Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“It means only that we must extend our sympathies.”

“Then we need stronger subjects!” the Professor barked gruffly. “Perhaps he is only seeking rest,” Father said ingenuously. “Perhaps he only wants you to serve him. His very misery, by gratifying his sense of guilt, may contribute to his recovery.”

The Professor reflected upon this without a word.

Felix took Wolf from the enclosure. Once outside, the dog abruptly offered his undamaged paw, holding it stiffly like an Eastern diplomat. His nose was red and crossed diagonally with white stripes of scar tissue. His vulnerability was almost sunny. Then, suddenly, without command, he sat.

“This might be as good as it gets,” Felix opined.

“Damn good!” the Professor shouted, and not long after, with the Dresden necklace displayed upon his chest, Wolf did go down, though he could not help peeing slightly and refused to break eye contact.

“I really must take a walk before dinner,” the Professor said into the triumphant silence, and Felix saw at once that he needed to be alone.

“We will sound the bell, of course,” Father said, as Wolf reentered and kissed his kennel’s earth.

Once alone, the Professor meandered back toward the house, only to emerge at once with his suitcase, and from there proceed down the towpath toward the fields. I followed him, keeping to the woods, watching from the edge like a pheasant. A quarter-mile out into the muddy wasteland he set down the suitcase, opened it, and began to make a small tent of papers on the ground. Then he touched his cigar to them, and a thin coil of smoke rose up in the violet dusk. He selected each paper carefully, leaving the majority in the suitcase, and once, after snatching one from the flames, plunged it into a puddle. He watched the tiny fire flicker out, leaving a smoldering scallop which he closed within the suitcase, then folded his arms in a self-satisfied shrug. The dinner bell sounded, as always at six p.m. on Sundays, and I glanced up. Mother was pulling the bell rope with one hand as she held a pair of field glasses with the other.

I waited until the Professor had disappeared up the path, then ran out to the smoldering site. Among the embers a few unburned scraps remained, and I snatched them out. Then I raced back to the house, mounted the stairs three at a time to Father’s lair, and placed the charred runes in a secret drawer which I had discovered in his desk.

As I came down the main staircase for dinner, I saw the Professor emerging from the guest bath in an improved mood, though somewhat unsteady.

The Professor’s actions had been inspired by Öscar Ögur, the family gardener. One rainy Sunday while we were eating lunch, old illiterate Öscar entered and asked my father if we had a letter to post. Father took a pen from one of his innumerable pockets, jotted a postcard to someone, and handed it over without a word. Öscar disappeared, and when he came back a short time later, my mother had set out a piece of cake for him. He sat at the corner of the table eating it silently, then took his leave. His manner was hunchbacked, though technically he wasn’t. In response to an inquiry from the Professor, Father explained that Öscar made himself useful by posting letters, and had fed himself in this way since he was a boy.

The simplicity and efficacy of this made a great impression on the Professor, who spent the rest of that Sunday following Öscar around, much to the annoyance of the locals, who were perfectly happy to assist Öscar and catch up with their correspondence, but not in the shadow of a man with those eyes, brown as the Mze itself, hovering in the background under a homburg.

This social arrangement whereby the deranged assisted the bureaucracy interested the Professor greatly, though he was irritated at being unable to observe Öscar under more controlled conditions, and his few attempts at conversation with the fellow produced only a gentle but opaque smirk on the far left side of Öscar’s face.

One of the rituals he observed was to affect him for the rest of his life, though, as well as bring him into conflict with Mother.

It was later in the afternoon that same Sunday, as the Professor followed Öscar back to the stone chicken house behind the chapel where he slept. Öscar had gathered flowers from the many gardens on the way, making a small bouquet using only those at the peak of their bloom. (On this day it was iris and peony.) Once home, he pulled out a three-legged campstool to support his asymmetrical buttocks, and there he proceeded to light the flowers on fire one by one. Occasionally he inhaled the crackling smoke, but mostly it seemed not to register with him. When queried, Father claimed to know nothing of the significance of this activity, nor did it interest him, being one of Öscar’s more harmless idiosyncrasies. But on his next visit the Professor arrived with an extra valise, and after greeting Wolf with a wave, strode out on stiffened legs into the sugar beet field, where he sat down and unloaded a stack of papers, which he proceeded to burn one by one with much the same expression as Öscar did the flowers.

Father never questioned his friend about this, though every once in a while as he was working the dogs a charred piece of paper would blow across his path and he would pick it up, noting crossed-out sentences, circled inkblots, phrases such as “noxious inadequacy,” and strange quasi-mathematical diagrams of mental states which looked rather like medieval routes of pilgrimage to Spain. Irritated both at the litter and the presumption behind it, Felix placed these singed thoughts in the appropriate pocket. Only later did I find out where he kept them.

Our octagonal dining room was typical Central Empire, the feet of the table those of lions standing on cannonballs, its legs Corinthian columns inlaid with vermeil trompe l’oeil griffins chasing an auroch up a pylon. On each wall was a locked glass breakfront: one for everyday china (a blue and chrome yellow pattern, the primary colors of Astingi eyes), one for Mother’s family figurines, one for the most enigmatic of Father’s collectibles (Roman coins, corded drinking beakers, stone axes, tobacco jars) and one of course for guns. A dozen or so firearms were displayed left to right in order of technological development, beginning with Grandfather Priam’s double-hammered Arabic horse guns, and ending with his custom-built drillings for the Marchlands, always three-barreled, their two-shot chambers snuggled around a high-caliber 30.6 rifle, blending English lightness with Krupp steel. All were distinctively strapped, the leather band making the guns ugly and military but testifying to the difficulty of Cannonian terrain, where the emphasis had to be on the intelligence of the dog and the stamina of the hunter. For despite the profusion of game in the Marchlands, the footing was so difficult you rarely had a gun at the ready — indeed, the weapon was almost an afterthought. The Astingi gunsmiths produced weapons of clarity and balance which clung to your body like a burr, and which when brought up to fire seemed merely a line drawn between your cheekbone and index finger. Such a gun almost pointed itself. It swung on its own weight and lay in your hand without pressure, though it kicked mightily. When fired, the stock bit into your shoulder like a wolverine, which clamps down on its prey only once. The first time I fired one, the recoil struck me late and deep, somewhere close to the heart. From that day on, I knew I would be no happy shooter, as I would always anticipate the pain.

Unusually, Father had given the Professor his choice of seats at the table — in essence, a choice of which vitrine and which collection to stare into. As with everything, the Professor took this seriously and systematically, and finally, reflecting a predictable response to weaponry — revulsion combined with fascination — chose to face the guns, a seat he never relinquished throughout thirty years as a guest in our home. It was not lost upon us that despite the reform laws, as a Jew he was still prohibited from owning a gun.