The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (32 page)

In the wake of all this, I have initiated an ongoing discussion
with Izzy Landes, the Reverend Lopes, and Father O’Gould. It could be that I have been seeking a kind of expiation for killing another man, however justified my action was in some lights. We often end up speaking about the nature of evil and the nature of comedy. What intrigues us, I think, is the way comedy relies in large part on pain, mishap, even cruelty.

The good priest has admitted that evolutionary psychology has yet to come up with a credible theory as to why humor developed among
Homo sapiens sapiens
. It’s not entirely clear, he says, in what ways a good laugh enhances reproductive fitness. For his part, Alfie Lopes concedes that neither of his good books provides much insight. There really isn’t, he notes ruefully, one good joke in either the New or Old Testaments. And as Izzy points out, we can no longer look to Freud in these matters. The Viennese doctor’s work, more often viewed now as “a grand, inadvertent parody of the scientific method,” is more a source of hilarity, however unintended, than an explanation thereof. Increasingly of late we have explored the possibility that comedy is a form of recognition — but of exactly what, I believe, remains a mystery.

And finally, and I mean finally, patient reader, you can imagine (you must imagine) my surprise this afternoon when, as I ruminated over this final entry in my office at the museum, the door opened. In hobbled none other than Corny Chard, missing a couple of limbs, of course. His ruddy face, shagged with a rough beard, beamed with a wild smile. “Norman,” he said, clanking over and sitting down in the chair before my desk, his crutch dropping to the floor with a clatter. All the while I stood, speechless with incredulity, and watched as his eyes lit up with a demonic, triumphant glee. “Norman … Norman. Man, do I have a story to tell.”