CHAPTER XXV
"You don't understand!" she said irritably. "I mean I felt my spirit reflected, the hypostatized nothing!"
"Over my head," I admitted, gently. The big words meant something to her.
She gnawed her knuckles, thinking. "Well, you know," she began again, "there is no such thing as a real thing in the world, don't you? You know that everything—a frying pan, a café table, an atom—is merely a make-believe. It's simple! If you divide a thing into the things that make it, and then divide them into the things that make them, and so on, and so on, you find whenever you want to stop that you've got down to Nothing! At the center of a thing sleeps a word. And what is a word?... A word is the spirit of a witch." She looked at me. "She doesn't understand," she muttered sadly. "She doesn't understand!"
Suddenly the witch reached forward and grabbed my empty coffee cup. "You think this is a coffee cup, don't you? You think it is a scientific fact that it is a coffee cup!"
She was talking loudly and men near us began to smile. Our kind of talk was not unusual in the White Hen; but it had never before been heard from two women! I said, "Sh-h-h, please not so loud," for I felt shy, and then I was very sorry I had spoken. The witch covered her face. "Oh, I am so sorry!" she said, "I am so sorry."
After a minute she began again in a low voice. "You say it is a cup, but what is it made of?"
"Atoms!" I said, quickly.
"What are atoms made of?"
"The scientists know." It was fantastic—two women unaccompanied by men whispering across the table about atoms!
"They say the atom consists of protons and electrons! Now, ask me what protons and electrons are!"
"Bien! I am asking you, what are they?"
"Two fictions!" exclaimed the witch triumphantly. "Two big lies!"
She leaned back in her chair and smiled at me. But as my thoughts groped around in a fog of her words, the smile faded. "Then I'll tell you a true fable," she said patiently.
"Once upon a time there was a scientist who wore glasses and used his brains all day long. One morning his wife brought him his coffee in a pretty blue cup. Instead of drinking the coffee he thought about the cup.
"'What is my cup made of?' he asked his wife and she said she didn't know but would go fetch the potter.
"'Clay,' said the potter, wiping his dirty hands on his leather apron.
"'What is clay made of?' asked the scientist, polishing his glasses and putting them back on his nose.
"'Clay,' said the potter, 'is made of clay we dig from a clay bank!'
"'That is not an answer,' objected the scientist.
"'It is, too,' the potter said, 'it is the best kind of an answer—clay is made of clay from the clay bank!'
"'It is not!' shouted the scientist, pounding on the table so all the dishes in the house rattled and his wife went running out into the barnyard because she felt more natural with the cows and horses during such arguments. 'It is not!' shouted the scientist again. 'If it is the best kind of answer why didn't you answer that the cup was made of cup!'
"'I am an ignorant man,' the potter admitted in a trembling voice for no one could deny the good sense of the scientist's retort. 'Tell me, what is clay made of?'
"'I don't quite know,' the scientist replied.
"'You don't know!' yelled the potter. 'You don't know! and you go and upset me for life? Now when I make pots I'll always have to be wondering what are they made of!'
"'You'll probably make better pots,' the scientist said. 'They have been too heavy—round with roundness of stones and zeros; now perhaps they will be round with the roundness of birds and clouds and your whirling thoughts, and the wind swishing by your house!'
"'They'll be fancy and mixed up and much worse,' moaned the potter.
"'Bring me some clay!' ordered the scientist, and the potter ran to get him some.
"The scientist looked at the clay with his microscope, he worked at it with his spectroscope. He decided it was made of atoms. He listened to the clay through an enormous loud-speaker and he heard the atoms moving around. They made a rustling noise ... s-s-s-w-s—w-sss.
"'Clay is made of atoms,' he declared.
"'What is an atom made of?' asked the potter.
"The scientist set to work to separate one atom from all the other atoms, and he worked at it with his biggest spectroscope, listened to it with his biggest loud-speaker, and looked at it through a microscope as big around and as deep as a well. After a long time he straightened his back and said: 'The atom is made of nothing!'
"'Then the cup is made of nothing!' cried the potter.
"'Then all things are at base nothing at all, and the world isn't real, because it can't be real, it is based on nothing,' cried the scientist, and they both took turns looking at and listening to the insides of the atom, and heard nothing and saw nothing! At least, in their ears there was naught but the beating of their own hearts; and when they peered down at the heart of the atom they saw on the curving lens away at the end of the tunnel of the enormous microscope only the reflection of their own, peering, frightened faces!
"'My pretty blue coffee cup is nothing,' the scientist moaned. 'It is not made of cup, nor of clay, nor of atoms—it is made of nothing!'
"'I have a magical idea,' declared the potter. 'Let us split the nothing we have brought into the world into twins and call one Electron and the other Proton, and hereafter let's make believe everything is made of electrons and protons, and let it go at that. We have to do something.'
"Well, right then in came the scientist's wife, smelling of the cows and horses, and she said: 'I'll fill your pretty blue cup with hot coffee,' and did so, and the cup held the coffee.
"'We are saved!' shouted the scientist.
"'We are saved!' shouted the potter—'The world is saved!' And they embraced each other. But the wife, when told of the narrow escape of the cup (and the world) from utter annihilation, was not greatly impressed.
"'If the cup were not a cup it would never have held coffee,' she asserted stupidly, 'and it would not get dirty and I would not have to wash it!'"