“We have millions and millions of pomegranates in my country!” the Italian ambassador exclaimed, looking proud.
“Be quiet, Emilio,” Sir Charles said. “Let the boy go on.”
“For twenty-seven years,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff has been studying the seed of the pomegranate. It became an obsession with him. He used to sleep in the laboratory. He never went out socially. He never married. The whole place was littered with pomegranates and their seeds.”
“Excuse me, please,” said the little Japanese man. “But why the pomegranate? Why not the grape or the black currant?”
“I cannot answer that question, sir,” I said. “I suppose it was simply what you might call a hunch.”
“Hell of a long time to spend on a hunch,” Sir Charles said. “But go on, my boy. We mustn’t interrupt you.”
“Last January,” I said, “the Professor’s patience was at last rewarded. What he did was this. He dissected the seed of a pomegranate and examined the contents bit by bit under a powerful microscope. And it was only then that he observed in the very centre of the seed a minuscule speck of red vegetable tissue that he’d never seen before. He proceeded to isolate this tiny speck of tissue. But it was obviously too small to be of any use on its own. So the Professor set out to dissect one hundred seeds and to obtain from them one hundred of these tiny red particles. This is where he allowed me to assist him. I mean by dissecting out these particles under a microscope. This alone occupied us for a whole week.”
I took another sip of port. My audience waited for me to go on.
“So we now had one hundred red particles, but even when we put them all together on a glass slide, the result could still not be seen by the naked eye.”
“And you say they were red, these little things?” said the Hungarian ambassador.
“Under the microscope they were a brilliant scarlet,” I said.
“And what did this famous professor do with them?”
“He fed them to a rat,” I said.
“A rat!”
“Yes,” I said. “A big white rat.”
“Vy vould anybody vish to feed deese little red bornegranate tings to a rat?” the German ambassador asked.
“Give him a chance, Wolfgang,” Sir Charles said to the German. “Let him finish. I want to know what happened.” He nodded for me to go on.
“You see, sir,” I said, “Professor Yousoupoff had in the laboratory a lot of white rats. He took the one hundred tiny red particles and fed every one of them to a single large healthy male rat. He did this by inserting them, under a microscope, into a piece of meat. He then put the rat in a cage together with ten female rats. I remember very clearly how the Professor and I stood beside the cage watching the male rat. It was late afternoon and we were so excited we had forgotten all about lunch.”
“Excuse me one moment, please,” the clever French foreign minister said. “But why were you so excited? What made you think that anything was going to happen with this rat?”
Here we go, I thought. I knew I’d have to watch this wily Frenchman. “I was excited, sir, simply because the Professor was excited,” I said. “He seemed to know something was going to happen. I can’t tell you how. Don’t forget, gentlemen, I was only a very young junior assistant. The Professor did not tell me all his secrets.”
“I see,” the foreign minister said. “Then let us proceed.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Well, we were watching the rat. At first, nothing happened. Then suddenly, after exactly nine minutes, the rat became very still. He crouched down, quivering all over. He was looking at the females. He crept toward the nearest one and grabbed her by the skin of her neck with his teeth and mounted her. It did not take long. He was very fierce with her and very swift. But here’s the extraordinary thing. The moment the rat had finished copulating with the first female, he grabbed a second one and set about her in just the same way. Then he took a third female rat, and a fourth, and a fifth. He was absolutely tireless. He went from one female to another, fornicating with each in turn until he had covered all ten of them. Even then, gentlemen, he hadn’t had enough!”
“Good gracious me!” Sir Charles murmured. “What a curious experiment.”
“I should add,” I went on, “that rats are not normally promiscuous creatures. They are in fact rather moderate in their sexual habits.”
“Are you sure of that?” the French foreign minister said. “I thought rats were extraordinarily lascivious.”