23
I received this morning a most extraordinary document. It indicates — the good news — that Korky Kummerbund may still be alive. It also indicates — the bad news — that he is under considerable distress and possibly in great danger. I’ll let the document, which is carefully handwritten and which came via ordinary mail in a standard number 10 envelope, speak for itself.
Dear Norman:
The following article must appear in the Bugle as soon as possible under my byline if I am to have any chance of being seen alive again. It must be word-for-word or I will be starved to death. As it is, until the meal described below, I had not had anything to eat for more than a week. I am allowed to tell you that I am under extreme duress from lack of food and noise on a loop, but that is all.
Your trusting friend,
Korky
A UNIQUE REPAST
by Korky Kummerbund
It is not difficult to describe the decor at this new eatery, which opened recently to a very select clientele. It is strictly no-frills, a setting informed by a radical minimalism that announces an anti-aesthetic so total it defines a whole new aesthetic.
Suffice it to say, the surroundings achieved a congruity with the food and service to a remarkable degree. The walls are … well, walls, unfinished gray chalkboard. The floor, of concrete, is covered with a thin carpet of gray-beige, and the ceiling matches the walls. The toilet facilities, over in the corner, are rudimentary but adequate. The food is served through a hinged pet flap in the bottom of a sturdy door of solid wood.
To start this memorable dining experience, I had what the simple but elegant, hand-printed menu called bouillon aux bons morceaux de papier journal. It was in fact a transparently thin bouillon with florets of newsprint cut from one of my food columns in the Bugle. I was unable to discern which particular column. The bouillon came in a tin bowl with a ring attached to the rim for hanging. Along with the white plastic soup spoon, which had a slightly flaring handle, the bowl made for a fittingly Spartan vessel for the dish, especially when arrayed against the scarred Formica top of the table and the simple and effective lighting, a naked 75-watt bulb hanging from a standard ceiling fixture, dirty white against dirty white.
Appetite truly being the best relish, it takes an effort to describe how delicious the bouillon and the bouillon-soaked newsprint tasted. The first sip of the nearly clear liquid is like a revelation, an epiphany of the senses, as the tongue and the esophagus surrender to its essential minerality, satisfying a primordial craving for salt in a way hard to describe with mere words. (It brought to mind the remark by A.J. Denny that food gives the tongue a voice beyond language.) The florets of newsprint, cut into simple, almost child-like patterns, added body to the fluid and, when properly chewed, proved not all that difficult to swallow.
It was, in any event, the perfect prelude to the fish, or should I say amphibian, course. The menu lists les petites tranches de crapaud grillées avec des allumettes. The toad came under the door on a small, stark cutting board complete with a box of wooden matches, plastic fork, and X-Acto knife. To my great delight, it was accompanied by a pint of Thunderbird, a sweetish little wine with no pretensions to complexity whatsoever.
If anything, the bouillon and newsprint had whetted my appetite, and I tore into this delicacy with a gusto I usually reserve for more prepossessing dishes. The truth: I found every morsel of the thing delectable, especially after I had gotten the hang of cutting off an appropriately sized piece and skewering it on the tip of the X-Acto knife where, with one or two matches, I could crisp it nicely. The sulfur from the matches added its own distinct resonance to a taste hard to limn with mere words. The essence was that of a paludal origin, not quite fetid, but definitely smacking of the swamp. The bones were sufficiently pliable not to be crunchable unless properly singed, but alas, I ran out of matches before quite finishing. Actually, raw toad isn’t that bad, either.
Again, after the perfect interval, I was served the main course, which, according to the simple but beautifully wrought bill of fare, consisted of Tartare d’écureuil écrasé dans la rue sur un lit de glands gratinés.
But I do not complain. Again simplicity added an undeniable elegance to the presentation. The rodent had been skinned and flensed. The meat and, from what I could gather, the rest of the soft parts had been ground medium-coarse then served in the cavity of the pelt, artfully splayed on its back, legs outspread and tail in full fluff curling upward and over toward the turned little head.
It was delicious. I never thought acorns could be so tasty. They added the exact right textural counterpart to the chewy meat and the shredded newsprint, the flavors combining with a gustatorial synergy little short of wondrous. I was ingesting nothing less than the essence of oak, at first hand in the muted yet subtle woodiness of the acorns, and then, at one remove, in the nutty echoes alive in the flesh of the little creature that feeds on these underappreciated delicacies.
The service was truly excellent, the dishes being slid on the floor through the door flap after just the right interval between courses, as you would expect in any well-run establishment.
As well as food, I was served food for thought. It is seldom in life that a meal serves both the body and the spirit, if only with a lesson in the true meaning of hunger and humility.
It was only after I had read this document through twice that I realized it constituted evidence of a kidnapping case and of a sick, deranged mind. Holding it by the edges, I forthwith placed letter and envelope in a plastic bag and phoned Lieutenant Tracy.
He arrived at my office less than half an hour later. Donning white gloves, he examined the letter in detail. He shook his head in disbelief. “What is this? Fresh roadkill squirrel? What kind of sicko …? Is this serious or some kind of joke?”
I nodded. “Both, I’m afraid.”
He shook his head again. “Where do you find fresh toad this time of year?”
“Maybe it wasn’t fresh.”
Lieutenant Tracy started to laugh, something I had never seen him do before. It was an attractive, revealing laugh that had him shaking his head and wiping tears from his eyes. Then, like a squall, it stopped as abruptly as it started. He wiped his eyes and apologized. I said I understood.
I told him it was, as far as I could determine, Korky’s handwriting. Over the past two years he had sent numerous notes and cards to Elsbeth and me. I said I could easily provide a sample, but I thought the editor of the Bugle should be informed immediately as to what had transpired.
Donald Patcher, the editor of the Bugle, responded with a sense of concern for Korky’s welfare when we contacted him. There was no bluster about the inviolability of the press and that sort of thing. He said he would run it the next morning just as though it were Korky’s regular column.
In part because it can’t be avoided — I’m sure she would read the column in tomorrow’s Bugle or one of her friends is sure to mention it to her — I called Elsbeth and let her know what had happened without going into details. She took it well, saying it would be good to read his column again whatever it said. I’ve told her about Corny’s death as well, again without going into details. Truth in these matters is always the best policy.
Robert Remick has called again. He was his gentlemanly self, but news of the Bert-and-Betti fiasco had reached him, as I knew it would. I sensed a note of exasperation in his tone as he told me that he and the rest of the board had full confidence in my ability “to clean up this latest mess” at the museum.
I had his call very much in mind when I summoned Alger Wherry up for a meeting. Closing the door and having Doreen poised with her pen and steno pad did not have much effect on the man. He refused to answer any questions I had about the use of the empty room in the Skull Collections. “Good,” I said, “you’re fired. Effective immediately. Please collect your personal effects and remove them.”
He turned surly. “There are procedures …”
“We are no longer part of the universit
y in that way, Alger. Appeal all you want to Human Resources, it won’t do you any good. In fact I’m looking for a good excuse to get rid of Maria Cowe and her inefficient staff.”
“The Long Piggers have been using the room.”
“You mean they never stopped using the room.”
“Right.”
“Who are the members?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“You don’t really expect me to believe that.”
“I don’t know most of the new members. Everyone has a code name. I don’t know who they are. I don’t really care.”
“Who does have the names?”
“Brauer. And Corny did.”
I believed him if only because I could tell from his air of defeat, which was more pronounced than usual, that he didn’t care enough to lie. He left, agreeing to clean out the room and start using it for storing skulls.
Word of Corny’s demise has spread far and wide. I have arranged for the Chards’ family attorney and an officer of the Middling County Probate Court to witness the tape. I can only hope they don’t start telling others about it afterward.
24
It’s evening and we are back from a couple of days out at the cottage. Elsbeth, weak and frail as she is, asked several times to spend Thanksgiving at the lake. I remonstrated with her, saying what if something happened? What if there was an emergency?
She smiled and took my hand. “Norman, dear, it’s already happened. I’m beyond emergencies.”
“But …”
“What’s the worst that could happen? That I die out there. I’d love to die out there.” She laughed her wonderful laugh, even if it were only a slight echo of itself. “You could build a bonfire on the lakeshore and cremate me right there like they did Byron. And then have an orgy.”
It turned out to be, despite everything, a wonderful time, of the kind that haunts you afterward. We all knew, of course, that this would be the last time Elsbeth would make the journey, taking the same roads, the same turns, winding our way through the needle-carpeted evergreen forest until we come to the fork in the road that I always used to miss. I think we fear death because we think we will miss all the things we do again and again in life.
It hasn’t changed much over the years. We’ve cleared back the hemlock saplings encroaching on the drive that leads to the cottage. We’ve had the rotting sills replaced, a new well dug, and some new wiring installed. But otherwise it’s not a lot different than it used to be all those years ago. We packed an extra space heater, because Elsbeth does suffer from the cold.
Upon arrival, I plugged in an electric blanket for Elsbeth on the wicker sofa in front of the fireplace. I lit the fire while Diantha started the turkey breast in the oven. She said it looked like something that had been given thalidomide, what with the stumps where the legs had been. But we had all the fixings — stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, gravy and mashed potatoes, three kinds of squash, a decent white wine, and pumpkin pie. We toasted our lives and we said a prayer of thanks and asked that Korky be returned safe and sound to us.
While there was still light, Diantha and I took a walk along the lakeshore to the pines on the point that reaches like a widow’s peak into the mirroring water. Why, I wondered, is there consolation in the beauty of dying nature? All around, the light of the setting sun touched to gold the browns and yellows of the trees, shrubs, and withered grass. I could hear the blue jays of my youth and the chiding of chickadees. I wanted to weep out of sheer poignancy.
Perhaps sensing my mood, Diantha looped her arm in mine, as though to remind me that life goes on. Her gesture both deepened and sweetened my melancholia, because it was exactly the way, over the past couple of years, Elsbeth and I had walked these paths — in a communing bliss so complete we were as one with each other and with everything we could see and hear.
Later, as it darkened and the wind came up, we made Elsbeth comfortable on a bed we had moved into a small room downstairs. Then we sat together on the same wicker sofa Elsbeth and I had courted on when we were young. The sensation for me was not so much of déjà vu as of temporal collapse, as though time had contracted and vanished, as though back then and right now were one and the same.
“Do you miss Sixy?” I asked as Diantha sipped an iced Pernod and I toyed with a dry sherry.
She laughed and shook her head, pleased, I think, that I was that interested in her personal life. “Naw. I was outgrowing him, anyway. I can’t believe I ever took that stuff he calls music seriously, never mind listened to it.”
I nodded. “And there are lots of other young men in the world.”
“I’m not sure I want another young man.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’s like breaking in a new puppy.” She turned to me, pulling closer, her face animated in the firelight. “They’re very cute and they wag their tails at you and bark and yip and lick your face and other places …” She giggled at her boldness. “But they leave messes all over the place. I think I’m one of those girls that likes older men.”
“Lots of those around, too,” I said, sighing. “Lots of other loose people around these days. I often wonder what they do for Thanksgiving.”
She pulled closer, her hip touching mine. She took my hand. “Let’s promise, right now, Norman, no matter what happens, that we’ll always have Thanksgiving together.”
“Done,” I said, deeply touched.
“You know. I keep thinking about that video clip. You know, of the three people.”
“Yes, it’s strangely moving.”
She gave a giggle. “You mean it makes you horny.”
“Well … yes.”
She tittered. “I love your reticence, Norman. It’s so sexy.”
“Oh, dear,” I said, which made her laugh and give me an affectionate kiss on the side of the lips.
Perhaps to break the spell, to keep my heart and my lips from wandering, I brought up the Ossmann-Woodley case directly. “What I don’t understand,” I said as we both stared into the flames, “is why anyone would go to the trouble of trying to get their hands on a powerful aphrodisiac.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters it’s not possible for someone, even if they got the dosage right, to simply sell it to some company and make lots of money.”
“Okay.”
“The whole research file has to be available, and those files are usually several feet thick.”
“Okay.”
“It’s all very cumbersome, involved, and expensive.”
“But it wouldn’t have to be legal to make money as a drug.”
“What do you mean?” Lights were starting to go on in my dim brain.
“Good God, Norman, there’s like a huge, multibazillion-dollar illegal drug business out there.”
“Even for a drug, if there is one, that induced Ossmann and Woodley to kill each other with sex?”
“That’s why people do Ecstasy.”
“Ecstasy?”
“It’s a drug that makes you feel good about everything. It opens you up, especially if you do it with something else. I still have a little stash …”
“Oh, right,” I said, remembering the autopsies. I wondered for a bewildering moment of she were proposing we try it. “Is that what you and Sixy …?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Then she put her put her hand to her mouth and gave an embarrassed laugh. “God, the things we used to do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. One afternoon me and Shelly, she was going with Danko, the drummer, we popped some meth and did a little blow and the guys swallowed some Viagra and I don’t know what else … Anyway, we ended up doing the whole band.”
“Had sex with them?”
“You don’t think the less of me for that?”
I sighed. “The things I’ve missed.”
The ensuing heavy silence I broke by saying, “So, Di, you think there would be a market?”
“Are you kidding? I mean
once they get it right, if that’s what they’re trying to do. Think of all those Chinese who can’t get it up unless they’re eating parts of endangered animals. You whip up a concoction, call it Tiger Balls or something like that. I mean the Asian market alone is incredible. They all seem to suffer from limp dicks.”
The light went on very brightly. I sat forward. “You’re a dear,” I said. I leaned over to give her a little kiss. “You’re a very smart dear. And now I must go to bed before I have another one of these and make a fool of myself.”
Diantha stood up with me and gave me a real kiss. “I’ll never think of you as a fool, Norman.”
But of course I am a fool, an utter, low fool. The very next morning I watched her as she left the upstairs bathroom with a small towel draped so haphazardly over herself that I could not but help seeing her naked form in its every robust detail. My breathing all but stopped. I suppose she doesn’t realize what this does to me. I am not one of those casual males where displays of this kind are concerned. As someone once said, the beauty of women makes good men suffer. Not that I count myself good. Because I find myself utterly infatuated. Can one love two women at once? Can one love a mother and daughter simultaneously, love them like a man loves a woman?
We came back on Saturday to find that Amanda Feeney-Morin had done a long “think” piece in the Bugle, dredging up the Bert-Betti and Ossmann-Woodley cases, linking them together, of course, rehashing the details with insinuating, subtle invective, and speculating about the management of the Museum of Man, “which has resisted efforts by the university to provide modern institutional leadership.” She then quoted President Twill of Wainscott to the effect that he has “ongoing concerns with the policy directions underway at present in the Museum of MOM [sic].” The man doesn’t even know what we’re called.
I have written to Don Patcher asking him to assign a more unbiased reporter to cover the university and the museum. I pointed out to him that Ms. Feeney is married to Mr. Morin and is doing nothing more than serving as a mouthpiece for Wainscott in its continuing attempt to take us over. As it stands, I wrote, you might as well put Malachy Morin’s byline next to hers. I don’t know whether that will do any good or not, but it is right and proper to respond to these matters.
The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man Page 16