Mr. Thornton asked, holding the silver tray and its obscene deposits up toward my chest where I could see it.
`Ununununun,' I vibrated noisily, my lower lip hanging sloppily and my eyes attempting an animal vacancy. With my
huge right paw I swept up and clutched six or seven crackers, almost upsetting the tray, and stuffed them into my
mouth, pieces falling in a splendid dry waterfall down my shirtfront to the floor.
A flicker of human surprise crossed for a millisecond the erased face of Mr. Thornton as he looked into my vacant
gaze and watched me chew ineptly, a bit of moist semi-chewed cracker dangling briefly from my lip before falling
forever to the deep brown rug below.
`Unununun,' I vibrated again.
'Thank you, sir,' said Mr. Thornton and turned to the ladies.
Dr. Krum was emphatically stabbing the air in front of Dr. Mann's stomach as if performing some magic rite before
making an incision.
`Proof! Proof! They do not know the meaning of the verd. They raise money with bribes, they are bankers, barbarians,
businessmen, beasts, they-'
`Shit, who cares?' interrupted Jake. `If they want to get rich and famous, let 'em. We're doing the real work.'
He squinted at me; or was it a wink? `That is true. That is true. Scientists like us and businessmen like them have
nutting in common.'
'un unun,' I said, looking at Dr. Krum, my mouth half open like a fish gasping wide-eyed on the deck of a ship. Dr.
Krum looked up at me seriously and respectfully and then stroked his beard three, four times.
`There are two classes of men: the creators and the - how you say - drudges. Is possible to tell immejetly creators.
Immejetly, drudges.'
`Ununununun.'
`I do not know your verk, Dr. Rhinehart, but from the moment you speak to me, I know, I know.'
`Unnh.'
`Dr. Rhinehart has the brains all right,' Dr. Mann said. `But he's got a writing block. He prefers to play games. He
expects every article to surpass Freud.'
`He ought, he ought. Is good to surpass Freud.'
`Luke's got a book in the works about sadism,' said Jake, `which may make Stekel and Reich read like Grandma
Moses.'
It was a wink.
They all three looked up expectantly at me. I continued to stare vacant-eyed, mouth agape, at Dr. Krum. There was a
silence.
`Yes, yes. Is interesting, sadism,' Dr. Krum said, and his face twitched.
`Unnnnnnnh,' I vibrated, but steadier.
Jake and Dr. Krum looked at me hopefully while Dr. Mann took a graceful sip of his wine.
`You have been verking lung on sadism?'
I stared back at him.
Dr. Mann suddenly excused himself and went to greet three more arrivals at the party, and Arlene took Jake's arm and
whispered something in his ear. He turned reluctantly to talk to her. Dr. Krum was still looking at me. I was only half
conscious of the conversation; I was focused on the crumb in his beard.
`Unununun,' I said. It was a little like a faulty transformer.
`Vunderful - I thought myself of experimenting with sadism in chickens, but is rare. Is rare.'
Dr. Mann returned with two other people, a man and a woman, and introduced them to us. One was Fred Boyd, a
young psychologist from Harvard I knew and liked, and the other was his date, a plump, pleasant blonde with a cream-
smooth complexion - a Miss Welish. She reached out her hand when she was introduced to me, and when I failed to
grasp it, she blushed.
Looking at her I said: `Ununununun.'
She blushed again.
`Hi, Luke, how's it going?' asked Fred Boyd. I turned to him blankly.
`How did Herder do with his grant application to Stonewall?' Dr. Mann asked Fred.