I had feared this might create a difficult problem of discrimination, but the girls volunteered in a body. So I took Frog-Igor out of the little box in which I had brought him to the Choir Room, and put him in the middle of the table.

The girls seemed to lose their zeal. Frog-Igor leered and did his best to make himself attractive; but I thought he looked worse than before. One of the sopranos suggested that perhaps a counter-tenor might kiss him, as the Frog wouldn’t know the difference. Frog-Igor spat up some unpleasant-looking black slime at that moment, and the choir realized that he understood English very well.

There was one noble contralto, a doctor by profession, who said she had had to meet worse problems in the Emergency Admissions, and she would make a start. After all, she said, it was just like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So she kissed him, and Frog-Igor perked up a little. The other girls were ashamed to back out after such an example of self-sacrifice, and, with a certain amount of gagging and wiping their mouths on bits of Kleenex, they all kissed Igor, and as they did so he swelled and swelled until at last he squatted before us, in the evening clothes he had worn when he was last a man, looking very much like a bass from the Mendelssohn Choir.

Oh, the joy of Gordon and Giles! It was beautiful to behold. They told the girls that every ounce of their sacrifice had been justified, and set to work at once to rehearse the great, rediscovered Purcell anthem. I have never heard anything like it. Igor boiled like a pot, and he slithered richly like grease, and one might have thought that the great John Gostling had been restored to life.

All too soon we realized that Igor’s cure was not permanent. Even during rehearsal he showed signs of shrinking again into a frog, but an occasional quick peck from any female singer who had a rest at the time would put him right again. But after rehearsal I had to take him back to Service 6, to the tank.

“These girls, they are not strong,” he said; “not strong like our Russian girls. But even a Russian girl could not help me for long.”

“Well, you can just put any ideas about a kiss from Elmer Iseler out of your head,” I said firmly.

“Ah, no; but there is still Comrade Khrushchev,” he said, rolling his great eyes at me.

I knew that Comrade Khrushchev had long since died in disgrace and obscurity, but I thought it better not to tell Igor.

The Sunday came—well, it was last Sunday, not to make a mystery of it—when the great Purcell anthem was to be performed at the afternoon Chapel service. Gordon had made it clear that no excuses of illness or having a cold would be accepted from any of the women in the choir, and they all turned up, looking a little discomfited, but showing a good spirit on the whole. I brought Igor in from his tank, and after half an hour’s hard work they had him in condition to sing.

For the first part of the anthem I experienced a delight I have never felt before in our Chapel. This, I thought, is the perfection of religious music. And in my dark heart I began to plot to keep Igor in the tank for many years, and let him out only for services and recording-sessions which would bring the College the ample funds it so badly needs.

Igor’s voice was superb. As he sang the deep did truly boil like a pot, and the sea was like a pot of ointment. But then came the later section of the anthem, very solemn, very noble, where the bass and tenor soloists together declare:

It is tricky work, that duet, and Robert Hurd as tenor, and Igor as bass, had to watch their step carefully. I became aware that while Robert was firm, Igor was rocky. There was an excitement in his voice that alarmed me. And then, suddenly, he made an obvious, a gross mis-timing; he came in too early, and an instant later there was a horrible croak, a sound as if gas were escaping from a large balloon, and the anthem sagged to a chaotic end.

Luckily this happened near the end of the service, and as soon as the benediction had been pronounced, I sped to the Choir Room.

Poor Igor! He sat damply in the middle of the table, a frog again. A contralto—that good sport the doctor—was puckering her lips, but I knew that would do no good now. Gordon was standing in a corner, with his face to the wall, muttering incoherently. Giles, to my horror, was kicking the organ savagely. The members of the choir looked shocked and shaken, except for Malcolm Russell, who was chuckling.

I knew what had to be done. There are times, happily few in number, when I have to exert authority in this College.

“Mr. Wry, Mr. Bryant,” I rapped out. “I will have no exhibitions of the Evil Eye in this College. Kiss Igor at once, both of you!”

“Won’t,” said Gordon.

Giles is an Englishman. “Shan’t,” said he.

I knew I was beaten. There is no arguing with musicians when somebody has foozled an entry. It was Robert Hurd who explained the situation to me.

“During our last passage, about the power of God, it was pretty obvious Igor got to thinking about Nikita Khrushchev,” he said, “and when he came in wrong both Gordon and Giles rounded on him at once, and he was caught between their glares. Poor old Igor.”

Poor Igor indeed. When I picked him up he was sobbing piteously for the Kiss of Khrushchev. So I put him in a little box, with some fresh lettuce leaves upon which I sprinkled a few grains of caviar, and I addressed it to Comrade Nikita Khrushchev, care of the Russian Embassy at Ottawa, and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner of Hoskin Avenue.

A dirty trick? Perhaps. But you see, Igor would never have been of any further use to the College.

Every Autumn when I meet my new classes, I look them over to see if there are any pretty girls in them. This is not a custom peculiar to me: all professors do it: I also count the number of young men who are wearing Chairman Mao coats, or horseshoe moustaches. A pretty girl is something on which I can rest my eyes with pleasure while another student is reading a carefully-researched but uninspiring paper.

This year, in my seminar on the Gothic Novel, there was an exceptionally pretty girl, whose name was Elizabeth Lavenza. I thought it a coincidence that this should also be the name of the heroine of one of the novels we were about to study—no less a work than Mary Shelley’s celebrated romance Frankenstein. When I mentioned it to her she brushed it aside as of no significance.

“I was born in Geneva,” said she, “where lots of people are called Lavenza.”

Nevertheless, it lingered in my mind, and I mentioned it to one of my colleagues, who is a celebrated literary critic.

“You have coincidence on the brain,” he said. “Ever since you wrote that book—Fourth Dimension or whatever it was called—you’ve talked about nothing else. Forget it.”

I tried, but I couldn’t forget it. It troubled me even more after I had met the new group of Junior Fellows in this College, for one of them was young Einstein, who was studying Medical Biophysics. He was a brilliant young man, who came to us with glowing recommendations; some mention was made of a great-uncle of his, an Albert Einstein, whose name meant nothing to me, though it appeared to have special significance in the scientific world. It was young Mr. Einstein’s given names that roused an echo in my consciousness, for he was called Victor Frank.

For those among you who have not been reading Gothic Novels lately, I may explain that in Mrs. Shelley’s book Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, the hero’s name is also Victor, and the girl he loved was Elizabeth Lavenza. This richness of coincidence might trouble a mind less disposed to such reflection than mine. I held my peace, for I had been cowed by what my friend the literary critic had said. But I was dogged by apprehension, for I know the disposition of the atmosphere of Massey College to constellate extraordinary elements. Thus, cowed and dogged, I kept my eyes open for what might happen.