by Frank Wynne
“You sound quite overjoyed … Most weird …”
“My dear friend, I have spent a long time in the British Museum Library today meditating on the nature of justice. I skimmed through a pile of grandiloquent tomes and every one stated the idea that justice is extremely important and as natural, say, as my existence or yours. I was soon convinced and marveling. Nonetheless, after leaving the library and taking a short stroll through this tranquil park I have seen a monstrous penguin devour a healthy sparrow that was full of life and full of love for its fellow sparrows. I don’t know if you noticed how the strange animal succeeded in catching the sparrow: fascinated by a passing beetle, the sparrow had decided it wanted a nibble and was thus distracted. I’m not in any way rejoicing over what happened. On the other hand, I’m not particularly partial to displaying huge stocks of hypocritical sentimentality. I am simply acknowledging the facts. Sparrows eat beetles, penguins eat sparrows. Why did it all take place? Who knows? Perhaps God merely punished the fixated sparrow …”
“There are days when you seem to have a monopoly over the commonplace …”
“My dear Vinyals, you are young, you are a dentist and a scientist and it is only natural that sentimentality should blind you to the nature of truth. We converse about a penguin and a sparrow and you find my remarks rather coarse. But the fact is one hears what I just said about these animals said every day about people, and people are shocked but they accept that life is so. You may say it is dangerous to compare like with unlike. I’m not so sure. When cast against the horizons of eternity, humanity’s hustle and bustle is as futile as the penguin’s stately waddle and its acts are as absurd as the sparrows’ voluptuous, morning chirrups. And if God, who is almighty and omniscient, as you are aware, dear Vinyals, condemns and forgives people, why can’t he do the same for sparrows? Or do you arrogantly believe, like so many distinguished yet blinkered men, that God only worries about beings who wear winged collars? You are mistaken. God worries about every living thing and still finds there are too many hours in the day. You are too young to have known Sra Boniquet, Adela, to her friends, now a retired widow living in Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Nevertheless, I will give you a profile of this extraordinary lady who has remained etched on my memory, even after all these years. Adela Boniquet, the wife of Boniquet the architect, was a woman who always longed for more. When I made her acquaintance she wasn’t far off forty and was always on the boil. She was a tall, plump woman, honey-natured, soft-skinned, with black tresses, eyes the color of Indian ink with the dreamiest of expressions. She was known to have three official lovers: in the morning a gentleman wearing a white glass-buttoned pique waistcoat paid her a visit – he was a mere South American consul; in the afternoon, from five to six, a fire-raising, radical town councilor called on her; and in the evening, a poet and famous philosopher would drop by, taking advantage of the time her husband spent with friends at his gentlemen’s club. It was a harmonious, natural cycle that was never interrupted. You might perhaps conclude that Adela was happy to receive all this attention, that she gave her thanks to heaven and blessed the gift of exuberant promiscuity. If you do, you are sorely mistaken. I can tell you that Adela never spurned approaches in the street or high society and it was relatively easy to win her over with an insistent stare. She led a life obsessed by the pleasures of the flesh and subjected herself to their natural laws with bovine meekness. Boniquet the architect was an absentminded, slightly chaotic man. As long as his supper was on the table at half past eight, he had a change of clothes every two days, and no one touched the papers in his study, he never complained about his lot. Who can doubt he loved his wife? Perhaps he had never told her so. But nor had he ever said as much to the umbrella he took with him when it rained, and how he loved that umbrella! They had the most cordial of relationships, but lived separate lives. I have never met anyone with such a lack of interest in architecture as Adela. Conversely, Sr Boniquet never found the time to inquire how his wife spent her day. His forte was metal and concrete fatigue.”
“…”
“In this way Adela enjoyed fifteen glorious years of emotional splendor, and her aggressive overtures towards numerous members of the opposite sex made their minimal contribution to dispelling the dreary, drowsy pall that floats over the big metropolis. Her extravagant behavior was the talk of the town. A friend in the architect’s circle hinted vaguely to Sr Boniquet that there was gossip, and, as he was with friends, he made strenuous efforts to pretend that he was annoyed. The moment he left them, however, he forgot all about it. On his way up to his flat he bumped into the philosopher on his way down and bid him a warm farewell. It was only four or five days later that he recalled that he was a cuckold. He summoned Adela and gingerly told her what he’d heard. Adela was livid and retorted that she’d never forget what he’d said or how furious it had made her, however many years went by. It would cost him dear. She forced him to apologize and added that she would never forgive him. The architect cursed the bones of the friend who’d made him suffer so. The second he was out in the street, his mind filled with contractors, metals, and reinforced concrete, as if nothing had happened. A few days later, in the midst of all this, when visiting a house he was constructing on the Diagonal, the roof – one he had calculated so carefully – collapsed on top of him. The day before yesterday I went to give my condolences to Adela. She tearfully described the scene her husband had provoked and, as if summing up the depths of her sorrow at his unfortunate, untimely death, she remarked: “God has justly punished him.”
“What exactly are you implying?” asked Vinyals the dentist, visibly shaken, after a short pause.
“Oh, nothing very much: that Sra Boniquet had remarked à propos of her husband that God had punished him …”
“You are a nasty cynic …”
“So how would you prefer me, Vinyals, my susceptible friend? You are simply sentimental. You don’t like to hear the truth. Whenever I try to take the cotton wool from your ears and help you to understand what reality is like, you retreat indignantly. You look the way I’d expect you to look if I had revealed a vaccination had been discovered that meant people would never suffer from toothache again. You are the victim of the worst possible dysfunction: emotional dysfunction. Obviously you are surprised when you discover that to be the case. That’s because the dysfunction is rife and is mistakenly thought to be the natural state of things.”
“Are you serious or in jest?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Don’t start again! I am surprised you say I am sentimental. I rather felt I was an individual shaped by the realism imparted by my particular branch of science. You seem to forget that I am a professional dentist who has made every effort to grasp the philosophical problems his profession raises … I see you are laughing …”
“No, not at all, I am not laughing …”
“You must be aware that every technical intervention involves an ethical dilemma.”
“Agreed. In your case, the removal and replacement of teeth. Anyway, dear Vinyals, things might have turned out worse for you. Your knowledge is based on the experimental method, a method endorsed by writers and universally praised. Nonetheless it is generally agreed that the results from this method are tentative and unsatisfactory, because man is presumptuous and science proceeds slowly and rarely lifts its head. In fact, my dear Vinyals, you apply the experimental method to toothaches and sore gums while simultaneously loving, dreaming, and even believing in spiritual things. Human beings harbor a confused mixture of the fantastic and the real. Can one separate the two? Fantasy may sow your thoughts with the seeds of madness but that doesn’t mean that reality supplies with you rock-hard certainties. Indeed, with every day that goes by you feel your knowledge of teeth becomes less and less secure. You know … Not very long ago, in my capacity as a journalist, I was invited to attend one of the largest congresses on physiology to be held in Europe over recent years. Physiology is one of the noblest and most important
of sciences because it focuses on the lives of men and animals. I was invited as a journalist, not as a physiologist, through the good offices of friends of mine, daughters of the general secretary of the association. This afforded me the great pleasure of being able to hear in public and in private one of the great scientists of our era, Professor Stevenson from Cambridge, the discoverer, as everyone knows, of a most significant virulent and lethal microbe. The Professor is one of the most civilized men I have ever met. Modest, shrewd, and frugal, hostile to letting the magical or sacred into his life, he spoke of things as they are and was confident enough to tell the truth.
“‘Whenever I think of the circumstances in which I made my discovery’ – I heard Professor Stevenson remark to a German Nobel Prize winner – ‘I can’t help but recall the purely random elements that created that chance occurrence. After a terrible spate of very ugly, rude maids my wife took on a beautiful, virginal Scottish girl. I can’t find the words to tell you how that changed me and how blissful I felt. I like my peace and comfort but I also like to be surrounded by individuals who are physically attractive. My brain is soon wearied by the spectacle of the monstrous and can never find the strength to abandon the sterile world of moral dilemmas. I was transfigured, as they say, my brain began working overtime, my imagination was aroused and I felt an urgent need to return to my work and research. Only this ingenuous thing we call beauty can plunge us into the states of ingenuousness that are necessary if we are to believe what we are doing is essential. If you don’t tell yourself night and day that your puerile scientific activity is really essential, it soon becomes difficult to make any headway. Hope and imagination are vital. I discovered that microbe within a few days. I saw it moving in the preparation under my microscope while I was recalling the dark golden tresses of that Scottish maiden.’”
“You are incorrigibly destructive and have no respect for what is noble in life …”
“But that is what Professor Stevenson said in a moment of candor, and I have no reason to doubt it isn’t true. I will tell you something else this famous scientist said: ‘Sometimes I can’t help thinking,’ he said to those sitting near him during an official banquet, ‘about my scientific publications and professional work. You have probably forgotten how three awards have given the seal of official recognition to my activities. Indeed, the university department in question awarded me three artistic medals. Well, I shall now describe something that will probably shock you. I won the first medal by demonstrating a particular principle, the second by demonstrating the opposite principle, the third and final – the work behind my third medal that was my crowning moment – established irrefutably that the method I had pursued in the two previous pieces of work could only lead us down blind alleys.’ My dear Vinyals, as we are all aware, your knowledge as a dentist depends on physiology. And if physiology is what the professor says it is, then it is unlikely that your knowledge of teeth rests on rock-hard certainties.”
“I find you somewhat paradoxical and I can’t guess what you are really after. You hate everything we might call spiritualism or magic yet at the same time you haven’t a single good word to say for science. Do please tell me what you are really thinking?”
“Dear Vinyals, the month of March in London is usually cruel and harsh. This afternoon seems an exception: there is a touch of spring in the air. It is a warm afternoon, the park is delightful, and it’s a pleasure to converse. I am one of the few people in my country to oppose material progress. I have written against science and against scientists and have even risked cutting a ridiculous figure when stating what I thought was the truth. However, years have gone by and I believe I now see everything in a clearer light. I do regret writing those things not because science, in the meantime, has made any giant steps forward. Science always remains more or less where it was. Its findings are trifling in the extreme. I will go further: science very rarely produces a clear-cut result. Nevertheless I don’t wish to imply that one should speak of the poverty of science. Dear Vinyals, I believe it’s not the results of a particular science that count, it is the attitude behind them. True, it is hard not to see scientists as self-caricatures. They are typically bad-tempered, aging gentlemen who set out to climb the Alps clutching a box of flea poison. But that is the nature of the beast. Scientists unflinchingly challenge mystery and its lowest sentimental forms, and this is what makes them great. It is in humanity’s interest to destroy what is vulgar, magical, and sentimental. History demonstrates that one of the most uncontrollable sources of human sorrow is mystery and unreality. Men and women kill and torture each other for fantasies that aren’t worth a pipeful of tobacco. The most basic form of magic foments tyranny, and sentimentality hallows our rankest ignorance. This is why I like science although I don’t think it will ever get anywhere, and why I like scientists themselves, even though they wander miserably in the wilderness. But science never holds anything back, everything is wide-open. And that is what I believe to be essential.”
“Do you believe such things are so important? I would never have said …”
“Vinyals, dear Vinyals the dentist, these things are what is really important and what has always excited me. If you think for a moment with a modicum of insight, you will understand and I won’t need to explain further. If you reflect on what has most influenced you in the course of your life, you will soon realize that it is shot through with sentimentality and vulgar errors. The most intelligent men can, with the utmost difficulty, shed that baggage. In my travels through the world, I have met one really outstanding man. I refer to Professor Turull the renowned writer and accomplished humanist. Physically he was yellow as tallow and thin as a rake. You’d often see him in bookshops and if you ever conversed with him he came across as good natured and mild, although he possessed that acid, stubbornly sardonic manner intellectuals often have. He was very studious and worked tirelessly. He wrote very well, in a style that was fluent, elegant, lapidary, and taut. His huge memory seemed to encompass the most vivid recreation of the ancient world, one that was not seen through rose-tinted glasses, but a much more complex vision that included the murky areas where anguish and passion rub shoulders. He embellished this knowledge with vast humanist erudition, erudition that enabled him to live a tranquil life and fill his days with scientific order and wise conversation. He was poor, wore a shiny black jacket, threadbare pants, and his knobbly knees and elbows stuck out like lumps of pig iron. He was always short of money and spent his life begging and writing highly obsequious letters to people in high places. He liked to eat well and would turn pale and twitch his fat nose at the bouquet from a glass of vintage wine. He had a traditional kind of maid and when he had the money she cooked him a range of exquisite dishes. I have never ever eaten Catalan-style broad beans with so much relish and insight as in the dining room of that celebrated and erudite professor. Moreover, he always followed up with delicious coffee and, generally speaking, liqueurs and tobacco that showed his excellent taste. He was a civilized man.”
“…”
“It would be an understatement to say that his ability to cope with everyday life was practically non-existent: he was literally hopeless. By the time I got to know him he’d been living beyond his means for years. He really had no clear idea about what he earned and what he spent. His entire economic activity was devoted to plugging the holes that kept appearing. It was hardly a pleasant way to live. When he started out as a teacher, however, though he had his fair share of headaches and wasted lots of time, he managed to keep up appearances. But as time passed the burden became increasingly onerous and his life became highly disagreeable. His debts started to pile up, innumerable small debts not even he could keep track of, but all together they represented a sum that was too much for the almost impecunious life of that innocent abroad. Scattered around his neighborhood, his debtors were strident and were always trying to pin him down: he owed shopkeepers who were naturally and respectably greedy. The time came when his situation became untenable, an
d Dr. Turull was pitched into an implacable struggle with his creditors that threatened to choke him. He had to learn all the strategies of the recalcitrant debtor: fake entrances and exits, skill in wriggling out of tight corners, and expertise in formulating the necessary, firm-sounding promises that were devoid of any real substance. Apart from the time one can waste on such wrangles and their intolerable side effects, they have a particularly malign impact in that they embitter the most evenly keeled of temperaments. Heading the professor’s queue of creditors was a tall, skinny, hyperactive woman whose skin was the sallow hue of people with jaundice. The professor had put that woman in charge of the upkeep of his underwear – the washing and ironing thereof – and this labor had accrued a debt of three hundred and eighty pesetas. The professor couldn’t believe the little she had washed and ironed could have spawned such a large debt. But that was only because Dr. Turull possessed the vaguest notion of time: the woman had been washing his underwear for years. According to the professor’s housecleaner, the bill was perfectly in order, indeed rather generous, and on the low side. As a bill it simply shared the principal defect of all bills: it had to be paid. The lady became tired of promises and decided she must collect. She spoke to all his creditors and agitated tirelessly. She managed to persuade them to act in concert, and after much coming and going they hired a lively, vociferous young lawyer. Dr. Turull was shortly summonsed to court. The episode had immediate repercussions in academic circles and the world of intellectuals. The professor believed momentarily that the speed at which the situation was deteriorating might lead to a solution in the sense that he lived in hope of a helping hand that would materialize and save him from infamy. But no such hand appeared and he simply confronted sullen, aggressive warnings that constituted de facto threats. Professor Turull could see he was done for. Crestfallen, more dead than alive, wiping the sweat from his face – now the color of sodden parchment – he exclaimed in a strained, low-key voice, as if completely sure of himself: ‘God will punish this evil woman …’”