Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

Then the Professor would take his valise and wander across the beetfields, burning small tents of papers, a toy soldier ritual, which by this time was fast losing its drama. Clutching a thick sheaf of manuscript against the fading ember of a cigar, the paper took on the same yellow cast which never left his thumb and forefinger before it burst into flame. Then, after a depository visit to the potting shed, they would be off together in the open trap, with the best horses, the best dogs, and my best self.

On one of these visits, the Professor arrived in an uncharacteristically cheery mood with a particularly lovely colleague and a most hideous rat terrier, which, after alighting, walked between the horses’ hooves without the slightest concern, then pattered directly with foreshortened stride up the front stair, through the open door, and upon entering the moonroom did something I had never seen a dog do: he went to the farthest corner, and there without the slightest concern for investigating the odors of a new territory visited by so many dogs (which would have driven any normal animal into an interrogative frenzy) lay down with his back to us, though it was evident he was not asleep. Apparently there were no written thoughts worth destroying that day, and our usual ride having been aborted by the curious indifference of the terrier and the exotic aura of the lady, it was clear that a conversation gallante would take precedence over any outing on this visit.

Mother always immediately inquired about one’s ancestry, and as it turned out, this most attractive and animated woman was of Russian-Huguenot parentage, the first half of which she claimed no memory of, as it was obliterated by history, and the second of which she could not bear to speak of on account of their recent suffering in Berlin. “Governments are very wicked,” she concluded as she sank into the couch. It was certain that she, like most everyone in our circle, was far older than she looked, a woman, as they say, of considerable experience, of which one wished to share only a third, and that preferably at third hand. Yet she was the type I so admire, one of those people who really believes that a moment’s charm can make up for miles of derelictions. For example, one does not normally notice that a person is breathing, but I found myself counting each one of her breaths. It was clear in her face that she knew more about the world and its passions than anyone who had ever visited our house. The pillows on the couch molded to her like a conch shell.

The question of origins exhausted in record time, we fell into a long silence centered upon Drusoc, the immobile white rat terrier whose bulging pike’s eyes lay embedded in a liver-colored spot covering half his face and most of an ear. Drusoc had indeed apparently made himself into a perfect pet, a cipher upon which every conceivable horror and longing could be projected. Not merely a companion, he had willfully emptied himself of every trace of personality, dropping not only his genus but all distinguishing traits, like a trail of old galoshes. This was a pet who lapped up your mistakes, allowing his unremarkable little white body to be tweaked with every twang from the unraveling rubber band in the toyboat of our mind, without shedding so much as a short hair, without so much as a snicker or a fart. Drusoc was of a species here well before men, and who will no doubt survive them. Generations had been sacrificed in breeding this near impossible task of assimilation, so that his own defining functions had totally atrophied. He looked at rats with a dull-witted, uncomprehending stare, rationalizing that if he could not catch them all, the pursuit of one would be mere pretense. In short, Drusoc had the integrity of the perfect object, upon which one could try out every half-witted theoretical sally and febrile explanation — the shaggiest jokes, the grossest anecdotes — and receive no objection. I missed Scharf and even Wolfie a bit.

Encouraged by Mother, the lady (who had somehow escaped formal introduction) began a story of how during the recent hostilities, when groceries were not plentiful, she would procure unpasteurized milk on the black market for Drusoc and herself, boiling it as a precaution. But occupied as she was with matters of an intellectual nature, she would invariably allow the milk to boil over, transforming it into a great insipid froth — not affecting its nutritive value, perhaps, but quite spoiling the taste. “And having no alternative”—this phrase was drawn from her bosom with considerable elaboration — she and Drusoc would drink the froth from the same saucer!

It was a charming story, and the Professor said so, striking his left forearm with his walking stick for emphasis. She took the interruption in stride.

“As it happened,” she continued, Drusoc disappeared one night during an artillery raid, having gone out to the roof to relieve himself, where he become preoccupied with the flares bursting over the city. (It was unclear in which city they were or whose shells were falling, only that the lady was capable of great acts of courage, kindness, and dignity.) He had obviously returned, as his obdurate presence testified from the corner of the moonroom. But the point , she concluded, was that during the time she agonized over the loss of her companion, believing him dead, she never once allowed the milk to boil over! And there the story ceased with great emphasis, her lovely lips parting on a lost definite article. All her facial orifices were ovuline, as if to give shape to her formless tale, and as the last aspirant syllable floated away, she glanced up at the large mirror to review her finale.

The Professor, nodding vigorously in assent, exclaimed, “There! Remarkable, is it not!”

My dear parents’ faces were full of genteel stupefaction, while the Professor’s eyes were half-closed, as if in infinite reverie. I will say this: no matter how garbled or inconsequential the story, no one ever forgets such a face, such hair, such flared nostrils, such hands fluttering about such a mouth. That beautiful gash of lips, smeared with lipstick on the outline of her muzzle, so that her mouth seemed slightly off center, like a ventriloquist’s doll’s, now issued a single sibilant, indecipherable word, which sounded like “unk” or “uck”—a pig’s word in sow’s purse.

Father’s knee was pumping up and down like an adolescent’s. “Would you like to see the American electric Bickford plough,” he broke in desperately, “or perhaps shoot some hares?”

“So this ,” Mother interrupted cheerfully, as always insisting upon a certain narrative momentum, and gesturing grandly toward Drusoc’s somnolent form, “this is what got you through your time of troubles. Forgive my husband, he is no politician. He sometimes doesn’t read a newspaper for a week.”

“My dear,” Felix countered, “kindly dedragonize yourself. Why, just yesterday I read how the new discovery of graffiti scrawled upon a vomitorium at Pompeii demonstrates how the Visigoths breached with such apparent ease the Roman defense on the Rhine.”

No one knew what on earth he was talking about, but Drusoc turned three-quarters, like a faucet, nodding to Felix while slightly opening one drooping, red-hawed eye, offering the merest yet distinctive echo of affirmation.

“Or perhaps you would like to spend an hour watching Drusoc learn some tricks,” Father finished haplessly. But his attempts to restore a subject matter to the conversation, or plan a diversion from it, fell equally on deaf ears.

To hear the lady tell it (and there was no stopping her now), Drusoc was also apparently prepotent and promiscuous beyond all reckoning, and during my forthcoming travels, I would see his issue everywhere — phenomes of nullity, who, curled up in the corner, back-assed to you, are willing to absorb your most fearful and incoherent speculation into their ugly bodies and blow back something like a kiss. Drusoc, the no-problem pet, does more than take you on your own terms. He veritably eats them up, and deposits them later without detection on somebody else’s roof, a condition not to be confused with whatever we infer about the noble aloofness of the cat, who is in fact not diffident at all but just looking, longing for a place that is eternally without shit.