Mrs. Mott departed homeward, leaving us alone.
It occurred to me that the whole meal had been white, or at least creamy-grey in colour; and served upon white plates. Even the wine we drank with it was Liebfraumilch--"milk of a beloved woman"--not that I should have fancied a robust Burgundy as accompaniment to the meat dish in question! Had we drunk Burgundy or some other red wine, it might have looked as though our glasses had miraculously filled with the blood so visibly absent from that part of the cow's anatomy.
An all-white dinner. Why?
Had Mrs. Mott gone mad?
"Will you pour the port?" asked my host; and I obliged. The port, at least, was a rich purple-red; a contrast on which I forbore, for the moment, to comment, though my curiosity was by now intense.
John tasted his wine, then at last confided in a low voice, "I'm going blind, Morris. Blind."
"Blind?" I repeated the word stupidly. I stared at John's round, rosy face and at the thick round spectacles thereon, which from some angles made his eyes seem to bulge. His cheeks were faintly pocked: a bad reaction to a childhood bout of measles, which I knew had nearly killed him and which had certainly impaired his eyesight. The dome of his head was mostly bald and smooth. His skin, and remaining strands of hair, were somewhat greasy. A lot of talcum powder would need to be patted on to him prior to any television appearance; or else he would seem shiny on screen.
I decided that it was high time to broach the matter of the meal--without insulting it, however, since my taste buds had relished every morsel even if my eyes had not had much to feast on.
"Er, John ... the dinner we just ate ... splendid fare! Mrs. Mott is to be congratulated. But, hmm, there wasn't a scrap of colour in it. Everything was white from start to finish. White food on white plates. Highly ingenious! But, um, that doesn't mean that you're going blind--just because you couldn't see any colours. There weren't any to be seen."
John uttered a few staccato laughs.
"Oh Morris, I know that!" he declared. "Mrs. Mott has always been a great admirer of yours. The white dinner was in your honour. "
"Was it? Why's that? I don't quite follow."
"You see, that's her understanding of how homeopathy works. In this case, a homeopathic cure for failing vision. Take something as essential to the health of the body as a well-cooked meal. The smell and the taste play a major role in stimulating appetite. So does the look of the meal: the contrasts, the colours. "
"Oh, I see! Mrs. Mott imagines that by reducing the colour content to almost nothing--"
"Just as the homeopath reduces the drug content of a medicine virtually to nothing, by repeated dilution. Exactly!"
"--thereby your visual faculty will be stimulated, rather than dulled? Your brain will strain to discriminate the tiny traces of colour remaining? My word, what an imagination that woman has. "
"The white dinner was also served as a broad hint in case I didn't bring myself to ask your help, Morris."
Ah.
Now I could put two and two together.
)
