Many of you, I know, find delight in the music of Henry Purcell, who is still regarded as the greatest of English composers. He wrote superbly for the human voice, because he was himself a singer, and in his time, as Organist of the Chapel Royal, he drew great singers around him. One of these was a remarkable ba.s.s called John Gostling; not only was his voice of dark beauty, but it was of extraordinary compa.s.s. His lowest note was an Fa"not the F below the ba.s.s clef, which any ba.s.s can sing, but the F an octave below thata"which only a very few exceptional ba.s.ses can sing. Now, our organist, Giles Bryant, discovered an anthem of Purcellas in MS in the British Museum; it had quite pa.s.sed out of the choral repertory because of its exceptional difficulty. It is a setting of the pa.s.sage from the Book of Job which contains the words, aHe maketh the deep to boil like a pot: He maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.a Obviously Purcell had written this for his favourite John Gostling, because when the sea boils like a pot the ba.s.s soloist is called upon to perform an exceedingly long trill on that low F, and when the sea becomes like a pot of ointment an excruciatingly difficult legato pa.s.sage in the deepest registers of the ba.s.s voice is called for, to produce an effect of heaving greasiness which would, properly performed, arouse nausea in every musically sensitive hearer.
Giles Bryant found it last summer, and he and Gordon Wry longed with all their musical souls to revive it in our Chapel. But where were they to find the necessary ba.s.s?
We have some good ba.s.ses, but there have been few Gostlings. Our choir directors were in an anguish of frustrated desire, and the refrain of their conversation was: aIf only Igor were here now!a I should explain that although the male members of our Choir are never wholly drawn from the members of the College, several Junior Fellows have, at one time and another, sung with them. Unquestionably the finest of these was one of our Russian exchange students, Igor Lvov. But Lvov disappeared from the College several years ago, on the 15th of December, and we never heard of him again. Russian exchange students are sometimes summoned home on short notice, for political reasons into which it would be tedious to penetrate now. So, when Igor vanished, we sighed, but accepted the situation with philosophy.
It was on a Sunday night two weeks ago that I was walking with Gordon and Giles along one of the corridors on the lowest floor of this College, listening to their plaints for the lost Igor.
aIgor could have boiled like a pot,a sighed Gordon.
aAnd how he would have handled that pot of ointment,a said Giles, almost sobbing.
aI can hear him now,a said Gordon, his face beautified by the light of happy recollection.
It was merely a figure of speech, but it filled me with terror. No, not terror; what overwhelmed me was that sense of doom, of realization that once again the forces of unreason had invaded Ma.s.sey College. Here we go again, I thought to myself; O, ye powers that protect colleges from all that threatens them, let it not be! This year, just for this year alone, let no uncanny thing drag its trail of loathsome slime across our chronicle! But even as I prayed, I knew that it was hopeless. For although Gordon thought he heard Igoras voice only in memory, I was horribly aware that I had heard it in reality! It was just as we were pa.s.sing a locked door marked Service 6.
As quickly as I could, I hurried Gordon and Giles to the gate, and bade them good-night. They walked away, happily talking about music, as I had seen them do a hundred times, and I, with heavy, doomed steps, dragged myself back to the cellarage, to the door marked Service 6. With my master-key I unlocked it, and went in, shuddering but with the courage of resignation.
aIgor, where are you?a I whispered. aIgor, speak to me.a aI am here, little father,a said a deep, velvety voice that seemed to come from the farthest depths of the room. For Service 6, because of the purpose for which it is used, extends far under the quadrangle. Guided by the sound of the voice, I felt my way into its cave-like recesses.
I donat know what I expected to find, but I knew Igor was there, for I never forget a voice. Names I forget, as a thousand humiliations every year makes clear, but never voices. If I had heard Igor, Igor it must be.
aWhere?a I whispered, as I crept deeper and deeper into the cave.
aHere,a said Igoras voice, seemingly at the level of my knees.
What had happened? What was Igoras fate? Had he refused to return to Russia at command, and was he dragging out a fugitiveas life in this darkest, most neglected, almost forgotten portion of the College? Dreading whatever it was I might see, I lit a match.
Oh, horror, horror, horror! There, in a dank tank, squatted a gigantic frog!
aIgor!a I hissed.
aI,a croaked the frog.
aLvov!a I gasped.
aNone other,a he gurgled.
aWhat has brought you to this?a I quavered.
aPride!a said Frog-Igor (for from now on I shall call him that). aPride in our great Soviet State. Pride in the glory of modern Russia! Pride in the sound of my own voice, which is the worst possible kind of pride for a citizen of a Communist state! Sit down, little father, and I shall tell you all.a I sat.
aSince childhood I have loved to sing,a said Frog-Igor. aAs a child on the collective, mine was the loudest voice, heard far above the sound of the machinery. As a youth in the university I was tempted to drop my studies in the crystallization of liquid manure in order to take up a career in opera. But Russia needs crystallized manure, and I stuck to it. But always I sang. Always I was in some choir. And when I came to Canada as a Soviet exchange student, I lost no time in finding a choir which badly needed me. It was a Toronto choir, named after the bourgeois-recidivist-Jew-beast Mendelssohn, and its leader was the mighty Gospodin Iseler.a aThe Mendelssohn Choir,a said I; aa happy choice.a aNot so happy,a said Frog-Igor. aVery degenerate; very tainted music. Trained as I had been in the state-approved peopleas music of Soviet Russia I found strong traces of ideological retrogression in this music. Buta"I must sing, or die, so I sang what the Mendelssohn Choir sang, all the time keeping my own reservations about the material.
aAt last came this time of year, the winter festival called Christmas, and the Mendelssohn Choir announced that it would offer a large composition unknown to me, called Messiah. You will understand, little father, that I was not pleased when I discovered, by going through the libretto with a dictionary, that this Messiah was a piece of overtly Christian propaganda. Yes! Shameless. But, I said to myself, these backward countries must take what music they can get. This music is degenerately modern to the Soviet ear, but there are a few good tunes and the whole score goes with a swing that is extraordinary when the source of its inspiration is considered. Soa"I shall consent to sing in it.
aYou see, the great Iseler was very kind to me. He created an entirely new group within the choir, for me alone. Third Ba.s.s, it was called. I admired Gospodin Iseler devotedly. A man of rich spirit and Byzantine beauty, little father, and even in Russia we meet few like him.
aBut still there was my problem. What was I to do about the nakedly religious nature of the text? And then I hit on a great idea. I would sing Messiah with mental reservations. Whenever the name of the false Hebrew G.o.d or his discredited Son occurred, I uttered an indeterminate sound, which, in the Mendelssohn Choir, n.o.body would notice. But in my mind I subst.i.tuted the name of our mighty leader, Nikita Khrushchev. And thus, you see, I preserved my integrity.
aOh, little father, it worked at rehearsal, but when the first performance came, musical enthusiasm betrayed me. It was a great night. Ma.s.sey Hall was filled to capacity with wealthy bourgeois. The smells of face-powder and mink recalled the worst days of the Czarist regime. I supposed it was because this was a new work we were launching, and I looked everywhere in the audience for the composer, but though many men had long hair, none looked like the picture of Handel on my music book.
aAll went well, and my system of mental reservation worked like aa"what is it you say it works likea"?a I have a fine academic command of cliche. aLike a charm?a I prompted.
aAh, good, good!a said Frog-Igor. aLike a charm. But then we approached one of my favourite pa.s.sages. It is in a big chorus, where everybody sings, aFor unto us a child is born,a but mentally I was singing, aFor unto us a peopleas republic is born,a and as we approached the climax, with the wordsa"And the government shall be upon his shouldera"I was thinking so powerfully of Comrade Khrushchev that his beautiful, benign face seemed to rise right in front of me anda"a aYes,a I said, aanda"a aAnd I made a wrong entrance,a said Frog-Igor, hanging his huge, warty head in shame. aBefore everybody else I sang, thunderously and triumphantlya"And the government shall be upon his shouldera"meaning Khrushchev, you see, and all at once I felt a most terrible blow, as if I had been struck with a bullet. I raised my eyes from my music, and found that the mighty Iseler was looking at me with such hatred, such loathing, such unutterable detestation, that I dropped my score, struggled past all the other ba.s.ses who sat between me and the door, and ran into the street. Oh, the shame, the bitter shame.a aAll that audience knows Messiah by heart,a said I. aElmer wouldnat care for a wrong entrance.a aWell you may say it,a said Frog-Igor. aAs I hurried back to the College I felt worse and worse. You remember me as I was; a splendid figure of a Russiana"two metres tall, two metres wide, two metres from front to backa"but as I hurried through the streets I felt myself shrinking, and my free stride was becoming more and more difficult. And hot! I was perishing with shame. At last, when I reached the College I pressed myself under the gatea"I could not bear to come under the glance of the Cossack McCrackena"and flung myself into the cooling pool. And there, sitting on a stone, with the chill water of December washing over me, I considered my fate.
aIt became clear at last. All my life, little father, and all my education, has been a rejection of superst.i.tion. Reason is all! So says the Soviet: so also says Ma.s.sey College. But in Russia, there are still those among our old people who talk of very bad, almost forgotten things. And one of them is the Evil Eye. And I knew the worst: I had done wrong, in the sight of everybody; I had spoiled the first performance of this new work, this Messiah, and the great Iseler had cast the Evil Eye upon me. Anda"there I sat in the pool and I had to face ita"I had been turned into a frog.
aSince then, I have lived in the pool all summer, and when the coldest weather comes, the good Comrade Roger puts me in here, in this nice wet tank, and I sleep the winter away. But O, little father, how I long to sing again.a I put out my hand and patted Frog-Igor on the head. It was not a pleasurable sensation, but I have never allowed personal considerations to stand in the way of a n.o.ble action.
aYou shall sing, again, Igor,a I said; abut first of all we must do something about your personal appearance. Did the old people who spoke of the Evil Eye say anything about how to get rid of it?a aYes,a said Frog-Igor; ait is very difficult. But you, little father, you are a good, simple man, a real member of the proletariat, and everybody pities you. Perhaps you could persuade him.a aPersuade who?a I asked.
aThe great Iseler,a said Frog-Igor. aI can only be restored to human form again by his kiss.a In old-fashioned books one often reads about somebody being anonplusseda. I had never before paid much attention to the word, but in that instant I understood its meaning fully. I was nonplussed. Frog-Igor was going on.
aGo to him, little father. Fall at his feet; caress his knees. Let him see the tears running down your withered cheeks. Entreat for me. He will not be able to refuse you.a It was now clear to me that, as so often happens in these invasions of the College by the forces of unreason, I was cast for an ignominious, absurdly demanding role. I spoke crisply.
aUseless,a I said. aI know Elmer Iseler quite well. If I crept up on him and pawed his knees I donat know what he might think. You donat understand life in the democracies. All that crawling and cringing and weeping is much too Dostoevskian for twentieth century Canada.
aIsnat there anybody else who could kiss you with the same effect?a aThere is Comrade Khrushchev,a said Frog-Igor hopefully. aHe has what we call in Russia the Proletarian Touch; it is the sovietized version of what used to be called the Royal Touch.a I knew something that Frog-Igor, during the past seven years, had not heard. I suppose a very limited version of the worldas news gets into our pool. So I temporized.
aToo far away,a I said. aBut what about a beautiful girl? In these situations on this side of the Iron Curtain it is always a princess who kisses the frog and turns him back into a prince.a aI refuse to be turned into a prince,a said Frog-Igor. aIt is against all my principles. A ba.s.s, da; a prince, nyet.a aPerhaps a soprano?a I suggested.
Frog-Igor looked as doubtful as a frog can.
aOr a very beautiful contralto,a I wheedled. aThe most beautiful girl in our choir?a To make a long story short, I talked him into trying it. I put the situation squarely up to Gordon and Giles, and at the next choir rehearsal Gordon made a very graceful little speech, not harping on the Frog aspect of the problem. Only the most beautiful of the womenas section, he said, was expected to volunteer.
I had feared this might create a difficult problem of discrimination, but the girls volunteered in a body. So I took Frog-Igor out of the little box in which I had brought him to the Choir Room, and put him in the middle of the table.
The girls seemed to lose their zeal. Frog-Igor leered and did his best to make himself attractive; but I thought he looked worse than before. One of the sopranos suggested that perhaps a counter-tenor might kiss him, as the Frog wouldnat know the difference. Frog-Igor spat up some unpleasant-looking black slime at that moment, and the choir realized that he understood English very well.
There was one n.o.ble contralto, a doctor by profession, who said she had had to meet worse problems in the Emergency Admissions, and she would make a start. After all, she said, it was just like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So she kissed him, and Frog-Igor perked up a little. The other girls were ashamed to back out after such an example of self-sacrifice, and, with a certain amount of gagging and wiping their mouths on bits of Kleenex, they all kissed Igor, and as they did so he swelled and swelled until at last he squatted before us, in the evening clothes he had worn when he was last a man, looking very much like a ba.s.s from the Mendelssohn Choir.
Oh, the joy of Gordon and Giles! It was beautiful to behold. They told the girls that every ounce of their sacrifice had been justified, and set to work at once to rehea.r.s.e the great, rediscovered Purcell anthem. I have never heard anything like it. Igor boiled like a pot, and he slithered richly like grease, and one might have thought that the great John Gostling had been restored to life.
All too soon we realized that Igoras cure was not permanent. Even during rehearsal he showed signs of shrinking again into a frog, but an occasional quick peck from any female singer who had a rest at the time would put him right again. But after rehearsal I had to take him back to Service 6, to the tank.
aThese girls, they are not strong,a he said; anot strong like our Russian girls. But even a Russian girl could not help me for long.a aWell, you can just put any ideas about a kiss from Elmer Iseler out of your head,a I said firmly.
aAh, no; but there is still Comrade Khrushchev,a he said, rolling his great eyes at me.
I knew that Comrade Khrushchev had long since died in disgrace and obscurity, but I thought it better not to tell Igor.
The Sunday camea"well, it was last Sunday, not to make a mystery of ita"when the great Purcell anthem was to be performed at the afternoon Chapel service. Gordon had made it clear that no excuses of illness or having a cold would be accepted from any of the women in the choir, and they all turned up, looking a little discomfited, but showing a good spirit on the whole. I brought Igor in from his tank, and after half an houras hard work they had him in condition to sing.
For the first part of the anthem I experienced a delight I have never felt before in our Chapel. This, I thought, is the perfection of religious music. And in my dark heart I began to plot to keep Igor in the tank for many years, and let him out only for services and recording-sessions which would bring the College the ample funds it so badly needs.
Igoras voice was superb. As he sang the deep did truly boil like a pot, and the sea was like a pot of ointment. But then came the later section of the anthem, very solemn, very n.o.ble, where the ba.s.s and tenor soloists together declare: Upon earth there is not his like,
Who is made without fear.
He beholdeth all high things:
He is a king over all the children of pride.
It is tricky work, that duet, and Robert Hurd as tenor, and Igor as ba.s.s, had to watch their step carefully. I became aware that while Robert was firm, Igor was rocky. There was an excitement in his voice that alarmed me. And then, suddenly, he made an obvious, a gross mis-timing; he came in too early, and an instant later there was a horrible croak, a sound as if gas were escaping from a large balloon, and the anthem sagged to a chaotic end.
Luckily this happened near the end of the service, and as soon as the benediction had been p.r.o.nounced, I sped to the Choir Room.
Poor Igor! He sat damply in the middle of the table, a frog again. A contraltoa"that good sport the doctora"was puckering her lips, but I knew that would do no good now. Gordon was standing in a corner, with his face to the wall, muttering incoherently. Giles, to my horror, was kicking the organ savagely. The members of the choir looked shocked and shaken, except for Malcolm Russell, who was chuckling.
I knew what had to be done. There are times, happily few in number, when I have to exert authority in this College.
aMr. Wry, Mr. Bryant,a I rapped out. aI will have no exhibitions of the Evil Eye in this College. Kiss Igor at once, both of you!a aWonat,a said Gordon.
Giles is an Englishman. aShanat,a said he.
I knew I was beaten. There is no arguing with musicians when somebody has foozled an entry. It was Robert Hurd who explained the situation to me.
aDuring our last pa.s.sage, about the power of G.o.d, it was pretty obvious Igor got to thinking about Nikita Khrushchev,a he said, aand when he came in wrong both Gordon and Giles rounded on him at once, and he was caught between their glares. Poor old Igor.a Poor Igor indeed. When I picked him up he was sobbing piteously for the Kiss of Khrushchev. So I put him in a little box, with some fresh lettuce leaves upon which I sprinkled a few grains of caviar, and I addressed it to Comrade Nikita Khrushchev, care of the Russian Emba.s.sy at Ottawa, and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner of Hoskin Avenue.
A dirty trick? Perhaps. But you see, Igor would never have been of any further use to the College.
The Cat that Went to Trinity
Every Autumn when I meet my new cla.s.ses, I look them over to see if there are any pretty girls in them. This is not a custom peculiar to me: all professors do it: I also count the number of young men who are wearing Chairman Mao coats, or horseshoe moustaches. A pretty girl is something on which I can rest my eyes with pleasure while another student is reading a carefully-researched but uninspiring paper.
This year, in my seminar on the Gothic Novel, there was an exceptionally pretty girl, whose name was Elizabeth Lavenza. I thought it a coincidence that this should also be the name of the heroine of one of the novels we were about to studya"no less a work than Mary Sh.e.l.leyas celebrated romance Frankenstein. When I mentioned it to her she brushed it aside as of no significance.
aI was born in Geneva,a said she, awhere lots of people are called Lavenza.a Nevertheless, it lingered in my mind, and I mentioned it to one of my colleagues, who is a celebrated literary critic.
aYou have coincidence on the brain,a he said. aEver since you wrote that booka"Fourth Dimension or whatever it was calleda"youave talked about nothing else. Forget it.a I tried, but I couldnat forget it. It troubled me even more after I had met the new group of Junior Fellows in this College, for one of them was young Einstein, who was studying Medical Biophysics. He was a brilliant young man, who came to us with glowing recommendations; some mention was made of a great-uncle of his, an Albert Einstein, whose name meant nothing to me, though it appeared to have special significance in the scientific world. It was young Mr. Einsteinas given names that roused an echo in my consciousness, for he was called Victor Frank.
For those among you who have not been reading Gothic Novels lately, I may explain that in Mrs. Sh.e.l.leyas book Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, the heroas name is also Victor, and the girl he loved was Elizabeth Lavenza. This richness of coincidence might trouble a mind less disposed to such reflection than mine. I held my peace, for I had been cowed by what my friend the literary critic had said. But I was dogged by apprehension, for I know the disposition of the atmosphere of Ma.s.sey College to constellate extraordinary elements. Thus, cowed and dogged, I kept my eyes open for what might happen.
It was no more than a matter of days when Fate added another figure to this coincidental pattern, and Fateas instrument was none other than my wife. It is our custom to entertain the men of the College to dinner, in small groups, and my wife invites a few girls to each of these occasions to lighten what might otherwise be a too exclusively academic atmosphere. The night that Frank Einstein appeared in our drawing-room he maintained his usual reserveda"not to say morosea"demeanour until Elizabeth Lavenza entered the room. Their meeting was, in one sense, a melodramatic cliche. But we must remember that things become cliches because they are of frequent occurrence, and powerful impact. Everything fell out as a thoroughly bad writer might describe it. Their eyes met across the room. His glance was electric; hers ecstatic. The rest of the company seemed to part before them as he moved to her side. He never left it all evening. She had eyes for no other. From time to time his eyes rose in ardour, while hers fell in modest transport. This rising and falling of eyes was so portentously and swooningly apparent that one or two of our senior guests felt positively unwell, as though aboard ship. My heart sank. My wifeas on the contrary, was uplifted. As I pa.s.sed her during the serving of the meal I hissed, aThis is Fate.a aThere is no armour against Fate,a she hissed in return. It is a combination of words not easily hissed, but she hissed it.
We had an unusually fine Autumn, as you will recall, and there was hardly a day that I did not see Frank and Elizabeth sitting on one of the benches in the quad, sometimes talking, but usually looking deep into each otheras eyes, their foreheads touching. They did it so much that they both became slightly cross-eyed, and my dismay mounted. I determined if humanly possible to avert some disastrous outcome (for I a.s.sure you that my intuition and my knowledge of the curious atmosphere of this College both oppressed me with boding) and I did all that lay in my power. I heaped work on Elizabeth Lavenza; I demanded the ultimate from her in reading of the Gothic novel, both as a means of keeping her from Frank, and straightening her vision.
Alas, how puny are our best efforts to avert a foreordained event! One day I saw Frank in the quad, sitting on the bench alone, reading a book. Pretending nonchalance, I sat beside him. aAnd what are you reading, Mr. Einstein?a I said in honeyed tones.
Taciturn as always, he held out the book for me to see. It was Frankenstein. aLiz said I ought to read it,a he said.
aAnd what do you make of it?a said I, for I am always interested in the puny efforts of art to penetrate the thoroughly scientific mind. His answer astonished me.
aNot bad at all,a said he. aThe Medical Biophysics aspect of the plot is very old-fashioned, of course. I mean when the hero makes that synthetic human being out of sc.r.a.ps from slaughter-houses. We could do better than that now. A lot better,a he added, and I thought he seemed to be brooding on nameless possibilities. I decided to change the line of our conversation. I began to talk about the College, and some of the successes and failures we had met with in the past.
Among the failures I mentioned our inability to keep a College Cat. In the ten years of our existence we have had several cats here, but not one of them has remained with us. They all run away, and there is strong evidence that they all go to Trinity. I thought at one time that they must be Anglican cats, and they objected to our oec.u.menical chapel. I went to the length of getting a Persian cat, raised in the Zoroastrian faith, but it only lasted two days. There is a fine Persian rug in Trinity Chapel. Our most recent cat had been christened Episcopuss, in the hope that this thoroughly Anglican t.i.tle would content it; furthermore, the Lionel Ma.s.sey Fund provided money to treat the cat to a surgical operation which is generally thought to lift a catas mind above purely sectarian considerations. But it, too, left us for Trinity. Rationalists in the College suggested that Trinity has more, and richer, garbage than we have, but I still believe our cats acted on religious impulse.
As I spoke of these things Frank Einstein became more animated than I had ever known him. aI get it,a he said; ayou want a cat that has been specifically programmed for Ma.s.sey. An oec.u.menical cat, highly intelligent so that it prefers graduates to undergraduates, and incapable of making messes in the Round Room. With a few hours of computer time it oughtnat to be too difficult.a I looked into his eyesa"though from a greater distance than was usual to Elizabeth Lavenzaa"and what I saw there caused a familiar shudder to convulse my entire being. It is the shudder I feel when I know, for a certainty, that Ma.s.sey College is about to be the scene of yet another macabre event.
Nevertheless, in the pressure of examinations and lectures, I forgot my uneasiness, and might perhaps have dismissed the matter from my mind if two further inter-related circ.u.mstancesa"I dare not use the word coincidence in this casea"had not aroused my fears again. One autumn morning, reading The Globe and Mail, my eye was caught by an item, almost lost at the bottom of a column, which bore the heading aOutrage at Pounda; it appeared that two masked bandits, a man and a woman, had held up the keeper of the pound at gunpoint, while seizing no less than twelve stray cats. Later that same day I saw Frank and Elizabeth coming through the College gate, carrying a large and heavy sack. From the sack dripped a substance which I recognized, with horror, as blood. I picked up a little of it on the tip of my finger; a hasty corpuscle count confirmed my suspicion that the blood was not human.
Night after night in the weeks that followed, I crept down to my study to look across the quad and see if a light was burning in Frank Einsteinas room. Invariably it was so. And one morning, when I had wakened early and was standing on my balcony, apostrophizing the dawn, Elizabeth Lavenza stole past me from the Collegeas main gate, her face marked, not by those lineaments of slaked desire so common among our visitors at such an hour, but by the pallor and fatigue of one well-nigh exhausted by intellectual work of the most demanding sort.
The following night I awoke from sleep at around two oaclock with a terrifying apprehension that something was happening in the College which I should investigate. Shouts, the sound of loud music, the riot of late revellersa"these things do not particularly disturb me, but there is a quality of deep silence which I know to be the accompaniment of evil. Wearily and reluctantly I rose, wrapped myself in a heavy dressing-gown and made my way into the quadrangle and therea"yes, it was as I had feareda"the eerie gleam from Frank Einsteinas room was the only light to guide me. For there was a thick fog hanging over the University, and even the cruel light through the arrow-slits of the Robarts Library, and the faery radiance from OISE were hidden.
Up to his room I climbed, and tapped on the door. It had not been locked, and my light knock caused it to swing open and therea"never can I forget my shock and revulsion at what I saw!a"there were Frank and Elizabeth crouched over a table upon which lay an ensanguined form. I burst upon them.
aWhat b.l.o.o.d.y feast is this?a I shouted. aMonsters, fiends, cannibals, what do I behold?a aShhh,a said Elizabeth; aFrankas busy.a aIam making your cat,a said Frank.
aCat,a I shrieked, almost beside myself; athat is no cat. Itas as big as a donkey. What cat are you talking about?a aThe Ma.s.sey College cat,a said Frank. aAnd it is going to be the greatest cat you have ever seen.a I shall not trouble you with a detailed report of the conversation that followed. What emerged was this: Frank, beneath the uncommunicative exterior of a scientist, had a kindly heart, and he had been touched by the unlucky history of Ma.s.sey College and its cats. aWhat you said was,a said he to me, athat the College never seemed to get the right cat. To you, with your simple, emotional, literary approach to the problem, this was an insuperable difficulty: to my finely-organized biophysical sensibility, it was simply a matter of discovering what kind of cat was wanted, and producing it. Not by the outmoded method of selective breeding, but by the direct creation of the Ideal College Cat, or ICC as I came to think of it. Do you remember that when you talked to me about it I was reading that crazy book Liz was studying with you, about the fellow who made a man? Do you remember what he said? aWhence did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our enquiries.a That was written in 1818. Since then the principle of life has become quite well known, but most scientists are afraid to work on the knowledge they have. You remember that the fellow in the book decided to make a man, but he found the work too fiddly if he made a man of ordinary size, so he decided to make a giant. Me too. A cat of ordinary size is a nuisance, so I decided to multiply the dimensions by twelve. And like the fellow in the book I got my materials and went to work. Here is your cat, about three-quarters finished.a The fatal weakness, the tragic flaw in my character is foolish good-nature, and that, combined with an uninformed but lively scientific curiosity led me into what was, I now perceive, a terrible mistake. I was so interested in what Frank was doing that I allowed him to go ahead, and instead of sleeping at nights I crept up to his room, where Frank and Elizabeth allowed me, after I had given my promise not to interfere or touch anything, to sit in a corner and watch them. Those weeks were perhaps the most intensely lived that I have ever known. Beneath my eyes the ICC grew and took form. By day the carca.s.s was kept in the freezer at Rochdale, where Elizabeth had a room; each night Frank warmed it up and set to work.
The ICC had many novel features which distinguished it from the ordinary domestic cat. Not only was it as big as twelve ordinary cats; it had twelve times the musculature. Frank said proudly that when it was finished it would be able to jump right over the College buildings. Another of its beauties was that it possessed a novel means of elimination. The trouble with all cats is that they seem to be housebroken, but in moments of stress or laziness they relapse into an intolerable bohemianism which creates problems for the cleaning staff. In a twelve-power cat this could be a serious defect. But Frankas cat was made with a small shovel on the end of its tail with which it could, once a week, remove its own ashes and deposit them behind the College in the parking-s.p.a.ce occupied by The Varsity, where, it was a.s.sumed, they would never be noticed. I must hasten to add that the cat was made to sustain itself on a diet of waste-paper, of which we have plenty, and that what it produced in the manner I have described was not unlike confetti.
But the special beauty of the ICC was that it could talk. This, in the minds of Frank and Elizabeth, was its great feature as a College pet. Instead of mewing monotonously when stroked, it would be able to enter into conversation with the College men, and as we pride ourselves on being a community of scholars, it was to be provided with a cla.s.s of conversation, and a vocabulary, infinitely superior to that of, for instance, a parrot.
This was Elizabethas special care, and because she was by this time deep in my course on the Gothic Novel she decided, as a compliment to me, to so program the cat that it would speak in the language appropriate to that genre of literature. I was not so confident about this refinement as were Frank and Elizabeth, for I knew more about Gothic Novels than they, and have sometimes admitted to myself that they can be wordy. But as I have told you, I was a party to this great adventure only in the character of a spectator, and I was not to interfere. So I held my peace, hoping that the cat would, in the fulness of time, do the same.
At last the great night came, when the cat was to be invested with life. I sat in my corner, my eyes fixed upon the form which Frank was gradually melting out with Elizabethas electric hair-dryer. It was a sight to strike awe into the boldest heart.
I never dared to make my doubts about the great experiment known to Frank and Elizabeth, but I may tell you that my misgivings were many and acute. I am a creature of my time in that I fully understand that persons of merely aesthetic bias and training, like myself, should be silent in the presence of men of science, who know best about everything. But it was plain to me that the ICC was hideous. Not only was it the size of twelve cats, but the skins of twelve cats had been made to serve as its outer envelope. Four of these cats had been black, four were white, and four were of a marmalade colour. Frank, who liked things to be orderly, had arranged them so that the cat was piebald in mathematically exact squares. Because no ordinary catas eyes would fit into the huge skull the eyes of a goat had been obtaineda"I dared not ask howa"and as everyone knows, a goatas eyes are flat and have an uncanny oblong pupil. The teeth had been secured at a bargain rate from a denturist, and as I looked at them I knew why dentists say that these people must be kept in check. The tail, with the shovel at the end of it, was disagreeably naked. Its whiskers were like knitting needles. Indeed, the whole appearance of the cat was monstrous and diabolical. In the most exact sense of the words, it was the d.a.m.nedest thing you ever saw. But Frank had a mind above appearances and to Elizabeth, so beautiful herself, whatever Frank did was right.
The moment had arrived when this marvel of science was to be set going. I know that Frank was entirely scientific, but to my old-fashioned eye he looked like an alchemist as, with his dressing-gown floating around him, he began to read formulae out of a notebook, and Elizabeth worked switches and levers at his command. Suddenly there was a flash, of lightning it seemed to me, and I knew that we had launched the ICC upon its great adventure.
aCome here and look,a said Frank. I crept forward, half-afraid yet half-elated that I should be witness to such a triumph of medical biophysics. I leaned over the frightful creature, restraining my revulsion. Slowly, dreamily, the goatas eyes opened and focussed upon me.
aMy Creator!a screamed the cat in a very loud voice, that agreed perfectly with the hideousness of its outward person. aA thousand, thousand blessings be upon Thee. Hallowed be Thy name! Thy kingdom come! O rapture, rapture thus to behold the golden dawn!a With which words the cat leapt upon an electric lamp and ate the bulb.
To say that I recoiled is to trifle with words. I leapt backward into a chair and cringed against the wall. The cat pursued me, shrieking Gothic praise and endearment. It put out its monstrous tongue and licked my hand. Imagine, if you can, the tongue of a cat which is twelve cats rolled into one. It was weeks before the skin-graft made necessary by this single caress was completed. But I am ahead of my story.
aNo, no,a I cried; amy dear animal, listen to reason. I am not your Creator. Not in the least. You owe the precious gift of life to my young friend here.a I waved my bleeding hand toward Frank. In their rapture he and Elizabeth were locked in a close embrace. That did it. Horrid, fiendish jealousy swept through the catas whole being. All its twelve coats stood on end, the goatas eyes glared with fury, and its shovel tail lashed like that of a tiger. It sprang at Elizabeth, and with a single stroke of its powerful forepaws flung her to the gound.
I am proud to think that in that terrible moment I remembered what to do. I have always loved circuses, and I know that no trainer of tigers ever approaches his beasts without a chair in his hand. I seized up a chair and, in the approved manner drove the monstrous creature into a corner. But what I said was not in tune with my action, or the high drama of the moment. I admit it frankly; my words were inadequate.
aYou mustnat harm Miss Lavenza,a I said, primly; ashe is Mr. Einsteinas fiance.a But Frankas wordsa"or rather his single worda"were even more inadequate than my own. aScat!a he shouted, kneeling by the bleeding form of his fainting beloved.
Elizabeth was to blame for programming that cat with a vocabulary culled from the Gothic Novel. aOh, Frankenstein,a it yowled, in that tremendous voice; abe not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice and even thy clemency and affection is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; dub me not rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest hence only because I lovea"nay reverence thee. Jealousy of thy love makes me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall once more be virtuous.a There is something about that kind of talk that influences everybody that hears it. I was astonished to hear Franka"who was generally contented with the utilitarian vocabulary of the scientific mana"saya"aBegone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between thee and me; we are enemies. Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw the light! You have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you or not. Begone! Relieve me of the sight of your detested form!a Elizabeth was not the most gifted of my students, and the catas next words lacked something of the true Gothic rhetoric. aYou mean you donat love your own dear little p.u.s.s.ikins best,a it whined. But Frank was true to the Gothic vein. aThis lady is the mistress of my affections, and I acknowledge no p.u.s.s.ikins before her,a he cried.