The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [52]
Recollections of what led to this state thumped into my consciousness like barbed arrows of shame. My outward winces and muffled groans as I lay there merely signified deeper, more nebulous hurts. I could see that my life with its claims to probity, high-mindedness, community spirit, and general gravitas had begun to unravel. The moral high ground to which I aspired had turned into a slippery slope.
It began the night before with the arrival of Ridley in a celebratory mood and a bottle of single-malt of the kind Alphus particularly likes. What we were celebrating was never made clear, not that it mattered. We began, slowly, even decorously. One doesn’t “do shots” with Lagavulin; one sips it slowly, appreciatively. Even I, no lover of Scotch, could appreciate this distillation of barley to its essence of pale gold. Besides, signing means that your hands are not free. And my friends were in a talkative mood.
Alphus put his glass down after a long, deliberative sip to explain how Lagavulin is an island malt made with the local grain, peat, and water. How it was then aged in old wine casks permeable to the sea air that wafts into the storage sheds, lending the final liquor its subtle tincture of iodine. He was required to spell out this last word as I certainly had no idea what he was signing.
Indeed, our evening began as a quite civilized little party in the living room, which is the grandest space in the house with several elegant antiques, a Turkish rug, and a chandelier fashioned of Lalique glass early in the last century.
Alphus had dressed for the occasion in his longest trousers, which came just below the knees, a long-sleeved pin-striped shirt, and his special sandals.
I should mention that neither Alphus nor Ridley handles alcohol very well. Not that I should talk. I soon switched to martinis, a drink Alphus dismisses as tasting like “distilled piss.” It wasn’t long before their sips of malt turned into shots with far less signage about complexity and finishes.
Ridley, slurring his gestured words, recited the Porter’s speech from MacBeth about the effects of drink. It took me a line or two to catch on. Then I chimed in to make it a duet of signs and voice, “… Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him to a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.”
Which we all applauded and raised our glasses.
Alphus, who grows bossy under the sway of drink, insisted on playing over and over his favorite piece of music, which is Ravel’s Bolero. Again and again and again until, still echoing in my hurting head like an aural nightmare, I hear the repetition within the repetition within the repetition.
But I think I understood his fixation when he explained how it came about. He told us that after the procedure that allowed more blood flow to his brain, Bolero was the first piece of classical music that he experienced. “I thought my head would explode. I thought my heart would collapse. My whole being resonated as it had never done before. It was the sound that led me out of my chimphood and into whatever it is I am now.”
The arrival of large amounts of Chinese food that I had ordered by phone while still relatively sober did little to slow our collective derangement. I had gotten Alphus his own paper boxes of the stuff as he has the annoying habit of fishing out the choice bits with his long hairy fingers and then dosing the rest with so much soy sauce as to render it inedible. I made a large pot of scented tea to go with the food, not that it did much to dent the momentum of our inebriation. I was still tasting that collation in sour eructations a day later.
Outwardly calm and even serene most of the time, Alphus,