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.“Me and my crew can’t do that.” Munsen shook his head firmly.“We’re too well known; we’d be recognized in a minute.Anyway, we’d have to more or less force our way in.What we need is someone who can be invited to the funeral in a natural way.Someone like Mr.Burmeister—whose uncle, as I understand it, is a big wheel in mortician circles and could get him invited into almost anything connected with funerals.”I felt a giddy sense of relief.The Angel of Death, dive-bombing in on me, had suddenly veered aside and picked the next man in line.“Of course,” I said.“Of course not,” said Waldo.“Actually, Mr.Burmeister is correct,” Munsen agreed.“He won’t quite do.He is—with all due respect, Mr.Burmeister—rather too conspicuous because of his size.We need someone less noticeable, someone who can keep a low profile, blend into the background.Someone like—”“I don’t know Uncle Mortimer.I’d never get invited to the funeral.”“Mr.Burmeister could invite you to dinner at his home.”“I don’t have the right clothes for a funeral.”“They will be provided.Black top hat, dark cutaway coat, black polished shoes, everything.”“And if you just let Uncle Mort talk corpses to you for an hour or so, Henry,” Waldo said cheerfully, “he’ll be so tickled he’ll get you invited to any funeral on the Moon.He’s been trying to drag me to one for days.What a pity, as Mr.Munsen says, that I’m too conspicuous.” Waldo stared down happily at his ample belly, and hugged his fat to him like a protective shield.I wondered, in a hopeless sort of way, how much fat a human being could put on in a couple of days.Not enough, I felt sure, to save me.* * *Waldo had described the family dinners to me, but I had discounted much of what he said.Having seen Waldo’s own prowess with a knife and fork, I deemed it remotely improbable that anyone at a meal table could deprive him of his rightful share of sustenance.That, of course, was before I met the Potter and Wilberforce wives.I arrived a few minutes late.Waldo was busy in the kitchen, and at my first sight of his living room when I entered, it seemed totally filled with aunts.A second look revealed just one massive pair, trampling and trumpeting like angry mastodons over the mangled ruins of trays of hors d’oeuvres.Ruth and Ruby were a year apart in age, and perhaps two kilos apart in bulk.There was less difference between them than the mass of any one of their many chins.I used to blame Waldo for being fat, but after I saw his aunts I vowed never to accuse him again.With such genes, he didn’t stand a chance.In fact, it was a tribute to the size of Ruby and Ruth that Pharaoh Potter was not himself a noticeable landmark.He was a big-framed man, well run to seed now but still possessing plenty of muscle on arms like a gorilla.He shook my hand, in a grip that mashed my bones together.“Play any tennis?” he said.“Haven’t for a while.I used to.” It seemed the safest answer: express interest, but don’t let yourself get dragged into any possibility of playing.I did not know it at the time, but my reply exhibited an uncanny prescience.“I never was much good,” I added.“Because you’re little and weedy,” Pharaoh replied.“A person needs some weight to make decent tennis shots.” He went off to sit in the corner with his head bowed.He was a man apparently in the grip of some great sorrow.I turned to Mortimer C.Wilberforce, just as Waldo called us through for dinner.Mort was the odd man out in the group, a function I suppose of his job.It’s probably a sort of professional requirement among morticians, that if you can’t actually be a corpse, you ought to look as much like one as you can.Mortimer did his best.If he had been the right height for his weight, he would have been about four-foot-two.As it was he was six-five, and pale as a well-blanched stalk of celery.I suppose he ate, but in this he was rather like a government official working.No matter how long and hard you looked, you would never see it happen.From my point of view, his behavior at the dinner table had one great disadvantage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]