The Uncanny Reader (36 page)

“I can see that I shall have to make a diversion, in order to attempt to establish the distinction between essence and accident. The essence of a thing refers to that which it is in itself, its inner, universal condition; its accidents refer to that which has befallen it accidentally, that, in other words, which has
happened
to it. The essence of a thing is undisturbed by its accidents.”

“It wasn't an accident!” shouted the student in the wheelchair, “I was born without legs!”

“You misunderstand me!” yelled back Dr. Tuberose, “you misunderstand me deliberately and maliciously! That you were born without legs is an accident, essentially you have legs! I will not be provoked! I will not be persecuted!”

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, shaking with fury but also close to tears, he began gathering up his papers and stuffing them into his briefcase. There was a vague consciousness in him that he was crossing some kind of Rubicon, that he was recklessly hurling himself forward into a region whence there is no return, but he did not care, the ardour and impetuosity of his temperament carried him onwards and could not be withstood; and then he was right, right beyond a shadow of doubting, persecuted and provoked and buffeted by the tempests of ill-fortune, but right, right, right … The students were too shocked to move or speak, they sat on in wide-eyed amazement, although a few were tentatively standing up, it was hard to say why. Dr. Tuberose tore out of the lecture hall, made straight for the staff toilet, and plunged his head in a basin of cold water.

He could just not account for this unprovoked attack. He was aware that he was liberal even to a fault, entirely confident that his record was irreproachable. He had always, as it happened, had particularly compassionate feelings and views about the treatment of the limbless. Had he not, as a matter of fact, been directly responsible, through his forceful eloquence at a crucial meeting of the University Council, for the installation of ramps and electrically-operated sliding doors throughout the lecture block—was it not through his caring vigilance that the very ramp existed by which his assailant had ascended to his commanding position above Dr. Tuberose? And was this his reward? More, had he not agitated, unsuccessfully it was true but sincerely, for the removal from the University Library of all shelves higher than three feet from the ground? And how was he now rewarded?

But when at length he emerged from the toilet, everything became instantly and chillingly clear. Little groups of students from his truncated lecture were standing around in animated conversation, there was a general buzz of excited gossip and speculation, there was seriousness and there was laughter, there was a little hilarity but perhaps a great deal more righteous indignation. Around the student in the wheelchair a particularly large and vocal group had gathered, and among them, with a lunge of panic, a stab of recognition, and at the same time a detached, ironical insight, a kind of sigh of inevitability, he identified the little Mephistophelean beard and the brown corduroy jacket of Philip Endymion Pluckrose. Tuberose realised now, with a calm certainty, that all this had been planned long ago. A student had been suborned, his lecture course deliberately sabotaged, and it was, of course, precisely this that McSpale had been plotting with Pluckrose on the afternoon of the departmental meeting.

Tuberose gazed at his enemy with a disgust too deep for words. Pluckrose always looked to him as if he were in disguise, like a spy in a bad comedy film of the fifties. The ascetic cut of his meagre, jet-black hair suggested a renegade monk of the Renaissance, despatched on some obscure and dubious mission to a distant court—an aspiring poisoner, perhaps; while his black trimmed beard gave the impression of being hooked over his ears. The truth, thought Tuberose, was that Pluckrose
was
in disguise: hiding himself, masking the truth of his own malice and hopeless mediocrity, poisoning the minds of the young, poisoning the wells of truth, poisoning them all against Tuberose, the righteous one, the disinterested one, the man of integrity. Pluckrose the poisoner.

There had to be a confrontation, Tuberose knew that, but not yet. Now was not the time. The students were incensed, they had been stirred up against him, bought by Pluckrose, and he could hope for no justice there. But tonight he would speak out—yes, tonight at Cowperthwaite's party. Everybody in the department would be there, everybody who counted, anyway, with one crucial exception. McSpale, he knew, had been obliged to refuse the invitation, or at least had made some excuse, and that was greatly in the favour of Dr. Tuberose. Without McSpale, Pluckrose was nothing, a mere paper tiger, a hand puppet from which the hand had been withdrawn, essentially just a limp rag. In fact, to call Pluckrose a limp rag was to flatter him.

When Tuberose had said what he had to say, Pluckrose would be finished, it would be totally out of the question that he could become Acting Head of the Department, he would be obliged instead to apply for early retirement, and he would be lucky if he got that, very lucky indeed. In fact, he would be much more likely to be up before the University disciplinary committee, a fate normally reserved for only the most hopeless drunks, and he might even have to leave the country. And then, of course, Tuberose would come into his own. His worth would be recognised, his disinterested and fearless exposure of Pluckrose would be widely discussed and favourably assessed, integrity would win through, truth would prevail and poetic sensibility be vindicated, he would be appointed Acting Head of Department, the idea of a personal Chair would be mooted, his book on the Romantic Imagination would be praised by George Steiner, he would succeed McSpale, and so on and so forth.…

*   *   *

What happened to Dr. Tuberose between the truncation of his lecture and the time of his arrival at the Cowperthwaites' party I do not know. He was known not to be a heavy drinker, and had he over-indulged himself on this occasion it would have been quite out of character. On the other hand, a man of his delicate frame, and of a constitution unaccustomed to alcohol, might, I suppose, have been more affected than another by a little Dutch courage. But those present at the party all agreed that Dr. Tuberose did not really appear to be drunk. It is more likely that his susceptible and excitable temperament was agitated by his horribly disturbed night, by the most unfortunate incident which had interrupted so inauspiciously the first in his series of lectures, and by the rather fevered speculations outlined above. He had, besides, been under considerable strain for some time past as a result of his unfortunate domestic circumstances; and that, really, is as much as can be usefully suggested as likely to throw light on what follows.

Everybody enjoyed the little gatherings given once or twice a year by Cowperthwaite and his lovely wife, Aminta. Cowperthwaite was a remarkable man. His favourite word was “teleological,” though he was pretty keen also on “ontological,” “epistemological,” and “taxonomy.” He was always calling his children “darling” and his wife “sweetheart,” and sometimes he would even address the family dog, Demiurge, as “darling.” Aminta was not quite as intelligent as her husband, though not, of course, by any means unintelligent. Perhaps for this reason, she was a stabilising influence on the wilder flights of Cowperthwaite's speculative conjectures. She spoke to him habitually in a teasing tone which conveyed that for all his little weaknesses there was really no one in the world quite so wonderful as he. That is not to say that he was not at times an embarrassment to her: when on one dire occasion that evening he spoke of the “Heraclitean flux,” her reaction was such as to suggest that she had mistaken that ontological phenomenon for a form of dysentery.

Demiurge, who is to play a not unimportant part in this tale of truth, was a cross between a spaniel and a corgi, something that can't possibly be imagined until it has been seen. As to his name, he was the victim of some obscure academic joke, a fate which, along with his appearance, probably contributed to his habitual look of shame, as if he were the author of some vile mess on the carpet which was perpetually the subject of discussion. Though known familiarly in the household as “Demmy,” he seemed to know that this was merely a diminutive, and to live in constant fear that the guilty secret of his full name would be revealed to visitors; as, indeed, it often was, thanks to his master's keenness to tell the story attached to the name, which displayed his genial intelligence to especial advantage.

I wish I could describe the wit and urbanity and the relaxed intellectual authority which marked the tone of that memorable evening: the talk of contemporary film, of child abuse, of advanced social theory, of construction and deconstruction, of Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, of “the Frenchman, Derrida” (whose name I personally would have pronounced “Dereeda,” but whom all of that company, and certainly correctly, called “Derry Dah”); and at the same time the common touch, the homely aspersions on the Thatcher Government, the substitution of the word “Jockish” for “Scottish,” and other little foibles to which it would be unpardonably bad taste to draw attention; and then the sense almost of an extended family, united in benignity and complacency of feeling, in the best sense: all this I would love to be able to depict. But my talents are not equal to the task—I lack the qualifications. Certain it is that anyone who had strayed by chance among those excellent people, lacking a doctorate or at the absolute minimum a very good honours degree, would have felt diffident and tongue-tied in the extreme; indeed even with these recommendations, but lacking the easy fluency which knows how to deploy difficult and complex, obscure and advanced ideas with geniality and deceptive simplicity and unostentatious control, such a person might have felt distinctly inferior and out of place.

The delightful atmosphere which I have just haltingly attempted to convey was already well established when Dr. Tuberose made his entry. He was unaccompanied, embarrassingly so, for when his wife had left him five months previously it had soon emerged that she was living with a Chinese waiter in Burntisland. Cowperthwaite and Aminta, in fact, had invited him partly out of sympathy and fellow-feeling, for Adrian, their seventeen-year-old son, was living with another Chinese waiter in Tollcross. When Dr. Tuberose came in they were all discussing Rudolf Steiner play-groups. As Tuberose advanced into the room with an intent but somehow abstracted look on his sensitive little face, a knowing, almost scornful little smile playing about the corners of his mouth, and an exalted expressiveness in his light grey eyes, the guests turned towards him with genial, welcoming expansiveness. Dr. Tuberose nodded vaguely at his acquaintances, his eyes flickering over the company, searching for Pluckrose. At that moment, an amazing incident occurred.

Demiurge, who up to that moment had been dozing comfortably beside the fire, having decided that the conversation, fascinating though it doubtless was, was way above his head, now suddenly sat up, the hair rising along his back, and staring at Tuberose with every sign of venomous hostility, growled at him in the most menacing manner, and even started to yap in a pitch of hellish stridency, advancing towards Tuberose and then backing away again as if uncertain whether the situation called for attack or defence. Tuberose, quite unnerved, retreated against a sideboard, and Cowperthwaite in complete consternation abandoned the drinks he had been pouring and hastened over, crying, “Demmy! Demmy! What is it, darling? You know Uncle Marcus! It's only Uncle Marcus, Demmy, he won't hurt you, sweetheart!”

Demiurge, however, was not to be pacified so easily. He was now yapping furiously and pertinaciously, and as it were with a growing confidence in the justice of his cause; Dr. Tuberose had retreated within a protective ring of guests, utterly taken aback but conscious of a dawning recognition that something was afoot, that there was more here than met the eye. Sterner measures were clearly required, and now Cowperthwaite rapped out, “Demiurge!” in a tone of warning, and with a rising emphasis on the final syllable.

The uttering of this shameful name had an instantaneous effect on the poor animal. With an appearance of great fright he shot off with his tail between his legs and slumped abjectly on the hearthrug; it was really impossible not to feel sorry for him. He now lay unmoving with his head between his paws, and soon commenced making ostentatious snuffling noises and settling his lips, as if he had never had any other thought in his head but to prepare for sleep. It was all a show, however. Shortly he began once more to cast furtive glances at Dr. Tuberose, and once the commotion had died down a little and he was no longer an object of scrutiny, he kept following ‘Uncle Marcus' with his eyes, with an unfathomable gaze that spoke volumes, but in some unknown tongue.

The party had no sooner settled back into normality than the telephone rang. Cowperthwaite left the room to answer it, and after a brief absence returned and called over to Aminta, ‘That was Phil Pluckrose, sweetheart. He sends his apologies, they won't be coming. It seems McSpale needed to see him very urgently about something.' Dr. Tuberose was at this moment in conversation with a psychiatrist whom he had always known simply as “Justin's Daddy.” Justin's Daddy had a club foot, for which reason he had been called “Dr. Goebbels” at school, which just goes to show how cruel children can be; and a few unpleasant people still referred to him by that name, not of course in his hearing. Justin's Daddy, who had met Dr. Tuberose socially on two or three previous occasions, had suddenly become interested in him when, a few minutes previously, he had overheard him say to Cowperthwaite, “Did you notice how McSpale kept staring at me during the Department meeting? There was an awful depth and malignancy in his eye…” (“Oh, dear,” Aminta had interrupted with sweet concern, “has he got cancer?”) Now, when the news about Pluckrose was announced, Dr. Tuberose broke off in midsentence and his poetic face at once took on a horrified, haunted, harried look, a look which caused Justin's Daddy to observe him with an almost professional concern. But no one else noticed.