Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [94]
“Oh, sure, you bet.”
The warrior who had been telling of feeding five thousand Tatars, of receiving a degree from a Chinese university and refusing a decoration from quite a good Balkan king, looked affectionately on his band of one disciple and demanded, “Was it all right — was it? Did they like it? So hot tonight, and I been lecturing nine time a week — Des Moines, Fort Dodge, LaCrosse, Elgin, Joliet [but he pronounced it Zho-lee-ay] and — I forget. Was it all right? Did they like it?”
“Simply corking! Oh, they just ate it up! Honestly, I’ve never enjoyed anything so much in my life!”
The prophet crowed, “Come! I buy a drink. As a hygienist, I war on alcohol. In excessive quantities it is almost as bad as coffee or even ice cream soda. But as one who is fond of talking, I find a nice long whisky and soda a great solvent of human idiocy. Is there a cool place with some Pilsener here in Detroit — no; where am I tonight?— Minneapolis?”
“I understand there’s a good beer-garden. And we can get the trolley right near here.”
Sondelius stared at him. “Oh, I have a taxi waiting.”
Martin was abashed by this luxury. In the taxi-cab he tried to think of the proper things to say to a celebrity.
“Tell me, Doctor, do they have city health boards in Europe?”
Sondelius ignored him. “Did you see that girl going by? What ankles! What shoulders! Is it good beer at the beer-garden? Have they any decent cognac? Do you know Courvoisier 1865 cognac? Oof! Lecturing! I swear I will give it up. And wearing dress clothes a night like this! You know, I mean all the crazy things I say in my lectures, but let us now forget being earnest, let us drink, let us sing ‘Der Graf von Luxemburg,’ let us detach exquisite girls from their escorts, let us discuss the joys of ‘Die Meistersinger,’ which only I appreciate!”
In the beer-garden the tremendous Sondelius discoursed of the Cosmos Club, Halle’s investigation of infant mortality, the suitability of combining benedictine and apple-jack, Biarritz, Lord Haldane, the Doane–Buckley method of milk examination, George Gissing, and homard thermidor. Martin looked for a connection between Sondelius and himself, as one does with the notorious or with people met abroad. He might have said, “I think I met a man who knows you,” or “I have had the pleasure of reading all your articles,” but he fished with “Did you ever run into the two big men in my medical school — Winnemac — Dean Silva and Max Gottlieb?”
“Silva? I don’t remember. But Gottlieb — you know him? Oh!” Sondelius waved his mighty arms. “The greatest! The spirit of science! I had the pleasure to talk with him at McGurk. He would not sit here bawling like me! He makes me like a circus clown! He takes all my statements about epidemiology and shows me I am a fool! Ho, ho, ho!” He beamed, and was off on a denunciation of high tariff.
Each topic had its suitable refreshment. Sondelius was a fantastic drinker, and zinc-lined. He mixed Pilsener, whisky, black coffee, and a liquid which the waiter asserted to be absinthe. “I should go to bed at midnight,” he lamented, “but it is a cardinal sin to interrupt good talk. Yoost tempt me a little! I am an easy one to be tempted! But I must have five hours’ sleep. Absolute! I lecture in-it’s some place in Iowa — tomorrow evening. Now that I am past fifty, I cannot get along with three hours as I used to, and yet I have found so many new things that I want to talk about.”
He was more eloquent than ever; then he was annoyed. A surly-looking man at the next table listened and peered, and laughed at them. Sondelius dropped from Haffkine’s cholera serum to an irate:
“If that fellow stares at me some more, I am going over and kill him! I am a peaceful man, now that I am not so young, but I do not like starers. I will go and argue with him. I will yoost hit him a little!”
While the waiters came rushing, Sondelius charged the man, threatened