The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [108]
“Freddie was shooting blanks. He had a vasectomy years ago.”
“Just like a nihilist would,” I said, stopping to take her in my arms. “You’re sure you’re pregnant?”
“I am. I’m seeing the doctor, but I know I am. If it’s a girl I want to call her Elsbeth.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
At the same time, I knew I would peruse the autopsy report of Mr. Bain, where the fact of his vasectomy might be listed. What strange beings we be.
It hasn’t been all roses between Diantha and me, but the thorns have been few and predictable. It would seem that I am playing Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. But cultural transmission, so to speak, goes two ways. It’s not simply a matter of, say, music. Like her mother, Diantha cannot abide Brahms. She can also be casual about meals. She doesn’t like to cook, and I am still leery about ordering prepared food that comes in those white containers.
It also turns out that my nubile Galatea has certain preferences of an intimate nature that test both my capacity for stimulation and the limits of my taste. And while a few eyebrows have been raised regarding our arrangements, I couldn’t care less. Not that I haven’t tried to get Diantha to refrain from referring to me, in public, as “Stud.”
In the wake of all this, I have initiated an ongoing discussion with Izzy Landes, the Reverend Lopes, and Father O’Gould. It could be that I have been seeking a kind of expiation for killing another man, however justified my action was in some lights. We often end up speaking about the nature of evil and the nature of comedy. What intrigues us, I think, is the way comedy relies in large part on pain, mishap, even cruelty.
The good priest has admitted that evolutionary psychology has yet to come up with a credible theory as to why humor developed among Homo sapiens sapiens. It’s not entirely clear, he says, in what ways a good laugh enhances reproductive fitness. For his part, Alfie Lopes concedes that neither of his good books provides much insight. There really isn’t, he notes ruefully, one good joke in either the New or Old Testaments. And as Izzy points out, we can no longer look to Freud in these matters. The Viennese doctor’s work, more often viewed now as “a grand, inadvertent parody of the scientific method,” is more a source of hilarity, however unintended, than an explanation thereof. Increasingly of late we have explored the possibility that comedy is a form of recognition — but of exactly what, I believe, remains a mystery.
And finally, and I mean finally, patient reader, you can imagine (you must imagine) my surprise this afternoon when, as I ruminated over this final entry in my office at the museum, the door opened. In hobbled none other than Corny Chard, missing a couple of limbs, of course. His ruddy face, shagged with a rough beard, beamed with a wild smile. “Norman,” he said, clanking over and sitting down in the chair before my desk, his crutch dropping to the floor with a clatter. All the while I stood, speechless with incredulity, and watched as his eyes lit up with a demonic, triumphant glee. “Norman … Norman. Man, do I have a story to tell.”