Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“Oh, Councilor,” the Professor laughed embarrassedly, “the next thing you will be telling me is that dogs can talk!”

“But my dear sir, the dog can talk,” Mother interjected sweetly. “No one with any knowledge would deny that. However, they only talk to themselves, just as a child learns to think silently before he speaks. This is not a vexing problem, and anything but esoteric. There is a whole area of experience which refers to things we would say if we wanted, but either we choose not to or we never get around to putting it into words. And who is to say whether our hearing is too refined or we are just deaf? I, for example, can distinguish the sound of a viola from that of a cello, but I wouldn’t know how to distinguish it in words. The dog’s knowledge could be articulated; it just happens not to be. Ultimately, the dog believes in civility, where everything is known and assimilated, provided it is not said openly. It is not kept secret for political or psychological reasons, as you seem to think.”

“This is madness!” the Professor snorted.

“No, Professor, in this matter my wife happens to be quite right for once. Recall Achilles’s chariot horse, Xanthus, who warned that a god would kill his driver, just as he had slain Patroclus. What did he get for his trouble, his prophesying? The Erinyes struck him dumb! No, we did not evolve; the animals simply stopped talking to us. There is something here much more interesting than language, Professor. It is the paralysis of speech. The dog always has a word on his lips, though he never utters it. Is this not the basis of our love and curiosity? One must learn to read the word which is caught short upon the lips. And should the animals start talking to us, as in olden days, watch out! If they speak, it means they have lost respect for us as their protectors, and insanity will reign!”

“Does it not strike you as odd that you insist so theoretically that everything we know is somehow tacit?” The Professor was reverting to his more sarcastic manner.

“Fine,” Father snapped. “If you want to make philosophy of it, make one. But please, let us not be caught up in a philosophy based only upon the mind and the eye. What would a philosophy be that was based only on the mind and the ear, or the mind and the nose? What begins as memory, terminates, Professor, as behavior is created. All we know is suddenly the dog learns, to everyone’s surprise, that a significant variation can be made upon the rules. Believe me, if you want to understand a working life, it cannot be studied scientifically, because we do not understand what we do until we have done it. Only the thing you thought you thought can teach you how to think.”

Refilling the Professor’s glass, Mother added with her most glowing smile, “Science, I think you’ll agree, doesn’t really matter in the end.”

Shaking his head like a horse avoiding a fly, the Professor slumped down in a long and disabused silence, as Öscar cleared the plates. He took note of his handsome, confident hosts at each end of the table with their goyische , self-satisfied grins and perfect manners. His depression had returned in full measure, and he raised his eyes and adjusted his pince-nez to avoid their open, friendly stare. Then, as the silence became interminable, his gaze suddenly widened with incredulity, and his lustrous brown eyes, so much larger than his glasses, turned all pupillary black.

He had been too distracted by the bright guns, the rare beef, and the dense conversation to notice that the main expanse of open wall, above the riflery vitrine and the evil little child, was dominated by an oil painting as large as the top of a grand piano. Out of a Rembrandtine black field he could make out a man in an even darker suit turning away from his desk laden with ancient books and skulls, turning from his studies in order to lift a white shroud clinging to the body of a beautiful woman lying on a pallet. His left hand held his bearded chin below blue-gray eyes, which were clearly in the process of having a thought that had not yet found its word. On his right hand, which rested above her exposed left breast, a wedding band glowed, more ancient and golden than the western light falling upon his high, domed forehead. His eyes were hooded in concentration, while on her face, behind the wires of lashes, the half-closed right eye was visible. In the upper right corner was a candlestick without a flame, and in the lower right one, a large moth at rest, its wings retracted about an illegible signature. There were many different whites — the off-white of the half-opened book pages, the enameled white of the skulls, the photographer’s white of the man’s cuffs and collar, the transparent white of the silk shroud, the ivory white of her breastbone, the pearl white of her face. It took no connoisseur to see that the visages bore an uncanny resemblance to his hosts. Thus commenced one of the longest silences in the history of our family, a veritable ice age.

“Might I inspect it more closely?” the Professor finally said, as a steaming, braided strudel put in an appearance.

“By all means,” Mother said, disappearing to return with a circular stepladder from the library. The Professor ascended it not too steadily, and I was instructed to hold his ankles.

“An amateur work, of course,” Father said absently, planting an enormous piece of strudel in the shape of a Greek cross on his absent guest’s plate, “but well-disciplined in the Cannonian school. Every few years he comes up with something interesting. What do you think?”

But the Professor could not answer. It was one of those works of art which makes its effect entirely apart from painterly worth or historical associations. It did not demand to know if it was good or not. And if it was a period piece, it was in no curriculum.

“Death and sexuality,” the Professor announced, “and rarely have I seen them in such cogent conjunction.”

There was no reply at first, only the huge knife clanging on the strudel plate, and Mother’s nails drumming on her napkin ring. Then she spoke:

“She isn’t dead, of course.”

“No?” the Professor said. “Then sleeping?”

“Neither dead nor sleeping,” Ainoha said distantly.

“But she’s so pale.”

“It’s the light, Professor. It’s, how do you say. . a device .”

“Who knows what’s going through her mind?” Felix said gruffly, finishing his dessert with a single bite.

“And he, he is. . experimenting with her,” the Professor whispered, “while she is not conscious.”

“How could one possibly know that?” Mother said sweetly. “How do we even know if he is a proper doctor?”

“Now, there it is,” the Professor fairly shouted. “He is a meshugana doctor, a fake doctor, taking advantage.”

“You have this habit, may I say,” Mother intoned evenly, “of insisting, whenever I question your observation, that my taking exception is simply an illustration which proves your point.”

“Doctor, she is right again,” Father said sententiously. “She is not in another world, nor this one. She is just, well, full of herself.”

“And our mad scientist who exposes her breastbone?” the Professor blurted, nearly falling from his perch.

“He is a bit overwhelmed, perhaps, but he is reverent,” replied Father. “Surely you can see that it is the observed who is in control here.”

“I see nothing of the sort,” the Professor blurted. “This is against all the rules.”

Mother’s voice assumed its deepest French horn sonority:

“My dear doctor, one always believes one has had more sex than one actually has, and this can confuse even your partner.”

“This is after sex,” announced the Professor.