Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“But, surely, love itself. .” the Professor began, as if by rote.

“It’s not enough to love somebody,” Father snapped. “For it to last, you must also love their life!” And with this, horse tears welled up in his eyes.

The Professor abandoned his prosecutorial tone.

“Well, Councilor,” he said with a forced wink, “a dog will perhaps betray you if you treat him badly. But a person will betray you no matter how you treat him.”

“Oh, but people are more forgetful. That’s their salvation. One slip with a dog and they never forgive you, never! I ruined so many before I learned, and who’s to pay for that, Doctor? Yes, who is to pay for that?” He had taken off his ascot to wipe his eyes.

“Yes, yes, someone must have done the same with Wolf,” the Professor murmured, almost absentmindedly. “And no, they don’t forgive. You can only reach a kind of accommodation.”

“You never know how many is one lash too many,” Mother said sweetly, her back turned. “And then all is lost.”

The Professor was aghast, waving his arms at the gallery. “How in heaven’s name did you survive all this?” he entreated.

I do not know whether it was the slightly patronizing tone of the question, but the tears abruptly stopped halfway down Father’s cheek, as if he had willed it, and he turned on his heel, thundering:

“We are first and foremost athletes, Professor. It’s not what you remember, but how fast you can forget, that allows us to stay in the game.” He poured two stiff whiskeys, jamming one into the Professor’s hand.

“The ones we ruin, well, that’s really your affair, Doctor. I have been forced by pecuniary circumstances to deal with other men’s errors and nature’s abortions, to become”—he spat this—“an educationist ! But in my heart of hearts, I am still the servant of the disabused, the congenitally alert. Ameliorism is my game, getting it right the first time round. The standard repertoire is quite enough for this life, Doctor. Start with the very best and leave the rest. The cruelest thing is to constantly praise mediocrity and believe that illness teaches us. Suffering teaches us, but illness bores us.”

The Professor stood his ground, matching him drink for drink.

“Your candor is most impressive, Councilor — almost overwhelming, one could say.” Turning his large head, he reached for an inoffensive phrase. “Your meritocratic sense is most admirable. But doesn’t it all speak to the need for new therapies?”

Mother had arrived between them with a modern movement, refilled their whiskeys, and then, like an officer at intermission at the opera, lowered the gas jets. There was a great whoosh through the gallery as the portraits disappeared. Father shrugged, rattling the ice in his whiskey and soda.

“Let us toast new cures, Doctor, as long as we admit the risk. But let us also be honest: in truth, we don’t even know what an animal is !”

“I believe I’m not feeling quite well,” the Professor mumbled, and on that note they flung their glasses into the roaring fire, and each arm supported by his handsome hosts, the Professor was taken for a walk on the terrace in the gathering tremulous winds.

As his nausea dissipated, he fumbled with his pocket watch, noting on the schedule the last departures of the Desdemona . But upon reaching his rented jitney he found it lying in a heap in the drive, and he followed Father’s finger to four of the tallest poplar trees on the estate, at the tops of which the wheels of his carriage were lashed. The Professor was dumbstruck, staring at Father, who seemed proud as Lucifer.

“I have appointments!” he almost shrieked, as Mother held his arm tightly and whispered in his ear.

“You must be careful not to insult my husband’s hospitality,” she intoned, batting her ever-thickening eyelashes. “In my father’s day, we would grease the carriage with wolf ’s fat so it was impossible to force the guest’s horse into the shafts. It is the custom in Cannonia for the hosts to keep their guests as prisoners. Sometimes for weeks. Some stay for years!”

The Professor looked helplessly at Father, who was standing tall.

“Now, it is you, my friend, who must learn to stay.” And he raised his hand high, the flat of the palm out. “Stay!” he commanded. Mother felt the Professor’s arm slip from her grasp as he fainted dead away.

The Professor was awakened at daybreak by a rosy-cheeked servant girl with a stiff, brandied café au lait. Through the gauze curtains he could make out an Astingi boy scrambling up and down the poplars. Then he fell into a profound and dreamless sleep, to be awakened at nine for a huge breakfast, during which not a word was said. Afterward they all took a walk, smoked, and talked unconvincingly about the crops and cattle.

“It’s so hard to know what’s on a cow’s mind,” Felix said absently. Upon their return, the jitney had been reassembled, and the piebald mare shone a deep burnt amber from a vigorous grooming. Wolf was happily narcotized in a new wicker kennel.

“Take him home with you,” Ainoha said, ill-concealing her exasperation. “A taedium vitae must run its course.”

“He has manners enough now to survive the city,” Felix added.

Everything about their farewell embraces had a jaded, slow-motion quality. I do not know to this day why their simplicity affected me so.

We sat down with iced tea on the terrace as the jitney exited the drive into a driving rain. The Desdemona emitted a morose E flat. Ainoha asked Felix why he was so uncharacteristically patient with such stupid questions, and how it was possible for a professional man to have such brutish table manners.

“No one has the courage to ask stupid questions anymore, my dear,” he cut her off, “and as for the eating, that is what comes from taking all your meals en famille .”

Mother’s instinct was nevertheless on the mark, for while the Professor had gone out of his way to charm her, exuding both a formal respect and a laconic wit, she had watched him closely, scrutinizing him more minutely than she would a flower. She knew that as quickly as my father made friends, it would fall to her to keep them. She also knew then that something in the Professor’s high-mindedness — always ready to wave the black banner of scrupulosity — would inevitably cause a rupture, for it is the smallest of differences between people that always loom largest in the end.

“It seems to me that in all this talk of method,” she said, “everything depends on whether the therapy is administered before or after the lack of confidence occurs.”

Father ignored her, as he always did when she was right, a curious mark of respect, just as now in his contrarian manner he chose to defend his client after demolishing his most sacred hypotheses, and as a boxer might bow to his rival, who after being hit with everything he had, stayed on his feet, registering pain everywhere except in his eyes.

“He is the most modern of men,” Father concluded cheerfully. “His powers of observation are considerable, if clouded by misunderstandings of a literary nature, a man whose scientific bent is always in conflict with unspoken politics. But no one was ever driven mad by contradictions in thought . He is, in short, one of us, only more so. We are going to have something of a conversazione galante, he and I.”

“But what, pray, exactly does he do?” Mother said. “Professor from where? Doctor of what?”

“Ah, my dear.” Father made a teepee of his napkin, and daubed his dagger beard. “The Professor has dedicated himself to reconciling those who have proven themselves unlovable.”