CHAPTER TEN

 

This Friday, Mr Stoyte's afternoon in town had been exceptionally uneventful.  Nothing untoward had occurred during the preceding week.  In the course of his various meetings and interviews nobody had said or done anything to make him lose his tempter.  The reports on business conditions had been very satisfactory.  The Japs had bought another hundred thousand barrels of oil.  Copper was up two cents.  The demand for bentonite was definitely increasing.  True, applications for bank credit had been rather disappointing; but the influenza epidemic had raised the weekly turnover of the Pantheon to a figure well above the average.

      Things went so smoothly that Mr Stoyte was through with all his business more than an hour before he had expected.  Finding himself with time to spare, he stopped on the way home at his agent's, to find out what was happening on the estate.  The interview lasted only a few minutes - long enough, however, to put Mr Stoyte in a fury that sent him rushing out to the car.

      'Drive to Mr Propter's,' he ordered with a peremptory ferocity as he slammed the door.

      What the hell did Bill Propter think he was doing? he kept indignantly asking himself.  Shoving his nose into other people's business.  And all on account of those lousy bums who had come to pick oranges!  All for those tramps, those stinking, filthy hobos!  Mr Stoyte had a peculiar hatred for the ragged hordes of transients on whom he depended for the harvesting of his crops, a hatred that was more than the rich man's ordinary dislike of the poor.  Not that he didn't experience that complex mixture of fear and physical disgust, of stifled compassion and shame transformed by repression into chronic exasperation.  He did.  But over and above this common and generic dislike for poor people, he was moved by other hatreds of his own.  Mr Stoyte was a rich man who had been poor.  In the six years between the time when he ran away from his father and grandmother in Nashville and the time when he had been adopted by the black sheep of the family, his Uncle Tom, in California, Jo Stoyte had learned, as he imagined, everything there was to be known about being poor.  Those years had left him with an ineradicable hatred for the circumstances of poverty and at the same time an ineradicable contempt for all those who had been too stupid, or too weak, or too unlucky, to climb out of the hell into which they had fallen or been born.  The poor were odious to him, not only because they were potentially a menace to his position in society, not only because their misfortunes demanded a sympathy he did not wish to give, but also because they reminded him of what he himself had suffered in the past, and at the same time because the fact that they were still poor was a sufficient proof of their contemptibleness and his own superiority.  And since he had suffered what they were now suffering, it was only right that they should go on suffering what he had suffered.  Also, since their continued poverty proved them contemptible, it was proper that he, who was now rich, should treat them in every way as the contemptible creatures they had shown themselves to be.  Such was the logical of Mr Stoyte's emotions.  And here was Bill Propter, running counter to this logic by telling the agent that they oughtn't to take advantage of the glut of transient labour to force down wages; that they ought, on the contrary, to raise them - raise them, if you please, at a time when these bums were swarming over the State like a plague of Mormon crickets!  And not only that; they ought to build accommodation for them - cabins, like the ones that crazy fool Bill had built for them himself; two-roomed cabins at six or seven hundred dollars apiece - for bums like that, and their women, and those disgusting children who were so filthy dirty he wouldn't have them in his hospital; not unless they were really dying of appendicitis or something - you couldn't refuse them then, of course.  But meanwhile, what the hell did Bill Propter think he was doing?  And it wasn't the first time either that he'd tried to interfere.  Gliding through the twilight of the orange groves, Mr Stoyte kept striking the palm of his left hand with his clenched right fist.

      'I'll let him have it,' he whispered to himself.  'I'll let him have it.'

      Fifty years before, Bill Propter had been the only boy in the school who, even though he was the older and stronger, didn't make fun of him for being fat.  They had met again when Bill was teaching at Berkeley and he himself had made good in the real estate game and had just gone into oil.  Partly in gratitude for the way Bill Propter had acted when they were boys, partly also in order to display his power, to redress the balance of superiority in his own favour, Jo Stoyte had wanted to do something handsome for the young assistant professor.  But in spite of his modest salary and the two or three miserable thousand dollars a year his father had left him, Bill Propter hadn't wanted anything done for him.  He had seemed genuinely grateful, he had been perfectly courteous and friendly; but he just didn't want to come in on the ground floor of Consol Oil - didn't want to because, as he kept explaining, he had all he needed and preferred not to have anything more.  Jo's effort to redress the balance of superiority had failed.  Failed disastrously, because, by refusing his offer, Bill had done something which, though he called him a fool for doing it, compelled Jo Stoyte secretly to admire him more than ever.  Extorted against his will, this admiration bred a corresponding resentment towards its object.  Jo Stoyte felt aggrieved that Bill had given him so many reasons for liking him.  He would have preferred to like him without a reason, in spite of his shortcomings.  But Bill had few shortcomings and many merits, merits which Jo himself did not have and whose presence in Bill he therefore regarded as an affront.  Thus it was that all the reasons for liking Bill Propter were also, in Jo's eyes, equally valid reasons for disliking him.  He continued to call Bill a fool; but he felt him as a standing reproach.  And yet the nature of this standing reproach was such that he liked to be in Bill's company.  It was because Bill had settled down on a ten-acre patch of land in this part of the valley that Mr Stoyte had decided to build his castle on the site where it now stood.  He wanted to be near Bill Propter, even though, in practice, there was almost nothing that Bill could do or say that didn't annoy him.  Today, this chronic exasperation had been fanned by Mr Stoyte's hatred of the transients into a passion of fury.

      'I'll let him have it,' he repeated again and again.

      the car came to a halt, and before the chauffeur could open the door for him, Mr Stoyte had darted out and was hurrying in his determined way, looking neither to right nor left, up the path that led from the road to his old friend's bungalow.

      'Hullo, Jo,' a familiar voice called from the shadow under the eucalyptus trees.

      Mr Stoyte turned, peered through the twilight, then, without a word, hurried towards the bench on which the three men were sitting.  There was a chorus of 'Good evenings' and, as he approached, Pete rose politely and offered him his place.  Ignoring his gesture and his very presence, Mr Stoyte addressed himself immediately to Bill Propter.

      'Why the hell can't you leave my man alone?' he almost shouted.

      Mr Propter looked at him with only a moderate astonishment.  He was used to these outbursts from poor Jo; he had long since divined their fundamental cause and knew by experience how to deal with them.

      'Which man, Jo?' he asked.

      'Bob Hansen, of course.  What do you mean by going to him behind my back?'

      'When I went to you,' said Mr Propter, 'you told me it was Hansen's business.  So I went to Hansen.'

      This was so infuriatingly true that Mr Stoyte could only resort to roaring.  He roared.  'Interfering with him in his work!  What's the idea?'

      'Pete's offering you a seat,' Mr Propter put in.  'Or, if you prefer it, there's an iron chair behind you.  You'd better sit down, Jo.'

      'I'm not going to sit down,' Mr Stoyte bellowed.  'And I want an answer.  What's the idea?'

      'The idea?' Mr Propter repeated in his slow quiet way.  'Well, it's quite an old one, you know.  I didn't invent it.'

      'Can't you answer me?'

      'It's the idea that men and women are human beings.  Not vermin.'

      'Those bums of yours!'

      Mr Propter turned to Pete.  'You may as well sit down again,' he said.

      'Those lousy bums!  I tell you I won't stand it.'

      'Besides,' Mr Propter went on, 'I'm a practical man.  You're not.'

      'Me not practical?' Mr Stoyte echoed with indignant amazement.  'Not practical?  Well, look at the place I live in and then look at this dump of yours.'

      'Exactly.  That proves the point.  You're hopelessly romantic, Jo; so romantic, you think people can work when they haven't had enough to eat.'

      'You're trying to make communists of them.'  The word 'communist' renewed Mr Stoyte's passion and at the same time justified it; his indignation ceased to be merely personal and became righteous.  'You're nothing but a communist agitator.'  His voice trembled, Mr Propter sadly noticed, just as Pete's had trembled half an hour before at the words 'fascist aggression.'  He wondered if the boy had noticed or, having noticed, would take the hint.  'Nothing but a communist agitator,' Mr Stoyte repeated with a crusader's zeal.

      'I thought we were talking about eating,' said Mr Propter.

      'You're stalling!'

      'Eating and working - wasn't that it?'

      'I've put up with you all these years,' Mr Stoyte went on.  'For old times' sake.  But now I'm through.  I'm sick of you.  Talking communism to those bums!  Making the place dangerous for decent people to live in.'

      'Decent?' Mr Propter echoed, and was tempted to laugh, but immediately checked the impulse.  Being laughed at in the presence of Pete and Mr Pordage might goad the poor fellow into doing something irreparably stupid.

      'I'll have you run out of the valley,' Mr Stoyte was roaring.  'I'll see that you're ...' He broke off in the middle of the sentence and stood there for a few seconds in silence, his mouth still open and working, his eyes staring.  That drumming in the ears, that tingling heat in the face - they had suddenly reminded him of his blood-pressure, of Dr Obispo, of death.  Death and that flame-coloured text in his bedroom at home.  Terrible to fall into the hands of the living God - not Prudence's God, of course; the other one, the real one, the God of his father and grandmother.

      Mr Stoyte drew a deep breath, pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his face and neck, then, without uttering another word, turned and began to walk away.

      Mr Propter got up, hurried after him and, in spite of the other's angry motion of recoil, took Mr Stoyte's arm and walked along beside him.

      'I want to show you something, Jo,' he said.  'Something that'll interest you, I think.'

      'I don't want to see it,' said Mr Stoyte between his false teeth.

      Mr Propter paid no attention, but continued to lead him towards the back of the house.  'It's a gadget that Abbot of the Smithsonian has been working on for some time,' he continued.  'A thing for making use of solar energy.'  He interrupted himself for a moment to call back to the others to follow him; then turned again to Mr Stoyte and resumed the conversation.  'Much more compact than anything of the kind that's ever been made before,' he said.  'Much more efficient, too.'  And he went on to describe the system of trough-shaped reflectors, the tubes of oil heated to a temperature of four or five hundred degrees Fahrenheit; the boiler for raising steam, if you wanted to run a low-pressure engine; the cooking-range and water-heater, if you were using it only for domestic purposes.  'Pity the sun's down,' he said, as they stood in front of the machine.  'I'd have liked to show you the way it works the engine.  I've had two horse-power, eight hours a day, ever since I got the thing working last week.  Not bad considering we're still in January.  We'll have her working overtime all summer.'

      Mr Stoyte had intended to persist in his silence - just to show Bill that he was still angry, that he hadn't forgiven him; but his interest in the machine and, above all, his exasperated concern with Bill's idiotic, crackpot notions were too much for him.  'What the hell do you want with two horse-power, eight hours a day?' he asked.

      'To run my electric generator.'

      'But what do you want with an electric generator?  Haven't you got your current wired in from the city?'

      'Of course.  And I'm trying to see how far I can be independent of the city.'

      'But what for?'

      Mr Propter uttered a little laugh.  'Because I believe in Jeffersonian democracy.'

      'What the hell has Jeffersonian democracy to do with it?' said Mr Stoyte with mounting irritation.  'Can't you believe in Jefferson and have your current wired in from the city?'

      'That's exactly it,' said Mr Propter; 'you almost certainly can't.'

      'What do you mean?'

      'What I say,' Mr Propter answered mildly.

      'I believe in democracy too,' Mr Stoyte announced with a look of defiance.

      'I know you do.  And you also believe in being the undisputed boss in all your businesses.'

      'I should hope so!'

      'There's another name for an undisputed boss,' said Mr Propter.  '"Dictator."'

      'What are you trying to get at?'

      'Merely at the facts.  You believe in democracy; but you're at the head of the businesses which have to be run dictatorially.  And your subordinates have to accept your dictatorship because they're dependent on you for their living.  In Russia they'd depend on government officials for their living.  Perhaps you think that's an improvement,' he added, turning to Pete.

      Pete nodded.  'I'm all for the public ownership of the means of production,' he said.  It was the first time he had openly confessed his faith in the presence of his employer; he felt happy at having dared to be a Daniel.

      '"Public ownership of the means of production,"' Mr Propter repeated.  'But unfortunately governments have a way of regarding the individual producers as being parts of the means.  Frankly, I'd rather have Jo Stoyte as my boss than Jo Stalin.  This Jo' (he laid his hand on Mr Stoyte's shoulder), 'this Jo can't have you executed; he can't send you to the Arctic; he can't prevent you from getting a job under another boss.  Whereas the other Jo ...' he shook his head.  'Not that,' he added, 'I'm exactly longing to have even this Jo as my boss.'

      'You'd be fired pretty quick,' growled Mr Stoyte.

      'I don't want any boss,' Mr Propter went on.  'The more bosses, the less democracy.  But unless people can support themselves, they've got to have a boss who'll undertake to do it for them.  So the less self-support, the less democracy.  In Jefferson's day, a great many Americans did support themselves.  They were economically independent.  Independent of government and independent of big business.  Hence the Constitution.'

      'We've still got the Constitution,' said Mr Stoyte.

      'No doubt,' Mr Propter agreed.  'But if we had to make a new Constitution today, what would it be like?  A Constitution to fit the facts of New York and Chicago and Detroit; of United States Steel and the Public Utilities and General Motors and the C.I.O. and the government departments.  What on earth would it be like?' he repeated.  'We respect our old Constitution, but in fact we live under a new one.  And if we want to live under the first, we've got to recreate something like the conditions under which the first was made.  That's why I'm interested in this gadget.'  He patted the frame of the machine.  'Because it may help to give independence to anyone who desires independence.  Not that many do desire it,' he added parenthetically.  'The propaganda in favour of dependence is too strong.  They've come to believe that you can't be happy unless you're entirely dependent on government or centralized business.  But for the few who do care about democracy, who really want to be free in the Jeffersonian sense, this thing may be a help.  If it makes them independent of fuel and power, that's already a great deal.'

      Mr Stoyte looked anxious.  'Do you really think it'll do that?'

      'Why not?' said Mr Propter.  'There's a lot of sunshine running to waste in this part of the country.'

      Mr Stoyte thought of his presidency of the Consol Oil Company.  'It won't be good for the oil business,' he said.

      'I should hate it to be good for the oil business,' Mr Propter answered cheerfully.

      'And what about coal?'  He had an interest in a group of West Virginia mines.  'And the railroads?'  There was that big block of Union Pacific shares that had belonged to Prudence.  'The railroads can't get on without long hauls.  And steel,' he added disinterestedly; for his holdings in Bethlehem Steel were almost negligible.  'What happens to steel if you hurt the railroads and cut down trucking?  You're going against progress,' he burst out in another access of righteous indignation.  'You're turning back the clock.'

      'Don't worry, Jo,' said Mr Propter.  'It won't affect your dividends for quite a long while.  There'll be plenty of time to adjust to the new conditions.'

      'With an admirable effort, Mr Stoyte controlled his temper.  'You seem to figure I can't think of anything but money,' he said with dignity.  'Well, it may interest you to know that I've decided to give Dr Mulge another thirty thousand dollars for his Art School.'  (The decision had been made there and then, for the sole purpose of serving as a weapon in the perennial battle with Bill Propter.)  'And if you think,' he added as an afterthought, 'if you think I'm only concerned with my own interests, read the special World's Fair number of the New York Times.  Read that,' he insisted with the solemnity of a fundamentalist recommending the Book of Revelation.  'You'll see that the most forward-looking men in the country think as I do.'  He spoke with unaccustomed and incongruous unction, in the phraseology of after-dinner eloquence.  'The way of progress is the way of better organization, more service from business, more goods for the consumer!'  Then, incoherently, 'Look at the way a housewife goes to her grocer,' he added, 'and buys a package of some nationally advertised cereal or something.  That's progress.  Not your crackpot idea of doing everything at home with this idiotic contraption.'  Mr Stoyte had reverted completely to his ordinary style.  'You always were a fool, Bill, and I guess you always will be.  And remember what I told you about interfering with Bob Hansen.  I won't stand for it.'  In dramatic silence he walked away; but after taking a few steps he halted and called back over his shoulder, 'Come up to dinner, if you feel like it.'

      'Thanks,' said Mr Propter.  'I will.'

      Mr Stoyte walked briskly towards his car.  He had forgotten about high blood-pressure and the living God and felt all of a sudden unaccountably and unreasonably happy.  It was not that he had scored any notable success in his battle with Bill Propter.  He hadn't; and, what was more, in the process of not scoring a success he had made, and was even half aware that he had made, a bit of a fool of himself.  The source of his happiness was elsewhere.  He was happy, though he would never have admitted the fact, because, in spite of everything, Bill seemed to like him.

      In the car, as he drove back to the castle, he whistled to himself.

      Entering (with his hat on, as usual; for even after all these years he still derived a childish pleasure from the contrast between the palace in which he lived and the proletarian manners he affected), Mr Stoyte crossed the great hall, stepped into the elevator and, from the elevator, walked directly into Virginia's boudoir.

      When he opened the door, the two were sitting at least fifteen feet apart.  Virginia was at the soda-counter, pensively eating a chocolate-and-banana split; seated in an elegant pose on one of the pink satin armchairs, Dr Obispo was in process of lighting a cigarette.

      On Mr Stoyte the impact of suspicion and jealousy was like the blow of a fist directed (for the shock was physical and localized in the midriff) straight to the solar plexus.  His face contracted as though with pain.  And yet he had seen nothing; there was no apparent cause for jealousy, no visible reason, in their attitudes, their actions, their expressions, for suspicion.  Dr Obispo's manner was perfectly easy and natural; and the Baby's smile of startled and delighted welcome was angelic in its candour.

      'Uncle Jo!'  She ran to meet him and threw her arms round his neck.  'Uncle Jo!'

      The warmth of her tone, the softness of her lips, had a magnified effect on Mr Stoyte.  Moved to the point at which he was using the word to the limit of its double connotation, he murmured, 'My Baby!' with a lingering emphasis.  The fact that he should have felt suspicious, even for a moment, of this pure and adorable, this deliciously warm, resilient and perfumed child, filled him with shame.  And even Dr Obispo now heaped coals of fire on his head.

      'I was a bit worried,' he said, as he got up from his chair, 'by the way you coughed after lunch.  That's why I came up here, to make sure of catching you the moment you got in.'  He put a hand in his pocket and, after half drawing out and immediately replacing a little leather-bound volume, like a prayer-book, extracted a stethoscope.  'Prevention's better than cure,' he went on.  'I'm not going to let you get influenza if I can help it.'

      Remembering what a good week they had had at the Beverly Pantheon on account of the epidemic, Mr Stoyte felt alarmed.  'I don't feel  bad,' he said.  'I guess that cough wasn't anything.  Only my old - you know: the chronic bronchitis.'

      'Maybe it was only that.  But all the same, I'd like to listen in.'  Briskly professional,  Dr Obispo hung the stethoscope round his neck.

      'He's right, Uncle Jo,' said the Baby.

      Touched by so much solicitude, and at the same time rather disturbed by the thought that it might perhaps be influenza, Mr Stoyte took off his coat and waistcoat and began to undo his tie.  A moment later he was standing stripped to the waist under the crystals of the chandelier.  Modestly, Virginia retired again to her soda-fountain.  Dr Obispo slipped the ends of the curved nickel tubes of the stethoscope into his ears.  'Take a deep breath,' he said as he pressed the muzzle against Mr Stoyte's chest.  'Again,' he ordered.  'Now cough.'  Looking past that thick barrel of hairy flesh, he could see, on the wall behind the inhabitants of Watteau's mournful paradise as they prepared to set sail for some other paradise, doubtless yet more heartbreaking.

      'Say ninety-nine,' Dr Obispo commanded, returning from the embarkation for Cythera to a near view of Mr Stoyte's thorax and abdomen.

      'Ninety-nine,' said Mr Stoyte.  'Ninety-nine.  Ninety-nine.'

      With professional thoroughness, Dr Obispo shifted the muzzle of his stethoscope from point to point on the curving barrel of flesh before him.  There was nothing wrong, of course, with the old buzzard.  Just the familiar set of râles and wheezes he always had.  Perhaps it would make things a bit more realistic if he were to take the creature down to his office and stick him up in front of the fluoroscope.  But no; he really couldn't be bothered.  And, besides, this farce would be quite enough.

      'Cough again,' he said, planting his instrument among the grey hairs on Mr Stoyte's left pap.  And among other things, he went on to reflect, while Mr Stoyte forced out a succession of artificial coughs, among other things, these old sacks of gut didn't smell too good.  How any young girl could stand it, even for money, he really couldn't imagine.  And yet the fact remained that there were thousands of them who not only stood it, but actually enjoyed it.  Or, perhaps, 'enjoy' was the wrong word.  Because in most cases there probably wasn't any question of enjoyment in the proper, physiological sense of the word.  It all happened in the mind, not in the body.  They loved their old gut-sacks with their heads; loved them because they admired them, because they were impressed by the gut-sack's position in the world, or his knowledge, or his celebrity.  What they slept with wasn't the man; it was a reputation, it was the embodiment of a function.  And then, of course, some of the girls were future models for Mother's Day advertisements; some were little Florence Nightingales, on the look-out for a Crimean War.  In those cases, the very infirmities of their gut-sacks were added attractions.  They had the satisfaction of sleeping not only with a reputation or a stock of wisdom, not only with a federal judgeship, for example, or the presidency of a chamber of commerce, but also and simultaneously with a wounded soldier, with an imbecile child, with a lovely stinking little baby who still made messes in its bed.  Even this cutie (Dr Obispo shot a sideways glance in the direction of the soda-fountain), even this one had something of the Florence Nightingale in her, something of the Gold Star Mother.  (And that in spite of the fact that, with her conscious mind, she felt a kind of physical horror of physical maternity.)  Jo Stoyte was a little bit her baby and her patient; and at the same time, of course, he was a great deal her own private Abraham Lincoln.  Incidentally, he also happened to be the man with the chequebook.  Which was a consideration, of course.  But if he were only that, Virginia wouldn't have been so nearly happy as she obviously was.  The chequebook was made more attractive by being in the hands of a demigod who had to have a nanny to change his diapers.

      'Turn around, please.'

      My Stoyte obeyed.  The back, Dr Obispo reflected, was perceptibly less revolting than the front.  Perhaps because it was less personal.

      'Take a deep breath,' he said; for he was going to play the farce all over again on this new stage.  'Another.'

      Mr Stoyte breathed enormously, like a cetacean.

      'And another,' said Dr Obispo.  'And again,' said Dr Obispo, reflecting as the old man snorted, that his own chief asset was a refreshing unlikeness to this smelly old gut-sack.  She would take him, and take him, what was more, on his own terms.  No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love and a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you.  Just sensuality for its own sake.  The real, essential concrete thing; no less, it went without saying, but also (and this most certainly didn't go without saying; for the bitches were always trying to get you to stick them on pedestals, or be their soul-mates), also no more.  No more, to begin with, out of respect for scientific truth.  He believed in scientific truth.  Facts were facts; accept them as such.  It was a fact, for example, that young girls in the pay of rich old men could be seduced without much difficulty.  It was also a fact that rich old men, however successful at business, were generally so frightened, ignorant and stupid that they could be bamboozled by any intelligent person who chose to try.

      'Say ninety-nine again,' he said aloud.

      'Ninety-nine.  Ninety-nine.'

      Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that they would never find out anything.  That was the fact about old men.  The fact about love was that it consisted essentially of tumescence and detumescence.  So why embroider the fact with unnecessary fictions?  Why not be realistic? Why not treat the whole business scientifically?

      'Ninety-nine,' Mr Stoyte went on repeating, 'Ninety-nine.'

      And then, Dr Obispo went on to reflect, as he listened without interest to the whisperings and crepitations inside the warm, smelly barrel before him, then there were the more personal reasons for preferring to take love unadorned, in the chemically pure condition.  Personal reasons that were also, of course, a fact that had to be accepted.  For it was a fact that he personally found an added pleasure in the imposition of his will upon the partner he had chosen. To be pleasurable, this imposition of will must never be too easy, too much a matter of course.  Which ruled out all professionals.  The partner had to be an amateur and, like all amateurs, committed to the thesis that tumescence and detumescence should always be associated with LOVE, PASSION, SOUL-MATING - all in upper-case letters.  In imposing his will, he imposed the contradictory doctrine, the doctrine of tumescence and detumescence for tumescence's and detumescence's sake.  All he asked was that a partner should give the thesis a practical try-out - however reluctantly, however experimentally, for just this once only; he didn't care.  Just a single try-out.  After that it was up to him.  If he couldn't make a permanent and enthusiastic convert of her, at any rate so far as he was concerned, then the fault was his.

      'Ninety-nine, ninety-nine,' said Mr Stoyte with exemplary patience.

      'You can stop now,' Dr Obispo told him graciously.

      Just one try-out; he could practically guarantee himself success.  It was a branch of applied physiology; he was an expert, a specialist.  The Claude Bernard of the subject.  And talk of imposing one's will!  You began by forcing the girl to accept a thesis that was in flat contradiction to all the ideas she had been brought up with, all the dreams-come-true rigmarole of popular ideology.  Quite a pleasant little victory, to be sure.  But it was only when you got down to the applied physiology that the series of really satisfying triumphs began.  You took an ordinarily rational human being, a good hundred-per-cent American with a background, a position in society, a set of conventions, a code of ethics, a religion (Catholic in the present instance, Dr Obispo remembered parenthetically); you took this good citizen, with rights fully and formally guaranteed by the Constitution, you took her (and perhaps she had come to the place of assignation in her husband's Packard limousine and direct from a banquet, with speeches in honour, say, of Dr Nicholas Murray Butler or the retiring Archbishop of Indianapolis), you took her and you proceeded, systematically and scientifically, to reduce this unique personality to a mere epileptic body, moaning and gibbering under the excruciations of a pleasure for which you, the Claude Bernard of the subject, were responsible and of which you remained the enjoying, but always detached, always ironically amused, spectator.

      'Just a few more deep breaths, if you don't mind.'

      Wheezily Mr Stoyte inhaled, then with a snorting sigh emptied his lungs.