“Son, I hate to say this—because, if you’ve been reading a lot of English, I see how you reached that opinion—but you are one hundred percent wrong.”
Ishtar looked startled. Galahad simply looked thoughtful. “Then I must go back and read some more.”
“Don’t bother, Galahad. Most of those writers you’ve been reading misuse the word just that way. Shucks, I misused it for years myself; it’s a prime example of the slipperiness of the English tongue. But, whatever ‘love’ is, it’s not sex. I’m not running down sex. If there is a purpose in life more important than two people cooperating in making a baby, all the philosophers in history haven’t been able to find it. And between babies, the practice runs keep up our zest in life and make tolerable the fact that raising a baby is one hell of a lot of work. But that’s not love. Love is something that still goes on when you are not sexually excited. It being so stipulated, who wants to try it? Ira, how about you? You know English better than the others, you speak it almost as well as I do.”
“I speak it better than you do, Gramp; I speak it grammatically, which you do not.”
“Don’t praggle me, boy; I’ll quang you proper. Shakespeare and I never let grammar interfere with expressing ourselves. Why, he said to me once—”
“Oh, stop it! He died three centuries before you were born.”
“He did, huh? They opened his grave once and found it empty. The fact is, he was a half brother of Queen Elizabeth and dyed his hair to make the truth less obvious. The other fact is that they were closing in on him, so he switched. I’ve died that way several times. Ira, his will left his ‘second-best bed’ to his wife. Look up who got his best bed and you’ll begin to figure out what really happened. Do you want to try to define ‘love’?”
“No. You would change the rules again. All you have done so far is to divide the field of experience called ‘love’ into the same categories Minerva divided it into when you asked her this same question weeks ago—namely, ‘Eros’ and ‘Agape.’ But you avoided using those technical words for the subfields, and by this sophistry you attempted to exclude the general term from one subfield and thereby claimed that the term to be defined was limited to the other subfield—which set it up for you to define ‘love’ as identically equal to ‘Agape.’ But again without using that word. It won’t work, Lazarus. To use your own metaphor, I saw you palm that card.”
Lazarus shook his head admiringly. “There are no flies on you, boy; I did a good job when I thought you up. Someday when we have time to waste, let’s have a go at solipsism.”
“Come off it, Lazarus. You can’t bulldoze me the way you did Galahad. The subcategories are still ‘Eros’ and ‘Agape.’ ‘Agape’ is rare; ‘Eros’ is so common that it is almost inevitable that Galahad acquired the feeling that ‘Eros’ is the total meaning of the word ‘love.’ Now you have unfairly confused him since he assumes—incorrectly—that you are a reliable authority with respect to the English language.”
Lazarus chuckled. “Ira, m‘boy, when I was a kid, they sold that stuff by the wagonload to grow alfalfa. Those technical words were thought up by armchair experts of the same sort as theologians. Which gives them the same standing as sex manuals written by celibate priests. Son, I avoided those fancy categories because they are useless, incorrect, and misleading. There can be sex without love, and love without sex, and situations so intermixed that nobody can sort out which is which. But love can be defined, an exact definition that does not resort to the word ‘sex,’ or to question-begging by exclusion through the use of such words as ‘Eros’ and ‘Agape.’ ”
“So define it,” said Ira. “I promise not to laugh.”
“Not yet. The trouble with defining in words anything as basic as love is that the definition can’t be understood by anyone who has not experienced it. It’s like the ancient dilemma of explaining a rainbow to a person blind from birth. Yes Ishtar, I know that you can fit such a person with cloned eyes today—but that dilemma was inescapable in my youth. In those days one could teach such an unfortunate all the physical theory of the electromagnetic spectrum, tell him precisely what frequencies the human eye can pick up, define colors to him in terms of those frequencies, explain exactly how the mechanisms of refraction and reflection produce a rainbow image and what its shape is and how the frequencies are distributed until he knew all about rainbows in the scientific sense . . but you still couldn’t make him feel the breathless wonder that the sight of a rainbow inspires in a man. Minerva is better off than that man, because she can see. Minerva dear, do you ever look at rainbows?”
“Whenever possible, Lazarus. Whenever one of my sensor extensionals can see one. Fascinating!”
“That’s it. Minerva can see a rainbow, a blind man can’t. Electromagnetic theory is irrelevant to the experience.”
“Lazarus,” Minerva added, “it may be that I can see a rainbow better than a liesh-and-blood can. My visual range is three octaves, fifteen hundred to twelve thousand angstroms.”
Lazarus whistled. “Whereas I chop off just short of one octave. Tell me, girl, do you see chords in those colors?”
“Oh, certainly!”
“Hmm! Don’t try to explain to me those other colors; I’ll have to go on being half blind.”
Lazarus added, “Puts me in mind of a blind man I knew on Mars, Ira, when I was managing that, uh, recreation center. He—”
“Gramp,” the Chairman Pro Tem interrupted in a tired voice, “don’t treat us as children. Surely, you’re the oldest man alive . . but the youngest person here—that offspring of mine sitting there, making cow-eyes at you—is as old as Gramp Johnson was when you last saw him; Hamadryad will be eighty her next birthday. Ham, my darling, how many paramours have you had?”
“Goodness, Ira—who counts?”
“Ever taken money for it?”
“None of your business, Father. Or were you about to offer me some?”
“Don’t be flip, dear; I’m still your father. Lazarus, do you think you can shock Hamadryad by plain talk? Prostitution isn’t big business here; there are too many amateurs as willing as she is. Nevertheless, the few bordellos we have in New Rome are members of the Chamber of Commerce. But you should try one of our better holiday houses—say, the Elysium. After you are fully rejuvenated.”
“Good idea,” agreed Galahad. “To celebrate. As soon as Ishtar gives you your final physical check. As my guest, Grandfather; I’d be honored. The Elysium has everything, from massage and hypnotic conditioning to the best gourmet food and best shows. Or name it and they’ll supply it.”
“Wait a moment,” protested Hamadryad. “Don’t be a selfish arsfardel, Galahad. We’ll make it a foursome celebration. Ishtar?”
“Certainly, dear. Fun.”
“Or a sixsome, with a companion for Ira. Father?”
“I could be tempted, dear, for Lazarus’ birthday party—although you know I usually avoid public places. How many rejuvenations, Lazarus? That’s how we count this sort of birthday party.”
“Don’t be nosy, Bub. As your daughter says: ‘Who counts?’ Wouldn’t mind a birthday cake, such as I used to have as a child. But just one candle in the middle is enough.”
“A phallic symbol,” agreed Galahad. “An ancient fertility sign—appropriate for a rejuvenation. And its flame is an equally ancient symbol of life. It should be a working candle, not a fake. If we can find one.”
Ishtar looked happy. “Of course! There must be a candlemaker somewhere. If not, I’ll learn how and make it myself. I’ll design it, too—semireatistic but somewhat stylized. Although I could make it true portraiture, Grandfather; I’m a fair amateur sculptor, I learned it when I studied cosmetic surgery.”
“Wait a minute!” Lazarus protested. “All I want is a plain wax candle-then blow it out and make a wish. Thank you, Ishtar, but don’t bother. And thanks, Galahad, but I’ll pick up the tab—although it may be a family party right here, where Ira won’t feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. Look, kids, I??
?ve seen every possible type of joy house and pleasure dome. Happiness is in the heart, not in that stuff.”
“Lazarus, can’t you see that the kids want to treat you to a fancy party? They like you—though Prime Cause alone knows why.”
“Well—”
“But there might be no tab. I think I recall something from that list appended to your will. Minerva—who owns the Elysium?”
“It is a daughter corporation of Service Enterprises of New Rome, Limited, which in turn is owned by Sheffield-Libby Associates. In short, Lazarus owns it.”
“Be damned! Who invested my money in that? Andy Libby, bless his sweet shy soul, would be spinning in his grave—if I hadn’t placed him spinning in orbit around the last planet we discovered together, where he was killed.”
“Lazarus, that’s not in your memoirs.”
“Ira, I keep telling you, lots of things not in my memoirs. Poor little guy got to thinking one of his deep thoughts and didn’t stay alert. I put him in orbit because I promised him, when he was dying, to take him back to his native Ozarks. Tried to, about a hundred years later, but couldn’t find him. Beacon dead, I suppose. All right, kids, we’ll have a party at my happy house and you can sample anything the place has to offer. Where were we? Ira, you were about to define ‘love.’ ”
“No, you were about to tell us about a blind man on Mars, when you were managing that whorehouse.”
“Ira, you’re as crude as Gramp Johnson was. This guy ‘Noisy’—don’t recall his right name, if he had one—Noisy was one of those people like yourself who just will work, regardless. A blind man could get by in those days quite well by begging, and nobody thought the less of him, since there was no way then to restore a man’s sight.
“But Noisy wasn’t content to live off other people; he worked at what he could do. Played a squeeze box and sang. That was an instrument operated by bellows which forced air over reeds as you touched keys on it—quite pretty music. They were popular until electronics pushed most mechanical music makers off the market.
“Noisy showed up one night, skinned out of his pressure suit at the lock dressing room, and was playing and singing before I knew he was inside.
“My policy was ‘Trade, Treat, or Travel’—except that the house might buy a beer for an old customer who temporarily wasn’t holding. But Noisy was not a customer; he was a bum —looked and smelled like a bum, and I was about to give him the bum’s rush. Then I saw this rag around his eyes and skidded to a stop.
“Nobody throws out a blind man. Nobody makes any trouble for him. I kept an eye on him but left him alone. He didn’t even sit down. Just played this broken-down stomach-Steinway and sang, neither very well, and I laid off the pianette not to interrupt him. One of the girls started passing the hat for him.
“When he reached my table, I invited him to sit and bought him a beer—and regretted it; he was pretty whiff. He thanked me and told me about himself. Lies, mostly.”
“Like yours, Gramp?”
“Thanks, Ira. Said he had been chief engineer in one of the big Harriman liners, until his accident. Maybe he had been a spaceman; I never caught him out in the lingo. Not that I tried. If a blind man wanted to claim he was the rightful heir to the Holy Roman Empire, I would go along with the gag—anybody would. Perhaps he was some sort of spacegoing mechanic, shipfitter or something. More likely he was a transported miner who had been careless using powder.
“When I checked the place at closing time, I found him sleeping in the kitchen. Couldn’t have that, we ran a sanitary mess. So I led him to a vacant room and put him to bed, intending to give him breakfast and ease him gently on his way—I wasn’t running a flophouse.
“A lot I had to say about it. I saw him at breakfast all right. But I hardly recognized him. A couple of the girls had given him a bath, trimmed his hair, and shaved him, and had dressed him in clean clothes—mine—and had thrown away the dirty rag he had worn over his ruined eyes and had replaced it with a clean white bandage.
“Kinfolk, I do not fight the weather. The girls were free to keep pets; I knew what fetched the customers, and it wasn’t my pianette playing. If that pet stood on two legs and ate more than I did, I still did not argue. Hormone Hall was Noisy’s home as long as the girls wanted to keep him.
“But it took me a while to realize that Noisy was not just a parasite enjoying free room and board, and probably our stock-in-trade as well, while siphoning off cash from our customers—no, he was pulling his weight in the boat. My books at the end of the first month he was with us showed the gross profit up and the net way up.”
“How do you account for that, Lazarus? Inasmuch as he was competing for your customers’ cash.”
“Ira, must I do all your thinking for you? No, Minerva does most of it. But it is possible that you have never thought about the economics of that sort of joint. There are three sources of gross, the bar, the kitchen, and the girls themselves. No drugs—drugs spoil the three main sources. If a customer was on drugs and showed it, or even broke out a stick of kish, I eased him out quickly and sent him down the line to the Chinaman’s.
“The kitchen was to supply meals to the girls—who were assessed room and board on a break-even or lose-a-little basis. But it also served food all night to anyone who ordered it, and showed a net since we had its overhead covered anyhow to board the girls. The bar also showed a net after I fired one barkeep with three hands. The girls kept their gross, all the traffic would bear, but they paid the house a flat fee for each kewpie, or a triple fee if she kept a customer all night. She could cheat a little, and I would shut-eye—but if she cheated too much or too often, or a john complained that he was rolled, I had a talk with her. Never any real trouble; they were ladies, and besides, I had means to check on them quietly, as well as eyes in the back of my head.
“The beefs about rolling were the stickiest, but I remember only one that was the girl’s fault rather than the john’s—I simply terminated her contract, let her go. In the usual beef the slob was not rolled; he simply had a change of heart after he had counted too much money into her greedy little hands and she had delivered what he had ordered—then he tried to roll her to get it back. But I could smell that sort of slob and would be listening via a mike--then would bust in as trouble started. That sort of jerk I would toss so hard he bounced twice.”
“Grandfather, weren’t some of them pretty big for that?”
“Not really, Galahad. Size doesn’t figure much in a fight—although I was always armed against real trouble. But if I have to take a man, I have no compunctions slowing me down about how I take him. If you kick a man in the crotch with no warning, it will quiet him down long enough to throw him out.
“Don’t flinch, Hamadear; your father guaranteed that you could not be shocked. But I was talking about Noisy and how he made us money while making some himself.
“In this sort of frontier joint the usual customer comes in, buys a drink while he looks over the girls, picks one by buying her a drink—goes to her room, then leaves. Elapsed time, thirty minutes; net to the house, minimum.
“Pre-Noisy, that is. After Noisy arrived, it went more like this: Buy a drink as before. Maybe buy the girl a second drink rather than interrupt a blind man’s song. Take the girl to her room. When he comes back, Noisy is singing ‘Frankie and Johnnie’ or ‘When the Pusher Met My Cousin,’ and smiles and throws a verse at him—and the customer sits down and listens to all of it—and asks Noisy if he knows ‘Dark Eyes.’ Sure, Noisy knows it, but instead of admitting it, he asks the john to give him the words and hum it and he’ll see what he can do with it.
“If the customer has valuta, he’s still there hours later, having had supper and bought supper for one of the girls and tipped Noisy rather lavishly and is ready for an encore with the girl or another girl. If he’s got the money, he stays all night, splitting his cash between the girls and Noisy and the bar and kitchen. If he spends himself broke and has been a good customer—well behaved as well as free
with his money—I stake him to bed and breakfast on credit, and urge him to come back. If he’s alive next payday, he’s sure to be back. If not, all the house is out is the wholesale cost of one breakfast—nothing compared with what he’s spent. Cheap goodwill advertising.
“A month of that, and both the house and the girls have made much more money, and the girls haven’t worked much harder as they have spent part of their time drinking pay-me drinks—colored water, half the price to the house, half to the girl—white they help a john listen to Noisy’s nostalgic songs. Shucks, a girl doesn’t want to work like a treadmill even if she usually enjoys her work as many of them did. But they never got tired of sitting and listening to Noisy’s songs.
“I quit playing the pianette, except, maybe, while Noisy ate. Technically I was a better musician—but he had that undefinable quality that sells a song; he could make ‘em cry or laugh. And he had a thousand of ’em. One he called ‘The Born Loser.’ Not much of a tune, just:
“Tahtah pcom poom!
Tahtah poom poom!
Tah t’tah tah tah poom poom—
“—about a bloke who can never quite make it. Uh:
“There’s a beer joint
By the pool hall
For to pass some pleasant hours.
“There’s a hook shop
Above the pool hall
Where my sister makes her living.
“She’s a good sport;
I can spring her
For a fin or even a sawbuck
When not holding,
Or the horses
Have been running rather slowly—
“Like that, folks. But more of it.”
“Lazarus,” said Ira, “you have been humming or singing that song every day you’ve been up here. All of it. A dozen verses or more.”