The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike Read online

  “You have some molds here in the Hall,” Wharton said. “I noticed them in the store room where you work.”

  “Those are plaster of paris, not any of the new plastics.”

  “Tell me what you’re doing. They look interesting.”

  “Just fooling around,” Dombrosio said. He always had several pet projects going. And now, since the hearing at which he had lost his license, he had spent even more time puttering around.

  “Did I see some of your masks? Rigid entire head masks, like those Martian invaders that you made? I always considered that to be a real innovation. You showed genuine genius in that.”

  “Thanks,” Dombrosio said. It warmed him, to recall that.

  Up near Drake’s Landing there was a flying saucer group, composed mostly of middle-aged women and retired people. Last year, as a club stunt, he had made invaders from outer space masks and costumes, and even a dummy flying saucer which Timmons had hauled up to Drake’s Landing in a flatbed truck. Late at night they had unloaded their tin and plastic flying saucer in the middle of a sheep pasture. Putting on their costumes and masks, and carrying toy rocket pistols bought at the drugstore, they, a group of four of them, had marched up the steps of the house in which the saucer group met. No meeting was in progress, but the woman who ran the group was there, in bed; they had got her up by making metallic whining noises with a vibrator that Dombrosio had salvaged from the junk pile at Lausch Company.

  “You approve of that?” he asked Wharton. It had always seemed to him that Wharton disliked their stunts; he felt practical jokes to be cruel and not funny. “You told me, I remember, that most hoaxes were infantile. What did you call it? Sadism?”

  “But I have nothing but contempt for that flying saucer group,” Wharton said. “They deserved it.”

  “So that’s an exception.” He felt that here, for the first time that he could remember, the grammar school teacher had shown a seamy side to his nature. “It’s okay to play tricks on people you don’t like.”

  Wharton considered, “Their credulity—they wouldn’t have fallen for the hoax if they had had normal common sense. You tested their ability to judge reality. Their scientific—or lack of any scientific—orientation.”

  Before the teacher could get off any further on his favorite topic, the value of science in training the mind, Dombrosio interrupted, “Let me ask you—have there been any hoaxes in science?”

  “I suppose you could consider the whole geocentric cosmology as a form of hoax. You mean deliberate? Where there was knowledge that the idea was untrue?” Wharton frowned. “I’ve heard that some Soviet scientists deliberately created spurious data to make their genetics theories seem plausible. Wax apples—”

  “What about the Piltdown Man?”

  Wharton grimaced. “Yes. Certainly.”

  “I’m interested in that,” Dombrosio said. “They don’t even know who did it, do they?”

  “If you look up the Piltdown skull in the Britannica,” Wharton said, “you’ll find that most authorities were in doubt about it. For one thing, it never fitted into any system. Even when it was not known to be a forgery it was an anomaly. A brain like that of a modern person but the jaw of a chimpanzee.”

  “Isn’t that actually what it was?”

  “Yes. Whoever concocted it put the two together knowing that they had no relationship. It was a conscious job of deception, involving real skill and knowledge of the subject. As you know, it wasn’t until the new carbon dating test that they could demonstrate that it was a fake.”

  “So a scientist must have done it. Maybe the one who found the skull.”

  “Maybe.”

  Dombrosio said, “But what would the motive be?”

  “Search me.”

  “Did he probably eventually intend to make it public that it was a fake? If nobody ever found out, I don’t see what satisfaction he would get. Maybe he intended to tell, but died.”

  “He may have got tired of searching for authentic stone age remains. My theory—” Wharton gestured. “Of course, by now everyone knows my anti-religious bias. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out someday that the Piltdown Skull was fabricated by a clerical person, bent on proving that all fossil remains were spurious. He hoped to get the Piltdown Skull accepted by the eminent scientific authorities of his day, and then he’d spring it on the world that he had put it together in his attic.”

  “But why didn’t he expose it, then?”

  “I have no theory about that,” Wharton said. “Possibly he continued to wait because not all authorities did accept the thing; he was waiting for a more universal assent, and it never came. He delayed too long.”

  “Could other early human skulls be fakes? Like the Neanderthals and the other missing links?”

  “There are too many of them by now,” Wharton said. “Hundreds have been found. A tremendous variety since the war, in Africa and Israel and Asia. Mixed types. New types. Sub types. Apes more advanced in some respects than men. If you’re interested, I have a few articles in Scientific American I’d be happy to lend you.”

  “I recall reading about some lake in Africa where they found a true dawn man.”

  “That was Leakey,” Wharton said. “The oldest skull found of tool-making man. Between six hundred thousand and a million years old. A well-developed ape or poorly developed man.” He walked over to Dombrosio, his forefinger extended. “There’s a very interesting thing. They used to think that the near-men, such as Neanderthal and Heidelberg and the rest, came before Homo sapiens.”

  “Didn’t they?” Dombrosio said.

  “Now they have found true human skulls that go back as far as any of the so-called dawn men.”

  “Then human beings existed side by side with the others.”

  “Human beings did not evolve out of the dawn men. Homo sapiens was one of a variety of types. We’re not descended from Neanderthal or any of the others. They were variants, with whom our ancestors possibly intermingled.”

  “Then there could be Neanderthal blood in human beings today.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then Neanderthals weren’t a race,” Dombrosio said. “They were more like a stock of—could you say degenerate men?”

  “That means little or nothing. In any case, they ceased to exist, very suddenly. And they evidently lived over a wide area, from Africa to Asia to Europe. But not in the New World, evidently. In any case, no skulls have been found in either North or South America.”

  “Interesting,” Dombrosio said.

  From downstairs they heard voices and the scraping of chairs. The slides on VD had all been shown; the meeting was breaking up. Dombrosio heard cars starting outside the Hall.

  “Want a ride?” Wharton said. “I can take you home.”

  “No,” he said. “Sherry is coming back for me.”

  “Does it put much of a burden on her? She has to spend five days a week in the City, doesn’t she? What does she do?”

  Dombrosio, as he put his coat on, said, “She visits people she knows there. She gets along fine—she’s satisfied. It’s a good deal for her. She shops. Goes to a movie. Attends a few classes in commercial art. That used to be her ambition, to be a professional artist.”

  “Possibly she could help with the Halloween costumes,” Wharton said hopefully.

  7

  On the first long grade up the side of Mount Tamalpais his wife carefully shifted into the proper gear, her eye on the Alfa’s tachometer. Behind them, far below the hillside and rocks, the ocean could be seen. Gazing up, he took in the sight of the forest, the dense groves of redwoods and firs, the firewatcher’s tower at the highest peak. In the cold misty light of 6:30 A.M. the tower looked like a little damp metal gun turret, far off. And they do have a Nike missile base up here, Dombrosio thought. Maybe that isn’t a firewatcher’s tower. Maybe it’s a radar installation.

  Since he did not have to drive he could examine the scenery. He could relax somewhat and look from side to side, even
back over his shoulder at the descending curves of road and the ocean. It made him dizzy to do so.

  “Don’t take the turns too fast,” he said.

  Sherry said, “I don’t hear any tire squeal.”

  “You never can tell what you’re going to meet,” he said. “These are blind curves.” He had said such things many times, during the drives in and back. It still made him nervous to be driven. His wife’s driving did not satisfy him, but he could not pin down what was wrong with it; she watched the tach, she did not over-rev the engine, and as she said, there was no tire squeal. She slowed the car on the downgrade with the gears and not the brakes. I just don’t like to be driven, he decided. And, without the steering wheel to grasp, he felt himself thrown around by each turn of the car. His stomach had bothered him from the first day that Sherry had taken the wheel.

  I suppose I should be grateful, he thought. That she’s willing to do it at all. From the very start, in fact, from the day of the hearing, she had driven him without outward sign of complaint; she had undertaken it as a job, and had stuck to it.

  “What are you going to do, today?” he asked.

  Sherry said, “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem a little more dressed up than usual.” He had noticed that she had on one of her best suits, the dark blue one. In his mind he had the idea that she only wore it on special occasions; the last time, as he remembered, she had worn it at a meeting with their attorney.

  Matter-of-factly, Sherry said, “I’m going job-hunting.”

  He felt cold. Cold and faint. “What do you mean?”

  “Job-hunting. I’ve thought it over and as long as I have to go into the City every day and be there all day I might as well apply for a job.” She kept her eyes on the road. Her voice was moderate.

  “What kind of job?”

  “We’ll see.”

  He said, “There’s just four more months of this crap of you having to drive me. By the time you find a job, half of that will be over with. You can’t get a job for two months.”

  “I think I can get a job sooner than that,” she said.

  “Have you been looking?” He had a full, absolute intimation; of course she had been looking. And she had not said anything to him until now. Now, she probably had a good prospect. Or perhaps she actually had the job. Naturally she would wait. Why should she tell him? His attitude did not matter to her.

  “Yes, I looked,” Sherry said.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about it?” He made himself be calm. He kept his feelings out of his voice, so that it got into it the same reasonable quality as hers. “I think it would have been a good idea to discuss it with me.”

  To that, she said nothing.

  Unable to keep silent, he said, “Suppose I don’t like the idea.”

  “We can use the money,” she said. “With house taxes coming up. And we’re going to owe a great deal of money for the leaching lines. And we haven’t paid all of the attorney fees—I held up that check. Did I tell you?”

  “Will you quit at the end, when I have my license back?”

  Sherry said, “It seems to me that that should depend on how well the job works out.”

  “On principle,” he said. “I don’t like a wife of mine to work.”

  “Well,” she said, “I intend to get a job anyway. I think you’re being domineering and aggressive, and I don’t like your tone of voice.”

  “I won’t let you,” he said.

  Turning her head she studied him for an instant with her cold, intense eyes. Then she swung her head away, to face the road. In a distinct voice she said, “I won’t drive you in anymore.”

  His emotions became too great, then, for expression. He stared out at the trees, the massive redwoods. Ahead of them a car appeared and passed, its tires squealing on the bend. Its driver glanced at them to see what sort of car theirs was.

  “It’s a wonder an American car will get around these turns,” Dombrosio said.

  “I gave him plenty of room,” his wife said.

  “You’re really putting the pressure on,” he said. “What do you want? I can’t figure it out. What’s it mean to you, to get a job? Is it like being a man?”

  She said nothing.

  “You’re determined to wear the pants,” he said.

  “Why do you make so much of this?” she said. “Why does it worry you so? You must be terribly insecure about your masculinity, if my getting a temporary job threatens you so. You must feel that you’re failing in some basic, vital way.”

  “If I were dead,” he said, “would you get a job?”

  That baffled her. “How—strange.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he told her. “Because if I were dead, it wouldn’t be necessary for you to defeat and destroy me.”

  At that, she laughed sharply and her face flushed. “My god,” she said. “You really are out of your head. This whole business about your license has driven you really mad.”

  “What would you do?” he persisted. “If you weren’t married to me? You wouldn’t get a job; you wouldn’t care a god damn thing about a job. It’d be the last thing you’d care about; you’d sit home—you’d get a studio—and paint fine art. Great art, like Picasso.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’d go back to living off your family,” he said. “You’ve never had a job. You’ve never worked in your life. When I met you, you were living off your family; if you want to work so bad, why weren’t you working, then?”

  She said, “How could I have worked, then? I was going to school.”

  “Lots of people work while they’re going to school.” He sprang at her; he had her, and he savored it. “I was working, then, when I met you. I was going to school and working; I didn’t have a rich family to support me.” His voice rose to a shout, but he did not care. “I know the real reason why you have no respect for me!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll never in a million years be able to earn as much money as you’re used to. As that family of yours. You think I ought to be able to do as well as your step-father. You’re comparing me to a—financial wizard.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Willis, a ‘financial wizard.’”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what he is. You think it’s perfectly normal for a man to own a string of businesses that bring in a fifty per cent return, year after year—my good god, when you’re up in that bracket, money doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to us. It isn’t a means of buying things; it’s power, sheer power. You expect me to compete with that? Remember—he didn’t start out from where I am. That whole family, his father and his grandfather, were investors. I wasn’t even alive when they made their money, their first money.”

  She said, “You always dredge this up.”

  Not listening, he went on, “Willis is so far up there that he’s in a bracket where you can’t even tell what’s legal and what’s not legal. They make the laws. They buy little town lawyers and judges. Except for that income tax suit, where he had to settle with the Government—except for that, he can do anything he wants. And I’m supposed to measure up to him. If I don’t I’m a failure as a man. My god, when they feel like seeing us, they hop on a plane and fly out here, from New York. Any time they feel like it. And rent a suite at the Mark Hopkins. And they have lawyers all over the country.”

  “You should have used one of Willis’ lawyers,” Sherry said. “If you had, you wouldn’t have lost your license.”

  “And you hold that against me, too.”

  “I hold it against you that you’re so childish that when he phoned and wanted you to use Adamson and Rogers, you said you didn’t need to. And you went out and got some boy just starting out, with no contacts of any importance.”

  “That’s it,” he said. “It’s who you know.”

  “As far as the law goes,” she said.

  “What a world,” he said.

  “You have to adapt to it,” Sherry said. “Reality is reality. Y
ou nurse your infantile pride…it’s what’s destroying you, if anything is. You can’t stand anybody achieving something you can’t; you envy them. You can’t stand Willis because he’s been financially successful and you haven’t.” She added, “Or rather, you haven’t done as well as he.” She glanced at him to see his reaction.

  Yes, he thought. I did hear. You haven’t. Aloud, he said, “My infantile madness is such that it gets you to say it out loud. That you do consider me a failure as a man.”

  With caution, she said, “I consider that you have no aptitude in the world of business, if that constitutes being a failure as a man.”

  “It does in this society,” he said. “The man is the hunter; the man brings home the food. And that means the paycheck.”

  “So if I get a job,” Sherry said, “that means I’m in competition with you as a man. That would make me the man.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you think that’s what I want. What I’m after.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Does it occur to you,” she said, in a hard, small voice, “that it’s all a projection on your part? That it’s in your own mind?”

  But he was deaf to that; he had heard it too many times, during their marriage.

  Her argument, he realized, is merely that. Merely to say that it’s in my mind. To assert that I do not know. No evidence is offered, of the kind that a man or a rational person, a scientist, would permit. What does my wife say to me? That I’m powerless to discover any reality except myself. And how can I answer that?

  With fright, he realized that he could not. He could never be sure if what she said might not be true.

  What a bad, unscrupulous, woman’s argument, he thought. What a cruelty to perpetrate on me. Unless she is right. Oh god, he thought. All she has to do is say it. She undermines me; she ends the discussion. How can I go on? The more I say, the angrier I get—it only proves that she is right. What is so awful about a wife working? Lots of wives do it. Husbands stay home; some of them feed the baby, wash the dishes. If it destroys me, it does so only because I believe it does.