I should note that there are a good number of Chinese fishermen on the bay who specialize in hunting unusual species of marine life specifically for their use in an assortment of esoteric Chinese pharmacopoeias. I’m given to understand that the export market for these perplexing products is thriving. Commodities like preserved sea cucumbers, sea urchins, needle fish roe, basking shark eggs, and various species of small kelp crabs and azure- colored sea snails are in great demand. All these and many more are highly prized, and can easily pull their weight in gold or silver on the export tallies.
The visiting fisherman and his wife bowed and introduced themselves in thick pidgin English. The man said that Master Ah Chung had sent them along with something special.
As my negotiations for the exotic shark continued, our Mr. O’Flynn suddenly appeared. Smiling broadly, and in a torrent of pidgin Chinese, Mr. O’Flynn suddenly greeted the fisherman as an old acquaintance. They spoke together rapidly for a moment, and then O’Flynn turned to me and asked what price the fisherman asked for the shark. I told him we had settled on a price of two dollars. Mr. O’Flynn quickly confirmed this with the fisherman, and then turned back to me and said, “For two dollars he’s making you a present of the fish, and he’s delivered it more or less alive, no mean feat if you ask me, but he’s done it only at Master Ah Chung’s insistence. You can safely wager there’s some binding obligation involved. To be sure, you’re barely paying for this fellow’s time. He tells me the shark’s liver alone is worth five dollars, and the tanned skin another twelve. I’ll be begging your pardon for the impertinence, Professor, but if I were you I’d up and give this good fellow eight dollars. That way he can honorably fulfill Mr. Ah Chung’s instructions and perchance realize a pittance of profit so as to save face with his family.”
O’Flynn grinned, winked, and went on. “Mark what I say, Professor, the good word will soon race about that you’re an honest man of business, and before you can recite the saints’ names, you’ll be up to your braces in all manner of fishy God-knows-what.”
I managed the transaction just as Mr. O’Flynn had so earnestly recommended, but I did so in a confused fog of amazement at his hitherto unknown, and totally unsuspected, ability to make himself perfectly well understood in brogue-laced pidgin Chinese. I was dumbfounded to say the least, but I paid out the eight dollars all the same, and was later happy to have done so, for we managed, with constant diligence, to keep this rare specimen alive and healthy for almost fifteen weeks.
The fisherman and his wife were quite pleased with the arrangement, and a minor festival of bowing, smiling, and amicable chatter ensued. It was then I noticed that the fisherman and his wife treated Mr. O’Flynn with particular deference that entailed bowing even lower with hands clasped together as if in prayer. I found this more amusing than interesting, and didn’t reflect on its significance at the time.
After I had instructed some of my more stalwart students to transfer the exhausted shark to one of the large, bay-fed tanks, the proud fisherman and his wife happily took their leave. I recall that they departed in the company of our Mr. O’Flynn, all the while chirping a seemingly endless exchange of Cantonese salutations and polite laughter.
The discovery of O’Flynn’s hidden linguistic talents opened new and vigorous channels for acquiring specific species for our research and preservation. Mr. O’Flynn even suggested that a reasonable bounty be paid for specimens delivered alive and in reasonable health. This we did to great effect. The demand for our scientifically preserved laboratory specimens had grown fivefold in five years. We at Hopkins soon found we were servicing six other universities, as well as smaller research institutions. We even managed to set aside a complete catalog of preserved specimens to satisfy the needs of the state biologists for whom the Hopkins Marine Station is almost a second home.
Mr. O’Flynn, though he was only employed every Wednesday, made his presence felt by the ongoing delivery of marine specimens from the various Chinese fishing villages. Due to his admonitions and the bounties offered, all but the most delicate or vulnerable creatures were delivered alive. We even occasionally received (free of charge) orphaned sea otter kits, sea lion pups, and the odd storm-stressed, fledgling pelican. In all respects, Mr. O’Flynn had quickly proved so successful acting as our purchasing agent that we soon were at liberty to offer him a decent commission on all accepted purchases, and a five percent wage increase. He expressed himself completely satisfied with this arrangement, though he insisted on an understanding that should we “find ourselves in want of anything particularly big and dangerous,” he wanted the right to renegotiate terms to compensate for the obvious increased risk all around. Personally amused by imagining what exact picture Mr. O’Flynn envisioned for such unspoken dangers, I so stipulated, and it was all agreed.
Since then, I’m pleased to recall the intervening years at Hopkins have passed most agreeably and very constructively, with Hopkins functioning well, albeit at a metered academic gait. And over time Mr. O’Flynn and I have become better acquainted, but only marginally better than I am with most of my own students. As I have previously stated, he is not a fellow who reveals much if he can help it. But after working for the laboratory for a few years, O’Flynn had come to witness a great many marine oddities; most of these specimens he never would have even suspected of existing. This novel if mostly untutored interest seems to have led him to indulge in a sincere if arcane Methodist interpretation of the Creation. In that vein Mr. O’Flynn’s interest became remarkably focused, if not fixated upon the more bizarre and seemingly pointless examples of “the Almighty’s Grand Design.” Creatures “kin” to the common flea, or the “blood-hungry” mosquito, were most assuredly of Satan’s dark creation. “And I ask you honestly, Professor, just what purpose would a caring Christian God have for a man-killing jellyfish no bigger than a nickel? It just doesn’t make sense in the great scheme of heaven’s design.”
Perhaps it was my position as a tenured old pedagogue at Hopkins that encouraged Mr. O’Flynn, on a number of occasions, to call upon me at the laboratory, or at my home. Hat in hand and head slightly bowed, he would beg my indulgence for a few minutes. He appeared interested in a remarkably wide range of seemingly disjointed subjects, as though he’d chosen them from a fishbowl, like a lottery ticket. He diligently and innocently inquired about pole stars, blackamoors, slack tides, narwhals, whip snakes, monsters, and misanthropes, and all with equal interest, intensity, and enthusiasm. And then he might ask some spiritually obtuse question on the subject of biology. To be honest, I was somewhat taken aback by his interests. The very fact that a man of his limited education could actually frame such questions, I regarded as something of a novelty. The man piqued my interest in numerous ways, and his interests were always remarkably unpredictable.
With each visit Mr. O’Flynn would bring by some living aberration or semifossilized oddity. Then he would ask me to explain what I saw in light of the Almighty’s faultless reputation for perfection. Following this vein, he showed me numerous examples of two-headed snakes and turtles, frogs and toads with six legs or two, a wingless chicken, and other creatures with all manner of strange malformations.
I attempted to explain to Mr. O’Flynn that there were obvious differences between those creatures that in the majority exist within their own zoological perfection, and those that are accidentally conceived with genetic imperfections that usually result in such malformations. I told him such imperfections could occasionally be found in every species of creature, including humans.
It had long seemed to me that our Mr. O’Flynn had been undergoing some small crisis of faith, perhaps aggravated by his peripheral acquaintance with our marine studies at Hopkins. On several occasions I tried reminding him, in a good-natured manner, that it was generally deemed unadvisable, if not impossible, to attempt to reconcile religious faith and pure science in absolute terms of correlation, faith being highly subjective in nature, and pure science (whenever possible) primarily objective.
I’m persuaded that I made no appreciable impression on O’Flynn whatsoever. It appeared that some complex
