Pantheon

by Sam Bourne

  He thought of his parents, how they never referred to numbers of people but rather to ‘souls’: we had a good twenty souls at the meeting this morning. It was a habit of mind, a reminder that people were not mere building blocks in the creation of some theoretical utopia, but that each one of them was individual and precious. He used to mock such talk in his youth, but now he had a good mind to start hurling the phrase ‘sanctity of life’ from his back row seat, heckling the speaker and challenging this complacent audience of nodding heads by reminding them that human beings were not cattle to be bred but that each one was unfathomable and mys-terious and full of wonder — that people were never a means to an end, but an end in themselves.

  But there was something else, too. He thought of his shattered shoulder. He recalled the repeated rejections from even non-military wartime service, explained to him by Bernard Grey down the telephone at Liverpool docks: not suitable for sensitive work. He remembered the verdict the Medical Examination Board had passed on him and which they might as well have branded onto his forehead: D1. He thought of all that and he realized his loathing for eugenics was grounded not only in principle but also in bitter, personal anger. He hated it because he knew that the likes of this William Curtis and his precious Leonard Darwin and probably everyone else in this bright, civilized seminar room would regard him, James Zennor — with his broken body, his blackouts, his rages and his torment — as ‘extremely undesirable’, as ‘inferior’, as ‘ defective’. And that, if Curtis and Darwin had their way, James too would doubtless have been told gently, and then compelled, to ‘refrain from parenthood’.

  And it wasn’t just him, it was all the people these eugenicists were ready to throw aside like so much refuse. He thought of the young men born in the slums of Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow who were now the defenders of Britain, risking their lives to save the country. Eugenics would have branded these soldiers sub-standard, not good enough to last another generation. He remembered a friend in the International Brigade, Len, who one night admitted that he was the child of a prostitute, that he had never known his father. Eugenics would have preferred he had never been born, yet he was one of the finest, bravest men James had ever known. He thought of his own parents, his father the son of a Cornish tin miner whose lungs had given out when he was barely forty years old. What would Darwin and Curtis have made of him, eh? He would hardly have made the cut, would he? They’d have snuffed him out, along with his son and his son — all of them expendable, so much human rubbish.

  Christ, the blood was boiling in his veins. His body seemed to be quaking with rage. He needed to get a hold of himself. In an act of will, his right hand gripped his left wrist and squeezed tight. He had to assert control. He needed to know what this group, the American Eugenics Society, was all about; what connection, if any, they had with the Wolf’s Head and how they might lead him back to Florence and Harry.

  So he calmed himself and, as if fiddling with the dial on the wireless, tuned in again to the speaker. Curtis seemed now to have turned to the specific task that confronted eugenicists in America. Quite baldly, as if it were entirely uncontroversial, the speaker explained that one fifth of the current population of the United States should never have been born — and that it was their duty, as the leaders of the coming generation, to ensure that such people were not born in the future.

  ‘Happily,’ Curtis went on, ‘you find yourselves in the right place. While other cities in the United States of America still labour in confusion and uncertainty, we are privileged to gather at a university where eugenics has taken firm root. Take these words, for example.’ He raised his hand again to signal a quotation. This time he was holding not Darwin’s little red book, but a sheaf of notes: ‘“ We could make a new human race in a hundred years if only people in positions of power and influence would wake up to the paramount importance of what eugenics means… we could save the bloodstream of our race from a needless amount of contamination.” Those,’ said Curtis with a beam of institutional pride, ‘were the words of the founder and first president of the American Eugenics Society, Irving Fisher, who, I’m glad to note, was a professor in the economics faculty right here at Yale. I don’t need, I’m sure, to mention Ellsworth Huntington, who only stepped down as president of our society’s board of directors a couple of years ago. He, as you all know, was Professor of Geography here at Yale. Or what about these words? “ Granting that society can decide just which individuals it wishes to eliminate as genetically inferior… how shall it proceed to eliminate them? ” That was Edmund W Sinott, a botanist, here at Yale. Those of you who are not yet subscribers to the Journal of the American Eugenics Society, I suggest you become so immediately: there are gems like that in every edition!’ he said to polite laughter.

  ‘And lest you think we have no allies at the very top, let me reassure you by citing the name of James Angell.’ There were nods of recognition. ‘Angell was President of Yale University until three years ago. Well, let me — and I promise this will be the last one — let me quote him to you: “ Modern medicine, unless combined with some kind of practicable eugenic program, may result in an excess of feeble and incompetent stock. Certainly the preservation and increase of life for individuals unable to make reasonably happy and effective adjustments to the conditions of living is a highly dubious blessing.” So you see. We have support at the highest possible level.’

  A worm of suspicion was forming in James’s mind, slowly and steadily turning through everything that had happened these last few weeks. He wanted to follow it, to watch it. But he needed to pay attention to what he was hearing in this room. Eugenics had crossed the Atlantic and seemed to have docked and found safe harbour here at Yale. Nor could it be dismissed as the marginal preoccupation of a few cranks: these people counted the former university president among their number.

  The speaker was coming to his main point. ‘I tell you all this,’ said Curtis, ‘for two reasons. First, I believe we have wasted too much time on rather sterile — if you’ll forgive the pun! — debates over persuasion versus compulsion, and that those debates arise only because there is still some uncertainty over definitions. We still lack clear-cut, unambiguous understanding of what, or rather who, counts as superior and what, or who, counts as inferior. The next step forward for our discipline is to arrive at some commonly-accepted definitions. The project I wish to propose to you tonight aims to settle this matter once and for all.

  ‘Before I detail the specifics, I want you to be assured that I am not asking you or your institutions to take on anything that we here at Yale are not prepared to take on ourselves. Indeed, what we have already undertaken — with support, as I hope I have demonstrated, at the highest level.’

  James could feel the tension in the room, which was now hushed. Everyone was rapt.

  ‘Two researchers,’ Curtis began, ‘one from Harvard, the other from Columbia, are pioneers in a field they describe as “Physique Studies”. They argue that a person’s body, properly measured, studied and analyzed, will reveal much about the intelligence, temperament, moral worth and even the future accomplishments of that person. But only if the study is extensive and meticulous.’

  He paused to let his words sink in. ‘They believe they can gather the evidence that will not only confirm that there is a connection between physical prowess and intellectual ability, but will also demonstrate how this connection operates. First, though, they need to establish a set of different bodily configurations. Once defined, and set alongside long-term data on performance — marital, professional and in all other spheres — it will, these men submit, be a simple task to correlate each body type and physiognomy with later life history. They believe that the correlation will be strong, that these bodily traits will be shown to be unswerving determinants of character. They believe, in other words — and forgive the crudity of my summary of their complex thesis — that physique equals destiny.’

  James could hear nothing but the sound of pen scratching on paper
from his neighbour.

  ‘But none of this will be possible without a comprehensive collection of photographs of young American adults, that might, taken together, form an Atlas of Men and an Atlas of Women. The subjects in such a study will, of course, have to be photographed without clothing, in order that the bodily configuration be correctly classified. Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. But a full range of subjects is essential, so any study must include those likely to be at the higher end of the scale of intellectual achievement and moral worth.

  ‘Which is why today I call on you, my dear colleagues in our fellow Ivy League institutions, to give your best endeavours in assisting this vital project — one on which, I am glad to say, we here at Yale have already made a start.’

  Suddenly James felt a shiver run through him. He was back at Frank Pepe’s pizza restaurant, George Lund’s briefcase open in his hands. Inside it were those photographs of men, naked as they stood before the camera, posing as if at a medical examination. And all of them were young, just as Curtis had suggested. Was this part of what George Lund had discovered? What he had been carrying in his bag — and what had been deliberately removed — was not a collection of pornographic pictures to titillate Lund, the secret homosexual. They were proof that Yale was engaged in the first stage of a study to show that the intellectual elite were defined by certain physical traits, that ‘physique equals destiny’. That was no crime; Yale could research whatever it liked. But what had Curtis just said? Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. Translated, that surely meant that the participants had not been told what they were posing for, that they had believed they were being photographed for some other reason. In other words, Yale had engaged in an act of deception, tricking its youngest members into posing naked for a camera. Was this the truth poor George Lund had stumbled across? Was this why he was killed?

  James halted his train of thought before it ran away with itself. If Yale had been involved in such an act of academic chicanery it would certainly be embarrassing. The Dean would have to apologize, to be sure. But James knew what these university politicians were like: McAndrew would be able to say there had been a misunderstanding, that he had been misled, that he had thought this was a bona fide research exercise. He would do what all senior college staff did in such situations: he would blame someone else. James had seen that manoeuvre a hundred times before. And how shaming a scandal would it really be? Not that shaming, surely, if Curtis felt able to allude to this research exercise in a meeting of colleagues, albeit one that was invitation-only.

  Besides, Lund had seemed convinced that Harry and Florence were caught up in whatever it was he had discovered. But how could they possibly have any connection with illicitly-taken undergraduate photographs? Both Lund and his widow had also suggested that much more was at stake than an academic scandal. You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Bigger and more dangerous.

  Curtis was still speaking, enumerating the challenges eugenicists like them faced in the coming years, identifying the potential sources of opposition, making the obligatory call for more funding for research. James was only half-listening, his mind furiously trying to assemble and re-assemble the pieces of the puzzle, desperate to construct a picture that might include his wife and child and that might reveal where he could find them.

  The speaker was moving to his conclusion. ‘This, I know we agree, is an idea whose time has come. It is an idea that needs to be tested and taken to its logical conclusion, so that the world may be persuaded at long last of its truth and its urgency. Here I must defer to a man I know would like to have been here tonight — who indeed sends his apologies — a man who is a great friend to our cause. His latest thinking represents a new and exciting advance, one that understands the changing times in which we find ourselves, especially with regard to the unfolding events in Europe. I’m referring of course to the Dean of Yale University, Preston McAndrew.’

  James did not wait for the end of the meeting, taking advantage of his seat at the back to slip out while Curtis was still basking in applause. He walked briskly onto York Street, the stones of Trumbull College almost amber in the evening sunshine. He checked his watch. If he was fast, he should get there in time. Unbidden, his mind calculated the time difference and worked out that it was past midnight in England. German pilots were probably in the skies right now, at this very instant, dropping their deadly cargo on cities, factories, homes, bedrooms…

  He quickened his pace. He was getting closer, he was sure of it. Lund had discovered what McAndrew was up to. The photographs were part of it, but not the whole, they couldn’t be. There was something else. And Curtis had just confirmed it. His latest thinking represents a new and exciting advance…

  What was McAndrew’s latest thinking? What was he doing or saying or planning that had got Lund so agitated and so frightened? It had been sufficiently serious that he had been killed to keep it secret. And somehow it involved Florence and Harry.

  It was only once he had walked through the grand entrance of the Sterling Library, and was standing in the echoing stone lobby, that James realized he did not know exactly which department he was looking for. Was eugenics to be found in Natural Sciences or in Philosophy? Was it classified as biology or politics? Given the grandiosity of eugenics’ ambition, its desire to be taken seriously as objective, unarguable fact, he headed for the Natural Sciences reading room.

  Approaching the librarian, a younger man who looked irritated to be taken away from his own reading, James attempted a smile. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for the latest writings of Dr Preston McAndrew. He’s the head of the Medical-’

  ‘I know who Preston McAndrew is,’ the librarian replied. ‘Books or journals?’

  ‘Is it possible to look for both?’

  The librarian looked up at the clock. ‘I could do that. Come back tomorrow morning, say, any time after eleven o’clock and I’ll-’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. It really is terribly urgent.’

  ‘Well, you need to be more specific, sir. Otherwise I can’t help you.’

  James said the first thing that came into his head. ‘ The Journal of the American Eugenics Society. The latest edition. Let’s try that.’ That was what Curtis had mentioned, after all. And if McAndrew was going to air his ‘latest thinking’ on eugenics anywhere, it would surely be there.

  The librarian looked at him sceptically, but eventually he turned to face the wall of drawers comprising the card index while James paced and paced, checking his watch, looking at the clock, replaying Curtis’s words in his mind, in case he had missed something important.

  After much checking and cross-checking, pulling drawers open and closed with exasperated sighs, the librarian returned to the counter. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that title you requested is currently with another reader.’

  Damn. ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me his name, could you? So that perhaps I could see if he’s finished with it?’

  The young man glowered, apparently weighing which would be more effort, acceding to this request or denying it and then having to argue over his decision with this troublesome-looking Englishman. He lingered for a moment longer, then went back to the card index and finally to a large ledger. Eventually he returned wearing an expression James had seen many times before. It said, I shouldn’t really be doing this, but…

  ‘I have the name, but this is rather-’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be extremely polite.’

  ‘All right. The book you requested is currently on loan to a reader whose desk number is four hundred and seventy-three. He’s a member of the faculty. His name is Dr George Lund.’

  Chapter Thirty-six

  As a young man, James had never had much of a poker face. His parents and their Quaker friends were straightforward, honest people and so he had never learned to dissemble. Only
at Oxford did he start to understand that the face of the sophisticated man was opaque, but even then he was not much good at it. It was only after Spain that he became adept at hiding his feelings. Which is what he did now, as he showed what he hoped was no response at all to the words he had just heard from the librarian. Instead, he turned around and walked unhurriedly over to the section of the room where the desks were numbered four hundred and above.

  So Lund had been down this exact same path just before his death, investigating the Dean and his ‘latest thinking’. James counted the numbers of the desks as he passed them: four hundred and sixty-five, four hundred and sixty-six…

  There it was, four hundred and seventy-three. James hesitated before sitting down, feeling a shudder of the dead man’s presence. On the desk were two books, as if their reader had simply stepped away for a cup of coffee. As James sat down, he felt certain: it was something Lund had found in these books that had made him half-crazed with fear — and set him on the path to his death.

  James picked up the first volume, which appeared to be an anthology, a series of short papers on eugenics. He flicked through it, turning the pages fast, desperate to find something he might latch onto. Maddeningly, there was neither a contents page nor list of contributors, nor any kind of printing history. Perhaps this was not a published book at all, but rather a collection of monographs that some institution — maybe Yale itself — had bound together.

  There was, however, no shortage of familiar names. Indeed, to James’s surprise, most of the authors seemed to be drawn from socialist circles back home. He had heard half of them lecture in person; the other half he had read. Here was George Bernard Shaw, arguing that if democracy were to be saved it would be by a Democracy of Supermen: The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of man. James skipped over the next bit, picking out only the sentence in which Shaw argued that the overthrow of the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman.