by Jane Langton
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Homer’s last lecture was over. His students clapped politely, a few cheered, and some hung around in the lecture hall to say goodbye to the American who had lectured them for eight weeks on the transcendentalists of Concord and told a number of funny stories. They said goodbye to Mary, too, who had taken over a couple of the lectures at Homer’s urging.
Stuart Grebe was there on the last day. He was not reading for an arts degree, he was a biochemist doing crazy studies on invented life forms on his rented computer. But he often crept into Homer’s lectures as part of his insane attempt to wring every drop of juice from the succulent fruit that was Oxford University.
Another part of his many-splendored plan was the long series of escapades like the Great Dodo Caper. Wherever there was an ancient ritual or a sacred cow, Stuart blasphemed it. It was as though his superabundant energy required him to climb every fence and burst every barrier, if always with a light heart. He hung a dead chicken from the ancient bronze knocker of Brasenose. He glued a pair of jockey shorts to the naked marble body of the drowned Shelley at University College. He joined in a traditional death-defying scramble up the dome of the Radcliffe Camera to crown it with a chamber pot. He dressed the heads of the Roman emperors in front of the Sheldonian in false whiskers, plastic fangs, dark glasses and women’s hats.
After one of his most outrageous transgressions, Homer had chastised him. “Listen here, Stuart, it isn’t so much the fact of your doing bad things, it’s the childish silliness of them. One would think you were a freshman instead of a graduate student. How old are you anyway?”
“Seventeen, Dr. Kelly.”
“Only seventeen!”
“I’m sorry. They kept skipping me in grade school.”
“Well, then, no wonder, you poor kid. You can’t help being silly. You’re only a child.”
Stuart rolled his eyes humbly. “Yes, sir. You won’t tell on me, will you, Dr. Kelly? Rhodes scholars are supposed to be at least eighteen.”
“Oh, God, Stuart.” Homer sighed with resignation. “No, I won’t tell.”
“Hello, is that you, William? Jerry Heddlestone here.”
“Oh, Jerry, it’s good to hear from you.”
“William, I can’t resist calling to say how deeply impressed I am with your new book.” And then Professor Heddlestone began a litany of praise.
“But Jerry, wait a minute.” Puzzled, William interrupted. “How did you—? I mean, I don’t understand. I haven’t sent out any review copies. In fact—”
“It was one of my students, an American kid. He lent me his copy of the manuscript. Said he thought I’d be interested.”
“But where did he get it?” William gripped the telephone. “Jerry, tell me, do you still have it?”
“Of course I do.”
“Oh, thank God. Jerry, listen. Hang on to it, because it’s all that’s left. It’s gone from the computer, and our only printout was stolen. Yours is all there is.”
“Good Lord!”
“Tell me, Jerry, who gave it to you?”
“Well, he’s a funny kid. When he appeared at his first tutorial I couldn’t help wondering what the cat had dragged in. But he’s turned out to be my cleverest pupil. As a matter of fact, I think he’s got your entire book on disk. His name is—”
“Grebe?”
“Exactly. Stuart Grebe.”
CHAPTER 52
Many kinds of monkeys … delight in fondling and being fondled by each other.
Charles Darwin,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Zoology Office faced south. When Homer came in to say goodbye, the room was awash with sunshine. A few dying bees from the hive on the south staircase crawled listlessly on the window.
Homer found Helen Farfrae hard at work. She was bowing over the last of the crab jars, prying off the lid, dumping the contents into a dish.
“You’re not leaving for good, Homer?” she said, looking up at him brighdy. “Mary promised me you’d come back someday.”
“Of course we will. She wants me to say how much we enjoyed that farewell party. You shouldn’t have done it, but we’re both glad you did. It was a ripping party.” Homer laughed. “You do say ripping, don’t you?” Then he asked about the great book. “It’s still all right, I hope?”
“Oh, yes. It’s going to press right now. They’re making a big fuss over it.” Helen’s smile vanished. She stood up and put a hand on Homer’s arm. “Homer, what about Hal Shaw? He came in this morning with a copy of the Oxford Mail. There he was on the front page with his arm around Freddy Dubchick. It looked so bad! And of course that’s why the paper printed it. Obviously they want people to think he’s guilty of Oliver’s murder. What about the police? Do you know what the inspector is up to?”
Homer looked grave. “I’m afraid Hal’s not out of the woods. Mukerji thinks Hal and Freddy might have fixed up that story between them. Maybe Freddy came along and found Hal bending over the body, and then they put their heads together and concocted the story that Hal was gone when she arrived, and Oliver still in one piece. But right now Mukerji’s homing in on some young tough at Nightingale Court, some dumb kid who stole Oliver’s television last month and kept it with the label still on it, Property of the Reverend Oliver Clare. Kid with a high-class intellect. He’s also a vicious mugger, according to Mukerji.”
“But what about suicide? Homer, really and truly, don’t you think Oliver committed suicide?”
“Damned if I know. Sometimes I think one way, sometimes another. Don’t worry. I’m working on it.”
“But how can you? Homer, you’re leaving tomorrow!”
He waved a careless hand. “Plenty of time, plenty of time.”
“Homer Kelly, don’t tell me you’re leaving?” William Dubchick walked into the office and clapped him on the shoulder.
Homer shook his hand. “We’re off to Heathrow tomorrow. Goodbye, William. Congratulations on the great book. Goodbye, Helen dear.” He kissed her. “Well, toodle-oo, you lot. You do say toodle-oo, don’t you?”
It was a joke. William and Helen laughed, and William called after Homer as he strode away down the hall. “You and Mary, you’ll come back someday?”
“Of course,” said Homer, halfway down the stairs.
William turned and went back into the office, where Helen stood at the table, holding her dish of crabs. The slanting sunlight of early December raked across her face. It sparkled on her earrings, which were bright gold, and made reflections in the irises of her eyes. It glowed on the red crabs in the dish and glittered on the jars that covered the table.
It also picked out the individual white hairs of William’s beard as he walked to the other side of the table and stood under the photograph of Charles Darwin. To Helen the picture was like a mirror. Does he know how much he looks like him? No, he doesn’t know.
“These are the last,” she said, smiling at him. “I think they must be the Porcellanidae he listed as number 357, from the coast of Patagonia.”
“We’re all finished then?”
“Yes, and I don’t see how we can come to any other conclusion but that—”
“—they are the missing crabs. They were collected by Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage.”
“Oh, William, I’m so glad. I’m sure of it, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.” William reached across the table and took her hand. “Therefore somebody’s got to write a paper.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll help.”
“You will write the paper, I will help.” William reached for her other hand and leaned over the table. Helen leaned forward too. Their lips met over Jar Number 1045, a crab admirably adapted for its habitation under the surface of round stones, collected by Charles Darwin in the year 1834, in the waters of the Pacific Ocean off the city of Valparaíso.
CHAPTER 53
“Give your evidence,” said the King.
“Shan’t,” said t
he cook.
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Homer had been mesmerized from the beginning by the courtyard of the museum. Today, leaving it for the last time, he glanced around at the ring of stone scientists and thought how much they looked like a jury. They were all sturdy citizens, good men and true, accompanied by the solid evidence of their worth—Harvey’s heart, Davy’s lamp, Watt’s steam engine, Euclid’s triangles, Priestley’s apparatus for producing oxygen. They listened and pondered and would one day deliver their verdict—not guilty, or guilty as charged.
In fact, as Homer walked out into the courtyard between Aristotle and Roger Bacon, it became in his imagination a large and sunny courtroom. The place had once housed a Mad Tea-Party, now let there be a trial scene like the last chapters of Alice in Wonderland, with a mad jury, a mad prosecuting attorney and a mad judge—Just take off his head outside!
After all, it was a good place for truth-telling, because nothing interfered with the fall of light. The sun bore down to show that nothing was hidden, all was visible. And the rolling murmur of voices was like a multitude of witnesses from whom nothing could be concealed.
The iguanodon was obviously the judge, with its solemn head poised high above everything else. The prosecutor was perhaps the stork, with its sharp glass eyes and long probing beak. The defense attorney—now, who would do for a defense attorney? Prince Albert? No, he looked too fashionable, and his whiskers were too neatly brushed. How about one of the little elephants? Their massive heads were obviously full of brain. Good. Now to get on with it.
The first trial was short. The iguanodon cleared its throat—it had been a hundred million years since it had uttered a croak—and explained the matter that had been brought before it for judgment. “Was Oliver Clare murdered or did he kill himself? Who would like to address the court?”
“I would, my Lord,” said Homer, speaking up loudly inside his head and trying to adopt the manners of a British courtroom.
There was an eruption in the north arcade, and the gorilla burst out of the display of stuffed primates and ran up to the iguanodon on all fours, to take the part of court hack. “The witness will please take the stand,” roared the gorilla.
Homer looked around the courtroom at each member of the jury. They were all gazing back at him attentively. Even Linnaeus looked up from his book. Hippocrates’ view was blocked by the giant brain coral, and he craned his neck.
“Members of the jury,” began Homer, “I have incontrovertible proof that Oliver Clare’s death was the result of suicide. What, you ask, is my proof? The moonlight. It was the moonlight on the river.”
“The—moon—light,” wrote the iguanodon, making a note, scratching fastidiously with a sharp claw on its left wristbone.
“You see, if you looked out the window of Oliver’s room, you could see the moon reflected in the Oxford Canal and also in the river Thames. It was quite beautiful.”
“Beau—ti—ful,” scribbled the iguanodon.
“Oliver, you see, was a God-fearing young man. His Christian faith was everything to him. But lately he had been exposed to a different view of creation.” Homer paced up and down between the stuffed ostrich and the skeleton of the giraffe, in the manner of courtroom attorneys he had seen in the movies. “Here at the end of the second millennium, the Reverend Oliver Clare was experiencing what many of Darwin’s contemporaries must have felt in the nineteenth century, a horrifying sense of shock. The creation, you see, was not the noble work of God, not even of a God with a Ph.D. in Evolutionaty Studies, whose guiding hand moved through all organic form, nudging it higher and higher toward the pinnacle of humankind. That way of thinking, he was told, was poppycock. Human beings were not created in the image of God, their existence was entirely an accident, and their hope of heaven beyond the grave a myth. Homo sapiens was merely a cousin to the apes.”
“Is that a personal remark?” snarled the court hack.
“No, no, of course not.”
“Come to the point,” snapped the iguanodon.
“The point is,” explained Homer, “Oliver was dragged out of the great edifice of the Church of England into the godless air. He clung to the cross, the altar, the font, but at last he was outside under the cold stars. The question of God’s guiding hand in history, God’s benevolence, God’s very existence had become overwhelming. Even Oliver’s love for Fredericka Dubchick faded in significance. What good was his desire to rise in the hierarchy of the Church of England if the Church was not inhabited by the spirit of God? Was the moonlight on the river beautiful enough? Did it display the presence of God? Did it balance the harsher understanding of Hal Shaw and William Dubchick? No, it did not. The answer was no. There was no God, no guiding hand, no ascent to perfection, no purpose in existence but brute survival.”
“So?” said the iguanodon impatiently. “What then?”
“He couldn’t stand it,” said Homer simply. “He killed himself.”
At once the iguanodon raised its bony head and bellowed, “Jury, how do you find? Murder or suicide?”
The jury did not bother to deliberate. The evidence about the moonlight was totally convincing. The stone scientists turned their heads toward the judge and shouted, “Suicide, your honor.”
The iguanodon chuckled, and said, “Well, that’s that.” Homer was interested to observe that the chuckle started far down its neck and worked its way upward, clicking together the vertebrae two at a time.
“No, no, my Lord,” cried Homer, his imaginary voice ringing clear in the courtroom, echoing from the glassy surfaces of the display cases and the metal sprays of pomegranates and pineapples crowning the castiron columns. “We’re not finished. There was also a murder.”
A murder! The glass cases sent the word back, and so did the pomegranates and pineapples. A murder, a murder, a murder! All the hard surfaces in the Oxford University Museum rang with the terrible word.
“Oh, it was murder, all right,” said Homer. “In fact it was murder sublime.”
The iguanodon recoiled, arching its bony neck. “Murder in the sublime degree? But that is the very worst kind!” Solemnly it bent its head and nodded at the court hack.
At once the gorilla rose to its full height and roared, “The trial in the matter of murder in the sublime degree will now begin. All rise.”
“No, no,” said the iguanodon testily, “don’t be ridiculous. They can’t rise if they’re not sitting down.” Turning to Homer it inquired courteously, “And who, may I ask, is the accused in this case?”
“If you please, my Lord,” said Homer, “his name is Charles Darwin.”
At this there was a stir in the court. The ichthyosaurus squirmed in its stony matrix, the tail of the quetzal rose and fell. The bison popped a vertebra, which clattered to the floor. In the upper gallery the wings of the butterflies trembled, and the beetles tossed their antennae from side to side. In the Zoology Office the Beagle crabs paddled uneasily in their jars of spirit, and the egg of the great auk fell open with a crack.
Downstairs in the courtyard a ray of sunshine setded like a spotlight on the golden statue of Darwin. There he was, the accused, the prisoner in the dock, standing awkwardly behind the coelacanth’s glass case. Darwin himself seemed untroubled. He continued to gaze serenely at the display of starfish across the aisle.
The iguanodon, too, remained calm. “I see,” it said, making a note. “The accused—is—Charles—Darwin. And what is Mr. Darwin’s crime?”
“Murder, Your Honor.”
“Mur-der.” The judge made another note. “And who, may I ask, is the victim?”
Homer stood on tiptoe, stretched his neck upward toward the head of the iguanodon, and whispered the august name.
“No!” gasped the iguanodon. “You don’t say so!”
Homer nodded grimly, and the iguanodon dictated aloud another note to itself, “The—victim—is—GOD.”
At this there was a wild response. The dodo uttered a shriek, the bush
baby twiddled its fingers and snarled at the potto, the spider monkey ran up and down its branch, the chimpanzee shuffled and hopped and chattered in a high falsetto,’ the starfish waggled their arms, and the crocodile opened its jaw to show all its hideous teeth.
“Order in the court!” bawled the gorilla. “The prosecuting attorney will call the first witness.”
And then, to Homer’s astonishment, everyone turned to look at him—Joseph Priestley, Humphry Davy, Galileo and all the rest—along with the penguin, the ostrich, the ruffed lemur and the pigtailed macaque. To his horror he guessed that he, Homer Kelly, had become the prosecuting attorney. They were expecting him to prove that Darwin was guilty of murdering God.
“But good grief,” said Homer, “I’m not accustomed to courtroom procedure. I mean, this is probably a big mistake on your part.”
“Disrespect to the court,” thundered the gorilla. “Off with his head.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said the iguanodon, nodding pleasantly at Homer. “Nobody’s going to chop off your head. At least not yet. Please call your first witness.”
His first witness? Homer looked around frantically, hoping to find a witness who could be relied on to give testimony hostile to Darwin’s cause.
“I know,” he said, struck with an idea. “I call as my first witness—the dodo.”
At this there was a flopping sound in the corridor, as the dodo tumbled out of its gold frame, shook its feathers, and waddled into the court, gobbling like a turkey.
Promptly the court hack rattled out the oath, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
The dodo flapped its useless wings, and squawked, “I dodo.” A pink feather wafted upward.