With the delicate precision that only Japan can offer, Mitsubishi removed the cochleas from the ears of newborn nightingales in 1895. He performed the same operation on five-week-old and four-month-old birds. Half had been exposed to their parents’ song: a control group had not. The deafened nightingales were minutely observed, and their songs – mere sketches for songs – were notated by a professional musician who could be trusted not to gossip. After three years the all-important questions could be answered: to what extent would the crucial length of time for which they had been allowed to hear normally influence their song pattern? Would all song patterns of birds deafened at birth be exactly the same? How would their subsongs differ from those who had heard only cymbals clashing during their lifetimes?
The answers to these questions are to be found in my book: On the Song of the Nightingale. The real song, utterly unaffected by family, is revealed in this book, which, in my opinion, has the poetry of truth, if not rhyme, about it.
The publication of the book was the result of twenty years of investigation. My chief experiments could be performed only during the months of April and May, the short-lived period of nightingale song in England, though the subsequent behaviour of the deafened birds was closely observed throughout their lives. They could not, of course, be released into the wild.
I do not know how Desmond Philips discovered the existence of Mitsubishi’s birds. The Anti-Vivisectionist League, of which I learnt he was a leading member, had kept up their resistance to the physiology laboratories, distributing pamphlets and posters in which my name continued to be unflatteringly mentioned. Although the removal of the nightingale cochleas was as nothing compared with the scale upon which vivisection was being practised on the Continent, I recognised that deliberate sensory deprivation as an experimental technique would be regarded by these fanatics as the worst form of torture, such as practised by notorious authoritarian regimes across the world. Accordingly the deafened birds were housed in a room in the laboratories to which I alone had the key: I can only assume that the laboratory caretaker with his master key was bribed.
My book was well received by the scientific community, elevating me to the world’s foremost expert on nightingale song. Letters of commendation poured into my college, where my position of Fellow was elevated to Professor: I received requests to deliver speeches at conferences on the Continent, and in America and Japan. I could ask for no higher accolades.
It is my practice in Oxford to start my day at the full-length Queen Anne windows of my study, once Saunders has drawn the curtains. From this vantage point I can gaze down into the geometrically arranged Fellows’ Garden which at once imposes a pleasing sense of order upon the thought patterns of my brain, all too often recovering from nightmares of the most vicious nature. I stare down into the Jacobean symmetries, the miniature topiaries, the white blooms (no other colour is admitted). In the very centre of the garden stands an ancient monkey-puzzle tree, the branches of which are arranged with mathematical precision. I sip my cup of China tea, and begin to feel in control. I can hear Saunders preparing my ablutions: the pleasant smell of soap and steam wafts past.
A few weeks after the publication of my book I awoke to find Saunders in an uncharacteristically agitated state of mind. To my astonishment he tried to divert me from my ritual, and suggested, in a shaking voice, that he bring me my cup of tea in bed that morning. Noticing his deathly pallor and haggard eyes I enquired after his well-being, to which he replied that it was not his well-being with which he was concerned, but my own. This response made me leap out of bed to prove to him that, though I might complain to him every day about the state of my bowels, the aches in my head, the pains in my chest and so on, the sum of health is larger than its parts, and I was very well, thank you. Poor Saunders, not given to improvisation, had tried to prevent me from striding across to the study windows by the simple expedient of not opening the curtains. The unaccustomed darkness of my study at once alerted me to the fact that something unusual had happened, and with a violent gesture I flung back my damask hangings and gazed truculently into the Fellows’ Garden.
The monkey-puzzle tree is an intellectual challenge. Its branches fork out from its trunk much like the passages of a maze: the philosopher may run his eye over its angular and unexpected progressions, and feel some answering call in his own thought processes. The branches are covered in the sharpest of needles, designed, according to the inhabitants of its native Chile, to prevent monkeys from reaching the tasty nuts at the branch tips (a further puzzle as there are no monkeys in the tree’s native forests).
On this morning a circle of gardeners, scouts and one or two dons, including the Master of the college, were gazing up into the maze of branches, shaking their heads, even scratching their heads. Some underling hastened through the topiary, a full-length ladder upon his shoulder.
Whoever had scaled the tree that night had been undeterred by needles.
The effigy which had been suspended from the highest branch bore a representation of my own facial features, though the body bulged grossly, unlike my own trim lines. Twisted beneath the instantly identifiable grey beard was an exaggerated hangman’s knot: a gigantic tongue, livid purple, had been made to protrude from my pink lips.
‘I must tell you, sir,’ murmured Saunders, passing me my cup of tea with quivering fingers, ‘they have released all your birds. They have destroyed your papers, sir, in a bonfire in the cages. It is a miracle that the laboratory did not burn down.’
‘Saunders,’ I enquired, ‘why does my father hang from the tree?’
Saunders placed his hand under my elbow and steered me away from the window. I allowed him to lead me into the adjoining room which looked out over a cobbled street.
‘Drink this, sir,’ he urged. I sipped obediently, my olfactory nerves recognising good malt whisky in the fumes.
‘He hangs, he hangs,’ I said, wondering if I was about to break out into song. ‘Elspeth thinks I kept to my room, but I can climb out of mouseholes. He hangs among the moths. His tongue is black. Yet he grins, does he not?’
‘That was a long time ago, sir,’ replied poor Saunders. ‘It does not do to dwell upon the past.’
‘He hangs because I have left half-winged messages in his safe place.’ It was a relief for me to explain to Saunders. For the first time in all the years I had known him I gazed directly into his eyes, and held my gaze.
His rheumy old eyes filled with tears. ‘They are wicked men!’ he exclaimed. ‘And women. They will be arrested and sent to prison. All your files. Quite, quite destroyed.’ He blew his nose loudly into a very large handkerchief.
A knock sounded on the door. While Saunders scurried to attend to this summons, I sipped thoughtfully at my tea. With each swallow I felt myself change shape, grow smaller, until, with the last swallow, I observed myself disappear altogether.
‘So that is why we drink tea!’ I exclaimed as I faded from view just as Saunders rushed into the room in the company of the distraught college Master.