the sort, I had remarked that at least he could count on a certain amount of recognition in his own obituary.
I suppose it wasn't a very clever remark, but then my remarks never are. I had meant it to be lighthearted, to pull him out of a gathering depression during which I knew, from experience, he would be most intolerable.
And perhaps there had been a little unconscious spite in. it, too. I cannot honestly say.
At any rate, he turned full on me. His lean body shook and his dark eyebrows pulled down over his deep-set eyes as he shrieked at me in falsetto, 'But I'll never read my obituary. I'll be deprived even of that.'
And he spat at me. He deliberately spat at me.
I ran to my bedroom.
He never apologized, but after a few days in which I avoided him completely, we carried on our frigid life as before. Neither of us ever referred to the incident. ere was another obituary.
Somehow, as I sat there alone at the breakfast table, I felt it to be the last straw for him, the climax of his long-drawn-out failure.
I could sense a crisis coming and didn't know whether to fear or welcome it. Perhaps, on the whole, I would welcome it. Any change could not fail to be a change for the better.
Shortly before lunch, he came upon me in the living room, where a basket of unimportant sewing gave my hands something to do and a bit of television occupied my mind.
He said abruptly, 'I will need your help.'
It had been twenty years or more since he had said anything like that and involuntarily I thawed toward him. He looked unhealthily excited. There was a flush on his ordinarily pale cheeks.
I said, 'Gladly, if there's something I can do for you.'
There is. I have given my assistants a month's vacation. They will leave Saturday and after that you and I will work alone in the laboratory. I tell you now so that you will refrain from making any other arrangements for the coming week.'
I shriveled a bit. 'But Lancelot, you know I can't help you with your work. I don't understand-'
'I know that,' he said with complete contempt, 'but you don't have to understand my work. You need only follow a few simple instructions and follow them carefully. The point is that I have discovered something, finally, which will put me where I belong-'
'Oh, Lancelot,' I said involuntarily, for I had heard this before a number of times.
'Listen to me, you fool, and for once try to behave like an adult. This time I have done it. No one can anticipate me this time because my discovery is based on such an unorthodox concept that no physicist alive, except me, is genius enough to think of it, not for a generation at least. And when my work bursts on the world. I could be recognized as the greatest name of all time in science.'
'I'm sure I'm very glad for you, Lancelot.'
'I said I could be recognized. I could not be, also. There is a great deal of injustice in the assignment of scientific credit. I've learned that often enough. So it will not be enough merely to announce the discovery. If I do, everyone will crowd into the field and after a while I'll just be a name in the history books, with glory spread out over a number of Johnny-come-latelies.'
I think the only reason he was talking to me then, three days before he could get to work on whatever it was he planned to do, was that he could no longer contain himself. He bubbled over and I was the only one who was nonentity enough to be witness to that.
He said, 'I intend my discovery to be so dramatized, to break on mankind with so thunderous a clap, that there will be no room for anyone else to be mentioned in the same breath with me, ever.'
He was going too far, and I was afraid of the effect of another disappointment on him. Might it not drive him mad? I said, 'But Lancelot, why need we bother? Why don't we leave all this? Why not take a long vacation? You have worked hard enough and long enough, Lancelot. Perhaps we can take a trip to Europe. I've always wanted to-'
He stamped his foot. 'Will you stop your foolish meowing? Saturday, you will come into my laboratory with me.'
I slept poorly for the next three nights. He had never been