Automatic Woman (10 page)

“No,” he said.

“Is Mr. Darwin here?”

“You want to know if Charles Darwin is here?”

Shite! Charles Darwin! How many blokes named C. Darwin could there be in London? I cursed myself for not seeing the obvious. Charles Darwin was the most well-known, if not the most controversial scientist in all of England. Maybe the world. Of course some fringe genius like Saxon would have correspondence with the great naturalist, the destroyer of small minds and large institutions.

“Sorry, mate. I had it that he lived here.”

“Thirty years ago,” Mustache told me.

“Fair enough.” I gave mustache a nod and stepped lively back to the road. I didn’t need to ask where Charles Darwin currently resided, I already knew. Everyone who read the society papers knew. Charles Darwin was currently at the University of Oxford where he was in his fifth year of a permanent fellowship. He’d reached a level of academic notoriety in which no one expected him to produce anything, his presence simply added to reputations. Time for me to catch a train to Oxford.

Jolly confides in the great Naturalist Charles Darwin

The train ride was lovely except for the gawks and stares I received from regular folk. Not just children mind you, grown men and women looked at me seated and whispered to each other. It reminded me of my public school days before I’d hit my growth spurt. The stares bothered me, the normality of the ladies and gents bothered me. All flush and fancy. Do regular people know what they look like? Do they know how they look when they gawk, when their dumb mouths hang open and their small minds work toward some bland conclusion? I finally turned to the couple sitting across from me.

“What, never seen a leper before?” I asked.

That shut them up but good. The man seated next to me rose and exited the car. Everyone seated within ten feet of me followed. Privacy works for me. I stretched my arms and legs and looked out the window at the scenery. Black Park, Stoke Poges, the Church Wood. Rolling hills and greenery pocked by country villages. It never failed to take my breath.

I’m a product of the city, of London, mainly Whitechapel. I’d never even been to the countryside until I was thirteen. Dad took me to scatter Mom’s ashes at Longwick, where she’d been born. He borrowed a horse and cart from a draftsman who he’d done free work for. We walked that horse from early morning to late afternoon. Father was silent in a way I was not used to. The verbose man, the cobbler philosopher. I had nothing to say either. Mother had been sick a long time. She’d been coughing blood for years, confined to her bed for months. Her death was an inevitability and we had adapted to the “when” rather than the “if” of our circumstances.

I can’t remember her face except to see a red speckled handkerchief in front of it. Blond hair, pale skin, blood on white cloth. That is my image of Mother.

Father and I left London in silence. Buildings gave way to grasslands and trees and I sat in stunned silence. I’d always seen trees as creatures of as much gray as green, as receptacles of soot that hung constant in our brave industrial society. To see trees unadorned by ash, to see them clean and swaying in a gentle breeze… Words escape me.

The trip lasted hours but to me it seemed much longer. We met Mother’s family in Longwick, but I wasn’t there. My mind took on the pictures of rolling grass and trees and I was running through them. I was drenched in sunlight and the grass came to my waist and rolled like crashing ocean waves.

The scattering, Mother’s wake - I was present for each event in body only. We left early the next morning and I swore to myself that when I grew to be a man, I would live my life in these forests. That I would become like the mythical elf, a creature who lives in the woods and for the woods and has nothing to do with the smoke and retch of our city home.

Like all dreams of youth, this was quashed quickly in the practical. I returned to school. I assisted Father. I grew to be a man of the city. A man who forgets his dreams only to remember them as the biography of a person wholly different and strange. Wood elf. Bollocks.

I must have dozed off. I woke at the stop before Oxford Station. The other passengers still kept their distance. I exited at Oxford and walked to the splendid university grounds.

Oxford is like the prototype of all universities. Old brick structures, open parks, hordes of brilliant youth in natty clothes. Every campus I’ve seen or heard of is some version of this. Which makes sense, Oxford being the first and oldest university of the Western world. The Italians claim the University of Bologna came first but I’ve been to Italy, I’ve spent holidays there and communed with the people. It’s just not possible that they came up with higher learning before we did.

I found the campus central library, another gray brick structure; it was three stories with windows cut through all floors. A kindly librarian gave me the whereabouts of Mr. Charles Darwin’s office but warned me not to bother checking there for two reasons. First, Mr. Darwin was constantly inundated with visitors, many unfriendly. His secretary had grown adept at removing them, bodily if necessary. The second and more relevant reason was that today was Thursday, thus Mr. Darwin would be giving his weekly lecture at the College of Science. She gave me directions to the college and I was on my way.

The primary lecture hall looked like a painting I’d once seen of a surgery theater. The room was circular and dropped into a deep pit. Rows upon rows of chairs lined the descending floor plan, stopping abruptly at a gated wall three meters from the bottom. Below the gates, the lecture hall stood as a flat and plain circle. The set up of the room gave me the impression of the Roman Colosseum in miniature. All the seats were full as were the stairs and any space that could be counted as standing room. I pressed in next to a group of young academics near the entrance. The hall was poorly ventilated and filled with the smoke of pipes and cigars and cigarettes. Every bloke in the hall was puffing something. The overall effect was like standing in thick, unbearable fog. I never understood the connection between academia and tobacco. Would it surprise you to know I’d never attended university?

Two men paced the lecture floor like swimmers in a sea of smoke. One of the men I recognized as Darwin. Bald head, pink peeling scalp, long white beard, bushy white eyebrows, ash cane. I’d seen Darwin before, but never in person. The papers showed his picture often enough, sitting at a charity ball, or speaking at some regal event, once with his head superimposed onto the body of an ape by some angry caricaturist.

Old Darwin shared the floor with a much younger man. The stranger was bedecked in a black suit and black wide-brimmed hat. His accent wasn’t just American, it was Southern American. The laziest of American accents. The Yank spoke first.

“My esteemed colleague would have you believe that transformation of species is inevitable. That creatures change based on fitness and adaptability rather than the will of God. Well, sir, if this is true, then why has humanity remained the same for the extent of our history? Why haven’t we evolved into something greater? Where is the super-human, Mr. Darwin?”

Darwin let his hand caress the full length of his beard. He looked every day of his seventy-nine years. The crowed silently exhaled smoke and tension. I tried to ask the bloke next to me who the Yank was and got a shushing for my troubles. Darwin gave a response.

“Who’s to say we haven’t evolved? The African Negro is better acclimated to sunlight, the Moor to the desert. Caucasians hail from places cold and wet, and we’ve acclimated to the seafaring. The Polynesians are beautiful swimmers and climbers. The Chinese are suited for the hardships of their regions. All stand as proof of fitness.”

The American dramatically raised his hands to the audience.

“You have failed to answer my question, sir. I ask for super-humans and you give me Africans and Chinese. Unextraordinary groups who have always existed. Probably inferior genetic stock. The very opposite of what I asked for.”

Darwin raised an eyebrow.

“Always you say?”

The American did not answer.

“Who were the first people to populate the Earth?”

The American was quick to answer this one.

“Adam and Eve.”

“And of what race were they?”

“They were of the white race,” the American said without hesitation.

“So where did the Negros come from? The Arabs? The Chinese? Based on the logic of your beliefs they must have come from the progeny of Adam and Eve.”

The American responded again without hesitation. “They are. The darker races are descended from Ham, the son of Noah who was cursed for looking upon his father’s shame. The Sumerians, Egyptians, Orientals, Africans, all are descended from Ham.”

“So the Africans and Chinese are the same?” Darwin retorted.

“Well, one is darker than the other.” This caught a few laughs in the crowd. “But they come from the same familial stock.”

“So again I ask, is the African Negro the same as the Chinaman?”

“They came from the same place.”

“But are they the same?”

The American rubbed a hand over his chin.

“Dr. Warfald, are they the same?”

“No.”

“And how do you account for the differences between Chinese and Africans if they share the same ancestor? Their color is not the same, nor their size, nor their eyes. What accounts for these differences?”

“Well,” the American’s body language showed nerves, apprehension. “Over time, their breeding grew specialized to region. The sons and daughters of Ham in Africa preferred different things than the sons and daughters and Ham in China.”

“And why?” Darwin interjected. “Why would the children of Ham in Africa prefer different breeding partners than the children of Ham in China? Why do similar creatures from identical backgrounds prefer different things?”

The American was silent again. He looked to the crowd of smoking academics. His arrogant demeanor softened on these strange rhetorical grounds. Darwin continued.

“Maybe the children of Ham found difficulties when they came to Africa. Maybe some of them died of the mosquitoes’ malaria. Maybe some of them blistered in the sun and were rendered hideous and unbreedable. Maybe the Hammites who came to China found that they were too big to ride the horses that roamed free. Maybe the smaller men found the advantage in mounting horses and riding to war. Maybe the larger African Hammites found advantage in killing lions and cougars, in running with long legs over deadly savannahs. Dr. Warfald, if what you say is true, children of the same man found themselves in different places, under different circumstances and only the right man for the region bred and passed on his genes. The Africans don’t look like the Chinese because they are perfected for their part of the world. They are fit. The same goes for the Chinese. Ham’s children evolved to their regions, thus evolution is reality.”

“Sir,” the American retorted. “You are not talking about evolution but de-evolution. I asked for examples of humanity advancing and you give me anecdotes about lesser races who are clearly accounted for in the bible.”

“The bible mentions the Chinese at no point. This is a moot argument; there is no distinction between evolution and de-evolution, as you put it. Both account for change, change based on adaptability. I’ve posited nothing less. If you believe that the Africans and Chinese have stepped backwards from their origins, then you must admit that they changed and their change was based on the environment they found themselves in.”

“I accept no such thing!”

“Then tell me sir, why are the children of Ham so different? Why are the all the colored men and women of the world built so differently one from the other? Why can’t I rely on my knowledge of the people of India to assist me in dealing with your own red Indian countrymen?”

“They are not my countrymen.” The American was letting anger seep into his voice.

“Why are the Indians of America so different and strange from the Indians of India? They share a name and yet they are each and every one adaptable to their region. I assume you regard them both as children of Ham. The best survived and lived on and passed his genes to the next children based on the requirements of the land. I don’t believe that Ham was the first man of color, but even if I did that would not change my theory of evolution and fitness.”

“Then perhaps God allowed for the survivors to adapt? Perhaps it was God who chose the fittest?”

“I never said he had no place in this, only that I don’t know what his place is. Don’t you see? If God accounts for adaptability then he is the catalyst for evolution, and evolution exists. By God or by chance the creatures of the world, of which man is one, change to conform to the world’s environment. By this very observation all of evolution is proven.”

“Not all evolution. Maybe men lived and changed in the short term, but this does not account for your shameful proposition that man descended from the monkeys.”

“Shameful?”

“Yes, shameful! By biblical calculations the world is no more than six thousand years old and yet you propose that men came from monkeys over the course of millions of years. You claim not to know God’s place but don’t deny his existence. If you don’t deny his existence, how can you deny his history of the world?”