Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

Of course, she lunged. But the impersonal mechanism did its job, the simple line of force instructing Topsy that it was she who was injuring herself. Then Father spoke.

“Topsy,” he said, as if she were the most important person in the world, “so schtupid !” And their eyes, blue above and bronze below, met for a moment in a single violet transplant.

Another lunge. This time determined and powerful, as a man walks more deliberately when his hands are tied behind his back, but the line of legitimization, the opposite of breathing, again enforced itself.

“Soooooooooo schtoopid !” Topsy’s eyes bulged at the judgment, the first virginal sign of focusing, after surviving a few footfalls of fear. And then they walked on together in a little collective shudder, not interested in diminishing the circle any longer, but only in maintaining a proper distance, Topsy watching Father’s mouth out of the corner of her eye. Then it happened. She took a single cautious step, not without spring, and perhaps for the first time ever — like a man who has done his first backflip and then never forgets how — it was evident she was paying attention to where she was going, not just following her nose.

“So schmart ,” Felix said softly. “ Sie schmart, Topsy!”

They took a few more somewhat grandiose turns, feelings without names pulsating along the cord, then Father stopped short without taking up the slack, and Topsy copied him . He reached down, and patted her head.

“ Schmart Topsy,” he said, and then removed the collar. “Nunc scio quid sit amor” (“Now we know what love is”), he muttered to himself.

The Professor stared incredulously. “So schtupid? So schmart? That’s the whole of it?”

“All for now,” Father said cheerfully. “Never work a tired dog.” Topsy rolled on her back in the grass, arching her spine, as if to rub away the stain of the experience. “Lest the neurotica become psychopathia.”

“And what do we call this. . methodology?” the Professor sniggered.

“Ah, Professor, try to be serious for a moment. The only true method is this: you try to hear all the notes before you hum the tune.”

The Princess had been watching this demonstration attentively through her lorgnette like a drowned man. “She’s just like me,” she murmured sadly. “A little barbarous, but only on the inside. It won’t come out.” Topsy had begun to walk backward like a snail trying to fit itself back into its lost shell.

“She seems to have no particular problem,” Mother said brightly, wiping something from her eye. “She is beautifully shaped, with perfect little feet, and her nostrils are expanded more than I ever saw in any dog, I think.”

The Princess smiled mysteriously. “Her only problem is. . abdominal.”

“If I may say,” Father interjected without a trace of irony. “The fair sex, though possessing unbounded and most proper influence over us , have but little control over their canine favorites. This is because when they take the poor soul for a walk, they constantly call to it, lest it should go astray. Ere long, the dog pays not the slightest attention. There is also a varying in the tone of voice which generally prevents teaching anything beyond the art of begging. ‘Beg, beg, beg, sir. Beg!’ Am I not correct? And sitting in a begging attitude is not an agreeable position for a dog. One might quite as easily teach her to dance, hold a pipe in her mouth, shut the door, pull a bellrope, leap over a parasol, or drag forth a napkin and spread it as a tablecloth. What would you have, Princess?”

The Princess had once made a show of good will and benevolence to those who, being different from herself, could not imagine her true interests and tastes. But she now made little effort to explain herself, knowing that in most cases this would be futile.

“Your husband, my dear,” she turned to Mother, “seems a man very much in contact with his uck .”

Ainoha reacted as if she had been struck by a bullet, and quickly braced herself by grasping the Princess’s forearm, which caused her in turn to blanche. The very mention of that word, and the merest chance that it would set off the causeries of abstract chat of the last visit, threw a fear into her she had not experienced since seeing a dog run over in the road, and watching it scream with pain as it dragged its broken hindquarters off into the woods. She resolved to lock the door forever on this lumber room of discourse.

“Do you enjoy diving, Prinzessin?” she blurted out.

“I beg your pardon!”

“Diving. You know, into water.” Her voice trilled back in her throat.

“Well, not since I was a child,” the Princess murmured. Her sadness had, if anything, deepened.

“Then it’s settled. We must recast the days of your youth here. I’ll take care of everything. Then we’ll go shoot some arrows.” And as she rushed her guest into the house, the men doffed their hats, and even Topsy herself seemed somewhat relieved.

“Another didact, I see,” Father said under his breath.

“Her virility and station have caused her a great deal of suffering,” the Professor said evenly. “She deserves your every consolation.”

“There are, no doubt, griefs and distresses no physician can measure. As for little Topsy, who can say? She is either a little too absent or a little too present, and always a little off center. Beauty with nothing else is worse than shit. You can mix all the raisins you want with turds, but they’re still turds. But who knows, we may see a bit of progress yet.”

“We are in need of a success,” the Professor intoned. “This woman, who can have anything she wants, is desperately alone.”

“In my experience, friend, privileges are more difficult to overcome than abuses. I trust you have arranged for the fee. Avanti !” And with a wave of his hand, Father gestured across the river. “We will work the high ground first, to see how she behaves when she knows her mistress is not watching after her. We must take care to never use any words she is likely to hear from others. And please remember, Professor, hallooing spoils the sport.”

Then he strode off, singing an old Venetian ditty:

Three golden horses

taken from the heathen.

A marvelous fair pair of

gallows made of alabaster.

So the Duke himself

might see the punishment at hand.

The ladies disrobed quickly, like schoolgirls, in the great hall of gray vibrating radiators. As the suits remained wet, they decided to swim in their chemises, and as they galloped down the path to the bathing beach, they could make out Father and the Professor traversing the shallows upstream, with a recalcitrant but unleashed Topsy following them by leaping from one slick stone to another.

“Have no fear of the diving board,” Mother announced over her shoulder. “It was left over from the piano lumber, good Cannonian pine used to line the trenches in the Balkan Wars, blasted with shrapnel and blood, and therefore incapable of splitting or further mischief.” This was something of an exaggeration, but our board was huge indeed, jutting fourteen feet out into a lagoon entirely concealed by reeds and anchored with a clutch of welded cannon balls. Ainoha sprung immediately to the end of the board, and without hesitation accomplished her patented half-gainer, disappearing into the Mze without so much as a fleck of foam. When she resurfaced and shook her golden mane, she saw the Princess follow her with only slight trepidation, though she held both her nose and mouth when she jumped, producing a fine geyser. They floated on their backs spitting modestly and scrunching their toes. Then, on a shawl, upon the weedy beach, as their crinolines conformed to their wet bodies, they regarded themselves intently as they turbaned their wet locks.