The Compleat Boucher Read online

  Fearing chuckled. “How well I remember when Gloria was a student here! I was thinking of it only last night when I saw her in Moonbeams and Melody. How she did upset this whole department! Heavens, my boy, if I’d been a younger man myself—”

  “I’m going. You’ll see about Herbrecht, Emily?”

  Emily sniffed and nodded.

  “Come, Wolfe.” Fearing’s voice had grown more serious. “I didn’t mean to plague you. But you mustn’t take these things too hard. There are better ways of finding consolation than in losing your temper or getting drunk.”

  “Who said anything about—”

  “Did you need to say it? No, my boy, if you were to— You’re not a religious man, are you?”

  “Good God, no,” said Wolf contradictorily.

  “If only you were If I might make a suggestion, Wolfe, why don’t you come over to the Temple tonight? We’re having very special services. They might take your mind off Glo— off your troubles.”

  “Thanks, no. I’ve always meant to visit your Temple—I’ve heard the damnedest rumors about it—but not tonight. Some other time.”

  “Tonight would be especially interesting.”

  “Why? What’s so special of a feast day about April thirtieth?”

  Fearing shook his gray head. “It is shocking how ignorant a scholar can be outside of his chosen field . . . But you know the place, Wolfe; I’ll hope to see you there tonight.”

  “Thanks. But my troubles don’t need any supernatural solutions. A couple of zombies will do nicely, and I do not mean serviceable stiffs. Goodbye, Oscar.” He was halfway through the door before he added as an afterthought, “’Bye, Emily.”

  “Such rashness,” Fearing murmured. “Such impetuosity. Youth is a wonderful thing to enjoy, is it not, Emily?”

  Emily said nothing, but plunged into typing the proposed budget as though all the fiends of hell were after her, as indeed many of them were.

  The sun was setting, and Wolf’s tragic account of his troubles had laid an egg, too. The bartender had polished every glass in the joint and still the repetitive tale kept pouring forth. He was torn between a boredom new even in his experience and a professional admiration for a customer who could consume zombies indefinitely.

  “Did I tell you about the time she flunked the mid-term?” Wolf demanded truculently.

  “Only three times,” said the bartender.

  “All right, then; I’ll tell you. Yunnerstand, I don’t do things like this. Profeshical ethons, that’s what’s I’ve got. But this was different. This wasn’t like somebody that doesn’t know because she wasn’t the kind of girl that has to know just because she doesn’t know; this was a girl that didn’t know the kind of things a girl has to know if she’s the kind of girl that ought to know that kind of things. Yunnerstand?”

  The bartender cast a calculating glance at the plump little man who sat alone at the end of the deserted bar, carefully nursing his gin-and-tonic.

  “She made me see that. She made me see lossa things and I can still see the things she made me see the things. It wasn’t just like a professor falls for a coed, yunnerstand? This was different. This was wunnaful. This was like a whole new life, like.”

  The bartender sidled down to the end of the bar. “Brother,” he whispered softly.

  The little man with the odd beard looked up from his gin-and-tonic. “Yes, colleague?”

  “If I listen to that potted professor another five minutes, I’m going to start smashing up the joint. How’s about slipping down there and standing in for me, huh?” The little man looked Wolf over and fixed his gaze especially on the hand that clenched the tall zombie glass. “Gladly, colleague,” he nodded.

  The bartender sighed a gust of relief.

  “She was Youth,” Wolf was saying intently to where the bartender had stood. “But it wasn’t just that. This was different. She was Life and Excitement and Joy and Ecstasy and stuff. Yunner—” He broke off and stared at the empty space. “Uh-mazing!” he observed. “Right before my very eyes. Uh-mazing!”

  “You were saying, colleague?” the plump little man prompted from the adjacent stool.

  Wolf turned. “So there you are. Did I tell you about the time I went to her house to check her term paper?”

  “No. But I have a feeling you will.”

  “Howja know? Well, this night—”

  The little man drank slowly; but his glass was empty by the time Wolf had finished the account of an evening of pointlessly tentative flirtation. Other customers were drifting in, and the bar was now about a third full.

  “—and ever since then—” Wolf broke off sharply. “That isn’t you,” he objected.

  “I think it is, colleague.”

  “But you’re a bartender and you aren’t a bartender.”

  “No. I’m a magician.”

  “Oh. That explains it. Now, like I was telling you— Hey! Your bald is beard.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your bald is beard. Just like your head. It’s all jussa fringe running around.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “And your glass is empty.”

  “That’s all right too.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t. It isn’t every night you get to drink with a man that proposed to Gloria Garton and got turned down. This is an occasion for celebration.” Wolf thumped loudly on the bar and held up his first two fingers.

  The little man regarded their equal length. “No,” he said softly. “I think I’d better not. I know my capacity. If I have another—well, things might start happening.”

  “Lettemappen!”

  “No. Please, colleague. I’d rather—”

  The bartender brought the drinks. “Go on, brother,” he whispered. “Keep him quiet. I’ll do you a favor sometime.”

  Reluctantly the little man sipped at his fresh gin-and-tonic.

  The professor took a gulp of his «th zombie. “My name’s Woof-woof,” he proclaimed. “Lots of people call me Wolfe Wolf. They think that’s funny. But it’s really Woof-woof. Wazoors?”

  The other paused a moment to decipher that Arabic-sounding word, then said, “Mine’s Ozymandias the Great.”

  “That’s a funny name.”

  “I told you, I’m a magician. Only I haven’t worked for a long time. Theatrical managers are peculiar, colleague. They don’t want a real magician. They won’t even let me show ’em my best stuff. Why, I remember one night in Darjeeling—”

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. . . . Mr.—”

  “You can call me Ozzy. Most people do.”

  “Glad to meet you, Ozzy. Now, about this girl. This Gloria. Yunnerstand, donya?”

  “Sure, colleague.”

  “She thinks a professor of German is nothing. She wants something glamorous. She says if I was an actor, now, or a G-man— Yunnerstand?”

  Ozymandias the Great nodded.

  “Awright, then! So yunnerstand. Fine. But whatddayou want to keep talking about it for? Yunnerstand. That’s that. To hell with it.”

  Ozymandias’ round and fringed face brightened. “Sure,” he said, and added recklessly, “Let’s drink to that.”

  They clinked glasses and drank. Wolf carelessly tossed off a toast in Old Low Frankish, with an unpardonable error in the use of the genitive.

  The two men next to them began singing “My Wild Irish Rose,” but trailed off disconsolately. “What we need,” said the one with the derby, “is a tenor.”

  “What I need,” Wolf muttered, “is a cigarette.”

  “Sure,” said Ozymandias the Great. The bartender was drawing beer directly in front of them. Ozymandias reached across the bar, removed a lighted cigarette from the barkeep’s ear, and handed it to his companion.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “I don’t quite know. All I know is how to get them. I told you I was a magician.”

  “Oh. I see. Pressajijijation.”

  “No. Not a prestidigitator; I said a magician. Oh, bl
ast it! I’ve done it again. More than one gin-and-tonic and I start showing off.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Wolf flatly. “No such thing as magicians. That’s just as silly as Oscar Fearing and his Temple and what’s so special about April thirtieth anyway?”

  The bearded man frowned. “Please, colleague. Let’s forget it.”

  “No. I don’t believe you. You pressajijijated that cigarette. You didn’t magic it.” His voice began to rise. “You’re a fake.”

  “Please, brother,” the barkeep whispered. “Keep him quiet.”

  “All right,” said Ozymandias wearily. “I’ll show you something that can’t be prestidigitation.” The couple adjoining had begun to sing again. “They need a tenor. All right; listen!”

  And the sweetest, most ineffably Irish tenor ever heard joined in on the duet. The singers didn’t worry about the source; they simply accepted the new voice gladly and were spurred on to their very best, with the result that the bar knew the finest harmony it had heard since the night the Glee Club was suspended en masse.

  Wolf looked impressed, but shook his head. “That’s not magic either. That’s ventrocolism.”

  “As a matter of strict fact, that was a street singer who was killed in the Easter Rebellion. Fine fellow, too; never heard a better voice, unless it was that night in Darjeeling when—”

  “Fake!” said Wolfe Wolf loudly and belligerently.

  Ozymandias once more contemplated that long index finger. He looked at the professor’s dark brows that met in a straight line over his nose. He picked his companion’s limpish hand off the bar and scrutinized the palm. The growth of hair was not marked, but it was perceptible.

  The magician chortled. “And you sneer at magic!”

  “Whasso funny about me sneering at magic?”

  Ozymandias lowered his voice. “Because, my fine furry friend, you are a werewolf.”

  The Irish martyr had begun “Rose of Tralee,” and the two mortals were joining in valiantly.

  “I’m what?”

  “A werewolf.”

  “But there isn’t any such thing. Any fool knows that.”

  “Fools,” said Ozymandias, “know a great deal which the wise do not. There are werewolves. There always have been, and quite probably always will be.” He spoke as calmly and assuredly as though he were mentioning that the earth was round. “And there are three infallible physical signs: the meeting of eyebrows, the long index finger, the hairy palms. You have all three. And even your name is an indication. Family names do not come from nowhere. Every Smith has an ancestor somewhere who was a smith. Every Fisher comes from a family that once fished. And your name is Wolf.”

  The statement was so quiet, so plausible, that Wolf faltered.

  “But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest I haven’t.”

  “A mammal,” said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young alive and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed does not make you any the less a werewolf.”

  “But a werewolf—” Suddenly Wolf’s eyes lit up. “A werewolf! But that’s even better than a G-man! Now I can show Gloria!”

  “What on earth do you mean, colleague?”

  Wolf was climbing down from his stool. The intense excitement of this brilliant new idea seemed to have sobered him. He grabbed the little man by the sleeve. “Come on. We’re going to find a nice quiet place. And you’re going to prove you’re a magician.”

  “But how?”

  “You’re going to show me how to change!”

  Ozymandias finished his gin-and-tonic, and with it drowned his last regretful hesitation. “Colleague,” he announced, “you’re on!”

  Professor Oscar Fearing, standing behind the curiously carved lectern of the Temple of the Dark Truth, concluded the reading of the prayer with mumbling sonority. “And on this night of all nights, in the name of the black light that glows in the darkness, we give thanks!” He closed the parchment-bound book and faced the small congregation, calling out with fierce intensity, “Who wishes to give his thanks to the Lower Lord?”

  A cushioned dowager rose. “I give thanks!” she shrilled excitedly. “My Ming Choy was sick, even unto death. I took of her blood and offered it to the Lower Lord, and he had mercy and restored her to me!”

  Behind the altar an electrician checked his switches and spat disgustedly. “Bugs! Every last one of ’em!”

  The man who was struggling into a grotesque and horrible costume paused and shrugged. “They pay good money. What’s it to us if they’re bugs?”

  A tall, thin old man had risen uncertainly to his feet. “I give thanks!” he cried. “I give thanks to the Lower Lord that I have finished my great work. My protective screen against magnetic bombs is a tried and proven success, to the glory of our country and science and the Lord.”

  “Crackpot,” the electrician muttered.

  The man in costume peered around the altar. “Crackpot, hell! That’s Chiswick from the physics department. Think of a man like that falling for this stuff! And listen to him: He’s even telling about the government’s plans for installation. You know, I’ll bet you one of these fifth columnists could pick up something around here.”

  There was silence in the Temple when the congregation had finished its thanksgiving. Professor Fearing leaned over the lectern and spoke quietly and impressively. “As you know, brothers in Darkness, tonight is May Eve, the thirtieth of April, the night consecrated by the Church to that martyr missionary St. Walpurgis, and by us to other and deeper purposes. It is on this night, and this night only, that we may directly give our thanks to the Lower Lord himself. Not in wanton orgy and obscenity, as the Middle Ages misconceived his desires, but in praise and in the deep, dark joy that issues forth from Blackness.”

  “Hold your hats, boys,” said the man in the costume. “Here I go again.”

  “Eka!” Fearing thundered. “Dva tri chatur! Pancha! Shas sapta! Ashta nava dasha ekadasha!” He paused. There was always the danger that at this moment some scholar in this university town might recognize that the invocation, though perfect Sanskrit, consisted solely of the numbers from one to eleven. But no one stirred, and he launched forth in more apposite Latin: “Per vota nostra ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Baal Zebub!”

  “Baal Zebub!” the congregation chorused.

  “Cue,” said the electrician, and pulled a switch.

  The lights flickered and went out. Lightning played across the sanctuary. Suddenly out of the darkness came a sharp bark, a yelp of pain, and a long-drawn howl of triumph.

  A blue light now began to glow dimly. In its faint reflection, the electrician was amazed to see his costumed friend at his side, nursing his bleeding hand.

  “What the hell—” the electrician whispered.

  “Hanged if I know. I go out there on cue, all ready to make my terrifying appearance, and what happens? Great big hell of a dog up and nips my hand. Why didn’t they tell me they’d switched the script?”

  In the glow of the blue light the congregation reverently contemplated the plump little man with the fringe of beard and the splendid gray wolf that stood beside him. “Hail, O Lower Lord!” resounded the chorus, drowning out one spinster’s murmur of “But my dear, I swear he was much handsomer last year.”

  “Colleagues!” said Ozymandias the Great, and there was utter silence, a dread hush awaiting the momentous words of the Lower Lord. Ozymandias took one step forward, placed his tongue carefully between his lips, uttered the ripest, juiciest raspberry of his career, and vanished, wolf and all.

  Wolfe Wolf opened his eyes and shut them again hastily. He had never expected the quiet and sedate Berkeley Inn to install centrifugal rooms. It wasn’t fair. He lay in darkness, waiting for the whirling to stop and trying to reconstruct the past night.

  He remembered the bar all right, and the zombies. And the bartender. Very sympathetic chap that, up until he suddenly changed into a little
man with a fringe of beard. That was where things began getting strange. There was something about a cigarette and an Irish tenor and a werewolf. Fantastic idea, that. Any fool knows—

  Wolf sat up suddenly. He was the werewolf. He threw back the bedclothes and stared down at his legs. Then he sighed relief. They were long legs. They were hairy enough. They were brown from much tennis. But they were indisputably human.

  He got up, resolutely stifling his qualms, and began to pick up the clothing that was scattered nonchalantly about the floor. A crew of gnomes was excavating his skull, but he hoped they might go away if he didn’t pay too much attention to them. One thing was certain: he was going to be good from now on. Gloria or no Gloria, heartbreak or no heartbreak, drowning your sorrows wasn’t good enough. If you felt like this and could imagine you’d been a werewolf—

  But why should he have imagined it in such detail? So many fragmentary memories seemed to come back as he dressed. Going up Strawberry Canyon with the fringed beard, finding a desolate and isolated spot for magic, learning the words—

  Hell, he could even remember the words. The word that changed you and the one that changed you back.

  Had he made up those words, too, in his drunken imaginings? And had he made up what he could only barely recall—the wonderful, magical freedom of changing, the single, sharp pang of alteration and then the boundless happiness of being lithe and fleet and free?

  He surveyed himself in the mirror. Save for the unwonted wrinkles in his conservative single-breasted gray suit, he looked exactly what he was: a quiet academician; a little better built, a little more impulsive, a little more romantic than most, perhaps, but still just that—Professor Wolf.

  The rest was nonsense. But there was, that impulsive side of him suggested, only one way of proving the fact. And that was to say The Word.

  “Ail right,” said Wolfe Wolf to his reflection. “I’ll show you.” And he said it.

  The pang was sharper and stronger than he’d remembered. Alcohol numbs you to pain. It tore him for a moment with an anguish like the descriptions of childbirth. Then it was gone, and he flexed his limbs in happy amazement. But he was not a lithe, fleet, free beast. He was a helplessly trapped wolf, irrevocably entangled in a conservative single-breasted gray suit.