Tales of the Black Widowers

"I think we'll be eating any minute," said Avalon hastily, looking at his watch.
Henry said, "Won't you be seated, gentlemen?" and placed one of the bread baskets directly in front of Gonzalo as though to suggest he use his mouth for that purpose.
Gonzalo took a roll, broke it, buttered one half, bit into it, and said in muffled tones, "-keep from getting sloppy drunk on one martini," but no one listened.
Rubin, finding himself between Avalon and Davenheim, said, "What kind of soldier was Jeff, Colonel?"
"Damned good one," said Davenheim gravely, "but he didn't get much of a chance to shine. We were both in the legal end of matters, which meant desk work. The difference is that he had the sense to get out once the war was over. I didn't."
"You mean you're still involved with military law?"
"That's right."
"Well, I look forward to the day when military law is as obsolete as feudal law."
"I do, too," said Davenheim calmly. "But it isn't as yet."
"No," said Rubin, "and if you-"
Trumbull interrupted. "Damn it, Manny, can't you wait for grilling time?"
"Yes," said Avalon, coughing semi-stentorially, "we might as well let Sam eat before putting him through his paces."
"If," said Rubin, "military law applied the same considerations to those-"
"Later!" roared Trumbull.
Rubin looked through his thick-lensed glasses indignantly, but subsided.
Halsted said, in what was clearly intended to be a change of topic, "I'm not happy with my limerick for the fifth book of the Iliad."
"The what?" said Davenheim, puzzled.
"Pay no attention," said Trumbull. "Roger keeps threatening to put together five lines of crap for every book of the Iliad."
"And the Odyssey," said Halsted. "The trouble with the fifth book is that it deals chiefly with the feats of the Greek hero Diomedcs, and 1 feel I ought to have him part of the rhyme scheme. I've been at it, off and on, for months."
"Is that why you've spared us limericks the last couple of sessions?" asked Trumbull.
"I've had one and I've been ready to read it, but I'm not quite satisfied with it."
"Then you've joined the great majority," said Trumbull.
"The thing is," said Halsted quietly, "that both 'Diomedes' and its legitimate variant 'Diomed' cannot be rhymed seriously. 'Diomedes' rhymes with 'Wheaties' and 'Diomed' rhymes with 'shy-a-bed' and what good are those?"
"Call him Tydeides," said Avalon. "Homer frequently used the patronymic."
"What's a patronymic?" asked Gonzalo.
"A father-name, which is the literal translation of the word," said Halsted. "Diomedes' father was Tydeus. Don't you think I've thought of that? It rhymes with 'di-dies' or, if you want to go Cockney, with 'lydies.' "
"How about 'ascites'?" said Drake.
"Wit seeks its own level," said Halsted. "How about this? All I need do is distort the stress and give 'Diomed' accents on first and last syllables."
"Cheating," said Rubin.
"A little," admitted Halsted, "but here it is:
"In courage and skill well ahead,
Into battle went brave Diomed.
Even gods were his quarries,
And the war-loving Ares
He struck down and left nearly for dead."
Avalon shook his head. "Ares was only wounded. He had enough strength left to rise, roaring, to Olympus."
"1 must admit I'm not satisfied," said Halsted.
"Unanimous!!" said Trumbull.
"Veal parmesan!" said Rubin enthusiastically, for, with his usual agility, Henry was already placing the dishes before each.
Colonel Davenheim said, after he had devoted considerable time to the veal, "You do yourselves well here, Jeff."
"Oh, we do our poor best," said Avalon. "The restaurant charges in proportion, but it's only once a month."
Davenheim plied his fork enthusiastically and said, "Dr. Halsted, you're a mathematician-"
"I teach mathematics to reluctant youngsters, which isn't quite the same thing."
"But why, then, limericks on the epic poems?"
"Precisely because it is not mathematics, Colonel. It's a mistake to think that because a man has a profession that can be named, all his interests must bear that name."
"No offense," said the Colonel.
Avalon stared at a neatly cleaned plate and pushed thoughtfully at his untouched last half-glass of liquor. He said, "As a matter of fact, Sam knows what it is to have an intellectual hobby. He is an excellent phoneticist."
"Oh, well," said Davenheim, with heavy modesty, "in an amateur way."
Rubin said, "Does that mean you can tell jokes in accent?"
"In any accent you wish-within reason," said Davenheim. "But I can't tell jokes even in natural speech."
"That's all right," said Rubin, "I'd rather hear a bad joke in an authentic accent than a good one with a poor one."
Gonzalo said, "Then how do you account for the fact that you laugh only at your own jokes when they fail in both respects?"
Davenheim spoke quickly to cut off Rubin's rejoinder. He said, "You've got me off the subject." He leaned to one side to allow Henry to place the rum cake before him. "I mean, Dr. Halsted-very well, Roger-that perhaps you switch to the classics to get your mind off some knotty mathematics problem. Then, while your conscious mind is permutating rhymes, your unconscious mind is--"
"The funny thing about that," said Rubin, seizing his own chance to cut in, "is that it works. I've never been so stymied by a plot that I couldn't get it worked out by going to a movie. I don't mean a good movie that really absorbs me. I mean a bad one that occupies my conscious mind just sufficiently to allow my unconscious free reign. A spy-action film is best."
Gonzalo said, "I can't follow the plot of those things even when I'm paying attention."
"And yet they're aimed at the twelve-year-old mind," said Rubin, striking back at last.
Henry poured the coffee, as Davenheim said, "I agree with what Manny says. I happen to think that a day spent on phonetics is sometimes the best way of contributing to a problem at work. But isn't there another aspect to this? It's easy to see that by keeping the conscious mind occupied, we leave the unconscious free to do as it wishes underground. But will it stay underground? Might it not obtrude aboveground? Might it not make itself seen or heard, if not to the person himself-the person who is thinking-then to others?"
"Exactly what do you mean, Colonel?" asked Tram-bull.
"Look," said Davenheim, "if we're on first-name terms, let it be first names all round. Call me Sam. What I mean is this. Suppose Manny is working on a plot involving an undetectable poison-"
"Never!" said Rubin strenuously. "Tarantulas are out, too, and mystic Hindus, and the supernatural. That's all nineteenth-century romanticism. I'm not sure that even the locked-room mystery hasn't become a matter of-"
"Just for example," said Davenheim, who had momentary trouble breasting the tide. "You do other things to let your unconscious work and as far as you yourself are concerned you can swear that you have completely forgotten the mystery, that you're not thinking about it, that it's completely wiped out. Then, when you're hailing a cab, you call, 'Toxic! Toxic!' "
Trumbull said thoughtfully, "That's farfetched and I don't accept it, but I'm beginning to get a notion. Jeff, did you bring Sam here because he has a problem on his mind?"
Avalon cleared his throat. "Not really. I invited him last month for many reasons-the most important of which was that I thought you would all like him. But he stayed over at my house last night and- may I tell them, Sam?"
Davenheim shrugged. "This place is as quiet as the grave, you say."
"Absolutely," said Avalon. "Sam knows my wife almost as long as he knows me, but twice he called her Farber instead of Florence."