The Chain of Chance

bearded neophytes and periwigged bluestockings, I felt a little like a crasher and a little like a host, inasmuch as I was Barth’s houseguest and was even sharing the honors of the house. Being neatly trimmed and shaven, I must have made the impression of an overaged Boy Scout.

Curiously absent from the party was that atmosphere of courtly formality, or even worse that revolutionary clowning so characteristic of intellectuals: ever since the latest events in China, the Maoists had gone into hiding. I made an effort to socialize with all the guests because I knew they had come expressly to meet an allergic astronaut, a roaming detective ad interim. Nonchalantly the conversation turned to the tribulations of the world. Not nonchalantly, really, but in a mood of surrender now that Europe’s eternal mission had come to an end, a fact that these graduates of Nanterre and l’Ecole Superieure seemed to grasp better than their compatriots. Europe had survived, but only in an economic sense. Prosperity had been restored, but not the feeling of self-confidence. It was not the cancer patient’s fear of malignancy, but the awareness that the spirit of history had moved on, and that if it ever returned it would not be here. France had lost its power and influence, and now that it had been moved from the stage into the audience it was at liberty to show concern for the sufferings of the world. McLuhan’s prophecies were coming true, but in an inverse sort of way, as prophecies have a habit of doing. His “global village” was already here, but split into two halves. The poorer half was suffering, while the wealthier half was importing that suffering via television and commiserating from a distance. That it couldn’t go on like this was everywhere taken for granted, but it went on just the same. No one asked for my opinion on the State Department’s new “wait and see” policy within the economic buffer zone, nor did I venture to offer any.

The conversation then switched from the trials of the world to its follies. Among other things, I learned that a famous French film director was planning to make a film about the “massacre on the steps.” The part of the mysterious hero was to be played by Jean-Paul Belmondo; the little girl would be played not by a child actress— since bedding down with a kid would have been considered in bad taste—but by a famous British movie star. Being just recently married, this same actress had invited a number of prominent personalities to her public wedding night—such pastimes were now the vogue—in order to take up a collection around the nuptial bed for the benefit of the airport casualties in Rome. Ever since reading about those Belgian nuns who indulged in charitable prostitution in order to redeem the hypocrisy of the Church, I’m no longer appalled by such things. And of course there was a lot of talk about politics. The latest news item was that members of an Argentine movement of national patriots had been exposed as government stooges. Various people expressed the fear that something like that couldn’t be ruled out even in a country like France. Fascism had survived, along with the most ruthless dictatorships—at least in Europe—whereas the only way to deal effectively with extremist terror was to exterminate the activists. Although a democracy refused to condone “preventive murders,” it nonetheless looked the other way when it came to progovernment assassinations carried out under discreet supervision and with limited liability. This was not to be confused with the old-fashioned type of political execution or repression instituted by the State, but was, rather, a form of constructive terror per procurationem. I once heard of a philosophy that advocated the total legalization of violence, which even de Sade regarded as the epitome of true freedom. It would have constitutionally sanctioned every sort of activity—revolutionary as well as reactionary; and since the supporters of the status quo far outnumbered the subversives, the established order was sure to emerge intact in a violent confrontation of both extremes, should it ever come to something like a civil war.

Around eleven Barth began showing the more curious guests around the house, leaving only a handful of people downstairs. I decided to join three of the guests who were sitting around an open patio door. Two were mathematicians belonging to rival camps: Saussure, a relative of Lagrange, was specializing in analysis, that is, in pure mathematics; the other was in applied mathematics, being a programmer and statistician by profession. Even their outward appearance offered an amusing contrast. Saussure looked as if he might have stepped out of a daguerreotype—lean, dark-haired, with chiseled features, bushy sideburns, a gold pince-nez dangling on a ribbon— and wore a Japanese transistorized calculator around his neck like a medal, which was obviously meant as a joke. The statistician, a burly, curly-headed blond, was a double for the slouchy Boche featured in French postcards from the time of the First World War, and was in fact of German origin. His name was Mayer, and not Mailleux, as I thought at first after hearing it pronounced that way. The mathematicians were in no hurry to make conversation, unlike the third man, a pharmacologist named Dr, Lapidus. Sporting a full-length beard, he looked as if he’d just returned from an uninhabited island. He asked me whether the investigation had turned up any abortive cases, that is, cases where the outward signs of insanity had simply come and gone. I answered that all the files were on microfilm, and that unless one wanted to classify the Swift case as abortive, there were none falling into that category.

“That’s amazing!” he exclaimed.

“Why amazing?”

“The symptoms varied in their intensity, but the moment any of the victims was hospitalized, like that man who jumped out the window, they immediately subsided. If one assumes the psychosis was chemically induced, that would mean the dose taken had a strange kind of cumulative effect. Didn’t anyone notice this?”

“I don’t really see your point.”

“There’s no psychotropic compound known to have such a delayed effect that, say, if it were taken on Monday it could begin producing the first symptoms on Tuesday, cause hallucinations on Wednesday, and reach a maximum intensity on Saturday. Of course it might be possible to build up a supply by using a hypodermic injection that it would take several weeks to absorb; but such a procedure would leave traces in the body, and I found nothing in the autopsy reports to indicate this.”

“You didn’t find anything because nothing like that was ever reported.”

“That’s what I find amazing!”

“But they might have taken the stuff more than once, which would explain the cumulative effect…”

He shook his head with disapproval.

“How? Between the change in routine and the appearance of the first symptoms there was always a time lapse of six to eight days on the average, nine in one case. And no chemical agent is capable of having such a delayed or cumulative effect. Let’s assume they started taking this chemical substance the first or second day after their arrival; then the initial symptoms would have had to occur within the next forty-eight hours. In the case of patients with kidney or liver diseases that’s debatable, but then there weren’t any such patients.”

“So what’s your opinion?”

“The case histories would indicate they were drugged on a steady, gradual, and continual basis.”

“So you believe it was a case of premeditated poisoning?”

He broke out in a smile, revealing his gold teeth.

“No. Who knows, maybe the goblins are to blame, or maybe some flies were on their way back from raiding a pharmaceutical lab and happened to land on the victims’ toast after tramping around in the latest derivatives of lysergic acid. But I do know that the process of accretion took place gradually.”

“But what if it were an unknown compound?”

“Unknown to us?”

He said it in such a way that I couldn’t help smiling.

“Yes. Unknown to you. To chemistry. Would that be impossible?”

He made a wry grimace and flashed the gold in his mouth.

“There are more unknown compounds than there are stars in the sky. But you can’t have any that are both resistant and non-resistant to tissue metabolism. There are many circles, but there is no such thing as a squared circle.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Very simple. Chemical agents known to cause acute reactions act by binding irreversibly to the body’s hemoglobin to form insoluble compounds with carbon monoxide or cyanide. An autopsy will always be able to detect the presence of such agents, especially if micromethods are used—chromatography, for example. But even with the help of chromatography they couldn’t find any traces! That means the chemical agent involved must be easily degradable. If it’s easily degradable, then it would have to be administered in a number of small doses or else in one massive dose. But if it were administered in a single dose, then the symptoms would start becoming noticeable in a matter of hours and not days. Now do you follow me?”

“Yes. Do you see any other possibilities?”