In Partial Disgrace (17 page)

“Very well,” she said with winsome exasperation, “you are a brave boy. And for that I shall love you forever.”

Flat as a fish, entrusting myself to her faith, but leaning on my Waterman, I turned Leviathan and escaped beneath the earth into those vast realms far beyond the night.

CORDIALS

(Iulus)

It was a solemn evening of impressive adult talk, and many crystal beakers of moon wine and Armagnac were emptied. Much of the conversation was above my head, though when the subject turned inevitably to Wolf, I realized they were speaking with the tact necessary for dealing with those more trouble than they were worth, a category in which I included myself and all the other helpless creatures in the world, and to which this handsome threesome had such an irrational attachment.

They spoke of themselves as gay soldiers and sober custodians waging a battle for Wolf ’s nihilistic soul. They would have preferred to run away from those responsibilities, I believe, perhaps to engage in one of those primitive rituals wherein all ties and taboos are thrown off for a fortnight, men and women anonymously and cheerfully betraying each other in a dark forest. It was only their contempt for the weakness of the majority which kept them from running off. They all admitted there were times when they wanted to take Wolf for a walk and shoot him cleanly through the base of the skull. Certainly that’s what the Astingi would have done. I blushed for their honesty. And I would never know whether I was meant to hear this or they simply had forgotten my presence.

They were not, as always, in total agreement as to strategy. The Professor now held to the view, as a result of his disastrous tentativeness, that while we cannot send force wherever our sensibilities are threatened, once committed we must pursue a policy of unconditional surrender.

My father took serious issue here—to terminate the illness, the ill cannot be threatened with liquidation, he argued, and in any case the burdens of total victory were impossible.

“The life of an animal such as Wolf is shaped by the incessant wait for aggression,” he said slowly. “He lives perpetually alert to the hunter, who most often does not even exist. The hunter is there in his life about as often as the tiger is in ours. The idea is not one of ethical perfection; it is only to persuade the beast that there is no Universal Hunter.”

Mother, picking up the lost sticks of the argument, brought things to a close:

“The only thing we can do, even if we cannot set a perfect example, is urge restraint as a matter of self-interest,” she said. “He will be less harmful to himself if he heeds our interpretation.”

This was brave talk, to be sure. I did not have the wit to realize then that I would come to my manhood in a time when all these strange notions of Passion and Honor, Authority and Discipline, Restraint and Guidance, were to be suddenly set aside, while every man and woman, child and parent, horse and dog, ran for the autonomous hills.

It was not clear whether the Professor had been disabused of his most cherished notions, or whether he was enervated by the meal. He simply sat, slouched as usual, playing with his fork.

Now Father, like all Cannonians, was a born raconteur, but he was sensitive enough to know that a
conversation couleur
ought not end like a courtroom drama, and so he moved to make a show of his vulnerability. In hindsight, it was perhaps a mistake to let the Professor off the floor.

“One thing I may have not made sufficiently clear is the cost.” Felix paused, stroking his beard.

“I thought we had already agreed,” the Professor broke in agitatedly.

“Not money. What I’m saying is you cannot blame yourself for Wolf. If we take on such a bargain, we risk incessant failure. You can ruin by any gesture—too liberal or too conservative, too diffident or too
délicatesse
—but you cannot help
one
until you have ruined a few others. This truth, I believe, is the only place where the Christian doctrine and the rule of capital intersect.”

He had stood up and, letting his napkin drop to the floor, turned his back on the table and spoke to the ceiling.

“You simply have no idea the damage a self-confident man can unwittingly do,” he finished.

The Professor affixed his stern gaze upon my father’s brow.

“Perhaps,” Ainoha interjected in her usual half-mysterious, half-deadpan mode, “perhaps the Professor would care to see the gallery?”

“Ah, yes,” Father sighed, “I believe he is ready.” And already Öscar was wheeling a small cart with whiskey, soda, and cigars down the hallway.

In Grandfather’s time our home had real art: Chaudet’s
Infant Sleeping in a Crib Under the Watch of a Courageous Dog Which Has Just Killed an Enormous Viper
, and Desporte’s
Dog Watching Over Game Beside A Rosebush
. Not to mention Oudry’s glowing pointer bitches, Courbet’s awkward grayhounds, Landseer’s chunky Newfoundlands, and Géricault’s
Bouledogues Vaginale
. But these had long since been sold off, save for George Stubb’s
White Poodle in a Punt
, which still hung in Father’s lair along with his favorite quote from the painter, who, returning from the mandatory trip to Italy, confided to his diary, “Nature is better than art.”

Indeed, in our part of the world most galleries were like any others, full of wall-eyed ancestors, dull sporting scenes, gratuitous orders of merit, and if one were fortunate, a few recumbent odalisques, their curves resembling stringed instruments. But as you might expect, ours was no ordinary
Galerie des glaces
, for this was where my father chose to remember the many dogs he had ruined on his ascent to Hauptzuchtwart Supreme
,
as well as those who had simply failed him. He had had their loving cups beaten into metal feed dishes for the kennels, and their show medals defaced and soldered together to make a set of Celtic signet collars, so that the animals might also have a memento of their brief encounter. When failed dogs passed away, we did not cremate them and scatter their ashes on the island in the artificial lake with the kennel, as we did with the champs. We buried them in the church graveyard at Muddy St. Hubertus, in the vague bushy boundary between the Catholics and the Jews. But in the gallery they were memorialized, mate with mate, like ruined royals without heirs.

Father had an idealistic period during the early, monied part of his life when he collected bad art with a view toward not only keeping it off the market, but expunging it from future generations. These were largely portraits of barristers, merchants, admirals, petit barons, and baronesses in which the faces were honorific, stereotypical, and not well executed, the hands often hidden. But the clothes and other details were accomplished, whether a weskit, military uniform, silk ball dress, tweed suit, or lace sleeves. The torsos and their accouterments often revealed more of the personality than the visage—a cigar dangling loosely from a thumb and forefinger, a bow tie against an Adam’s apple, a chin resting upon a crook or a walking stick. In any case, Father had the faces whited out and the ruined dogs’ heads painted in, in such a way as to indicate how a character defect had gone undetected or an illness undiagnosed, which, intertwined with overreaching pressure or other ill-advised methods, had destroyed the animal’s usefulness. He wanted evidence of his many failures kept green, almost unavoidable, so that he would not repeat such harm.

First was the gaggle of gun-shy dogs rendered in various styles of foppery to conceal their secret hurts: Bello Bellini, a graceful grayhound in spats and top hat, who would come apart at the slightest rustle of wind; Satanella, a butch and vicious lapdog, all decked out in fur with protruding eyes; Malteo Falconi, a spinone galapatore, mindlessly playing his accordion with webbed paws; Gottlieb Von O., the essence of a German country gentleman, with exposed haws and curvature of the muzzle; Little James, a not-so-adorable pug in a sailor suit capable only of the most suffocating love; Dr. Becker, an enormously serious but bowlegged, loose-loined hound; and Henritte von Fitzewicz, a macabre terrier in a hunting dress, with a depressed saddle and seriously overshot jaw.

The Professor walked up and down the gallery, hands behind his back, taking in the grotesqueries while pausing now and then to examine a picture more closely, his head cocked in a way as to indicate serious interest, if not entire approval.

“There is no cure for gunshyness, then?” he inquired.

“Of course,” Father said, “but it is most drastic. I pray you will never see it.
Obit anus, obit onus
.”

The Professor attempted to pursue this line of questioning, but soon found himself guided among a more peculiar and recent class of portraits, all Chetvorah, those animals devoted to cynegetics and each other, exemplars of loyalty, probity, chaste ardor, and elevated thoughts, but who passed on hideous recessives, unfitted joints, cryptorchidism, and broken ears, or more commonly and mysteriously were simply unable to transmit their more desirable traits in any significant number, and thus, too, had to be discarded from the future if not the past. These were of course the saddest figures of all, arranged around a roaring fireplace: Chrysanor and Kallirhoe, dressed in an admiral’s uniform and a severe black ball gown, who proved, Mother said, that a good marriage might consist of nothing save that the two partners were united against reactionaries and philistines. (“But their children, oh Lord, their crazy, selfish, ugly children, you would not believe it!”) And there were Panfreddo and Pascheline, beautiful as they come, who would retrieve through an oak tree if necessary, but who produced only cleft palates and mental collapse. And Miriam and Monastatos, too cool for their species and over given to philosophizing and abject digging, even on concrete. And finally there were the braces of androgynous brothers and sisters which you wanted to breed so much it almost hurt, knowing they would produce a superior strain faster, but who would also introduce a timed explosive in the lineage, ruining all in the end. Among these were Parerga and Paralipomena, Leon and Lubmissa, Fawn and Dawn, Mars and Mustapha, Philemon and Bancis; the lost lovers, Helenia and Lysander, and Permea and Dimitrius; and the great and famous trick dogs, Didi and Dada.

“Ah, the complicity of flesh is one thing,” Mother murmured, “but the complicity of intelligence—oh, dear.”

The aristochiens no longer seemed amusing collages to the Professor; they had been transfigured into pure emotional states, all their fears and pretensions focusing out of their gilded frames, anticipating the blows of history that would subtract them from the race.

“This seems, if I may say so, somewhat bizarre,” he said without an edge.

Mother was doing some half-hearted
port de bras
in a corner before a large mirror, between death masks of comedy and tragedy.

“The dog has a better memory than we do,” Father spoke softly. “He never forgets the worst thing that happens to him. He does not store it away. He remembers it afresh each day. We must emulate his humility and allow it to stimulate our sense of gratitude.”

“But, surely, love itself . . .” the Professor began, as if by rote.

“It’s not enough to love somebody,” Father snapped. “For it to last, you must also love their life!” And with this, horse tears welled up in his eyes.

The Professor abandoned his prosecutorial tone.

“Well, Councilor,” he said with a forced wink, “a dog will perhaps betray you if you treat him badly. But a person will betray you no matter how you treat him.”

“Oh, but people are more forgetful. That’s their salvation. One slip with a dog and they never forgive you, never! I ruined so many before I learned, and who’s to pay for that, Doctor? Yes, who is to pay for that?” He had taken off his ascot to wipe his eyes.

“Yes, yes, someone must have done the same with Wolf,” the Professor murmured, almost absentmindedly. “And no, they don’t forgive. You can only reach a kind of accommodation.”

“You never know how many is one lash too many,” Mother said sweetly, her back turned. “And then all is lost.”

The Professor was aghast, waving his arms at the gallery. “How in heaven’s name did you survive all this?” he entreated.

I do not know whether it was the slightly patronizing tone of the question, but the tears abruptly stopped halfway down Father’s cheek, as if he had willed it, and he turned on his heel, thundering:

“We are first and foremost athletes, Professor. It’s not what you remember, but how fast you can forget, that allows us to stay in the game.” He poured two stiff whiskeys, jamming one into the Professor’s hand.

“The ones we ruin, well, that’s really your affair, Doctor. I have been forced by pecuniary circumstances to deal with other men’s errors and nature’s abortions, to become”—he spat this—“an
educationist
! But in my heart of hearts, I am still the servant of the disabused, the congenitally alert. Ameliorism is my game, getting it right the first time round. The standard repertoire is quite enough for this life, Doctor. Start with the very best and leave the rest. The cruelest thing is to constantly praise mediocrity and believe that illness teaches us. Suffering teaches us, but illness bores us.”

The Professor stood his ground, matching him drink for drink.

“Your candor is most impressive, Councilor—almost overwhelming, one could say.” Turning his large head, he reached for an inoffensive phrase. “Your meritocratic sense is most admirable. But doesn’t it all speak to the need for new therapies?”

Mother had arrived between them with a modern movement, refilled their whiskeys, and then, like an officer at intermission at the opera, lowered the gas jets. There was a great
whoosh
through the gallery as the portraits disappeared. Father shrugged, rattling the ice in his whiskey and soda.

“Let us toast new cures, Doctor, as long as we admit the risk. But let us also be honest: in truth, we don’t even know what an animal
is
!”

“I believe I’m not feeling quite well,” the Professor mumbled, and on that note they flung their glasses into the roaring fire, and each arm supported by his handsome hosts, the Professor was taken for a walk on the terrace in the gathering tremulous winds.

As his nausea dissipated, he fumbled with his pocket watch, noting on the schedule the last departures of the
Desdemona
. But upon reaching his rented jitney he found it lying in a heap in the drive, and he followed Father’s finger to four of the tallest poplar trees on the estate, at the tops of which the wheels of his carriage were lashed. The Professor was dumbstruck, staring at Father, who seemed proud as Lucifer.