Chapter 39: Monday, Jan. 29

In the interest of promoting the Museum and my new book, I have made several guest appearances on national television talk shows. Elsbeth could watch them for hours and knew extraordinary amounts about the people interviewed and talked about. To me the shows all seemed the same -- a ritual in which the host and the guest try to be profane or profound. And I have always found it annoying when the host or hostess lowers his or her voice, mimicking sincerity and signaling to everyone they were asking a searching question. But I must say they all treated me with great respect and consideration. One fellow, in suspenders, reminded me of a side-show barker, and the alpha female on one of the morning shows had very nice legs.

Which brings me to my own situation. Two nights after the denouement in the castle, late in the evening, Diantha came into my bedroom where, restless, I was trying to read myself to sleep. She sat on the edge of the counterpane and, in essence, confessed that she had returned to the Bain place "on an impulse." She said she was going to try to convince him to leave me alone. "I knew it was a mistake the minute I got there. At first he was amused. Then he turned freaky. I mean really freaky. He wouldn't let me go. He kept asking me where Celeste was. He wouldn't believe me when I told him I didn't know."

"Were you still in love with him?" I asked.

"Maybe. Until I got there and saw him again. Then ..." She sighed and looked at me with her marvelous eyes. "I kept thinking about you and me."

So, in quick succession, she came into my arms, into my bed, and into my life.

Diantha, it turns out, is pregnant. A week ago she informed me she was late with her period and that an off-the-shelf test from the pharmacy proved positive. I didn't know quite how to respond, to tell the truth.

"It's yours, you know," she said, as we moved around the kitchen, making dinner together.

"How can you be sure?" I asked as the realization sank in through layer on layer of denials, no, no, no, culminating in a large, smiling yes.

"Freddie was shooting blanks. He had a vasectomy years ago."

"So like a nihilist!" I said, stopping to take her in my arms. "You're sure you're pregnant?"

"Positive. I'm seeing the doctor, but I know I am. If it's a girl I want to call her Elsbeth."

"Absolutely," I said.

At the same time I knew I would peruse the autopsy report on Mr. Bain, where the fact of his vasectomy should be listed. What strange beings we be.

It hasn't been all roses between Diantha and me, but the thorns have been few and predictable. It would seem that I am playing Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. But cultural transmission, so to speak, goes two ways. It's not simply a matter of, say, music. Like her mother, Diantha cannot abide Brahms. She can also be casual about meals. She doesn't like to cook, and I am still leery about ordering prepared food that comes in those white containers.

It also turns out that my nubile Galatea has certain preferences of an intimate nature that test both my capacity for stimulation and the limits of my taste. And while a few eyebrows have been raised regarding our arrangements, I could care less. Not that I haven't tried to get Diantha to refrain from referring to me, in public, as "Stud."

In the wake of all this, I have initiated an ongoing discussion with Izzy Landes, the Reverend Lopes, and Father O'Gould. It could be that I have been seeking a kind of expiation for killing another man, however justified my action was in some lights. We meet at the Club for dinner and often end up speaking about the nature of evil and the nature of comedy. What intrigues us, I think, is the way comedy relies in large part on pain, mishap, even cruelty.

The good priest has admitted that evolutionary psychology has yet to come up with a credible theory as to why humor developed among Homo sapiens. It's not entirely clear, he says, in what ways a good laugh enhances reproductive fitness. For his part, Alfie Lopes concedes that neither of his good books provides much insight. There really isn't, he notes ruefully, one good joke in either the Old or the New Testaments. And, as Izzy points out, we can no longer look to Freud in these matters. The Viennese doctor's work, nowadays viewed as an inadvertent parody of the scientific method, is more a source of hilarity, however unintended, than an explanation thereof. Increasingly of late we have explored the possibility that comedy is a form of recognition -- but of exactly what, I believe, remains the mystery.

And finally, and I mean finally, gentle reader, you can imagine (you must imagine) my surprise this afternoon when, as I ruminated over this final entry in my office at the Museum, the door opened. In hobbled none other than Corny Chard, missing a couple of limbs, of course. His ruddy face, shagged with a rough beard, beamed with a wild smile. "Norman," he said, clanking over and sitting down in the chair before my desk, his crutch dropping to the floor with a clatter. All the while I stood, speechless with incredulity, and watched as his eyes lit up with a demonic, triumphant glee. "Norman ... Norman, man, do I have a story to tell!"

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