Darwin in Love

Norman Lock

�� He had been dead many years when he finally arrived in Africa.� Long enough to devolve into an egg custard, he said.� A blancmange.� Though meant in jest, I thought his remark tasteless and told him so.� Humph! he peeved, tugging at his beard.�

�� I ought to have no earthly existence at all,� Darwin continued in that smug way of his.� �After all I�ve been through.�

�� My friend Pennington is also dead,� I told him, hoping to puncture the inflated opinion he had of himself.�

�� Yes, I met the gentleman.�

�� Where?� I asked suspiciously.

�� (You recall I returned Pennington to the wild forest people in the condition I had found him: rather worse for wear -- he was a corpse after all! -- and, if not talkative, glumly capable of speech if incapable of satisfying my curiosity concerning the hereafter.)�

�� Where did you meet him?� I repeated, nudging him with the toe of my boot from his rapt contemplation of the dirt.��

�� In the Sweet-by-and-by,� said Darwin -- maliciously, for I knew him to be an unrepentant materialist, who had given his name to a pernicious and irreligious science.� �Outside time, where all times are one and the equality of death places everyone on an equal footing.�

�� Pennington would have nothing to do with you,� I sneered.� �He is a lady�s man.�

�� Shit!� said Darwin, and snuffled disagreeably.

�� Pardon me?� I asked, ready to take offense.

�� I have mistaken this dried rhino dung for a bit of Paleozoic stratum.�� He snuffled a second time.� �My nose is not what it used to be.�

�� Did you see Pennington in the forest?� I demanded.

�� Here and there,� said Darwin.� �Here, there, and everywhere!�

�� And he brayed a laugh that set my hairs on end!

�� I should like to kill you,� I told him in all sincerity, �if it were only still possible.�

�� All things are possible ...� he said.� �But not that!� he hastened to add.

�� I sighed and, hearing the silver bell announce the cocktail hour, turned on my heel and left him to his dung.

�� I met the most annoying man.�

�� Oh?� Colette said, allowing a long blue plume of cigarette smoke to leak from her mouth.

�� My eyes watered the way they always did in the presence of strong tobacco.� (Siggy�s cigars are the worst, and I insisted that my analysis be conducted in plein-air.)

�� Charles Darwin,� I said.

�� I thought he was dead.�

�� His ideas persist and, with them, the man.�

�� The elegant sophism pleased me immensely, and I looked to her for admiration.� She withheld it, absorbed as she was in the ember at the end of her Abdullah.

�� I sat at the bar and developed my idea: those who leave us, finally, with a body of work -- philosophical, scientific, poetical -- seem to be with us always, seem ... familiar, as if they not only breathed air yet, but breathed the same air as we.� It is this feeling that might best describe immortality.� But what of those who leave nothing behind? I asked myself anxiously; for I was sure to be one of them.� Are we to be cheated of eternity simply because our brains are not so evolved as the more gifted among us?� Would God (or, if not God, the universe) be so undemocratic?� So ... elitist?

�� I was angry.� At the injustice of it all, which continued outside time as it does inside it.� I picked up my double-barreled Holland and let fly at the King, his portrait which hung over the bar.

�� Colette jumped inside her dress.

�� The barman picked up a decorative Masai spear and flung it at me, �for indignities against His Majesty.�

�� Pritchett, chief of the Mombasa constabulary, materialized with a squad of handsome askari policemen, all creased khakis and polished shoes.

�� It was only an effigy!� I insisted, referring to the King�s blasted portrait.

�� I was standing before the judge, trying to suppress the urge to laugh at his judicial wig, which, for some reason, was in motion atop his head like a hedgehog.� Perhaps the wig (a �peruke�) was animated by his Lordship�s fury.��

�� It was only an effigy,� I repeated.

�� While my lawyer began my defense, I elaborated on the vexed relationship of an image to a thing, a metaphor to its referent and so on.� Symbolic language is something I have always thought a good deal about.� I don�t know why.� Anna claimed it was a waste of time -- my obsession with semiotics, as it has come to be called.� She called it �a fucking bore,� preferring pinochle and sex.� Though I could never work up much interest in card games, I like sex, quite a lot; but one cannot always be humping -- as Quigley observed.� From time to time one must think, of this I am certain.� Watching his Lordship bridle impatiently against the ermine restraints of due process, my thoughts returned to his wig.� Why should I be fascinated, I asked myself, by words like �peruke� and ... �antimacassar�-- for the first quite naturally suggests the second?� There must be more instructive things to think about.� Sigmund thinks about the unconscious mind; Albert, gravity and relativity; the Wright brothers, about the curve of a wing.� And now here is Darwin, thinking even in death about sedimentary rocks and whatnot.� And Colette -- what is she thinking as she sits in the sultry courtroom, waiting for judgment to be pronounced on me?� Ah, the boy pulling the punkah!� We are, all of us, true to our natures.

�� I rose, cleared my throat, and launched myself into the proceedings.

�� I would like to say, by way of extenuation, a word about nature and how it rules us cradle to grave and� -- with a nod to Darwin, who just then was peering in at the window -- �beyond.�

�� Silence!� screamed the judge, who was in no mood for intellectual subtleties.� �I have had you before me on two previous occasions,� he said sternly.� �Once for creating a public disturbance by parading the corpse of your friend Pennington --�

�� A fetish!� I interrupted.�

�� Again, the judge adjured me to silence.

�� And a second time for the murder of the Bishop of Mombasa.�

�� The Bishop stood and showed himself, the marks my fingers had left on his neck still visible.

�� Not proved!� my lawyer objected.

�� He is the man!� the Bishop screeched, shaking an accusatory finger at me.� �He is my murderer!�

�� The Bishop�s words created an immediate sensation in the courtroom.�

�� Inadmissible!� my lawyer shouted above the din.� �The words of a ghost have no weight in jurisprudence.�� (I closed my eyes and watched as the Bishop�s words rose through the ceiling, each a gaudy-colored balloon reminding me of lingerie.� Oh, I was enjoying myself!)� And then my lawyer quoted Hamlet:

�� The spirit that I have seen

�� May be the devil, and the devil hath power

�� T� assume a pleasing shape ....�

�� Considering that the Bishop�s shape -- quick or dead -- was far from pleasing, I let my eyes rove until they came to rest, happily, on someone whose was.

�� Colette.�

�� Will I become her lover? I wondered.�

�� I could have sent you to the gallows,� said Darwin with characteristic smugness.� �I was a witness to the Bishop�s murder -- deserve it though he might.� The view from the next evolutionary rung is excellent.�

�� I remarked that his testimony would have been as inadmissible as the victim�s, both lacking credibility in their present -- highly dubious -- state.

�� Yours, even less credible,� I added brutally.

�� Why do you say that?� he asked, offended.

�� Because you are an atheist and therefore unable to swear by Holy Writ with any persuasion.�

�� But I am a great man!� he objected.� �I am a member of the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences!�

�� Was,� I reminded him, exulting in my cruelty.� �Was a member.�

�� I was buried in Westminster Abbey!� A rare distinction!�

�� Are.� You are buried in Westminster Abbey, and I wish you would return there at once.�

�� He crumpled, like a wounded rhino in mid-charge.

�� I don�t mean to be unkind,� I said, relenting.� �But I�ve had a bellyful of great men!� Africa is a Mecca for them!� And it has been my fate to meet them -- one and all.�� I sighed.� �You can have no idea how wearisome that is: to be subjected, morning, noon, and night to the genius of others -- to their eccentricities.� Their funny little ways.� Is it any wonder I�ve become a drunkard -- a laughingstock from one end of the continent to the other?�

�� I was, by now, crying in my beer.� Or, rather, sobbing into my gin -- the little glass of it that sat quietly and peremptorily before me on the bar of the Mombasa Hotel.

�� Darwin was embarrassed.

�� What do you want?� I asked him.� �What is it that you want in Africa?�

�� To find the missing link!� he averred.� �Evidence of the species that once stood between man and ape.� Mediator between the human and the simian world.�

�� Oh, you mean Kong,� I replied. �He showed up several years ago, moped around Mrs. Willoughby�s topiary garden a while, then carried her off.�

�� Off?�

�� Ravished her.� Claimed he couldn�t live without her!� Fellow�s a notorious philanderer.� He may dress like a gentleman, but -- believe me -- he�s not.� I fought a duel with him over Mrs. Willoughby, who was and is the Object of My Desire.� A duel with cigars.� Lost, unfortunately.� I just can�t tolerate strong tobacco.�

�� In your arms life reasserts itself,� I told Colette as we snuggled under the mosquito net.� We were in my room, not far from Freud�s office on Queen Victoria Street.� In my anxiety I took courage in his nearness.� �Desire beats up inside me, and death retreats.�

�� I was sincere.� I did feel the icy grip of death let go as Colette rummaged me.� Death let go its hand and retreated, although only a little way.� I saw it standing in the corner of the room where the shadows were thickest.

�� My ch�ri,� she breathed into my ear, moistening it with her tender words.

�� I studied her as I had not done a woman since Anna, in Dayton, among the oiled chains and lamps at the back of the Wright brothers� bicycle shop.� My fingertips read the formations of hips, buttocks, and bone, the pelvic estuary, the mounds of her breasts.� (Oh, sweet to be buried there!)� In return her hands traced butte and plain; her lips, brushing mine, banished doubt; and with her hair she swept away a bitter unhappiness.��

�� It is the geology of love,� said Darwin, for whom there could be no secrets.

�� Colette was asleep, and he had stepped out of the closet to speak to me.

�� The lover digs and, digging, discovers his lost self in the beloved.� Digs with a spade soft as feathers, down through the sediment of time and habit until the shining ore of youth is uncovered.� To be gloried in.�

�� The sight of our love-making had temporarily aroused his long insensate body and with it a Swinburnian rapture.

�� I wish I were a boy again, in Shrewsbury, undressing a girl for the first time behind the hayricks.�� He lifted the mosquito net and looked at Colette.� �She�s beautiful,� he said, and in his voice I heard the tremolo of desire.� And then he sighed for, being one of the dead, he knew the fate of every living thing on earth.�

�� Geological forces are marking her, eroding her.� This lovely flesh will press against the sheets of time and leave its fossil record there.� An invalid in the Palais-Royal Hotel, she will climb into her last bed, in Paris, on August 3, 1954.� Soon, no one will be living who remembers her face or these sweet hills.�� He reached out a hand to touch her breast, hesitated, and in that hesitation I saw the struggle of non-being to enter the mortal world.� He withdrew his hand, sadly.

�� Alas!� he said, for he was a Victorian after all and entitled to his anachronisms.

�� Prince Kong is in town,� I said, closing the mosquito net over Colette�s nakedness.� �I suspect he�s come for her.�

�� Darwin was incensed.

�� I�ll castrate the rapscallion!� he shouted.� �I�ll display his pickled member to the great British public!� The indignities suffered by the Elephant Man will be as nothing next to his!��

�� I led him outside onto the balcony to calm him with a view of the busy street.� But he would not be calmed.

�� Darwin was in love.

�� You�ve made a new conquest,� I told Colette as we were eating our breakfast in the Mombasa Hotel Grille.

�� Oh?� she asked, buttering her toast.

�� Charles Darwin.�

�� Such a dreary man.�

�� Where is your novelist�s curiosity?� I taunted her.

�� Nothing could induce me to satisfy it with him!�

�� And in the crunching of a piece of toast, I heard the bones of past lovers.

�� Just then, Kong appeared, dressed as he had been for the abduction of Mrs. Willoughby: tuxedo, top hat, spats, and yellow gloves -- the very image of an effete dandy.� If I didn�t know him to be dangerous, I would have laughed.� He bowed mockingly at me and then, setting eyes on Colette, swaggered over to our table.

�� I give you back your Mrs. Willoughby,� he smirked.� �She no longer interests me.� But this --.�� He took Colette�s hand and kissed it.� �This lovely lady is of supreme interest.�

�� Colette yawned and took her hand away.

�� Kong�s lips retreated in a sneer, uncovering his formidable teeth.

�� We shall see,� he said imperiously, pulling off his gloves.

�� There is someone who would like to know you better,� I said with happy spite.

�� And who might that be?�

�� Charles Darwin.�

�� That ass!� he snarled.� �Absurd to think I could have anything in common with you or your cretinous kind!� �He stood and beat his breast.� �I am the culmination, the flowering and highest expression of my species -- a species infinitely superior to you poor, bald, sexually repressed humans!�

�� In his indignation he would have leapt onto the chandelier if I had not restrained him.

�� We are absolutely not related!� he shouted.

�� Evidently, evolution was a sore point with him, too.

�� Colette was amused.

�� So mankind did not descend from the monkeys?� she asked.

�� Kong composed himself and, after a moment, replied haughtily: �Insofar as man is a degenerate of my race -- yes, he can be said to have descended.� Apes are perfect in the way anything is perfect that is completed.� As you still struggle to be.�

�� He pulled on his gloves and, turning to Colette, icily concluded: �If men and monkeys are related, it is -- I assure you -- only distantly and not a family connection we are pleased to acknowledge.�

�� He�s a very virile man,� said Colette admiringly.

�� He�s not a man.� He�s a beast!�

�� I was annoyed.� Kong had ruined one love affair, and I was determined not to let him spoil my chances with Colette.

�� All men are beasts,� she replied.

�� Knowing full well the truth of this, I was momentarily silenced.� I took advantage of the silence to unbutton her blouse.� If all men are beasts, I might as well behave beastly.

�� Not now, I�m writing!� she scolded.

�� Why don�t you use a typewriter?�

�� The machine isn�t sensuous.�

�� I caressed her.

�� Nothing is more sensuous than a devoted lover,� I whispered.

�� She shook her head.

�� Words,� she said.� �Words are the most sensuous thing of all.�

�� (How I hate writers and their paradoxes!)

�� I lay on the bed and sulked while her pen scratched, scratched, scratched through the hot afternoon.

�� Kong has debauched Mrs. Willoughby,� I said.

�� Colette smiled.

�� I closed my eyes and slept.

�� And woke to find her gone.

�� I envy him,� I said.

�� It is always so,� Darwin replied wistfully.� �The more evolved species yearns nostalgically for its primitive ancestor.� The fish dreams of plankton, indolent in sunlight.� The salamander, of a worm eating its way through the chocolate earth.� Modern men long to exchange their politics and poetry, their brass bands and flying-machines for the frank and sauntering ways of animals.�

�� And as if he had sailed all the way from St. Louis in order to illustrate this very point, Cromwell Dixon passed overhead in his cigar-shaped blimp.

�� What wouldn�t he give to be a bird!� said Darwin.� �Even an archaeopteryx winging through empty Jurassic skies.�

�� Cromwell waved to us, and we returned his greeting, wishing him well though he looked awkward and ridiculous above the streets of Mombasa.� A foolish, flimsy poem of flight.

�� What do you long for?� I asked Darwin as an unaccustomed tenderness rose up in me.�

�� The creature from which I have descended,� he answered.� �A boy in Shrewsbury.� A young man in Tierra del Fuego and Port Desire.� An old man retired happily in Kent.� I envy the living.�

�� I met Colette at the bar.� She had been with Darwin.� She had been curious, after all, to know him better.�

�� From the point of view of the novelist,� she said; but I suspected her curiosity was that of a woman for a man -- a genius, after all, of immense experience and renown.

�� He had, she said, disappointed.

�� He had, she said, no romance.

�� They had stood looking out to sea. The water hissed and sighed. The moon was a bronze parenthesis; the black sky, dusted with stars.

�� She invited him to look at the moon, but he looked at shells instead -- �the ocean�s broken crockery.�

�� The stars! she pleaded, but he was transfixed by what lay under his feet.

�� I am no romantic,� he said.

�� But doesn�t the lovely Mombasa night move you?� she demanded.

�� I can no longer be moved,� he replied.

�� Sadly,� she told me.� �So that I pitied him.�

�� She had taken his hand.� He permitted it.

�� His hand was cold,� she told me.

�� What did you expect?� I asked angrily.

�� Why are you angry?�

�� I shrugged.� I didn�t know.

�� She took my hand.� She wanted to feel its warmth.� She was suddenly afraid.� The shadows in the corners of the room were uncommonly dark.� Night pressed against the window as if wanting to get in.� At the far end of the bar, someone began to cry.� I felt the old anxiety.� I gulped down my gin.� And another, �for courage.�� And then, holding each other�s hands, we hurried upstairs to my room to forget.

[email protected]

Click on "Back Issues" in the home page to see other irreverent Norman Lock stories.

Home