“Livy is so busy mispronouncing German these days she can’t even attempt to get at this.”
After some rummaging, Mark pulled out a manuscript that seemed to be of more recent date.
“German or Chinese laundry tickets?” he asked.
“It’s German,” I said, glancing at it.
There were about ten pages of copy, neatly written and headed “Mein Briefkasten” (My letterbox). On the line below was the title: “Tetragamy by Schopenhauer.”
Mark was at once interested.
“Schopenhauer, the arch-misogynist,” he mused, “let me see, physically he might have been the grandfather of queer Strindberg of the land where the matches come from. Ever read any of his books or dramas?” he asked, and before I could deny the implication, he was off talking again: “I have studied Strindberg’s womankind, hard-faced, sullen, cold-blooded, cheeky, grasping, vindictive, hell-raising, unvirtuous, unkind vixens, all of them—a dead give-away on the author’s part, for a writer who sees no good in women confesses that he was found out by the sex he wars on and that the female of the species pronounced him n. g. before he had time to out-Ibsen the Norwegian. If I ever turn over a new leaf and beat Livy, bet your life I will have naught but honeyed words and sweet metaphor for the ladies. This fellow Strindberg’s women are all compounds of vile ingredients—hideous hags with or without angel-faces—wife-beater Strindberg whipping dead mares. Well, to return to Schopenhauer (to me as incomprehensible as mutton) what’s this?” (pointing to the word Tetragamy), “Hebrew or merely Yiddish?”
“Literally it means marrying a fourth wife.” I examined the first page of the manuscript. “Seems to deal with conditions due to monogamy.”
“Good,” exclaimed Mark, “I have always wanted to reform monogamy, when my wife isn’t looking. Now let’s have the medicine straight.”
“But,” I said, “I can’t do this long MS. justice here. The librarian will come in presently and you heard what he told us.”