Few estates in this country feature robotic-monkey displays, and I am burstingly proud to say that none – not even those vast sumptuous domains owned by Donald Trump, the Sultan of Brunei, Bill Gates, and Mick Jagger – none can boast as elaborate a collection of robotic monkeys as that which capers, tumbles, scampers, frolics, chatters, dances, and occasionally simulates copulation on our south lawn, albeit I will admit that Mick’s collection, while smaller than ours, does contain more monkeys engaged in grossly obscene acts. Though if I were him, I wouldn’t brag about this dubious distinction. Ours is largely a G-rated bunch of charming mechanical primates. On a warm spring afternoon, we enormously enjoy spreading a blanket on the south lawn and watching the monkeys pretend to pick lice out of one another’s thick nylon fur, while we eat cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches and wash them down with fifths of bourbon.
Will you please adjust my lap blanket? After even an incomplete massage from Bruno, I’m not at once able to control my arms, and in attempting to adjust my lap robe, I might spasmodically knock over that priceless Tiffany lamp or gouge off my nose.
Thank you. That’s just right.
What?
Where?
Oh, be not afraid. No, really, there’s no danger. That was nothing more than a robotic monkey flinging itself at the window.
See, there’s another one.
Yes, I know they can be daunting, with their gnashing steel teeth, gnashing and gnashing, but they are merely malfunctioning machines, not possessed of malevolent intent.
Well, you see, the windows will not shatter because –
Now that was a furious little Curious George! What an impact!
– because they are fabricated from inch-thick bulletproof glass.
Really, please sit down.
No, really.
Good lord! Impressive noise, wasn’t it?
No, no, that wasn’t a bigger monkey. They’re all approximately the same size. That was just a pair of them, throwing themselves at the window while pretending to copulate.
I would offer you a little Scotch to quiet your nerves, but when you had finished it, you would be required to floss and convey the used length to the visitor’s window at the carriage master’s cottage. Until Bruno has ascertained the precise cause of the malfunction of the robotic monkeys and has effected repairs, it would be unwise for any of us to venture outside.
Where was I?
8
Everything Additional that I Know about The Cursed Book.
I have told you heretofore and foursquarely that to track the ownership of The Book of Counted Sorrows is to follow a trail of frightful destruction.
I was not exaggerating.
I never exaggerate. The exaggeration nodule of my cerebellum was surgically removed when I was six years old, as part of a religious ritual performed on every child in the cult to which my parents had committed themselves and from which I didn’t escape until I was fourteen. Though I sometimes yearn for my lost ability to exaggerate, I am most grateful that it was not the policy of the cult to neuter every six-year-old child.
But allow me to return – which I must, as surely as the swallows return to Capistrano and occasionally fry themselves by perching on insulation-stripped power lines – to the subject of Counted Sorrows, and to the truly frightful destruction and the violent death and the madness and the severe dental crises that found those who came into possession of that tome.
After Clete Reet swallowed himself in 1942, Sorrows eventually passed into the hands of Rupert Cling, of the peach-fortune family. In 1944, in a state of tremulous excitement, he told friends that he had discovered the meaning of life in The Book of Counted Sorrows and felt as though he might explode with the power of this knowledge. He did not explode – as you were no doubt expecting he would – but two days thereafter, he threw himself into the peach-handling equipment, whereupon he was peeled, sliced, processed, and canned in heavy syrup along with two million pounds of Georgia’s finest.
In 1946, Henry Dubonnet, an apprentice spittle-valve cleaner for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, came into possession of the book. One week later, during a performance of 101 variations on Ravel’s Bolero, as Henry was standing by with his spittle-collection jar, his vacuum siphon, his spittle-sample camera, his log book, and the necessary legal forms requiring the signature of each donating musician, this dear man, this well-liked nonentity, suddenly began to spin. Faster and faster he spun, so fast that his spittle-collection jar and the other items vital to his trade were flung away from him at such high velocity that they decapitated and otherwise inconvenienced seven members of the audience. Yet faster Henry spun, faster, faster, churning ever faster, until he was a blur, and then something less clichéd than a blur (though the word eludes meà, faster. When at last he stopped spinning, he was no longer a man at all, but a column of butter in the shape of a man. The Enforcer of Official Orchestra Systems, one Lucifinda Scuttlesby, happened to be standing near Henry Dubonnet when this transformation occurred, and she is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “It was most distressing. Our apprentice spittle-valve cleaner, whatever his name might have been, was such a huggable little chubby nonentity. I know everyone involved with the Philharmonic will pause this evening for perhaps a quarter minute of silence to honor his memory. But in spite of whatever grief we might feel sticking like phlegm in our throats, I believe that all of us would agree that the butter into which this humble little nobody spun himself looked as creamy and delicious as the finest spread you have ever seen served in any five-star restaurant in the world. Had there been muffins and scones handy, we would have slathered them at once. With great affection, we would have devoured what’s-his-name in a New York minute, which is the most touching tribute I can imagine being given to a man with so little to offer the world prior to this event.”