Irregular Verbs (25 page)

“Dump the cargo in the river,” Daniel said. “We should make better time that way.”

Latour was silent for a moment. Daniel wondered how much his orders had told him: each set of orders, he supposed, would hold a bit less information than the last, so it was unlikely that Latour knew why they had really made their journey.

“Very good.”

“Wake the stokers and the engineer,” Daniel said. “I’d like to get going as soon after dawn as possible.” He wondered if Latour had ever questioned his orders. Probably not: the logic behind them was flawless.

Once Latour had gone Daniel turned back towards the east bank, saw the first light touching the top of the pyramid. He thought about the long-vanished people that had built them, in worship or propitiation of the sun or moon or Reason knew what else. What had they thought, he wondered, when the Spanish came, when they began to get sick? Did they think that their gods had abandoned them, or that the newcomers’ gods were stronger?
I make strong medicine
. He thought of the statue, the Goddess of Reason, and of what Coeur-de-Lion had written:
Nous sommes tous sauvages
.

Then the dawn arrived in earnest, and the mist of dreams dissolved. The sun was up, and there was work to do.

To an unnamed correspondent; found in the effects of Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”) after his death, apparently unsent. Dated December 20, 1881.

You will recall, I think, a story I wrote some years back, about Smiley’s jumping frog, how it was the subject of a peculiar bet, and how a fellow took an underhanded way to win it. It has done pretty well for itself, having had the good fortune to be translated into French and the better to be translated out of it. I put forth that it was a true story, and so it was, though many doubted it. Since then I have gained reason to believe, though, that I never did know the whole truth of it—until now; that I shall ever be able to tell anyone that truth, however, I much doubt.

I have, as you may know, recently returned from a short stay in Canada; having to reside there for a certain time in order to claim ownership of my own work, I chose to visit Montreal and Quebec, on the grounds that a place that makes claims to being a separate nation ought to at least have a different language. I gave a speech there that was pretty well received, most likely due to it having as its main competition the weather. It was after the speech that I was approached by an odd little fellow, an old gentleman with a thick black moustache and a fringe of hair circling his bald skull. Standing very near, and mumbling into his chest, he said, “Meester Clemens”—but I will cease there with reporting his words as he spoke them; recent experience with French has shown me how easily a man can be made to look a fool in a language not his own, and this was a man of great intelligence and education, as you will see.

His tale, then, began like this: “Mr. Clemens, I have long wanted to meet you. My name is Luigi”—but there, with his last name, we get into the unbelievable part of the tale; and so I will pass over it—“and I believe I may cast some light on a story of yours.”

My interest piqued, I nodded for him to continue. “I should like to hear about it,” I said.

“You are an educated man, so I am sure you recognize my name; you are a rational man, so I feel certain you know something of my work. But you should know that it was not always as a scientist that I imagined myself: instead, as a young man, I imagined I would study theology, and join one of the monastic orders. For I had a hunger, you see, to study those questions which, at that time, the natural sciences did not even hope to answer. Above all, I wished to answer the question of life!

“Practical considerations took hold, however, and I followed my father’s advice in becoming a doctor. I married my darling Lucia, made a steady living as a lecturer at the University of Bologna, and for a time was happy. For many years I focused only on the smallest parts of the matter that had formerly been my obsession, studying the bones and organs that made up men and animals. In that time I learned much about how things lived, but still I was no closer to the question of why. What force gave vigour to things once lifeless? What was it that departed the body at death, leaving it no more alive than a stone?

“It was one of your own countrymen, Dottore Franklin, who led me to the answer—for I read how he had, while trying to shock a guinea fowl, taken the charge meant for the bird into himself; rather than killing him, as it would have the bird, it did him no harm. Indeed, I suspected, it more likely had invigorated him: for all his great work was done after receiving that charge, and it is said that even as an old man, while ambassador to France, he was still able to—” (I omit the rest of this story, on the grounds that it is not right to say such things about a founding father, and you will have heard them already anyhow.)

“It was then that I began my researches into animal electricity. Fortunately the marshes of my home state of Bologna were at all times replete with frogs, simple creatures whom I could dissect and study in my quest for the nerveo-electrical fluid. You are, I am sure, already familiar with the part of my work that was published: how I showed that the fluid, present in the air during a thunderstorm, could be used to cause a frog’s leg to twitch, and that the same results could be obtained with a spark made by an electrostatic machine or held in a Leyden jar. What you will not know is that I published only the first part of my research: for it was while that first volume was in preparation, and I was preparing the second—my magister opus—that disaster struck. Was it my pride that caused me to be punished so—to lose all that I had, my work, my home, my love, in pursuit of my art?”

Some look of alarm on my face must have betrayed me, for the old man took a step back, then glanced around, perhaps to see if others were listening. Satisfied that they were not he moved yet closer, winding up only an inch or so from my face, and went on.

“My aim, you see, was to do on purpose what I suspected Dottore Franklin had done by accident—to charge a living body with nerveo-electrical fluid. In this way I hoped to perhaps double the lifespan, or at least give vitality well into old age, as Franklin had. My dear wife Lucia had always been sickly; as well as frogs, the swamps of Bologna hold many bad airs, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she, delicate flower, succumbed. A Leyden jar ought to hold enough fluid to achieve the effect I sought, but how much was too much? And would a charge sufficient for me be too much for her?

“To test my theory on a human being would be inconceivable: to apply the charge before I knew the correct amount would be equally so. I resolved, therefore, to determine the correct amount to apply to a smaller creature, and extrapolate from there. What sort of creature was obvious: I owed my little fame to frogs, and did not doubt they would do me greater service. I acquired a frog weighing precisely one pound, which I planned to etherize to a point just shy of death, then test how large a spark it would take to revive it.

“I waited until a night when there was a thunderstorm raging outside, that I might easily recharge my Leyden jar if I so needed. My first few attempts, using small sparks from the electrostatic machine, brought some animation to the frog; emboldened I continued, but the next time over-applied the ether, stilling the poor creature’s heart. In my panic I gave it a charge not from the electrostatic machine but from the Leyden jar—the one in which I stored the nerveo-electric fluid I hoped to use to invigorate myself and my sweet Lucia. Remembering Dottore Franklin’s experiments with the guinea fowl I feared that, rather than reanimating it, the charge would cook the frog; it had, after all, been given a dose meant for a man many times its size and weight. To my relief, however, the frog revived. More than revived, in fact; for I imagined as its eyes opened that I saw in them—what? A spark of understanding?

“You may imagine my study as it was then, with frogs and parts of frogs hanging from brass hooks, to draw the nerveo-electrical fluid from the iron railing in my garden; imagine, now, how that might look to a frog. Perhaps that was why the frog immediately set to jumping. When I say jumping, signore, I do not mean how you have seen a frog jump: I mean that it shot from the operating table like a ball from a cannon. Had I been in its way I likely would have been killed; as it was the frog touched a shelf holding much of my equipment, sending it crashing to the ground as it caromed off to the facing wall. Though I tried to catch it, my attention was quickly drawn by the bottle of ether that had fallen near the Leyden jar. When I saw that I forgot the frog and ran to separate them, but as I grabbed hold of the jar the remaining charge jumped into me, leaving me stunned; at the same time the spark that had passed from the jar to my body ignited the ether fumes, and a moment later fire broke out in my study. Out the window shot the frog; again I thought of catching it, until I remembered that my Lucia was sleeping in her bedroom.

“Lucia! It was for her sake I had tried to harness this power; for her sake I braved the flames, only to find my way to her door barred by fallen timbers. The charge had given me more strength than I had ever known, but the barrier was immovable. It was all I could do to escape the house before it, and everything in it, was consumed by fire. In as much time as it has taken to tell you, signore, the frog had taken away everything of value I had, but my punishment was not yet at an end.

“When I staggered out into the garden I saw through the dark rain a shape sitting in the pond; over the crack of thunder I heard what sounded like a low, mocking laugh. It was—the frog—croaking at me, and I knew from my time in the swamps what he meant by that croak: he was declaring his intention to mate.

“Can you imagine, signore, what would happen if that frog should have children? If the power I had wakened in it should breed true, and within years all the countless frogs of Earth had the strength of Hercules? It was too horrible to contemplate. I rushed to catch the devil but he evaded me with ease, heading for the swamp.

“I pursued it for years, never quite catching it but at least denying it the opportunity of finding a mate. Its course took me north, which puzzled me at first, until I learned of the powers of extreme cold to recharge a voltaic pile, as well as the ability of frogs to hibernate under snow—some instinct, I suppose, was showing it how to conserve the charge I had given it.

“Here is where I come into your story. Over time I harried the frog to the edge of the ocean, where I thought I might finally catch him: for even a frog such as he could not possibly swim that far. Again he thwarted me, though, for he led me down to the quay, where he jumped—a jump you would not believe if you saw it, signore—onto a ship that was departing just at that moment. Certainly it was too far for me to follow, and at first I thought he had finally beaten me, until my enquiries showed that the ship he had boarded was headed for San Francisco, and that another ship was due to depart for that port the next day.

“On that crossing I enjoyed a few weeks of leisure for the first time in years, and cast my mind to what I might do with the frog if I ever did succeed in catching it. To defeat it bodily was out of the question. Even with the vitality my jolt from the Leyden jar had given me—that which has allowed me to long outlive the three-score-and-ten years Our Lord allotted man—the beast had much greater power than I. Others had followed me in studying the nerveo-electric fluid, though, and had found there were some substances through which it could not pass: lead was one of these. With these facts in hand I formed a plan.

“The weeks of my passage crept by after that; finally we made port, and I crept out of the hold where I had concealed myself. I quickly learned that the first ship had arrived a week before, aided by favourable winds. Finding the trail cold I went inland; having heard that the chief virtue of Americans was curiosity I asked those I met whether they had heard or seen anything of a remarkable frog, one that could jump farther than any other. It did not take long for my inquiries to be gratified: a man, I heard, was harbouring the frog and exhibiting him. This was an unexpected development: I had presumed the beast hateful to all humanity, but now realized the hate that filled its heart was directed solely at me, its re-animator and tormentor. With this in mind I disguised myself as a man of your country, a simple prospector like so many others, and in this guise I approached the man whom I was told had found the frog—a signore Smiley, as of course you know.

“This Smiley, I had widely heard, could not resist a wager, and this was essential to my plan. So it was that when I found him and saw that he was carrying a lattice box, I asked him what lay within: a frog, said he, which in the charming naiveté of your nation he had named Daniel, and removed the lid. Within I saw at once that it was the frog, grown yet larger than when I had last seen it, and (by my good fortune) drowsing in the afternoon heat.

“Why, I asked—carefully concealing my excitement below a mask of indifference—why should he be taking such care of a simple frog? In a tone that implied he was imparting a great confidence he explained to me that Daniel was the greatest leaper since the first frog had been named by Adam. Now was the greatest test of my self-disguise, for of course no man knew the truth of his words better than I, and any hint of my true voice might wake the frog and set it to fleeing once more. Instead I expressed doubt, saying that I saw nothing about this Daniel that made it superior to any other frog; that, indeed, I would not hesitate to bet against his frog in a jumping contest. I was careful, though, to express it as a hypothetical—if I had a frog, I said, I felt sure it should prove no worse than his frog. Smiley rose to the bait, and set off to find another frog against which Daniel could race.

“Now—alone with the frog at last, and it confined in the lattice box Smiley had constructed—I put the final phase of my design into action. In my pouch I carried a quantity of lead shot, which, prying the still-dozing frog’s mouth open, I poured into its belly. I spoke earlier of lead’s quality of blocking the nerveo-electric fluid: my hope was to disrupt the flow of the fluid within the frog’s body, granting it the death I had denied it—and letting us both find rest at last.

“It seemed at first as though I had succeeded. The frog struggled, but its vitality seemed gone, and when shortly Smiley returned with another frog he found that his Daniel not only lost the race but refused to compete, failing even to leave the ground.

“In this, though, I now see my error; for if I had only burdened Daniel enough to reduce him to the level of an ordinary frog Smiley would have thought nothing odd. I had induced too great a change in him, though, for even a man of Smiley’s limited intelligence to accept. Lifting Daniel from the ground, Smiley overturned him, and the lead balls tumbled out of his mouth—too soon; for their work in blocking the nerveo-electric fluid was not yet done, and the frog quickly regained its diabolical energy. Smiley, simple man that he was, thought I had intended to cheat him in the wager; unable, with the limited command of English I had then, to explain the true facts of the situation I simply fled, being well aware of the propensity of your countrymen to arm themselves.