Doctor Rat

by William Kotawinkle

  Slipping down the side of the crock and…and undergoing decapitation, my head floating off…must grab hold of it…thank goodness I caught it in time…

  Flutterings over the pulmonary valve and mitral area. Profound sensation of deformity, my elbow connected to my rectum (cf. “Opium-Eating Rats,” British Journal of Inebriety, 1935). And here is Miss Hop Toy beckoning to me.

  “This way, Doctor, everyone is waiting for you.”

  “Waiting for me? How nice.”

  I follow her through a crack in the wall. We mount another flight of stairs. I hear many voices. A door opens, we enter……an auditorium! Everyone is applauding. Why, it’s me they’re applauding!

  “Go right on up to the stage, Doctor. The King awaits you.”

  Of course, I understand now. Head lowered, I walk toward the stage. There, ahead of me, seated on his throne—King Rat of Sweden!

  “…to Doctor Rat for his outstanding contribution…because of his superb…a magnificent breakthrough…it is my pleasure to award you, Doctor Rat, the Nobel Prize for Science.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  Cameras flashing, the audience cheering.

  “…over here, Doctor, if you would, please. You and the other Laureates will be having a special dinner party…various cheeses…some pressed biscuit…several cookies…”

  “Of course, of course…”

  A richly carpeted dining room, a blazing chandelier. All the Laureates bending and bowing to each other. And at the center of the room, a glorious bowl of finest crystal. What a lovely spread. And such delightful fruits floating inside it—oranges, lemons—the Laureates are putting their noses into it. So here I go, joining them. Delicious. My compliments to the cook.

  But why am I sliding down the side of the bowl, passing through an orange peel? Chinese embroidery all around, where am I, what’s happening? Why am I wearing a high silk hat? Crawling along here through the gutter, carrying a saxophone, my paws stuck in black tar (cf. “Drug Loss of Reality,” Psychiatrie und Neurologie). A gong sounding in the distance. Here comes a nurse in white…it’s Miss Hop Toy…the lamp is flickering… Mr. Kem Lee is smiling at me… I’m hung over the edge of their crock, nose in the syrup…

  Loud voices at the door. Rebel rats rushing in! Quick, Doctor, sober up!

  “All right, grab the medicine…”

  A rebel captain and his staff of hooligans take hold of the crock, knocking aside Mr. Li Young and Company. I roll back over my tail and collapse in the shadows, as the rebels plot their next move:

  “We’ve got to stone the President, that’s the first order of the day…”

  “Right, we want to stone them all—congressmen, senators, VIP’s…”

  “We’ll carry the dope in our mouth pouches. And we’ll sneak into the cellar of the White House…”

  “We’ll slip the shit into the President’s soup. Stone him at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and stone everybody who eats with him.”

  “Stone his old lady too.”

  “Right, stone her too.”

  “We’ll have to drug the army.”

  “No problem, they’re all half-drugged anyway.”

  I feel so strange. The revolution has so many arms. Militants outside, inside, marching around, I hear their tramp, tramp, tramp. And these rats with their drug plot. What am I doing here? Starting to quiver. Tail trembling, teeth chattering. Going into an identity crisis. “Excuse me… I’ve got to get some air.” They’re busy looting the narcotics locker and don’t notice me slipping away.

  “Then as we brighten their awareness, they’ll see the essential unity of all creatures…”

  Some kind of nightmare I’m having here, caught in an opium den, listening to sinister voices. Weird inflated ideas. I must…warn the President. Rats in his cellar, pouches filled with opium-soaked biscuit.

  Through this hallway, down the stairs…

  The street, the aisles. Hell of a jolt I’ve just had and I don’t mean from the electric grid. Head still not on straight but I’m…coming around. Walking along here, legs wobbling, nose still itching.

  Well, I’ll be a stump-tailed skink! (Trachysaurus rugosus) How fantastically beautiful!

  Our pickled ancestors.

  Floating in jars. And the rebels have illuminated them with spotlights. Lot of rats walking around the bottles, looking at the ancestors. Quite a sight, quite a sight.

  Now I’m starting to see why the Learned Professor and his assistants do all this pickling. It’s just gorgeous to look at. The Learned Pro stained all the organs and musculature with bright dye and the apophesyal centers are just beautiful. How often I heard the Learned Professor cry out, “Beautiful, just beautiful!” And I never really knew why until just now.

  The bright organs and muscles are a trip!

  The Learned Prof and his assistants get high looking at them. Yes, they forget all their cares and woes and just groove on musculature. What a light show! Who says Science doesn’t have any artistic appreciation!

  Give them a nicely stained body, and they receive all the primary and secondary aesthetic feeling-toned brain-cell firings.

  We’ve got to open a Muscle-Organ Gallery! First we could set up a test exhibition at the Student Union Building. Get the Theater Arts Department to light it tastefully—then float a dead chimp in a large glass tank. Stain him up right, show all the organs a different color. Play a little light classical music in the background.

  It would give us the sort of public relations program we need!

  All those dogs’ eyeballs we gouged out—we could set them afloat in their own jar. Be quite a Pop Art exhibit, I’d say. And a tie-dyed baboon’s asshole.

  Doctor Rat has done it again, folks. He’s working on every angle for improving the Scientific Image. Right outside the Science Building we’ll spotlight a fetal pig. Put it on the lawn somewhere, under glass. All the viscera shining. Let everybody see what we really do. Passing Liberal Arts students will see the fetal pig and start salivating with excitement just like a Learned Science Professor.

  Is it possible—the janitor in the Biology Building is getting old—we could stain him red, white, and blue and float him in a permanent exhibit tank in the auditorium, right next to the flag!

  Favorite tusk, on the right, I rub you now with my trunk. The trees give shade and I rub you as I have done for years. I rub you again and again, making the smooth sliding sound. Old trunk, I’ve worn a groove in you with all my rubbing—but the feeling comforts me.

  The river flows gently today, and I’m here beside you with my memories. My teeth are worn, gone, and soft riverbank vegetation is my final repast. Thus does it turn out for the old elephant—to the riverbank, with his heavy tusks, tusks so old and heavy that the head hangs low under the weight of them.

  But I have no regrets, for in that grove nearby the plum fruits are almost ripe. I’ll eat them and in a while they’ll ferment within me. Then I’ll feel young again, light-headed, tipsy.

  But a good drunk makes one feel young again for only a few hours. Then come the headache and the tiredness and, if I’m not careful, a sunstroke. But I’ve been drunk before. I know how to handle plums. To gain the fine edge of a good drunk toward the end of day, when the sun is not too hot—I’m looking forward to you, little plums. Please ripen soon, for I’m getting older every day.

  One day I’ll go to the water to drink and bathe, and my feet will sink deep in the mud. Then I’ll struggle to free myself, but the great tiredness will come over me. I pray this doesn’t happen before I eat the plums.

  Often in my earlier travels we found elephant bones in the river bed. Young as the morning, I never thought that one day I too would be at the river, chewing mushy greens with my gums, and getting drunk alone as I wait to die.

  But so it goes, so it goes. Here is a nice clump of that spicy water weed. Careful, old one, don’t stray out too far. You don’t want to drown before the plums have ripened. You want to eat the rare fruit and feel like
a giant once more. You want to have it all back again for an hour, tooting with a trunkful toward the evening sky.

  It’s nice to think about. It’ll keep me going. The plums are half-ripe now.

  If only some old cow would come along, just when I’m at the first beautiful edge of the drunk. I would lay my trunk across her back…

  But that’s asking too much of fate. It has been kind enough to lead me here, by the plum grove. Here comes the long-legged white bird. Will he…yes, he’s landing on my head. A quiet companion, and the feel of his claws on my knob is pleasant. An old bird, an old elephant, beside the ancient river. It’s not too terrible to have aged so. I’ve seen elephants die in ways that left no time for reflection. The hunter’s weapon, his loud flaming tusk, gives one no time for looking into memory.

  And there are terrible driver ants who bite the trunk and can drive one mad. I’ve seen a maddened bull rush off the edge of a cliff. All in all, I’m fortunate, even though I have a spearhead in my left tusk. That was a close one. “Little bird, I’ll tell you of one that’s even stranger than this spearhead in my tusk.”

  “What is that, Father Elephant?”

  “Scratch just a little to the…yes, that’s it, right there, thank you. Well, there was a very lucky elephant in a herd I once ran with. A spear went into his skull. He broke off the shaft, but the spearhead remained. It traveled down through his skull and came out alongside his trunk, where it remained, like a third tusk. In fact, he called it his ‘hunter’s tusk.’ It brought him great esteem among the bulls, and occasionally with a young cow.”

  “A strange story, indeed, Father Elephant.”

  “I knew hundreds of stories like that, little bird, for a long life brings many strange incidents. But I’ve forgotten them now. My days all seem to blend into one flowing stream, like the stream here before us. Do you want a little bath?”

  “If you would…”

  I fill my trunk and squirt a few drops on him lightly. Small pleasures now, in these quiet days. But once—once I was the thunder.

  At the end of the rainy season, all the bulls gathered. We went to the savannah and there were seven hundred of us. As far as one could see—the elephant nation. At the center was an enormous bull, the biggest of seven hundred. What a giant he was. When I was in my prime I was large and strong enough to be one of those close beside him. Then we formed new herds, made new alliances, and in this way strengthened the blood of our nation.

  We ate the magnificent herb of the savannah, the one that raised us to the skies. Beside it, a plum drunk is calf’s play. It is the desert-herb-which-brings-insight. Our family has eaten it for ages. I had many and distinguished visions in those great days. But I have forgotten them too. Except for the feeling which cannot be forgotten, the incomparable feeling which the herb gave us—that we were all one elephant. One heart, one knowledge. They had a name for this wonderful feeling, a special name, but I’ve lost the sound of it now. “But imagine, little bird, imagine one elephant with the strength of seven hundred.”

  “A mighty thing, Father.”

  “It seems to me that I was running across the heavens. Yes, it comes back to me now. I was this one mighty elephant, and I had the unreachable fruit upon my back. I was the one who carried it across the sky each day. After eating the herb, as I say.”

  So in the end, despite the wondrous herb, I am at the riverbank talking to a bird. Our greatness is here for a moment and gone. Bones on the riverbank. That’s what it comes to in the end.

  There is a bit of that floating green. I’ll just scoop that up. Delicious. The river is generous. I must never complain. Reflection, yes, permissible. But I must never insult this beautiful flowing creature, even if I am tempted to groan as my tusks grow still heavier in the last days. It will do me well to keep in mind the Tuskless Leader. His tusks never descended, I don’t know why. But he was tough. When the Seven Hundred finally separated into smaller herds, that tuskless fellow was always a leader. It’s in the heart, so the elders always said. Strength is in the heart.

  “Father Elephant, spread your ears. I hear a great beast approaching.”

  “Fly, little bird, and tell me quickly: Is it, perhaps, an old cow?”

  Could I be so lucky as that? Let me just spray myself with a bit of water…easy, don’t fall in with excitement, old fellow. That’s it, steady. She could be sixty and still have it in her. I recall one ancient beauty of that age who was still suckling a calf. Such things are possible. The river of life is generous.

  “It is a bull elephant, Father. And he limps.”

  A limping bull. Well, I know why he comes here. He’s not a lovely cow, but he’ll be company. Two outcasts at the stream. “Come ahead! Come join me here, the grass is good, Limping Bull.”

  Out of the trees then, and toward me. He’s not well. He’s sick inside. I’ve seen such sickness before. “Come join me, Limping Bull. The plums will soon be ripe.” He limps slowly down my path, pain riding him. When the plums are ready, he’ll forget his pain. We’ll toast the old days together, Limping Bull, you and I. Fate has kindly sent me someone to get drunk with. It makes it better. We’ll create a great racket here, and then run through the bamboo. He raises his trunk in greeting.

  “May I drink beside you?”

  “Please, Limping Bull. I’m honored…honored…”

  He quenches his thirst. The little white bird settles on his head, picking at his ticks. Limping Bull is drinking deeply.

  “Yes, and try some of that weed there…yes, that’s it. A little spice in it…yes? I knew you’d like it. Have more, have more. The banks are filled with it hereabouts. Plenty for two rogues like you and me.” Well, this is fine, very fine. We can enjoy many such days together, telling the old tales, if I can remember them. And if I can’t remember, if I can’t tell a tale, then Limping Bull will find me a good listener and he can tell the stories. The great unreachable fruit sets in a certain way here, just beyond those trees—at evening it makes one mellow. I’m tempted to go right now to the plum grove. But green plums make a very sour drunk. It would not be what it should be. Patience, old fellow, patience. Limping Bull is lifting his head to speak:

  “I thank you for your kindness. Now I must go…”

  “Go? But, Limping Bull, why torment yourself with further traveling? Here is all you need. There’s food, water, and plums for a good drunk. What could be better?”

  “You haven’t heard, then?”

  “Heard what, Limping Bull?”

  “A great meeting on the savannah. I must attend.”

  “Limping Bull, please listen to good advice. I see now that you have never attended one of the great musterings on the savannah. But I have attended, many times. One must be young and strong for such a meeting. Permit me to say that you do not appear well enough.”

  “What you say is true, Old River Elephant. I am not well enough for a mustering. I know what they are, for I was not always sick. Once I too was near the Central Elephant. I know the mustering and its dangers. But this is no ordinary meeting.

  “In what way does it differ, Limping Bull?”

  “It is a mustering of all the animals, River Elephant.”

  “All the animals? But what could be served by that? We don’t exchange blood with the other animals. We don’t form herds.”

  “I cannot say for certain why it is. Many different stories are passing through the forest. But you know what it’s like at a meeting of elephants. After a few days together…”

  “Yes, we feel like one elephant. I was just telling the little bird about it, about the herb of the savannah…”

  “This great mustering, so they say, will produce a feeling far greater than any produced by the herb, River Elephant. It will be the feeling of one animal.”

  “One animal? But what one animal would it be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Limping Bull, this is a drunken monkey’s dream you’re telling me. If you want to have such a dream you don’t have to
go a step further. As I said, in the grove only a few steps away are some of the loveliest plums—not ripe, I admit. But soon to ripen, and then…”

  “Old River Elephant, forgive me, but I must go. I am a slow traveler, and the great savannah is distant.”

  “Hold on, Limping Bull, just hold on one moment more. I feel a strange wind blowing over me as you stand here.”

  “Old River Elephant, I know how you feel. I too had found a quiet spot for myself, with fruit and roots and tubers. I was certain it was my last piece of jungle. The days were quiet and I was resigned. And then I felt the forest tremble. I heard the drumming of the chimps upon the tree stumps. And I saw them soon enough, in numbers so great I couldn’t believe my eyes. All around were monkeys of every kind, millions of them. The floor of the jungle was suddenly alive with little creatures, all proceeding in the same direction. The branches were filled with snakes, slithering along. I couldn’t stay in my grove. The feeling was too strong. And I can’t stay with you at this pleasant riverbank. I must cross the river now.”

  “Little bird, have you heard of this great mustering?”

  “Yes, Father Elephant.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought perhaps your plums would ripen first.”

  A mustering. A mustering so great that the heavens will shake. “Little bird, you know the sky and all its gifts. Is that thunder I hear in the distance? I’ve heard it for several days. Is it the thunder that precedes the rain?”

  “No, Old River Elephant.”

  “It’s the sound of the mustering?”

  “Yes, River Elephant.”

  “Then let us cross this stream, my friends. If I seem to falter as we cross, if I seem to be miring in the mud, remind me that when we reach the great savannah I will taste again the herb-which-brings-insight. That will get my old feet moving.”

  I move along quietly through the blood-sample test tubes, where numerous rebels have gathered, paying respect to the blood of our ancestors. Observe: I do not bow my head all the way.