthropologist-economist. Still others contend that I am a psychologist-archaeologist. And no doubt you have heard Irving Howe’s epigram describing me as a medievalist-modernist.… Rather a better phrasemaker than a critic, don’t you think?”
“Who?” said Jefferson.
“Howe,” said Linden-Evarts.
“Oh,” said Jefferson.
“Robert Penn Warren called me a philosopher-photographer,” said Linden-Evarts. “In his cups, of course. Meant no harm. Decent sort, Warren. Quite often too decent. I refer to the Ezra Pound business naturally.”
“Virgil,” said Jefferson, perspiring lightly, “fetch me a glass of that sherry wine.”
“Yes, Pa,” said Virgil, concealing a smile as he left.
“Still,” Linden-Evarts went on, “he was not too wide of the mark.”
“Howe?” said Jefferson.
“Warren,” said Linden-Evarts.
“Oh,” said Jefferson, looking rapidly around to see whether he could not find a more likely partner for conversation, specifically one of the food and nutrition experts Virgil had hired. But he could discover no way to distinguish them from their colleagues. He frowned in bewilderment. One hundred and thirty-five teachers were gathered in the room, teachers of all sizes, shapes, and sexes, yet, to Jefferson’s eye, there was an indefinable sameness about all of them. Tall or short, thin or fat, bald or hairy, silent or garrulous, aloof or forward—they somehow seemed to be cut all from the same bolt.
Wouldn’t you think, thought Jefferson, that food chemists would just naturally look different from poetry teachers? Yet they did not. The mark of Academe was mysteriously on all of them.
Jefferson did not understand it, and what Jefferson did not understand, Jefferson did not like. A vague uneasiness gripped him, a sudden feeling that maybe this whole project had been a mistake. It had all sounded so foolproof when first he and Virgil began, but now as he looked upon this flock of loony-birds, he was not sure at all, not the least little bit sure.
“But a fig to them all!” cried Linden-Evarts, breaking into Jefferson’s reverie. “Let them call me historian or anthropologist or sociologist or just plain Nosy Parker! I am all of those, and more. What I want is to know! So I look. I listen. I poke. I pry. I prod. I burrow.… And that, Tatum, is why I am most awfully glad to meet you.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Jefferson politely.
“Did you, by chance, read my latest monograph, The Nostalgia for Feudalism?”
“Durn!” said Jefferson. “Must have missed it somehow.”
“Pity,” said Linden-Evarts. “Well, no matter. We’ll just start at the beginning. Tatum, why do you think I accepted this post at Acanthus?”
“Money?” ventured Jefferson.
“Perfect! Perfect!” exclaimed the professor, clapping his hands together. “How precisely in character! Bless you, Tatum, you are a living fossil!”
“Come to that, you ain’t exactly a beauty winner yourself,” said Jefferson with a chilly smile.
“Sorry, Tatum,” said Linden-Evarts placatingly. “We’ll start again. I recently published, as I said, a monograph called The Nostalgia for Feudalism. Well, of course, the left-liberals were up in arms before you could say ‘knife’! Oh, what did they not call me! Reactionary! John Bircher! Fascist! Me, mind you, who still carries a picture of Adlai Stevenson in his billfold!”
“Hmmm,” said Jefferson darkly.
“But a fig, I say. I shall answer my critics, for I am right. There is among us a most definite nostalgia for feudalism—yes, here in America in the second half of the twentieth century. Nor is it so difficult to understand. When in all history, I ask you, were things better ordered than during the age of feudalism? There was one unchallenged, preordained leader, and all the rest were followers. Each man gave obeisance and received, in return, his pallet, his hut, and his pittance. He saw no horizons and hence did not aspire. Having no ambition, he suffered no frustration. A closed, complete, congruous, consonant world … Not, of course, my own cup of tea, but not nearly so dismal as some would have it.”
“So how come folks got rid of it?” asked Jefferson.
“Ah, but they did not—not entirely. It still exists, sometimes perfectly intact, and that, Tatum, is why I have come to Acanthus.”
“I don’t get your meaning.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Here is where I will gather material for my next paper, because this town of yours, this Owens Mill, is an almost classic fief, and you, my dear fellow, are an almost flawlessly prototypical lord of the manor!”
“Now, just a durn minute,” said Jefferson, reddening. “This here is a town of free-born people who can live how they like, work where they please, vote for who they want to, come or go, stay or leave—and not one of ’em beholden to me for nothing.”
“It’s no s
uch thing, you rogue, and you know it,” chuckled Linden-Evarts, nudging Jefferson playfully in the ribs. “But the question is,” he continued, turning serious, “how do you manage it? How—in such an unlikely place? The barons of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were, after all, imposing serfdom on basically homogeneous units of population. But you, Tatum, have successfully made vassals not only of the indigenous stock, but also of a group which is both numerically significant and ethnically quite alien. I refer, of course, to the Negroes of Owens Mill.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jefferson demanded hotly. “For your information, it just so happens that it’s practically a dead certain cinch the William Lloyd Garrison Foundation is going to give the Community Relations Award to Owens Mill this year.”
“I shouldn’t count on it,” giggled Linden-Evarts merrily. “It also just so happens that I am chairman of the board of trustees of the Garrison Foundation.” Then, turning serious again: “But back to my question, Tatum. How do you get your Negroes to accept vassalage with such docility?”
“Now, see here,” rumbled Jefferson, his color deepening.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” said Linden-Evarts, patting Jefferson’s arm. “I didn’t really expect you to give away your secrets. It’s a puzzle I have to solve for myself, and, by Jove, I shall! I am going to dig, dig, dig, and dig some more until I find the answer!”
“What you are going to do, you little pissant,” said Jefferson ominously, “is take your picture of Adlai Stevenson and scoot right back where you came from.”
An urgent tugging at his sleeve turned Jefferson around. “Pa,” said Virgil, “here’s your sherry.”
“Don’t want it!” snapped Jefferson and started to wheel back on Linden-Evarts.
Virgil held. “And this, Pa,” he said, indicating a large, erect, steady-eyed, handsome, gray-haired lady of fifty years who stood at his side, “is Dr. Clara Silenko.”
Jefferson nodded and tried once more to turn away. Virgil’s grip tightened. “Dr. Silenko is head of our new department of nutrition and public health,” he said pointedly.
Jefferson paused, untensed, made a smile. “How do, Doctor,” he said, offering his hand.
She gave it one firm pump. “Evening, Tatum,” she said. She spoke in level, clipped tones, her eyes meeting Jefferson’s dead-on. “Prexy here tells me you’re interested in food adulterants.”
“More than anything in the world,” said Jefferson. “Shall we set?” He took her elbow gallantly and steered her to an empty sofa.
“Food adulterants,” mused Dr. Silenko. “Strange thing for a cigarette maker to be concerned about. I mean you’re not exactly peddling health yourself, are you?”
“Never said I was,” said Jefferson, looking appraisingly at her handsome, intelligent features. No fool, it was obvious. Some careful footwork would be needed here.
“Never said I was peddling health,” he repeated. “All I’m peddling is cigarettes to people who enjoy smoking. Can’t do em no good I can think of. On the other hand, can’t do ’em no particular harm either.”
“Oh?” said Dr. Silenko. “Are you aware, Tatum, that I was a member of the Surgeon General’s Panel on Smoking?”
“Yes, ma’am, I know that,” said Jefferson. “Happens you was dead wrong in your report, but that’s got nothing to do with the business at hand. You’re at Acanthus to study food, not cigarettes.”
“True,” she said. “And that brings me to my next question: the big money you’re paying me—the fine staff you’ve gathered—the beautiful labs—the marvelous equipment—what’s in it for you?”
“That don’t rightly concern you, if you’ll excuse me, missy,” replied Jefferson courteously. “As I understand it, you’ve been warning people for years that they’re pouring poison down their gullet by the cubic ton. Now I’ve given you the wherewithal to prove it. While you’re proving it, if some benefits should fall my way—I ain’t saying they will, mind you—but if they do, why should it matter to you?”
“Fair enough,” nodded Dr. Silenko.
“You can prove it?” asked Jefferson sharply. “I mean about all the poisons in our food?”
“With these facilities, this staff, these funds, no doubt whatsoever,” she said with perfect positiveness.
“Good, good!” said Jefferson, rubbing his hands gleefully. “Mind telling me how you’re going to start out?”
“Glad to. I’ve divided the staff into five teams. One will research permissible doses.”
“And what might that be?”
“The Food and Drug Administration—FDA—allows food processors to dose their products with more than four hundred different chemical additives—things that make bread soft or butter yellow or corn flakes crisp or milk smooth, emulsifiers, preservatives, coloring agents, things like that. Every last one of these four hundred chemicals is, in itself, a deadly poison. Moreover, according to the Public Health Service, also an agency of the federal government, one-quarter of the additives can definitely cause cancer. But FDA maintains that if the additives are used in permissible doses, they are absolutely harmless.”
“Well, well,” said Jefferson, eyes shining. “And how does FDA arrive at this permissible dose?”
“With the LD-50 test,” replied Dr. Silenko. “L stands for lethal, D stands for dose, and 50 means 50 percent. Each chemical is added to food in doses of varying strength and then tested on different groups of laboratory rats. When the technician finds a dose that will kill only one-half of the group of rats being tested, it is then certified by FDA as a permissible dose for humans.”
“But people ain’t rats!” said Jefferson indignantly.
“No. Nor rabbits, nor hamsters, nor dogs. Each organism has its own system of tolerance for poisons. And, even assuming that FDA’s permissible dose is safe for one human meal or two or ten or fifty or a hundred, who knows what the cumulative effect may be over a period of years?”
“Murderers!” whispered Jefferson. “Good Lord, that FDA ain’t nothing but a nest of murderers!”
“Gently, gently,” soothed Dr. Silenko. “The researchers of FDA are all highly trained scientists—all honorable men who believe implicitly in what they are doing.… Of course, it is true that FDA is woefully understaffed—and their budget isn’t a tenth of what it ought to be—and they don’t attract any of the really bright young college graduates—and their equipment is obsolescent—and they are under constant pressure from the lobbyists of the food industry who swarm all over Washington—but, all the same, I would hardly call the FDA murderers.”
“Manslaughterers?” said Jefferson hopefully.
“Oh, no.”
“Will you settle for pee-poor guardians of the public gut?”
“That I’ll accept.”
“Fine. Now, about these additives—would you say they get squirted into very many kinds of food?”
“I would say they get squirted into every kind of food.”
“No kidding?” said Jefferson, grinning hugely.
“Let’s take, for example, what you had for lunch today. Can you remember?”
“Ought to remember,” he answered. “Been having the same thing every day for fifty years: one bourbon old-fashioned, one roast beef sandwich, one tossed salad, one glass of milk.”
“All right,” said Dr. Silenko. “Well take a quick look. Your bourbon old-fashioned contained, in addition to the alcohol, an antifoaming agent called dimethyl polysiloxane; an orange slice sprayed with pesticides and dyed with coal tar; sodium o-phenylphenate and ammonia—both preservatives; and a maraschino cherry preserved with sodium benzoate, bleached with sulphur dioxide, and then reddened with coal tar.
“The roast beef contained DDT, chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, and probably several other pesticides that the steer accumulated while he was grazing. It had, besides, one or two female hormones with which the animal had been injected, a residue of aureomycin from the cattle feed, and a film of mineral oil from the w
rapping paper.
“The bread contained a dough conditioner called ammonium chloride; softeners called diglyceride and polyoxyethelene; an antioxidant called ditertiary-Butyl-para-Cresol; artificial vitamins to replace the nutrients lost in milling; and, of course, a wide assortment of pesticides.
“The butter contained nordihydroguaiaretic acid, which is an antioxidant; magnesium oxide, which is a neutralizer; AB and OB Yellow, both coal tar dyes; and diacetyl, which inhibits stinking.”
“Do tell!” exclaimed Jefferson happily.
“And, in addition, the butter had a heavy concentration of pesticides. And, naturally, the milk did too.”
“How about the salad?” asked Jefferson hopefully.
“Crawling with pesticides.”
“Good, good!”
“Also in the salad, there was sodium alginate, which is a stabilizer; monoisopropyl citrate to prevent fat deterioration in the dressing; and—shall I go on?”
“No, that’s fine. I got the picture.” He regarded her with admiration. “You know something? You’re an awful smart lady. Pretty too. Not young, of course, but still tolerable good to look at.”
“Thank you … The first team, as I said, will research permissible doses. The second team—”
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” interrupted Jefferson.
“Dissecting a monkey,” said Dr. Silenko.
“I see,” said Jefferson. “The second team?”
“The second team will investigate hormones. More and more livestock and poultry are being fattened for market with injections of female hormones—stilbestrol and other estrogens. And in recent years, even fruits and vegetables have been widely dosed with growth hormones derived from plant life—the gibberelins. The object, of course, is to add bulk and therefore increase the price.”
“Scandalous!” said Jefferson happily.
“More than you know,” said Dr. Silenko. “The endocrine balance in the human body is extremely delicate. This indiscriminate use of hormones may have significant, perhaps disastrous, consequences. It’s not inconceivable, for instance, that we could turn into a nation of oversexed women and impotent men.”
