Magic, p.7
Magic, page 7
“Granted,” I said, dubiously, “that I am a model of rectitude and dignity, I don’t know if I can persuade Cambyses—”
At this point, Valencia’s mouth opened, her handkerchief moved to her eyes and I know she was a microsecond removed from howling her grief. So I said, “But I will try, little one. I will do my best.”
I did see Cambyses in consequence. It was the first time I had ever visited him at his home. In fact, it was the first time I had ever seen him alone and without the presence of a roistering throng, all of whom were steadily consuming spirituous liquor of varying degrees of potency.
I suppose I had, therefore, an instinctive expectation that I would meet up with a grave and serious Cambyses, for it is not for nothing that those who are grave and serious are characterized by the adjective “sober.”
But I was quite wrong. It was the same merry Cambyses I was accustomed to. As I stepped into his room, he laughed loudly and clapped me on the shoulder by way of a hearty greeting.
“My pal,” he said. “My buddy. What are you doing without a drink in your hand? You look naked. Come, let me correct that vile omission.”
And he forced a small whiskey on me. It was a little early for such dissipation but it would have been unkind of me to refuse. I tossed it off and, as I did so, I thought of all the times when he had stood me a drink, and of all those other times when he had refused to let me stand him a drink but had stood me another. He was, if you like, one of nature’s noblemen in that respect.
He was also, now that Valencia had opened my eyes, one of nature’s drunks. Although it was early afternoon and he was alone, there was a distinct weave to his steps, a pronounced glaze to his eyes, a definite vagueness to his smile, and an emphatic touch of alcoholic fragrance in the air—especially when he exhaled.
I said, “Cambyses, my friend, I come to you on behalf of that excellent young creature, Valencia Judd.”
He said, “Nature’s noblewoman; a beautiful and virtuous goddess. I drink to her.”
“No,” I said, urgently, “don’t drink to her. That is the root of the problem. She has the feeling you drink to her too often and to everything else, indiscriminately, as well. She wishes you to cease.”
He stared at me owlishly. “She has never said so to me.”
“I suspect that, cowed by your manifold good qualities, she has hesitated to hurt your feelings by pointing out your one small fault, your one tiny misdemeanor, your one minuscule flaw—the fact that you are a drunken bum.”
“Just because I take a tiny sip of something for medicinal purposes on rare occasions?”
“The sips are not tiny, Cambyses, nor the occasions rare, nor the reasons medicinal, though the rest of your statement I accept. Therefore, though Valencia did not say so directly, she wishes you to understand that lips that touch liquor are likely to touch hers only at infrequent intervals.”
“But it’s too late, George, old boy, old friend. My lips touch liquor. I can’t deny it.”
“They are pickled in it, Cambyses. Can you not cease? Can you not turn away from this dreadful habit and bathe in the pure sun of sobriety as you once did?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “When did I once do?”
“Start now.”
He poured himself another drink, and put it to his lips. “George,” he said, “have you ever thought what a stinking, miserable hellhole the world is?”
“Frequently,” I said.
“Have you never wanted to change it into a fine, warm, delightful paradise?”
“Often,” I said.
“I’ve done it. I’ve discovered the secret. A few drinks, the merest imbibing of the friendly warmth of gin, or rum, or brandy or—or any of a number of drinks of the sort—and the grim misery of this Earth, melts and dissolves. Tears are changed to laughter, sour looks to smiles, the welkin rings with song. Come, come, am I to give up all this?”
“Some of it. When Valencia is looking, at least.”
“I cannot. Not even for Valencia. My duty is to humanity and to the world. Can I allow society to sink back into the foulness that would characterize it were it not for the alchemy of alcohol?”
“But the alchemy you speak of is subjective. It shows its effect only in your mind. It has no real existence.”
“George,” said Cambyses, solemnly, “you are a dear and beloved friend, so I cannot order you out of my house. But I intend to do it anyway. Out of my house!”
As you know, old man, if I have a failing it is that of having an incredibly soft heart. I would never consent to these meals I consume at your expense, for instance, were I not concerned over your obvious need for stimulating company. It means that I must suffer yours, but what of that?
In any case, my heart was aching for Valencia and I felt it was a case for Azazel, my two-centimeter friend from another plane of existence.
This being —Oh, have I told you about him? —Very well, there is no need to sigh melodramatically.
For once, Azazel was not annoyed at being called up. He was delighted. At least, he said he was.
He was dancing around, making peculiar gestures with his tiny hands, the details of which I could not make out. “How triply fortunate for him that you called me here,” he said in his squeaky little voice. “I would have sepotulated him. I would have flaxated his modinem. I would have—”
“You would have done this to whom?” I asked with mild interest. “And for what reason?”
Azazel said, with an attempt at dignity quite incompatible with his squeaky voice and tiny size, “He addressed me in terms no gentlebeing would use to another, the big sasquam.”
I let him cool down. Being a small object on his own world as on ours, he was forever being stepped on and tripped over, which was a good thing, for it was his forever bruised ego that made him willing to help me. He had a great need to demonstrate his powers.
I said, “A friend of mine is an alcoholic.”
“Ah,” said Azazel. “He creeps into holes with alcos. What are alcos?”
“No, no. Alcohol is an organic fluid that acts as a stimulant in small doses, but as a mental disorienter in large. My friend is incapable of refraining from large doses.”
For a moment, Azazel looked puzzled. Then, “Ah, you mean a ‘phosphotonic.’”
“A phosphotonic?” I said, rather puzzled, I admit.
Azazel explained. “People on my world enjoy phosphatones of one sort or another. We sniff phosphine, drink a variety of phosphate solutions, lap up phosphopyruvic acid and so on.” Azazel shuddered. “Carried to excess it is a vile habit, but I have found that a little bit of phosphorylized ammonia taken after meals is an excellent digestive aid. Hence our proverb, ‘Take a little phospham for your stomach’s sake.’” Azazel rubbed his BB-shaped abdomen and licked his red lips with a small red tongue.
I said, “The question is: how to cure my alcoholic friend and induce him to lay off the sauce?”
“Lay off the—”
“I mean cease drinking in and out of season.”
“That is easy,” said Azazel. “It is child’s play to a being of my technological attainments. I need merely to alter the taste centers of his brain as to make alcohol taste to him like something vile—excrement, perhaps.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. That is going too far. A rational amount of alcoholic intake, such as the amount in which I indulge myself, scarcely a quart a day, is invigorating and no one should be deprived of that. In the excellence of your wisdom, O Mighty Vastness, think of something else.”
“Well,” said Azazel, “is there any way in which drinking alcohol can be made into a virtue? Are there drinkers who are admired?”
“There are connoisseurs,” I said, after some thought. “There are people who are very knowledgeable about drinks, and can distinguish those of high quality. They are usually treated with great admiration.”
“Your friend is not one of these? He does not distinguish between high quality and low?”
“Good lord, no. He’ll drink bathtub gin, hair tonic, shoe polish, antifreeze. It is astonishing that nothing seems to kill him outright.”
“Well, there you are, then, I shall so alter the sense receptors of his brain that he will be able to distinguish between any two varieties, however closely allied, and tell the superior. He will no longer be considered an alcoholic to be despised but a connoisseur to be admired. —Actually, I have this connoisseurish quality with regard to our own phosphatones and have frequently struck large assemblages with awe at my ability—”
He went on and on in excruciating detail, but I listened, if not gladly, then with patience, so eager was I to help Cambyses.
I visited Cambyses some time afterward when I thought that he had gotten over the spleen with which he had ordered me from his digs. I found I had nothing to fear. Alcoholics are merry spirits who never remember the evanescent angers and petulances of the past—or anything else, either.
Not that Cambyses looked much like a merry spirit. He sat on the floor surrounded by a sea of shotglasses, filled with liquids of different appearances. On his face was a look of settled melancholy.
I said, in alarm, “Cambyses, what is wrong?”
“I scarcely know,” said Cambyses, “but I have apparently become aware of the shortcomings of these items. Here, George, try this.”
It was a tawny port of considerable power, as a slight sip showed me. I said, “Very good, old man.”
He said, “Very good? Are you serious? It is deficient in fruitiness!”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
“You wouldn’t,” he said, insultingly. “Nor is it as mellow as it should be. You weren’t aware of an inappropriate sharpness?”
“Not at all.”
Cambyses closed his eyes and shook his head as though overcome with faintness at having witnessed my obtuseness. He said, “About the best thing I could find in my collection is this one. Try this.”
It was a cherry Heering of surpassing excellence. I almost cried aloud at the magnificence of its bouquet and the delicacy of its taste. “Magnificent,” I said in awe.
“Barely tolerable,” he said. “I admit the idiots meant well, but somewhere in the preparation, the fluid passed over a rusty nailhead. There is a not-quite-overpowering but definitely unpleasant metallic taste to it.”
“I noticed no such thing,” I said indignantly.
“That’s because you wouldn’t notice a unicorn if it jabbed you in your fat behind,” he replied coarsely.
I could no longer fail to notice the ill nature of his taunts and these forced me to observe a characteristic I had never before associated with my young friend.
“Cambyses,” I said, “surely you are sober.”
He looked up at me with a snarl. “What do you expect? I have nothing here I can bear to drink. It is all dishwater and poison.”
It was strange, I acknowledged to myself in the months that followed. Azazel had not so reoriented Cambyses’ sense perceptions so to make all alcoholic drinks taste like excrement. Azazel had instead simply given Cambyses a sense of discrimination of superlative delicacy and in his search for an unattainable ideal, Cambyses acted as though any drink that fell short of that ideal (that is, all of them) tasted like excrement.
Cambyses became not merely sober, he became a very model of sobriety. He walked stiffly upright, cultivated an austere glance, went to bed early, woke early, adopted habits of distressing regularity and was stern to the point of captiousness toward anyone who deviated from the paths of rigid virtue in the slightest. To him, all normal human behavior resembled drinks of insufficient fruitiness and metallic taste.
My dear young niece, Valencia, was woebegone. She was wrenching at a sopping wet handkerchief, and her face was blotched.
“Cambyses is, as you wished,” I pointed out, “sober.”
“Cold sober,” she said. “Frigidly sober. Liquid-air sober. Yes, that is as it should be.” She blubbered a bit, then seized hold of her emotions and said, “His post in his father’s financial firm, until now a sinecure, has become a showcase for his talents. He is known as the ‘tyrannosaur of Wall Street.’ He is widely admired as the epitome of American financial enterprise, and crowds gather to watch him grind the faces of widows and orphans. The deftness with which he does it elicits unbounded applause and has won him a citation from the secretary of the Treasury.”
“How proud you must be,” I said.
“Proud, indeed. His merciless virtue is admired by all, and his eloquent denunciation of lying, theft, and connivery, except when these characteristics are necessary for the gathering of corporate profits, are cheered to the echo. And yet—”
“And yet?”
“He has grown cold to me, Uncle George.”
“Cold? Surely you jest. You are as virtuous as he.”
“Oh, every bit,” she admitted. “I am a solid mass of virtue. And yet—for some reason—I no longer seem to satisfy him.”
I went to see Cambyses. It was not easy. So attentive was he now to business that he found twelve hours a day insufficient to the dedication he brought to his task of bilking the public by overcharging the Department of Defense for toothpicks and bottlecaps. He was therefore surrounded by secretaries, assistants, and aides-de-camp whom it took all my skill and address to evade.
I finally made my way into his large office, and found him scowling at me. He had aged quite a bit, for the essence of sobriety that now consumed him had etched vertical furrows in his cheeks and turned those once bright and sparkling eyes into the hard opacity of marble.
He said, “What in Tophet do you want, George?”
“I come, my friend,” I said, “on behalf of your loved one, Valencia?”
“My what one, who?”
I had to admit that was a bad sign. “Valencia,” I said. “Blonde little girl so high, beautiful, virtuous, and made to be loved.”
“Oh, yes.” Cambyses picked up a glass of water from his desk, frowned at it and put it back. “I seem to remember her. She won’t do, George.”
“Why ever not? She has been acclaimed as utterly lovable by some of the finest experts in the field.”
“Finest experts, bah! Incompetent bunglers! George, that woman makes use of perfume that would sicken a muskrat. Toward the end of the day, despite the perfume, I detect an unpleasant body odor. Her breath is frequently appallingly rancid. She has a tendency to eat Swiss cheese, sardines, and other items that linger on her tongue and teeth. Am I expected to bathe myself in this foul effluvium? For that matter, George, you yourself have neglected to bathe this morning, I perceive.”
“No such thing, Cambyses,” I replied hotly. “I bathed.”
“In that case, stand closer to the soap next time,” he said. “You needn’t tell Valencia the details if you think it will offend her—as it certainly offends me. But you may tell her that if she ever sees me, she must remain downwind.”
“This is ridiculous, Cambyses,” I said. “Valencia is a dainty and sweet-smelling young lady. You will not find anything better.”
“No,” said Cambyses, his face growing grimmer. “I expect not. This is a filthy and rancid world. I am astonished that people do not notice.”
“Has it occurred to you that you, yourself, might be imperfect in this regard.”
He lifted one wrist and sniffed at it. “No,” he said, “it has not.”
“That can only be because your senses are saturated with your own odor. To others, you are probably offensive.”
“To others? What on earth do I care about others?”
Which, I had to admit to myself, was an unanswerable point.
Cambyses lifted the glass of water again, sipped at it, made an appalling face, and said, “I can detect at least five organic chemicals of noisome taste that have been added to this water. Even bottled spring water has a siliceous tang owing to the traces of glass that it dissolves.”
I sighed and left. The case was hopeless. Azazel, in giving him a nice discrimination of the senses, had overdone it.
I tried to break the news to Valencia gently. She blubbered, squealed and keened dreadfully. It took me three days and nights to console her, and it was a difficult task, for some of my spring had been sprung in recent years and you can’t imagine how much consolation that woman needed.
As for Cambyses, the last I heard of him, he was searching the world for a place to live where the air and water were sufficiently pure for his refined palate, for a cook who could meet his exacting needs and, most of all, a young woman who would not offend his delicate nose. He is as rich as you would expect a defense contracter to be—his low-quality, high-cost equipment is the pride of the armed forces of our glorious nation—but I suspect he’s not happy.
George heaved a vinous sigh of commiseration and tossed off his fifth goblet of white wine.
I was furious. I said, “I thought you said wine is a mocker.”
“So it is. Not its presence, of course, but its absence.”
“I deny that.” I had rarely been so annoyed with the man. “I am always prepared for the peculiar attitude toward life that these very dubious reminiscences of yours portray, but I draw the line at this one. I deny that a sober man, simply because he is sober, develops all the evil characteristics you ascribe to this Cambyses you speak of.”
“You do?” said George, sounding astonished. “What possible evidence can you have to the contrary?”
“Well, for one thing, I am a teetotaler.”
“I rest my case,” said George.
THE MAD SCIENTIST
GEORGE AND I GENERALLY MEET AT some neutral spot—in a restaurant or on a park bench, for instance. The reason is simple: my wife won’t have him in our apartment because she thinks he’s a deadbeat—and I agree. In addition, though, she’s immune to his charm and I, for some reason I can’t fathom, am not.
However, my dear wife was out for the day and George knew that, so he dropped around in the afternoon. I couldn’t very well turn him from my door so I invited him in with what enthusiasm I could muster. That wasn’t much because I had a deadline staring me in the face and a set of galleys that had to be read.
At this point, Valencia’s mouth opened, her handkerchief moved to her eyes and I know she was a microsecond removed from howling her grief. So I said, “But I will try, little one. I will do my best.”
I did see Cambyses in consequence. It was the first time I had ever visited him at his home. In fact, it was the first time I had ever seen him alone and without the presence of a roistering throng, all of whom were steadily consuming spirituous liquor of varying degrees of potency.
I suppose I had, therefore, an instinctive expectation that I would meet up with a grave and serious Cambyses, for it is not for nothing that those who are grave and serious are characterized by the adjective “sober.”
But I was quite wrong. It was the same merry Cambyses I was accustomed to. As I stepped into his room, he laughed loudly and clapped me on the shoulder by way of a hearty greeting.
“My pal,” he said. “My buddy. What are you doing without a drink in your hand? You look naked. Come, let me correct that vile omission.”
And he forced a small whiskey on me. It was a little early for such dissipation but it would have been unkind of me to refuse. I tossed it off and, as I did so, I thought of all the times when he had stood me a drink, and of all those other times when he had refused to let me stand him a drink but had stood me another. He was, if you like, one of nature’s noblemen in that respect.
He was also, now that Valencia had opened my eyes, one of nature’s drunks. Although it was early afternoon and he was alone, there was a distinct weave to his steps, a pronounced glaze to his eyes, a definite vagueness to his smile, and an emphatic touch of alcoholic fragrance in the air—especially when he exhaled.
I said, “Cambyses, my friend, I come to you on behalf of that excellent young creature, Valencia Judd.”
He said, “Nature’s noblewoman; a beautiful and virtuous goddess. I drink to her.”
“No,” I said, urgently, “don’t drink to her. That is the root of the problem. She has the feeling you drink to her too often and to everything else, indiscriminately, as well. She wishes you to cease.”
He stared at me owlishly. “She has never said so to me.”
“I suspect that, cowed by your manifold good qualities, she has hesitated to hurt your feelings by pointing out your one small fault, your one tiny misdemeanor, your one minuscule flaw—the fact that you are a drunken bum.”
“Just because I take a tiny sip of something for medicinal purposes on rare occasions?”
“The sips are not tiny, Cambyses, nor the occasions rare, nor the reasons medicinal, though the rest of your statement I accept. Therefore, though Valencia did not say so directly, she wishes you to understand that lips that touch liquor are likely to touch hers only at infrequent intervals.”
“But it’s too late, George, old boy, old friend. My lips touch liquor. I can’t deny it.”
“They are pickled in it, Cambyses. Can you not cease? Can you not turn away from this dreadful habit and bathe in the pure sun of sobriety as you once did?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “When did I once do?”
“Start now.”
He poured himself another drink, and put it to his lips. “George,” he said, “have you ever thought what a stinking, miserable hellhole the world is?”
“Frequently,” I said.
“Have you never wanted to change it into a fine, warm, delightful paradise?”
“Often,” I said.
“I’ve done it. I’ve discovered the secret. A few drinks, the merest imbibing of the friendly warmth of gin, or rum, or brandy or—or any of a number of drinks of the sort—and the grim misery of this Earth, melts and dissolves. Tears are changed to laughter, sour looks to smiles, the welkin rings with song. Come, come, am I to give up all this?”
“Some of it. When Valencia is looking, at least.”
“I cannot. Not even for Valencia. My duty is to humanity and to the world. Can I allow society to sink back into the foulness that would characterize it were it not for the alchemy of alcohol?”
“But the alchemy you speak of is subjective. It shows its effect only in your mind. It has no real existence.”
“George,” said Cambyses, solemnly, “you are a dear and beloved friend, so I cannot order you out of my house. But I intend to do it anyway. Out of my house!”
As you know, old man, if I have a failing it is that of having an incredibly soft heart. I would never consent to these meals I consume at your expense, for instance, were I not concerned over your obvious need for stimulating company. It means that I must suffer yours, but what of that?
In any case, my heart was aching for Valencia and I felt it was a case for Azazel, my two-centimeter friend from another plane of existence.
This being —Oh, have I told you about him? —Very well, there is no need to sigh melodramatically.
For once, Azazel was not annoyed at being called up. He was delighted. At least, he said he was.
He was dancing around, making peculiar gestures with his tiny hands, the details of which I could not make out. “How triply fortunate for him that you called me here,” he said in his squeaky little voice. “I would have sepotulated him. I would have flaxated his modinem. I would have—”
“You would have done this to whom?” I asked with mild interest. “And for what reason?”
Azazel said, with an attempt at dignity quite incompatible with his squeaky voice and tiny size, “He addressed me in terms no gentlebeing would use to another, the big sasquam.”
I let him cool down. Being a small object on his own world as on ours, he was forever being stepped on and tripped over, which was a good thing, for it was his forever bruised ego that made him willing to help me. He had a great need to demonstrate his powers.
I said, “A friend of mine is an alcoholic.”
“Ah,” said Azazel. “He creeps into holes with alcos. What are alcos?”
“No, no. Alcohol is an organic fluid that acts as a stimulant in small doses, but as a mental disorienter in large. My friend is incapable of refraining from large doses.”
For a moment, Azazel looked puzzled. Then, “Ah, you mean a ‘phosphotonic.’”
“A phosphotonic?” I said, rather puzzled, I admit.
Azazel explained. “People on my world enjoy phosphatones of one sort or another. We sniff phosphine, drink a variety of phosphate solutions, lap up phosphopyruvic acid and so on.” Azazel shuddered. “Carried to excess it is a vile habit, but I have found that a little bit of phosphorylized ammonia taken after meals is an excellent digestive aid. Hence our proverb, ‘Take a little phospham for your stomach’s sake.’” Azazel rubbed his BB-shaped abdomen and licked his red lips with a small red tongue.
I said, “The question is: how to cure my alcoholic friend and induce him to lay off the sauce?”
“Lay off the—”
“I mean cease drinking in and out of season.”
“That is easy,” said Azazel. “It is child’s play to a being of my technological attainments. I need merely to alter the taste centers of his brain as to make alcohol taste to him like something vile—excrement, perhaps.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. That is going too far. A rational amount of alcoholic intake, such as the amount in which I indulge myself, scarcely a quart a day, is invigorating and no one should be deprived of that. In the excellence of your wisdom, O Mighty Vastness, think of something else.”
“Well,” said Azazel, “is there any way in which drinking alcohol can be made into a virtue? Are there drinkers who are admired?”
“There are connoisseurs,” I said, after some thought. “There are people who are very knowledgeable about drinks, and can distinguish those of high quality. They are usually treated with great admiration.”
“Your friend is not one of these? He does not distinguish between high quality and low?”
“Good lord, no. He’ll drink bathtub gin, hair tonic, shoe polish, antifreeze. It is astonishing that nothing seems to kill him outright.”
“Well, there you are, then, I shall so alter the sense receptors of his brain that he will be able to distinguish between any two varieties, however closely allied, and tell the superior. He will no longer be considered an alcoholic to be despised but a connoisseur to be admired. —Actually, I have this connoisseurish quality with regard to our own phosphatones and have frequently struck large assemblages with awe at my ability—”
He went on and on in excruciating detail, but I listened, if not gladly, then with patience, so eager was I to help Cambyses.
I visited Cambyses some time afterward when I thought that he had gotten over the spleen with which he had ordered me from his digs. I found I had nothing to fear. Alcoholics are merry spirits who never remember the evanescent angers and petulances of the past—or anything else, either.
Not that Cambyses looked much like a merry spirit. He sat on the floor surrounded by a sea of shotglasses, filled with liquids of different appearances. On his face was a look of settled melancholy.
I said, in alarm, “Cambyses, what is wrong?”
“I scarcely know,” said Cambyses, “but I have apparently become aware of the shortcomings of these items. Here, George, try this.”
It was a tawny port of considerable power, as a slight sip showed me. I said, “Very good, old man.”
He said, “Very good? Are you serious? It is deficient in fruitiness!”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
“You wouldn’t,” he said, insultingly. “Nor is it as mellow as it should be. You weren’t aware of an inappropriate sharpness?”
“Not at all.”
Cambyses closed his eyes and shook his head as though overcome with faintness at having witnessed my obtuseness. He said, “About the best thing I could find in my collection is this one. Try this.”
It was a cherry Heering of surpassing excellence. I almost cried aloud at the magnificence of its bouquet and the delicacy of its taste. “Magnificent,” I said in awe.
“Barely tolerable,” he said. “I admit the idiots meant well, but somewhere in the preparation, the fluid passed over a rusty nailhead. There is a not-quite-overpowering but definitely unpleasant metallic taste to it.”
“I noticed no such thing,” I said indignantly.
“That’s because you wouldn’t notice a unicorn if it jabbed you in your fat behind,” he replied coarsely.
I could no longer fail to notice the ill nature of his taunts and these forced me to observe a characteristic I had never before associated with my young friend.
“Cambyses,” I said, “surely you are sober.”
He looked up at me with a snarl. “What do you expect? I have nothing here I can bear to drink. It is all dishwater and poison.”
It was strange, I acknowledged to myself in the months that followed. Azazel had not so reoriented Cambyses’ sense perceptions so to make all alcoholic drinks taste like excrement. Azazel had instead simply given Cambyses a sense of discrimination of superlative delicacy and in his search for an unattainable ideal, Cambyses acted as though any drink that fell short of that ideal (that is, all of them) tasted like excrement.
Cambyses became not merely sober, he became a very model of sobriety. He walked stiffly upright, cultivated an austere glance, went to bed early, woke early, adopted habits of distressing regularity and was stern to the point of captiousness toward anyone who deviated from the paths of rigid virtue in the slightest. To him, all normal human behavior resembled drinks of insufficient fruitiness and metallic taste.
My dear young niece, Valencia, was woebegone. She was wrenching at a sopping wet handkerchief, and her face was blotched.
“Cambyses is, as you wished,” I pointed out, “sober.”
“Cold sober,” she said. “Frigidly sober. Liquid-air sober. Yes, that is as it should be.” She blubbered a bit, then seized hold of her emotions and said, “His post in his father’s financial firm, until now a sinecure, has become a showcase for his talents. He is known as the ‘tyrannosaur of Wall Street.’ He is widely admired as the epitome of American financial enterprise, and crowds gather to watch him grind the faces of widows and orphans. The deftness with which he does it elicits unbounded applause and has won him a citation from the secretary of the Treasury.”
“How proud you must be,” I said.
“Proud, indeed. His merciless virtue is admired by all, and his eloquent denunciation of lying, theft, and connivery, except when these characteristics are necessary for the gathering of corporate profits, are cheered to the echo. And yet—”
“And yet?”
“He has grown cold to me, Uncle George.”
“Cold? Surely you jest. You are as virtuous as he.”
“Oh, every bit,” she admitted. “I am a solid mass of virtue. And yet—for some reason—I no longer seem to satisfy him.”
I went to see Cambyses. It was not easy. So attentive was he now to business that he found twelve hours a day insufficient to the dedication he brought to his task of bilking the public by overcharging the Department of Defense for toothpicks and bottlecaps. He was therefore surrounded by secretaries, assistants, and aides-de-camp whom it took all my skill and address to evade.
I finally made my way into his large office, and found him scowling at me. He had aged quite a bit, for the essence of sobriety that now consumed him had etched vertical furrows in his cheeks and turned those once bright and sparkling eyes into the hard opacity of marble.
He said, “What in Tophet do you want, George?”
“I come, my friend,” I said, “on behalf of your loved one, Valencia?”
“My what one, who?”
I had to admit that was a bad sign. “Valencia,” I said. “Blonde little girl so high, beautiful, virtuous, and made to be loved.”
“Oh, yes.” Cambyses picked up a glass of water from his desk, frowned at it and put it back. “I seem to remember her. She won’t do, George.”
“Why ever not? She has been acclaimed as utterly lovable by some of the finest experts in the field.”
“Finest experts, bah! Incompetent bunglers! George, that woman makes use of perfume that would sicken a muskrat. Toward the end of the day, despite the perfume, I detect an unpleasant body odor. Her breath is frequently appallingly rancid. She has a tendency to eat Swiss cheese, sardines, and other items that linger on her tongue and teeth. Am I expected to bathe myself in this foul effluvium? For that matter, George, you yourself have neglected to bathe this morning, I perceive.”
“No such thing, Cambyses,” I replied hotly. “I bathed.”
“In that case, stand closer to the soap next time,” he said. “You needn’t tell Valencia the details if you think it will offend her—as it certainly offends me. But you may tell her that if she ever sees me, she must remain downwind.”
“This is ridiculous, Cambyses,” I said. “Valencia is a dainty and sweet-smelling young lady. You will not find anything better.”
“No,” said Cambyses, his face growing grimmer. “I expect not. This is a filthy and rancid world. I am astonished that people do not notice.”
“Has it occurred to you that you, yourself, might be imperfect in this regard.”
He lifted one wrist and sniffed at it. “No,” he said, “it has not.”
“That can only be because your senses are saturated with your own odor. To others, you are probably offensive.”
“To others? What on earth do I care about others?”
Which, I had to admit to myself, was an unanswerable point.
Cambyses lifted the glass of water again, sipped at it, made an appalling face, and said, “I can detect at least five organic chemicals of noisome taste that have been added to this water. Even bottled spring water has a siliceous tang owing to the traces of glass that it dissolves.”
I sighed and left. The case was hopeless. Azazel, in giving him a nice discrimination of the senses, had overdone it.
I tried to break the news to Valencia gently. She blubbered, squealed and keened dreadfully. It took me three days and nights to console her, and it was a difficult task, for some of my spring had been sprung in recent years and you can’t imagine how much consolation that woman needed.
As for Cambyses, the last I heard of him, he was searching the world for a place to live where the air and water were sufficiently pure for his refined palate, for a cook who could meet his exacting needs and, most of all, a young woman who would not offend his delicate nose. He is as rich as you would expect a defense contracter to be—his low-quality, high-cost equipment is the pride of the armed forces of our glorious nation—but I suspect he’s not happy.
George heaved a vinous sigh of commiseration and tossed off his fifth goblet of white wine.
I was furious. I said, “I thought you said wine is a mocker.”
“So it is. Not its presence, of course, but its absence.”
“I deny that.” I had rarely been so annoyed with the man. “I am always prepared for the peculiar attitude toward life that these very dubious reminiscences of yours portray, but I draw the line at this one. I deny that a sober man, simply because he is sober, develops all the evil characteristics you ascribe to this Cambyses you speak of.”
“You do?” said George, sounding astonished. “What possible evidence can you have to the contrary?”
“Well, for one thing, I am a teetotaler.”
“I rest my case,” said George.
THE MAD SCIENTIST
GEORGE AND I GENERALLY MEET AT some neutral spot—in a restaurant or on a park bench, for instance. The reason is simple: my wife won’t have him in our apartment because she thinks he’s a deadbeat—and I agree. In addition, though, she’s immune to his charm and I, for some reason I can’t fathom, am not.
However, my dear wife was out for the day and George knew that, so he dropped around in the afternoon. I couldn’t very well turn him from my door so I invited him in with what enthusiasm I could muster. That wasn’t much because I had a deadline staring me in the face and a set of galleys that had to be read.
