Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

Freddy has one passion, and it is not gambling. “Gambling’s my work, old bean,” he says. (He uses these corny aristocratic epithets. They make him seem fatuous but are as functional to his profession as a drawl to a hired gun.) “I’m no gambler at all, actually. I’m this sort of mathematician. Please don’t gamble with me, please don’t accept my bets. We’re friends and I’m ruthless. Not vicious — ruthless. I will never surrender an advantage. Since I know the odds and respect them, to ignore them would be a sort of cheating, and since I’m honorable I couldn’t think of that. Don’t play with me. We’re friends. I was never the sheikh’s friend, never the friend of any of those feet-off-the-ground Fleugenmensch sons of rich men I lived with at Harrow and Cambridge and who gave me my stake. Where I was meditative they were speculative. I like you, as I like anyone who doesn’t confuse his need with his evidence. Let’s never gamble. Promise. Promise? ”

So he has a passion, but it isn’t gambling. It’s animals — beasts, rather. Duluth contains perhaps the most superb private zoo in the world, a huge game park, larger than Whipsnade and much more dangerous. Where Whipsnade hedges with moats and illusions, at Duluth the animals are given absolute freedom. An enormous, camouflaged electrified fence, the largest in the world, runs about the entire estate. (“We control the current. The jolt merely braces the larger animals and only stuns the smaller, puts them unconscious. I’ve installed an auxiliary electrical plant for when there are power failures”) Although from time to time a few of the animals have fought and occasionally killed each other, an attempt has been made to introduce as near perfect an ecological balance as possible, vegetarians and carnivores who find the flesh of the beasts with whom they must live inimical, some almost religious constraint in the jaws and digestion, some once-burned, twice-sorry instinct passed on from generation to generation that protects and preserves his herds.

It was an ancestor of Plympton’s who began the park, and as a result of the care he and his successors put into selecting and arranging the animals, some of the most incredible and lovely juxtapositions in the world are to be found there. (Freddy told me that Henri Rousseau painted his “Sleeping Gypsy” while he was a guest on the estate.) From the beginning a single rule has determined the constituency of the zoo: all the beasts collected there must have appeared on the Plympton heraldry. Lions, bears, elephants, unicorns (“a pure white rhinoceros actually”), leopards, jackals (“One old boy helped to do in Becket, old boy”), pandas, camels, sheep and apes. The family is an old one, the list long.

Though Plympton and I had known each other for years — we’re the same age — this was the first time I had been invited to Duluth. I drove down with him the next morning, and of course it was not of the fabulous game park that I was thinking — I was not sure I even approved of it — but of Jane. I gave myself away with my questions.

“She’s ill, you say?”

“Did I? I thought I said tired. What she told me, anyway. Looks ruddy healthy, in fact. Tanner than I’ve ever seen her.”

“Is she alone?”

“What, is there a man with her, you mean? No, no, Ashenden. She’s quite singular.”

“How did she happen to drop in on you?”

“I’m not in it at all, dear chap. I’m a businessman and gamekeeper. My life’s quite full. I suppose that may actually have had something to do with it, in fact. She called from Heathrow day before yesterday. Said she was in England and wanted someplace to rest. Lord, I hope she’s not put off by my bringing you down. Never thought of that aspect of it before.”

“I won’t bother her.”

“No, of course you won’t,” he said smiling. “Sorry I suggested that. Just thinking out loud. A man concerned with animals must always be conscious of who goes into the cage with whom. It’s a social science, zoology is, very helpful in making up parties. I suppose mine, when I trouble to give them, are among the most gemütlich in Europe. Indeed, now I think of it, I must have realized as soon as I saw you last night that you’d be acceptable to Jane, or I’d never have asked you. Have you known her long?”

“We’ve never met.”

“What, never met and so keen?” I smiled lamely and Freddy patted my knee. “I understand. I do. I feel you hoping. And I quite approve. Just don’t confuse your hope with your evidence.” He studied me for a moment. “But then you wouldn’t, would you, or I’d not be so fond of you.”

“You do understand quite a lot, Freddy.”

“Who, me? I’m objective, is all. Yearning, I can smell yearning a mile off.”

“I shall have to shower.”

“Not at all, not at all. It stinks only when untempered by reason. In your case I smell reason a mile off, too. Eminently suitable, eminently,” he pronounced. “I wouldn’t bet against it,” he added seriously, and I felt so good about this last that I had to change the subject. I questioned him about Duluth, which till then I hadn’t even thought of. Now, almost superstitiously, I refused to think about Jane. Every time he gave me an opening I closed it, choosing, as one does who has so much at stake and success seems within his grasp, to steer clear of the single thing that is of any interest to him. We spoke trivially the whole time, and my excitement and happiness were incandescent.

“How many miles do you get to the gallon in this Bentley of yours, Plympton?” I asked, and even before he could answer I turned to look out the window and exclaim, “Look, look at the grass, so green it is. That’s your English climate for you. If rain’s the price a nation must pay to achieve a grass that green, then one must just as well pay up and be still about it. Who’s your tailor? I’m thinking of having some things made.”

When we left the M-4 and came to the turnoff that would bring us at last to Duluth I put my hand on Plympton’s sleeve. “Freddy, listen, I know I must sound like a fool, but could you just introduce us and give me some time alone with her? We’ve so many friends in common — and perhaps other things as well — that I know there won’t be any awkwardness. My God, I’ve been pursuing her for months. Who knows when I’ll have such an opportunity again? I know my hope’s showing, and I hope — look, there I go again — you won’t despise me for it, but I have to talk to her. I have to.”

“Then you shall,” he said, and we turned onto the road that took us across the perimeter of the estate and drove for five miles and came to a gate where a gatekeeper greeted Lord Plympton and a chauffeur who seemed to materialize out of the woods got in and took the wheel while Freddy and I moved to the back seat, and we drove together through the lovely grounds for another fifteen or twenty minutes and passed through another gate, though I did not see it until we were almost on it — the queer, camouflaged electric fence — and through the windows I could hear the coughing of apes and the roar of lions and the bleating of lambs and the wheezes and grunts and trebles and basses of a hundred beasts — though I saw none — and at last, passing through a final gate, came to the long, curving, beautiful driveway of the beautiful house and servants came to take our bags and others to open doors and an older woman in a long gown — Plympton kissed her and introduced her as his wife, the Lady Plympton I’d never met (“She came with guanacos on her crest, dear fellow, with the funny panda and the gravid slug. I married her — ha ha — to fill out the set”), and he bolted upstairs beckoning me to follow. “Come on, come on,” he said, “can’t wait to get here, then hangs back like a boy at his first ball,” and I bounded up the stairs behind him, and overtook him. “Wherever are you going? You don’t know the way. Go on, go on, left, left,” he called. “When you come to the end of the hall turn right into the Richard Five wing. It’s the first apartment past the Ballroom of Time. You’ll see the clocks,” and I left him behind, only to come to the door, her door, and stop outside it.