The Adventures of Ibn Opcit

Scene 2. Weight Watchers

28 Scene 2. Weight Watchers Demon Now everybody say Hi, everybody say Hello. And let the games begin. Let’s play Twenty Questions. Soul 2 All right. Animal, vegetable or mineral? Demon No, that is what we are here to determine; it is to one of those states you are headed for. This game is to find out where you came from. In the last life whom do you suppose you were? Soul 2 But I can’t. I can’t remember who I am. Or was. Demon Think carefully. We have the time. Lost souls are not lost spoons. And finding them, like the slow regeneration of kidney stones, takes time. I’ll give you a clue. In life you had a hulking bulk and a perfect memory for the bottom. Soul 2 A whale! Demon No, although the nation of the manatee, when you do a float roll, greets you as its own. Another clue: In life you wore a monk suit for the sink-or-swim. Soul 2 A churchman? 29 Demon Close! In life you were a large man with a florid calendar. You were known, among many things, as the Enormous Bo-Diddly Man. Soul 2 Much in the way of bells it does not ring. Demon (Mimics.) Does dis sound familiar? The thing about the past is how little trace it leave of itself. And humans, not so much as a fern print on Wyomingonian shale. Aren’t we, finally, who our fellows say we are? Soul 2 Opcit! Demon We have a winner! And in life you were . . . Combe Apotheosis Combe. In matters of Church I was inspector of the people’s spirit. As head prelate I gave my flock, charged with the indecision of prayer, the Pompous Encyclical. Mine was the metaphysics of the pounded pulpit. I catered to the Dukes, to their invented notions of finery. Demon (A savage Hissonery; a savage Yerhonory.) Combe I was a man of ectoplasmic integrity, a jack of all ministerial trades. 30 Demon You were one of the dominant squanders of your time. When Combe in his great preponderance arrove, when he entered the nave ahead of that momentous butt, the congregation hastened to move aside. (“There is that priest,” they whisper, “who sitting can encompass toilet seats complete.”) Combe If the cheeks of my hams can parlez-vous a toilet seat, what’s that to you?I lived in the care of the fatting effects of food, but mine was not the body pinched thin by smoking. Who are dieters, after all, to live like wizened stalks? To bring to my responsibilities a kind of corpuscular abundance, to err at times on the side of inundation: This I found not inappropriate. I gained a few surmounted pounds. And then a few. Demon With contingent metabolisms you grew great. In your furious penchant for food, able to condense it at alarming rates into disheveled pounds— Combe Not so, not so. Like Jacob with his angel, I wrestled my stomach to the ground and mastered it. Yes, indeed. All things in moderation. I ate a moderation of potato chips, drank a moderation of white wine, a moderation of raspberry piddle . . . Demon . . . of chocolate-covered strawberries, of any immersive bub of fat or fruit. 31 No stranger to the grab of cheddar, the hanker of garlic in a meatloaf sandwich, you had your eye on the entire licorice production of North America. Combe I was eating my way to health! Demon Rotundly overweight you kept eating, and if anything ate more. A dignitary of dross, you exhibited a kind of slovenly rectitude. Towards the end your sermons got pretty bad. “This is the pot in which you are allowed to pee.” Or “Give thanks that you live in a world that elicits the Holy Cow response.” So did your prayers. “The Lord is my putative Shepherd.” Or “Our Father, whatever art thou, whichever be thy Name.” Combe I remember one sermon, “The Taking of Christ’s Walk”— Demon You may not denigrate the Dauphin. That is one thing you may not do here. But I remember. You told your laity, “Give thanks for buttons, without which our shirts would blouse and our pants fall down.” Like a toilet whose handle needs that extra jiggle, you ran on and on. At the end you displayed a punditry of beefsteaks. You were prone to frequent the Religious...