Madness Read online

  ‘You know what you ought to do,’ his aunt said to him, gobbling the stew. ‘You ought to set yourself down this very minute with paper and pencil and write a cooking-book.’

  He looked at her across the table, chewing his parsnips slowly.

  ‘Why not?’ she cried. ‘I’ve taught you how to write and I’ve taught you how to cook and now all you’ve got to do is put the two things together. You write a cooking-book, my darling, and it’ll make you famous the whole world over.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  And that very day, Lexington began writing the first page of that monumental work which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. He called it Eat Good and Healthy.

  VI

  Seven years later, by the time he was seventeen, he had recorded over nine thousand different recipes, all of them original, all of them delicious.

  But now, suddenly, his labours were interrupted by the tragic death of Aunt Glosspan. She was afflicted in the night by a violent seizure, and Lexington, who had rushed into her bedroom to see what all the noise was about, found her lying on her bed yelling and cussing and twisting herself up into all manner of complicated knots. Indeed, she was a terrible sight to behold, and the agitated youth danced round her in his pyjamas, wringing his hands, and wondering what on earth he should do. Finally, in an effort to cool her down, he fetched a bucket of water from the pond in the cow field and tipped it over her head, but this only intensified the paroxysms, and the old lady expired within the hour.

  ‘This is really too bad,’ the poor boy said, pinching her several times to make sure that she was dead. ‘And how sudden! How quick and sudden! Why only a few hours ago she seemed in the very best of spirits. She even took three large helpings of my most recent creation, devilled mushroom-burgers, and told me how succulent it was.’

  After weeping bitterly for several minutes, for he had loved his aunt very much, he pulled himself together and carried her outside and buried her behind the cowshed.

  The next day, while tidying up her belongings, he came across an envelope that was addressed to him in Aunt Glosspan’s handwriting. He opened it and drew out two fifty-dollar bills and a letter. ‘Darling boy,’ the letter said.

  I know that you have never yet been down the mountain since you were thirteen days old, but as soon as I die you must put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt and walk down to the village and find the doctor. Ask the doctor to give you a death certificate to prove that I am dead. Then take this certificate to my lawyer, a man called Mr Samuel Zuckermann, who lives in New York City and who has a copy of my will. Mr Zuckermann will arrange everything. The cash in this envelope is to pay the doctor for the certificate and to cover the cost of your journey to New York. Mr Zuckermann will give you more money when you get there, and it is my earnest wish that you use it to further your researches into culinary and vegetarian matters, and that you continue to work upon that great book of yours until you are satisfied that it is complete in every way. Your loving aunt – Glosspan.

  Lexington, who had always done everything his aunt told him, pocketed the money, put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt, and went down the mountain to the village where the doctor lived.

  ‘Old Glosspan?’ the doctor said. ‘My God, is she dead?’

  ‘Certainly she’s dead,’ the youth answered. ‘If you will come back home with me now I’ll dig her up and you can see for yourself.’

  ‘How deep did you bury her?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Six or seven feet down, I should think.’

  ‘And how long ago?’

  ‘Oh, about eight hours.’

  ‘Then she’s dead,’ the doctor announced. ‘Here’s the certificate.’

  VII

  Our hero now set out for the City of New York to find Mr Samuel Zuckermann. He travelled on foot, and he slept under hedges, and he lived on berries and wild herbs, and it took him sixteen days to reach the metropolis.

  ‘What a fabulous place this is!’ he cried as he stood at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, staring around him. ‘There are no cows or chickens anywhere, and none of the women looks in the least like Aunt Glosspan.’

  As for Mr Samuel Zuckermann, he looked like nothing that Lexington had ever seen before.

  He was a small spongy man with livid jowls and a huge magenta nose, and when he smiled, bits of gold flashed at you marvellously from lots of different places inside his mouth. In his luxurious office, he shook Lexington warmly by the hand and congratulated him upon his aunt’s death.

  ‘I suppose you knew that your dearly beloved guardian was a woman of considerable wealth?’ he said.

  ‘You mean the cows and the chickens?’

  ‘I mean half a million bucks,’ Mr Zuckermann said.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Half a million dollars, my boy. And she’s left it all to you.’ Mr Zuckermann leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his spongy paunch. At the same time, he began secretly working his right forefinger in through his waistcoat and under his shirt so as to scratch the skin around the circumference of his navel – a favourite exercise of his, and one that gave him a peculiar pleasure. ‘Of course, I shall have to deduct fifty per cent for my services,’ he said, ‘but that still leaves you with two hundred and fifty grand.’

  ‘I am rich!’ Lexington cried. ‘This is wonderful! How soon can I have the money?’

  ‘Well,’ Mr Zuckermann said, ‘luckily for you, I happen to be on rather cordial terms with the tax authorities around here, and I am confident that I shall be able to persuade them to waive all death duties and back taxes.’

  ‘How kind you are,’ murmured Lexington.

  ‘I shall naturally have to give somebody a small honorarium.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann.’

  ‘I think a hundred thousand would be sufficient.’

  ‘Good gracious, isn’t that rather excessive?’

  ‘Never undertip a tax-inspector or a policeman,’ Mr Zuckermann said. ‘Remember that.’

  ‘But how much does it leave for me?’ the youth asked meekly.

  ‘One hundred and fifty thousand. But then you’ve got the funeral expenses to pay out of that.’

  ‘Funeral expenses?’

  ‘You’ve got to pay the funeral parlour. Surely you know that?’

  ‘But I buried her myself, Mr Zuckermann, behind the cowshed.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ the lawyer said. ‘So what?’

  ‘I never used a funeral parlour.’

  ‘Listen,’ Mr Zuckermann said patiently. ‘You may not know it, but there is a law in this State which says that no beneficiary under a will may receive a single penny of his inheritance until the funeral parlour has been paid in full.’

  ‘You mean that’s a law?’

  ‘Certainly it’s a law, and a very good one it is, too. The funeral parlour is one of our great national institutions. It must be protected at all cost.’

  Mr Zuckermann himself, together with a group of public-spirited doctors, controlled a corporation that owned a chain of nine lavish funeral parlours in the city, not to mention a casket factory in Brooklyn and a post-graduate school for embalmers in Washington Heights. The celebration of death was therefore a deeply religious affair in Mr Zuckermann’s eyes. In fact, the whole business affected him profoundly, almost as profoundly, one might say, as the birth of Christ affected the shopkeeper.

  ‘You had no right to go out and bury your aunt like that,’ he said. ‘None at all.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Zuckermann.’

  ‘Why, it’s downright subversive.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann. All I want to know is how much I’m going to get in the end, when everything’s paid.’

  There was a pause. Mr Zuckermann sighed and frowned and continued secretly to run the tip of his finger round the rim of his navel.

  ‘Shall we say fifteen thousand?’ he suggested, flashing a big gold sm