Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“It’s a new concept in funding, Doctor.” Art is shouting over the storm as he takes papers out of his attaché case. He frowns at the open door but I don’t feel tike closing it,

I try to turn on the tights to see him better, but the current is off. The lightning flashes, however, are almost continuous. He’s an odd-looking fellow, curiously old-fashioned. Indeed, with his old-style flat-top haircut, white shirt with short sleeves, which even have vestigial cuff buttons, and neat dark trousers, he looks like a small-town businessman in the old Auto Age, one of those wiry old-young fifty-year-olds, perhaps a Southern Bell manager, who used to go to Howard Johnson’s every Tuesday for Rotary luncheon. His face is both youthful and lined. The flat-top makes a tangent with the crown of his skull, giving the effect of a tonsure. Is it an early bald spot or a too-close flat-top?

When he leans across the desk to shake hands, air pushes ahead of him bearing to my nostrils a heavy complex odor, the intricate canceled smell of sweat neutralized by a strong deodorant.

“A lovely little lady, Doc,” says the stranger, nodding at the closed door.

“Who? What’s that?” I say sharply, frowning with irritation. Did he wink at me or is it the effect of the lightning?

“Very high-principled and efficient, yet most attractive. Most I’d like to beat you out of her.”

“How—! What in hell do you mean?” At a loss for words — I almost said, How dare you? — I jump up from the chair.

“No offense! Take it easy, Doc! Ha ha, made you come up for air, didn’t I?”

“What do you want?”

“I only meant that I admire your nurse and wish I had someone as good to assist me in my own researches. What is the saying: All is fair in love and war and hiring cooks?”

“Are you selling something?” My hair prickles with an odd, almost pleasurable dislike.

“Not selling today, Doc. We’re giving it away.” With that, Art hands over what appear to be application forms. “Don’t worry!” He laughs heartily. “They’re already filled in.”

I haven’t been listening carefully. The papers seem to jump back and forth in the lightning. “What are these for?” (Why don’t I throw him out?)

“For the money you need.”

“Money? Who are you representing, Art?”

“I’m one of those liaison fellows from Washington.”

“Liaison? Between whom?”

“Between the public and private sectors.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ha ha, you might well ask.” His young-old face, I notice, goes instantly serious between laughs. “In this case it is between the National Institute of Mental Health in the public sector and the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations in the private sector.”

“Good.”

“It does sound impressive, doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Actually, I’m a glorified errand boy.”

“Is that so?” I say gloomily, trying to read my watch.

“We of N.I.M.H. and”—for a moment his words are lost in a clap of thunder—“you may have come up with the most important integrative technique of our time.”

“What’s that?” I say. The wind shifts and a fine mist blows in the doorway. There is a smell of wet warm brick.

“You’ve done it, Dr. More!”

“Done what?”

“You’ve come up with a technique that maximizes and unites hardware and software capabilities.”

“How’s that?” I ask inattentively. What to make of this fellow who talks like a bureaucrat but looks — and smells — like a hard-working detail man? “What technique are you talking about?”

“The More Qualitative-Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer,” says Art Immelmann, laughing. “What a mouthful. Everybody at the office calls it the MOQUOL. Sounds like a hole in the ground, doesn’t it?”

I set down my toddy. My hand, feeling light and tremulous, levitates. I put it in my pocket.

“Surprised, eh, Doc?”

After a moment I decide to fix a drink. Though my hand feels normal, I decide to hold the glass in both hands.

“What I don’t understand is how you knew about it.”

“Think about it a moment Doc, and you’ll see.”

I see in the next lightning flash. Either the Director has approved my article, or Brain has accepted it or both, and either or both have leaked the news to N.I.M.H.

“You’ve won, Doctor,” says Art gravely. Again the hand comes across the desk. We shake hands. Again comes the intricate canceled sweat-and-deodorant smell.

I’ve won.

Now I know how Einstein felt when the English astronomers flashed the news from Venezuela that sure enough, Arcturus’s light had taken a little bend as it swept past the sun.

Victory.

I sit back and listen to the steady rain and the peepers turning up in the ox-lot What to do now? I recall my uncle’s advice: guard against the sadness of hubris. How to do that? By going to the Little Napoleon and having a drink with Leroy Ledbetter.

“We’re interested in funding truly innovative techniques. Yours is truly innovative.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got your own built-in logistical factor. The results, moreover, are incremental.”

“Yes.” What in hell is he talking about? It doesn’t matter. I’ve won.

“You are aware of the national implications?”

“Yes, I am.”

“For the first time the behavioral sciences have a tool for dealing with the heretofore immeasurable and intangible stresses that are rending the national fabric.”

“Yes.”

“Dr. More.” Again Art stands up, not to shake hands again I hope, no, but again there is the heavy mollified protein smell.

“Yes?”

“We’re prepared to fund an interdisciplinary task force and implement a crash program that will put a MOQUOL in the hands of every physician and social scientist in the U.S. within one year’s time.”

“You are?” Why don’t I feel excited? My eyes don’t blink.

“As you know better than I, your MOQUOL has a multilevel capacity. It is operative at behavioral, political, and philosophical levels. I would even go so far as to say this, Doc—” Art pauses to hawk phlegm and adjust his crotch with an expert complicated pat.

“What’s that, Art?”

“If the old U. S. of A. doesn’t go down the drain in the next year, it will be thanks to your MOQUOL.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, but—”

In the last flash of lightning, a legal-size blue-jacketed document appears under my nose and a pen is pointed at my breastbone.

“What’s this, Art?”

“A detail. A bureaucratic first step, ha ha.” Art laughs his instant laugh and goes as sober as a mortician.

“Hey, this is a transfer of patent rights!”

“Boilerplate, Doc. Standard procedure for any contract with the private sector. And look at your return!” Expertly he flips pages. “Seventy-five percent!”

“Yeah, but I mean, goddamn, Art—!” I begin, but Art Immelmann turns white and falls back a step.

“Pardon. I only meant to say that the money doesn’t interest me.” Art must be a Holy Name man or a hard-shell Baptist.

“I told them you’d say that. But let’s don’t worry about it. The important thing is to get the MOQUOL distributed in time.”

“Well, I’ve already got a hundred production models.”

“Where?” Art nearly comes across the desk.

I sit back in surprise. “In a safe place. Don’t worry.”

“You don’t want to leave something like MOQUOL lying around. Doc.”

“I know.” I tell him of my plans, my appointment with the Director Monday, the submission of my article to Brain . “I just don’t see the necessity of signing over my patent rights.”