He then began a maniacal cleanup, discarding books and journals he would never read again, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, and painting, as if his rooms were a yacht. So when the Professor entered, ducking under the reams of stained and drying manuscript, he beheld a chamber nearly devoid of its old charm and eccentricity. On the large cherry table, once piled high with papers and indescribable objects of every sort, there was now only some perfectly coiled telegraph wire, a green accountant’s shade, and a pistol. There were also three large bronze-lipped vessels, one filled with Charbah Negra, one with golden water from the Mze, and a middle one, empty. These limpid, liquid pools flung discs of reflected light about the newly whitewashed ceiling. The black velvet curtain had been drawn together to a fraction of its former breadth, revealing a new set of empty, gilded cubbyholes to memorialize the lost transitions of the manuscript, but in its dark folds I was to discover later the first new quote, I think from The Aeneid:
But now commit no verses to the leaves
Or they may be confused, shuffled and whirled
By playing winds: chant them aloud, I pray.
A gleaming bronze telescope and its tripod had been placed on the balcony, the only place now free of the rustle of warped paper. Across the bitter river, a file of Astingi were moving, not en masse but in an endless single column, streaming beautifully as the Mze once did.
“Have a look,” Father said, adjusting the telescope so the Professor could glimpse a few of their faces close-up: hollow-cheeked with emerald eyes and unkempt hair, aquiline jawbone, nose and brow decisively but delicately finished, the Ur-Goyim departing. What struck one was neither their military nor sportive rituals, but the ultimate distinction of their manners in looks and bearing, their reckless tempo and lack of fuss, their almost preposterous patrician mien, which made even the most elegant modern courtier seem hopelessly gloomy and plebeian in our spoilt eyes.
“Sometimes,” Father mused, “I think they are the last real people left on the face of the earth.”
The Professor did not take the bait, and believing he had achieved a kind of trump with ownership of the royal chows, began tentatively, hoping to break the ice.
“Is it a book then. . that you’re working on?”
“I wouldn’t call it a book, really.” Felix replied evenly, his knuckles white on the balcony railing.
“But through all our talks, you’ve never once mentioned it!” the Professor, now truly hurt, blurted mournfully. “How can that be?” Then the question authors dread above all others:
“Pray, what’s it about?”
Father pointed silently across the river at the column heading East.
“A fine spektakel, no doubt, but do not you think it a waste of time to write about barbarians doomed to disappear?”
“Exactly what Marcus Aurelius thought upon this very spot, dear Doktor.”
“On the edge of the ancient world, you choose to write about the only people without a history?”
“They lost their written language some time ago,” Felix said softly without turning. “I aim to give it back to them before they depart.”
“But surely this is a project that with. . fresh capital. . might best be finished in southern France, or even Italy.”
“I moon not for your vie méditerranée,” Father said without edge. “Oxen and wainwrights could not drag me away from here. I appreciate you playing the fool the other day, but despite your ineffectual gallantry, you’re still not ready for a Chetvorah.”
“Not ready,” the Professor said sarcastically, “or not deserving, Councilor?”
“Ah, always the justiz business, eh, Herr Doktor?”
The Professor let this pass with a superior glance, and Felix felt his self-control slipping away.
“I find it passing strange, Herr Doktor, that of all the girls in the world, you would attach yourself to this, this brace of chowlets from the uncircumsized East.”
The Professor was unperturbed. “That’s quite the point: the Prinzessin traces them back to the eleventh century BC. They are the true ancestors of the basic breed, migrated from the Arctic Circle. They joined us in our time of troubles, the glacial age, when hair was hair.”
“I see that the Princess has been reading Popular Dogs,” Father enjoined. “But how far back must we go, Herr Doktor? Could we just for a moment climb out of prehistory and concentrate, say, on something more admissible? Their parentage, for example?”
“Lun and Jofi,” the Professor announced, “are of the Tartoum line.” And he handed over the pedigree papers like a military messenger under artillery fire.
“Tartoum?” Father interjected. “British stock!” Then, placing his pale hand on Professor’s shoulder, he made preparations for a long, soft soliloquy. “Let us go and do some lineage work,” and they passed directly across the library, now shaded by a huge tree of manuscript fluttering in the breeze. Felix offered nothing by way of hospitality, and the Professor’s usual martial walk became tentative. He suspected that he was not adventuring that day, but trespassing. The chows’ violence had released some unspeakable aura into the air. Father sat him down behind his desk as he scanned the dogs’ papers.
“One shouldn’t make too much of this, but I can tell you now that these dogs will never get along. There are forces here, a jealousy say, that is well beyond our control, and you are going to have to choose between the two. But let’s defer that. You seem to forget that in this part of the world we have a certain sensitivity to visits from the East, and that your fondness for the Ice Age neglects the somewhat more contemporary fact that it was precisely these dogs, with their black tongues and stiff gait, who accompanied the Tartars on their raids. And so, for hereabouts, they are the veritable symbol of Asiatic carnage. I’m surprised that they weren’t shot right out of your carriage. If word got around, I could have my whole kennel poisoned. So I must ask you to remove. . I forget their names — the girls — by darkfall, and to return without them.”
The Professor accepted this with equanimity — indeed, he seemed to take pleasure in what Father told him. He simply said, “I need something, someone strong in my life.”
Father pretended not to hear. He had already removed the drying manuscript pinned to the periodical rack where the issues of Dogdom for each year had been bound annually in blue cloth with leather spines. He matched the Prinzessin’s papers with the subsection on “Chow Life,” and found the lineage quickly, whereupon he broke into a devilish grin.
“It seems, Professor, that what we have here is a hegemonic Anglo-American cross.”
The Professor’s face fell.
“And there seems another burden you must bear, my friend: the pater, Tartoum the Fifth. The chow breed became popular in England when Queen Victoria put one in her kennels. Tartoum won the show at the Crystal Exhibition despite biting the judge and his handler. He was owned by one Marchioness Hurtley, who, after centuries of random breeding, decided to fix, in a fit of Darwinism”—Felix spat this word—“the traits she most prized. In this case the project was to deangulate the hindquarters and perfect the perpetual scowl. She was trying for aristocratic aloofness, one must suspect; what she got was bitterness. She strengthened the back legs, no doubt, which is why we now have a leonine body upon pencil legs, like an old whore. In any event, Tartoum continued to win and bite — the more he won, the more he bit — and the English dealt with this in their usual manner, by changing ownership often, so that Tartoum accumulated as many masters as medals, bringing glory to a succession of not-so-old families — always in need of certification — who, having filled their trophy case with his ribbons, passed on his viciousness at a profit to one another. Tartoum did manage, randomly, to produce some notable dogs, mainly daughters: Blue Cobweb and Tam Wong Ton come to mind. I saw the latter drag a child on a sled once at Berlin.”