“Synonyms for ‘beggar.’ In the Philosophical Language there will only be one word for penises, one for beggars. Quick, Daniel, is there a distinction between groaning and grumbling?”
“I should say so, but-”
“On the other hand-may we lump genuflection together with curtseying, and give them one name?”
“I-I cannot say, Doctor!”
“Then, I say, there is work to be done! At the moment, I am bogged down in an endless digression on the Ark.”
“Of the Covenant? Or-”
“The other one.”
“How does that enter into the Philosophical Language?”
“Obviously the P.L. must contain one and only one word for every type of animal. Each animal’s word must reflect its classification-that is, the words for perch and bream should be noticeably similar, as should the words for robin and thrush. But bird-words should be quite different from fish-words.”
“It strikes me as, er, ambitious…”
“Half of Oxford is sending me tedious lists. My- our-task is to organize them-to draw up a table of every type of bird and beast in the world. I have entabulated the animals troublesome to other animals-the louse, the flea. Those designed for further transmutation-the caterpillar, the maggot. One-horned sheathed winged insects. Testaceous turbinated exanguious animals-and before you ask, I have subdivided them into those with, and without, spiral convolutions. Squamous river fish, phytivorous birds of long wings, rapacious beasts of the cat-kind-anyway, as I drew up all of these lists and tables, it occurred to me that (going back to Genesis, sixth chapter, verses fifteen through twenty-two) Noah must have found a way to fit all of these creatures into one gopher-wood tub three hundred cubits long! I became concerned that certain Continental savants, of an atheistical bent, might misuse my list to suggest that the events related in Genesis could not have happened-”
“One could also imagine certain Jesuits turning it against you-holding it up as proof that you harbored atheistical notions of your own, Dr. Wilkins.”
“Just so! Daniel! Which makes it imperative that I include, in a separate chapter, a complete plan of Noah’s Ark-demonstrating not only where each of the beasts was berthed, but also the fodder for the herbivorous beasts, and live cattle for the carnivorous ones, and more fodder yet to keep the cattle alive, long enough to be eaten by the carnivores-where, I say, ’twas all stowed.”
“Fresh water must have been wanted, too,” Daniel reflected.
Wilkins-who tended to draw closer and closer to people when he was talking to them, until they had to edge backwards-grabbed a sheaf of paper off a stack and bopped Daniel on the head with it. “Tend to your Bible, foolish young man! It rained the entire time!”
“Of course, of course-they could’ve drunk rainwater,” Daniel said, profoundly mortified.
“I have had to take some liberties with the definition of ‘cubit,’ “ Wilkins said, as if betraying a secret, “but I think he could have done it with eighteen hundred and twenty-five sheep. To feed the carnivores, I mean.”
“The sheep must’ve taken up a whole deck!?”
“It’s not the space they take up, it’s all the manure, and the labor of throwing it overboard,” Wilkins said. “At any rate-as you can well imagine-this Ark business has stopped all progress cold on the P.L. front. I need you to get on with the Terms of Abuse.”
“Sir!”
“Have you felt, Daniel, a certain annoyance, when one of your semi-educated Londoners speaks of ‘a vile rascal’ or ‘a miserable caitiff’ or ‘crafty knave,’ ‘idle truant,’ or ‘flattering parasite’?”
“Depends upon who is calling whom what…”
“No, no, no! Let’s try an easy one: ‘fornicating whore.’ “
“It is redundant. Hence, annoying to the cultivated listener.”
“ ‘Senseless fop.’ “
“Again, redundant-as are ‘flattering parasite’ and the others.”
“So, clearly, in the Philosophical Language, we needn’t have separate adjectives and nouns in such cases.”
“How about ‘filthy sloven?”
“Excellent! Write it down, Daniel!”
“ ‘Licentious blade’… ‘facetious wag’… ‘perfidious traitor’…” As Daniel continued in this vein, Wilkins bustled over to the writing-desk, withdrew a quill from an inkwell, shook off redundant ink, and then came over to Daniel; wrapped his fingers around the pen; and guided him over to the desk.
And so to work. Daniel exhausted the Terms of Abuse in a few short hours, then moved on to Virtues (intellectual, moral, and homiletical), Colors, Sounds, Tastes and Smells, Professions, Operations (viz. carpentry, sewing, alchemy), and so on. Days began passing. Wilkins became fretful if Daniel, or anyone, worked too hard, and so there were frequent “seminars” and “symposia” in the kitchen-they used honey from Christopher Wren’s Gothic apiary to make flip. Frequently Charles Comstock, the fifteen-year-old son of their noble host, came to visit, and to hear Wilkins or Hooke talk. Charles tended to bring with him letters addressed to the Royal Society from Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spinoza. Frequently these turned out to contain new concepts that Daniel had to fit into the Philosophical Language’s tables.
Daniel was hard at work compiling a list of all the things in the world that a person could own (aqu?ducts, axle-trees, palaces, hinges) when Wilkins called him down urgently. Daniel came down to find the Rev. holding a grand-looking Letter, and Charles Comstock clearing the decks for action: rolling up large diagrams of the Ark, and feeding-schedules for the eighteen hundred and twenty-five sheep, and stowing them out of the way to make room for more important affairs. Charles II, by the Grace of God of England King, had sent them this letter: His Majesty had noticed that ant eggs were bigger than ants, and demanded to know how that was possible.
Daniel ran out and sacked an ant-nest. He returned in triumph carrying the nucleus of an anthill on the flat of a shovel. In the front room Wilkins had begun dictating, and Charles Comstock scribbling, a letter back to the King-not the substantive part (as they didn’t have an answer yet), but the lengthy paragraphs of apologies and profuse flattery that had to open it: “With your brilliance you illuminate the places that have long, er, languished in, er-”
“Sounds more like a Sun King allusion, Reverend,” Charles warned him.
“Strike it, then! Sharp lad. Read the entire mess back to me.”
Daniel slowed before the door to Hooke’s laboratory, gathering his courage to knock. But Hooke had heard him approaching, and opened it for him. With an outstretched hand he beckoned Daniel in, and aimed him at a profoundly stained table, cleared for action. Daniel entered the room, upended the ant-nest, set the shovel down, and only then worked up the courage to inhale. Hooke’s laboratory didn’t smell as bad as he’d always assumed it would.
Hooke ran his hands back through his hair, pulling it away from his face, and tied it back behind his neck with a wisp of twine. Daniel was perpetually surprised that Hooke was only ten years older than he. Hooke just turned thirty a few weeks ago, in June, at about the same time that Daniel and Isaac had fled plaguey Cambridge for their respective homes.
Hooke was now staring at the mound of living dirt on his tabletop. His eyes were always focused on a narrow target, as if he peered out at the world through a hollow reed. When he was out in the broad world, or even in the house’s front room, that seemed strange, but it made sense when he was looking at a small world on a tabletop-ants scurrying this way and that, carrying egg-cases out of the wreckage, establishing a defensive perimeter. Daniel stood opposite and looked at, but apparently did not see, the same things.
Within a few minutes Daniel had seen most of what he was going to see among the ants, within five minutes he was bored, within ten he had given up all pretenses and begun wandering round Hooke’s laboratory, looking at the remnants of everything that had passed beneath the microscope: shards of porous stone, bits of moldy shoe-leather, a small glass jar labelledwilkins urine, splinters of petrified wood, countless tiny envelopes of seeds, insects in jars, scraps of various fabrics, tiny pots labelledsnails teeth andvipers fangs. Shoved back into a corner, a heap of dusty, rusty sharp things: knife-blades, needles, razors. There was probably a cruel witticism to be made here: given a razor, Hooke would sooner put it under his microscope than shave with it.