Explanations follow new phenomena like tails follow dogs, or so Dean claimed as he did his loquacious best to pitch the idea of a symposium to the chair of the English Department. Dr. Fenton was a portly man twice Dean’s age who had a reputation for driving his underlings to the point of collapse then stepping in to assume credit for their toils. Dean hated Fenton the way an ant hates a dog that has dropped a turd on the ant hill—not the best comparison, to be sure, which might explain why Dean didn’t have tenure yet. Organizing a symposium might help. Even if Fenton took all the credit, enough members of the faculty knew how the game was rigged and resented it enough to ensure that Dean would at least receive credit through unofficial channels. Even if Dean received no credit at all—not even through unofficial channels—that wouldn’t matter to him so long as the symposium created the space for him to execute his plan—a plan of revenge against the inimitable Dr. Fenton.
“A symposium, eh?” Dr. Fenton leaned back in his pleather chair, fingers interlocked across his considerable gut.
On one corner of Fenton’s desk stood a small bust of Lord Byron. Dean entertained a momentary fantasy of using the statuary to bludgeon his superior until the old man’s brains were spattered across the shelves of books. But Dean restrained his violent impulse; it was crude and he would be caught. Besides, when he fingered the bust of Lord Byron, he discovered that it was a plastic bobblehead. Nobody ever died from a bobblehead bludgeoning.
“On what, pray tell?” Fenton spoke with a smug condescension.
“The Really Long Jest, sir.”
Fenton stared at Dean with a blank expression.
“I see you’re familiar with it”
An obtuse joke, but surely a man of Fenton’s stature would be acquainted with The Really Long Jest.
“Details, Dean. Give me details.”
“Sir, does the Evelyn Cormack affair ring a bell?”
“The poor librarian?”
“Precisely.”
“The one who—”
“From the Nazi collection.”
“No!” Fenton was incredulous.
“Yes!”
“A symposium on that piece?”
“Precisely.”
“That’s downright dangerous.”
“With all due respect, sir. No one ever built a reputation by playing it safe.”
“True enough.”
Dr. Fenton sucked thoughtfully on the end of a pen, then rested it in the thatch above his upper lip. Dean imagined himself rushing to Fenton’s side and with a swift stroke of his arm, mashing the pen up the man’s left nostril, piercing the cranium and lodging the pretentious writing implement in the man’s frontal lobe. If it didn’t kill the man, then surely it would lobotomize him.
“Whatever happened to the poor woman?”
“Still in an institution, sir.”
“Is she still—you know—”
“Sir?”
“Non compos mentis if you know what I mean.”
“I hear she spends all day staring at a blank wall.”
“A damn shame!” And Fenton shook his head.
“She has to wear an adult diaper.”
“Gehirn-tote geschichte.”
“Gehirn-tote geschichte.”
For a moment, the two men shared what might almost pass for camaraderie.
In 1942, British intelligence caught wind of a German plot code-named Gehirn-tote geschichte. Rumours and hearsay. Nothing concrete. According to MI6, the German High Command had devoted considerable resources to the development of English language stories. Its aim was to produce a story utterly devoid of meaning. The technical challenges of such a project were enormous. We who live in the age of the internet often fail to appreciate that in 1942 a story with meaningless content was all but inconceivable. The chief barrier, then as now, was that even where a writer kept his mind utterly blank and produced a work of complete drivel, nevertheless his readers might read fresh meaning into the blank work, much as some people today see the Virgin Mary burnt onto a piece of toast. How, then, to achieve a work of über pointlessness, a work both devoid of meaning and incapable of supporting meanings read into it by the reader?
The project was the brainchild of Goebbels. He had reasoned that an utterly pointless story would incapacitate its reader. It would be so mind-numbing that the reader would stare blankly at the pages in a permanent trance-state. Once the Germans developed their story, they planned to exploit contacts on the editorial board of The Times. Imagine! The sheer gall! To distribute a story of unadulterated drivel in a newspaper! Such a thing had never been tried before.
Der Führer was delighted at the plan’s efficiency. Even if only two percent of the paper’s subscribers read the story, that would be enough to establish a viral effect. Imagine how it would proceed. Sir High Street would sit to breakfast with the Sunday Times, first reading of the Hun’s terrible progress through France as he slurped up his soft-boiled egg, then shifting to the Times Literary Supplement for something lighter to read with his toast. There, he would spy a curious tale, bland in its cadence and alluringly dull in its point of view. A few minutes later, Lady High Street would enter the room and discover her husband staring blankly at his teacup, unresponsive, as if he had suffered a stroke. Alarmed at first, our Lady High Street would cast about, then settle her gaze upon her husband’s hands still clutching The Times. She would wonder what was so bloody important that her husband continued to clutch it even after the intelligence had faded from his eyes like the light from an extinguished candle. She might then gaze at the story, as her husband had, and find herself likewise seduced by its subliminal deceit. Enter the maid and later the butler. In the afternoon, perhaps the nanny would stumble upon the stupefied quartet, followed by the older children. In the manner of dominoes, Goebbels’ dastardly story would bring down entire British households.
The plan was never executed, and after the first day of May, 1945, when Goebbels committed suicide, no one could say for certain if his crack team of storytellers had developed even a prototype of the Gehirn-tote geschichte. Rumours faded to wisps and the matter was forgotten until several years ago when an obscure New England college became the beneficiary of an estate. The late Fritz Unbelegterkopf had been a member of the faculty, a modest professor of linguistics who, when inebriated at Friday afternoon wine and cheese parties, told stories of his aunt who had served as a stenographer under Goebbels at the Ministry of Propaganda when the lunatic had first conceived of Operation Gehirn-tote geschichte. The aunt was so badly affected by the early drafts that, after Germany’s defeat, she spent most of her time filing her nails and chewing gum. Yes, Gehirn-tote geschichte was real, the old professor slurred. But the college had no evidence until Unbelegterkopf died.
Most of the late professor’s papers went to the German Studies Department to round out its Nazi collection. But the man earmarked one box for the English Department, sealing it with packing tape and labelling it with a bold warning: DO NOT OPEN. Dean had joined the faculty only that year and so was too junior to participate in the debates. To open; or not to open. That was the question.
Opinions ran the gamut, from the historical (was there sufficient evidence to suppose the Gehirn-tote geschichte was real?) to the military (since the Gehirn-tote geschichte had been developed as a weapon, was it properly a matter for study by literary scholars?) to the philosophical (what is the truth value of an imperative sentence?) to the legal (could the note affixed to the box be regarded as a codicil with the force of a testamentary document?).
As one might expect, the lawyers prevailed. The college would have continued unblemished in its long tradition of cover-your-ass scholarship if not for the intrepid Evelyn Cormack, a librarian renowned for her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, who could no more leave newly received materials uncatalogued than Edith Piaf could sing love songs in Klingon. Staying late one Friday evening, Ms. Cormack sliced through the packing tape and began the painstaking process of logging each item in the library database. On Monday morning, a colleague discovered her sitting in a puddle of her own urine, eyes glazed to a milky white, and muttering meaningless platitudes to herself. It was fortunate for the college that the colleague had attended some of those wine and cheese parties when the drunken professor Unbelegterkopf told his tales of the Gehirn-tote geschichte. Could the tales be true? Daring not even a glance, the librarian stuffed all the papers back into the box and resealed it, storing the box in the darkest corner of the building.
Dean’s symposium was a ripping success. It had a certain cross-discipline cachet and drew academics from all around the globe. Perhaps it was inaccurate to call this event Dean’s symposium. Although Dean was the driving force behind the proceedings, Dr. Fenton took pains to make it his affair. He was worse than a plaid suit. Snatching the microphone from Dean on the first day, Fenton interrupted the welcome message with remarks of his own. Those of Dean’s colleagues who grasped the dynamics of the situation rolled their eyes and groaned but were surprised at Dean’s equanimity. He looked on with an almost beatific smile. Later, at the opening luncheon, when Fenton delivered a few off-the-cuff anecdotes that ran on for half an hour, Dean again surprised his colleagues by maintaining an implacable countenance.
As one would expect, Fenton delivered the opening paper, a piece on the provenance of the Really Long Jest, and effectively wrote himself into the account: it wasn’t the head librarian, but Fenton himself, who had discovered the poor Evelyn Cormack in her state of blethering discombobulation; it was Fenton who recognized the heinous work of the late Joseph Goebbels; it was Fenton who saved civilization as we know it from the viral ravages of the Gehirn-tote geschichte. Even then, Dean held his tongue and smiled.
The next day, Fenton let it be known in a hundred different ways that the symposium was his brainchild. The credit was to him and to no one else. When a neuropsychiatrist from Berlin spoke about the neurological mechanisms which make it possible to develop a story-as-weapon, Fenton leapt to the podium and thanked the man, but not before offering an embarrassing joke about a psychiatrist a rabbi and a hooker. That afternoon, he introduced Noam Chomsky by regaling the delegates with tales of the renowned linguist’s prostate gland. And that evening, at a special performance of Wozzeck mounted by the local opera company, Fenton prepared himself by shaving off his beard and leaving behind only that portion of his moustache immediately below the nose. He made his entrance by goose-stepping down the centre aisle of the theatre.
No one was sad when Dr. Fenton failed to attend the final proceedings on Friday. Nevertheless, because they had grown accustomed to his annoying habits, they voiced curiosity at his absence. Dean assured the delegates that this was a normal Friday for Dr. Fenton and he staved off further questions with a wink and a vague tippling gesture. In fact, Dean knew full well that Dr. Fenton’s incapacity was far more serious than a simple case of inebriation. In fact, Dean knew full well that Dr. Fenton sat splayed on a chair staring at a blank wall in the library basement.
Fenton had been sitting in the same chair since the previous evening when Dean confronted him alone in his office. Dean had cornered him there and, taking up the Lord Byron bobblehead, declared the Gehirn-tote geschichte a hoax.
Fenton was furious. “Bite your tongue, young man.”
But Dean was insistent.
If Fenton had been a priest, he would have accused Dean of blasphemy; he would have excommunicated him; he would have burned the young man at the stake.
Dean returned the bobblehead to its place on the desk and raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ll make you a wager,” he said. “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks I can read that story and walk away with all my noodles intact.”
Fenton had been drinking just enough to let his natural belligerence get the best of his common sense. He shook Dean’s hand and together the men crossed the quadrangle to the library. Although the library was closed, Fenton had a key, and they made their way to the basement unimpeded. For the duration of the symposium, the library had placed the lone box on a table in a basement seminar room. While Fenton stood in the doorway, Dean rifled through the yellowed pages, stock paper imprinted with the official seal of the Third Reich and watermarked with a swastika. At last, Dean’s fingers settled on the only pages written in English, a story, the Really Long Jest. Dean held the pages under the florescent lights and began to read the completely pointless story. When he was done, he set the pages face-down on the table, looked up at Fenton and smiled.
“As you can see, I’m not soft in the head.”
Dr. Fenton was stunned. “I thought the story was authentic.”
“Apparently, we’ve been duped.”
“Let me see.” Fenton stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind him. He took up the pages and began to skim.
Dean watched the man’s eyes move line by line down the first page, then on to the second and the third, slowing as they neared the end, then coming to a rest on the final word. The eyes glazed over. The man’s breathing slowed. The hands clutched at the pages and ceased to move.
“Dr. Fenton?”
The chair of the English Department did not answer.
Dean waved a hand before the older man’s unseeing eyes. He eased the man onto a chair, then reached into the man’s jacket pocket and retrieved a billfold. He paid himself one hundred dollars in satisfaction of the wager. Not a penny more. Not a penny less. Dean prided himself on his scrupulous honesty. And, no, he did not regard it as dishonest, when making his wager with Dr. Fenton, to omit the fact that he was dyslexic.