Chapter 16 14

Alexander, Sam, and Edmund. Requesting permission to speak. Of course, said Thomas. What is it? Well sir, said Alexander, some of the boys have been thinking. Yes? What is it they have been thinking? Well sir, said Alexander, the men have a melancholy. Oh my, said Thomas. Which? Well sir, I would say it is the pip. Less a sulk than a sourness. What are the symptoms? Headache, vertigo, singing in the ears, much waking, fixed eyes, red eyes, high color, hard belly, short and sharp belchings, dry brains, and pain in the left side. Not each man has every symptom. Most have two. Some have three. One has four.

Me, Edmund said. Did I not double the rum ration? Thomas asked. You did, sir, you did, and we are grateful. Yet -- Well what is the issue? Well sir, I was coming to that. The issue, Alexander said, is ethical. Oh my. Local or general? Well sir, we feel maybe we ought not to be doin what we are doin. We feel its a scotomizing, you might say. A what? A darkening of the truth. What truth and how darkened? Well sir, Alexander said, look at it this way. It is this: The grand Fathers bein all hauly-mauly by the likes of us over bump and bumbust and all raggletailed and his poor bumleg all hurty and his grand aura all tarnagled and June be in a bad month for new enterprises and a bad month for old enterprises according to the starcharts and like that, we that is to say us the men have a faint intustition that maybe the best is not to come in terms of the grand Father the moon -hanger the eye-in-the-sky the old meister the bey window the bit chammer the gaekwarder the incaling the khando kid the neatzam the shotgun of kyotowing the principal stadtholder the voivode the top wali, this Being, I say, being a Being of the highest anthropocentric trac interest, as well as the one who keeps the corn popping from the fine green fields and the like and the like, is maybe being abruised and lese-majestied by us poor galoots over many meters of hard cheese days in and out but even a galoot has a brain to wonder with and what we wonder is to what end? for what purpose? are we right? are we wrong? are we culpable? if you have told him what have you told him? how much of the blame if there is blame is ours? ten percent? twenty percent? in excess of that figure? and searching our hearts as we do each morning and evening and also at midday after lunch and after the dishes have been washed, we wonder whither? what for? can the conscience be cogged? are we doing the right thing? Standing and for your wisdom which we do not deny for a moment and for your heart -- To put it in the short form, we are dubious.

An occasion. Thomas rising. Your questions are good ones, he said. Your concern is well founded. I can I think best respond by relating an anecdote. You are familiar I take it with the time Martin Luther attempted to sway Franz Joseph Haydn to his cause. on the telephone and said, "Joe, youre the best. I want you to do a piece for us." And Haydn just said, "No way, Marty. No way." You have got the centuries all wrong and the telephone should not be in there and anyway I do not get the point, said Edmund. You see! Thomas exclaimed. There it is! Things are not simple. Error is always possible, even with the best intentions in the world. not clear. You must be able to tolerate the anxiety. To do otherwise is to jump ship, ethics-wise.

I hate anxiety, Edmund said. He produced a flask and tilted it. Have some? he asked Thomas. What is it? Paint thinner with a little grenadine. Ill pass thanks, Thomas said. You have not resolved our dilemma, said Alexander. If you could give us a statement of purpose, no matter how farfetched or improbable. . . Something we could take back to the boys. We are helping him through a difficult period, Thomas said, that would be a way of putting it. Then he was struck, as if by a thought. It is, you might say, a rehearsal.