Tales of the Black Widowers - Asimov Isaac - Страница 46

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Atwood said, "Two bishops are shown in one of the illustrations to the first chapter."

"That's Tenniel's work," said Henry, "not Carroll's. Now isn't the total absence of the Bishop a curious omission?"

"I don't know," said Avalon slowly. "Lewis Carroll, a thorough-going Victorian, probably feared giving offense to the Church."

"Isn't it curious to have him go so far in avoiding offense?"

"Well, supposing it is?" asked Halsted.

Henry said, "I think it possible that if Mr. Atwood checks the four bishops of his set, a set which Mr. Sanders knew Mr. Atwood cherished and would neither sell, give away, or lose, he will probably find the piece of film. If the head comes off, he should look inside. If the head doesn't come off, pull off the piece of felt it stands on."

There was an uncomfortable silence. "That's farfetched, Henry," said Trumbull.

"Perhaps not, sir," said Henry. "Mr. Sanders has more than once been described as having a raucous sense of humor. He teased Mr. Atwood constantly about his religion. Perhaps this final message is another way of continuing the joke. You are an Episcopalian, Mr. Atwood, and I suppose you know what the word means."

"It's from the Greek word for bishop," said Atwood, half choking.

"I imagine, then," said Henry, "Mr. Sanders might think it funny to hide the message in a bishop."

Atwood started to his feet. "I think I had better go home."

"I'll take you," said Halsted.

"I think the snow has stopped," said Henry, "but drive carefully."

This, in a way, is a twice-told tale.

At a time before I had begun the Black Widowers series, I was asked by Union Carbide Corporation to write a short mystery without a solution for a contest they were running for their employees, who were to supply solutions, with myself making the final judgment on excellence.

Well, I wrote the short mystery, which was rather like the story you have just read. The contest was carried through successfully (two other writers also supplied short mysteries) and all was well.

However, I was made restless by the fact that the short mystery I wrote was never published-except on the book jacket of an edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was given out to the contest applicants. That seemed a waste to me, and I abhor literary waste. It was especially annoying since the story appeared without my solution.

So I completely rewrote the story, lengthening it a good deal, placing it against the Black Widower background, and now I feel ever so much better. Especially since now my solution is included.

The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers had reached the point where little was left of the mixed grill save for an occasional sausage and a markedly untouched piece of liver on the plate of Emmanuel Rubin-and it was then that voices rose in Homeric combat.

Rubin, undoubtedly infuriated by the presence of liver at all, was saying, even more flatly than was usual for him, "Poetry is sound. You don't look at poetry. I don't care whether a culture emphasizes rhyme, alliteration, repetition, balance, or cadence, it all comes down to sound."

Roger Halsted never raised his voice, but one could always tell the state of his emotions by the color of his high forehead. Right now, it was a deep pink, the color extending past the line that had once marked hair. He said, "What's the use of making generalizations, Manny? No generalization can hold generally without an airtight system of axiomatics to begin with. Literature-"

"If you're going to tell me about figurative verse," said Rubin body, "save your breath. That's Victorian nonsense."

"What's figurative verse?" asked Mario Gonzalo lazily. "Is he making that up, Jeff?" He added a touch to the tousled hair in his careful caricature of the banquet guest, Waldemar Long, who, since the dinner had begun, had eaten in a somber silence, but was obviously following every word.

"No," said Geoffrey Avalon judiciously, "though I wouldn't put it past Manny to make something up if that were the only way he could win an argument. Figurative verse is verse in which the words or lines are arranged typographically in such a way as to produce a visual image that reinforces the sense. 'The Mouse's Tail' in Alice in Wonderland is the best-known example."

Halsted's soft voice was unequal to the free-for-all and he methodically beat his spoon against the water goblet till the decibels had simmered down.

He said, "Let's be reasonable. The subject under discussion is not poetry in general, but the limerick as a verse form. My point is this-I'll repeat it, Manny-that the worth of a limerick is not dictated by its subject matter. It's easier-"

James Drake stubbed out his cigarette, twitched his small grizzled mustache, and said in his hoarse voice, "Why do you call a dirty limerick dirty? The Supreme Court will get you."

Halsted said, "Because it's a two-syllable word with a meaning you all understand. What do you want me to say? Sexual-excretory-blasphemous-and-miscellaneous-generally-irreverent?"

Avalon said, "Go on, Roger. Go on. Make your point and don't let them needle you." And, from under his luxuriant eyebrows, he frowned austerely at the table generally. "Let him talk."

"Why?" said Rubin. "He has nothing to… Okay, Jeff. Talk, Roger."

"Thank you all," said Halsted, in the wounded tone of one who has finally succeeded in having his wrong recognized. "The worth of a limerick rests in the unpredictability of the last line and in the cleverness of the final rhyme. In fact, irreverent content may seem to have value in itself and require less cleverness-and produce a less worthwhile limerick, as limerick. Now it is possible to have the rhyme masked by the orthographical conventions."

"What?" said Gonzalo. "Spelling," said Avalon.

"And then," said Halsted, "in seeing the spelling and having that instant of delay in getting the sound, you intensify the enjoyment. But under those conditions you have to see the limerick. If you just recite it, the excellence is lost."

"Suppose you give us an example," said Drake.

"I know what he means," said Rubin loudly. "He's going to rhyme M.A. and C.D.-Master of Arts and Caster of Darts."

"That's an example that's been used," admitted Halsted, "but it's extreme. It takes too long to catch on and amusement is drowned in irritation. As it happens, I've made up a Limerick while we were having the argument-"

And now, for the first time, Thomas Trumbull entered this part of the discussion. His tanned and wrinkled face twisted into a dark scowl and he said, "The hell you did. You made it up yesterday and you engineered this whole silly nonsense so you could recite it. If it's one of your Iliad things, I'll personally kick you out of here."

"It's not the Iliad," said Halsted. "I haven't been working on that recently. It's no use my reciting this one, of course. I'll write it down and pass it around."

He wrote in dark block letters on an unused napkin:

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