Demonic Bodies and the Dark

Ecologies of Early Christian Culture

Travis W. Proctor
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Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early

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Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early
Christian Culture
 Demonic Bodies and the Dark
Ecologies of Early Christian Culture
TRAVIS W. PROCTOR
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
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reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Proctor, Travis W., author.
Title: Demonic bodies and the dark ecologies of early Christian culture /
Travis W. Proctor. Other titles: Rulers of the sea
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Originally presented as author’s Thesis (Ph.D.—University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Department of Religious Studies, 2017) under the title: Rulers of the sea) |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021049822 (print) | LCCN 2021049823 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197581162 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197581186 (epub) | ISBN 9780197581193
Subjects: LCSH: Human body—Religious aspects—Christianity—
History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. |
Demonology—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. |
Rites and ceremonies—History—To 1500. | Church history—Primitive and early church, ca.
30–600.
Classification: LCC BT741.3.P76 2022 (print) | LCC BT741.3 (ebook) |
DDC 233/.5—dc23/eng/20211109
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021049822
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021049823
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197581162.001.0001
For my parents, with love and gratitude.
 Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Evil Entanglements

1. Disabled Demons: Demonic Disembodiment in Second Temple
Judaism and the Gospel of Mark
2. Bodiless Demons: Ignatius of Antioch, the Coptic Apocalypse of
Peter, and the Demonic Body of Jesus
3. Changeable Demons: Demonic Polymorphy, “Magic,” and
Christian Exorcism in the Writings of Justin Martyr
4. Belly-Demons: Clement of Alexandria and Demonic Sacrifice
5. Abject Demons: Tertullian of Carthage, Roman “Religion,” and
the Abject Body
Conclusion: Christians among Demons and Humans

Notes
Bibliography
Index
 Acknowledgments

My fascination with demons began early in my academic journey,

when I wrote an undergraduate thesis at Washington University in
St. Louis on the demonology of Justin Martyr’s Apologies. This book
is in many ways a sequel to that initial venture, and thus over a
decade in the making. A project with such a long history
accumulates many debts.
First, I am deeply grateful to Bart Ehrman, whose patient
guidance of this project in its form as a doctoral dissertation at UNC-
Chapel Hill was essential to its success. Bart provided stalwart
mentorship, attentive guidance, and careful feedback at every stage
of the work. It would be a much inferior project, and I a much lesser
scholar, if not for his direction.
Elizabeth Clark welcomed me into her courses and intellectual
community with open arms, providing good company, stimulating
conversation, and valuable feedback all along the way. Zlatko Pleše
and James Rives likewise provided careful comments and feedback,
often supplying important yet patient correctives. Other faculty
members at UNC similarly furnished support and guidance: Randall
Styers, Juliane Hammer, David Lambert, Lauren Leve, Laurie Maffly-
Kipp, Jodi Magness, Omid Safi, Jes Boon, and Brandon Bayne,
among others.
I owe a deep debt to others who have read all or parts of the
manuscript in its various forms: Annette Yoshiko Reed, Dale Martin,
Jennifer Knust, Mark Letteney, Heidi Marx, and Dayna Kalleres.
Special thanks are due to the friends and colleagues who have
inspired me with great conversation and supportive comradery:
Andrew Aghapour, Matthew Hotham, Michael Muhammad Knight,
Leif Tornquist, Nathan Schradle, Megan Goodwin, Ilyse Morgenstein-
Fuerst, Kathy Foody, Anne Blankenship, Stephanie Gaskill, Shannon
Schorey, Brook Wilensky-Lanford, Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Shaily
Patel, Jason Combs, Jason Staples, Brian Coussens, Erin Walsh, Julie
Lillis, Jeremiah Bailey, CJ Schmidt, Brad Erickson, Bo Eberle,
Benjamin White, and Pam Mullins Reaves.
I am appreciative of the support of the North American Patristics
Society, whose Dissertation Completion Grant furnished additional
time for research and writing. I am also indebted to the Dolores
Zohrab Liebmann fund, which provided funding for teaching releases
at important stages of my research and writing.
Before my time in North Carolina, I benefited from the great
mentorship of Religious Studies and Classics faculty at Washington
University in St. Louis, especially Roshan Abraham, Jonathan
Schwiebert, and Daniel Bornstein.
Steve Wiggins has been an excellent editor who expertly guided
me through the review and editing process. The anonymous readers
at OUP, whose generosity was matched only by their careful
attention to detail, made very helpful suggestions that improved the
manuscript.
I owe thanks to the many students at UNC-Chapel Hill, Northland
College, and, most recently, Wittenberg University, who have
humored the ways in which demons seem to show up in all corners
of Religious Studies courses.
I am grateful for my friends and former colleagues at Northland
College, especially Kyle Bladow, Jessica Eckhardt, Dave Ullman, Kate
Ullman, Emily Macgillivray, Kevin Schanning, Brian Tochterman, Ruth
de Jesus, Erica Hannickel, Jason Terry, Leslie Alldritt, and Tim Doyle,
who provided great intellectual comradery and friendship as this
project was transitioning from its dissertation to book phases.
Thanks are also (and especially) due to David Saetre, my
predecessor in teaching Religious Studies at Northland, whose
friendship and mentorship were invaluable as I began my
postgraduate career.
At Wittenberg University so many have provided guidance and
support, including Nancy McHugh, Chris Raffensperger, Michelle
Mattson, Heather Wright, and Julius Bailey. My greatest debt of
gratitude is owed to Jennifer Oldstone-Moore, whose friendship,
mentorship, and support have been unfailing.
This project would not have been possible without the steadfast
support of the library staffs at UNC-Chapel Hill, Northland College,
and Wittenberg University. In particular, to Elizabeth Madsen-
Genszler, Julia Waggoner, Suzanne Smailes, Karen Balliet, and Lori
Judy: thank you.
No other person supported me over the length of this project
more than Casey Proctor, whose intelligence, good humor, and
abiding love make the work worth doing, and worth taking a break
from. My two children, Caroline and Jackson, have constantly
reminded me how fun it is to learn new things. My sister Heather
and niece Madison have provided unwavering support and good
laughs along the way. This book is dedicated to my parents, David
and Tina Proctor, whose selfless care and unending support nurtured
my love of learning, even when it took me far from home and into
the unfamiliar worlds of academia. May this be a small token of
gratitude for all that they have given me.
 Introduction
Evil Entanglements

Demons and Bodies in the Ancient

Mediterranean
This is a book about demons—the residual spiritual offspring of
primordial fallen angels (or fallen angels themselves) who waged an
obstinate onslaught on humans in general, and the followers of
Jesus in particular.1 But reader beware: demons are notorious for
telling half-truths. In his Literal Commentary on Genesis, published
in the early fifth century, Augustine explains that demons use their
“far more subtle” (longe subtilior) bodies to inform humans of events
that have occurred elsewhere in the world, deceiving humans into
thinking that their informants possessed skills of divination
(12.17.34–38). Similarly, the second-century Christian apologist
Tatian advises his readers that demons “slip on the masks” of the
Greco-Roman gods in order to fool unsuspecting worshipers into
offering them sacrifice (Address to the Greeks 16.1).2 Christian
writers also warned that those who consort with demons are
sometimes apt to take up their ways, falsehoods included. It will
become clear that the present author is no exception, as this book-
about-demons will at times shapeshift into a book-about-humans,
and back again.
According to early Christian accounts, demons afflicted human
victims with harmful maladies, usurped their bodies, and dissuaded
or distracted them from appropriate worship practices. On these
points, Christians largely agreed. On other demonological issues,
Christians diverged. Are demons gaining strength, or waning in
importance? Do demons “haunt” particular places, or is their
presence primarily occasioned by certain human actions? Do demons
have their own bodies, or are they purely “ethereal” entities that can
only inhabit the bodies of others (e.g., humans and nonhuman
animals)? The latter question was apparently the subject of some
dispute. According to Origen of Alexandria, for example, some
Christians claimed that demons were incorporeal, while others
argued for the “fine” corporeality of demons:

Now this [demonic body] (daemonici corporis) is by nature a fine substance and
thin like air (subtile quoddam et velut aura tenue), and on this account most
people think and speak of it as incorporeal . . . It is customary for everything
which is not like [the human body] to be termed incorporeal by the more simple
and uneducated of humans (incorporeum a simplicioriubus vel imperitioribus
nominatur) just as the air we breathe may be called incorporeal because it is not a
body that can be grasped or held or that can resist pressure. (On First Principles,
pref.8; emphasis mine)3

Even a brief survey of early Christian literature substantiates Origen’s

observation: early Christians held variant viewpoints on demonic
(in)corporeality. Several Christian writers depict demons as lacking
bodies; Ignatius of Antioch, for example, refers to demons as
“bodiless” and contrasts their ethereal existence with the “flesh” of
human corporeality (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 2–3).4 Other Christian
authors, by contrast, posit that demons indeed have bodies, even if
composed of thin material “stuff” (see later discussion).5
But what would it have meant to argue over whether a demon
has a “body,” especially in the context of Greco-Roman antiquity?
Origen’s previously quoted comments regarding the “fine” or “thin”
body of demons alert the modern reader to the important
observation that while ancient terms for the body (Gr., σῶμα; Lat.,
corpus; Copt., ⲥⲱⲙⲁ) parallel modern usage in their reference to the
“physical” bodies of humans and other creatures, they were also
frequently applied to a much broader range of “embodied” entities
that had a more ethereal material composition. In his landmark
treatment of the issue, Dale Martin helpfully traced how post-
Cartesian dichotomies between “immaterial” mind/soul and
“material” body can be misleading when applied to the ancient
world.6 Most significantly, it should be stressed that “corporeal” did
not always simply equate to possessing a body similar in “material”
composition to humans. Rather, as Gregory Smith puts it, ancient
conceptions of the body comprised “a more or less finely graded
range of material existence, ranging from the tangible human body
and its parts (inside and out), to the fine-material stuff of souls,
demons, and air (including pneuma in its various forms).”7 Many
ancient thinkers, for example, held that embodiment might be
defined not only by physical constitution, but also by the ability to
act or be acted upon, extension through space, or three-
dimensionality. The Epicurean Lucretius, for example, held that the
possession of corporeality was necessary in order for anything to act
or be acted upon; every active being in the world, therefore,
including ethereal entities such as souls, were necessarily considered
“embodied” in Lucretius’s understanding.8 Stoic intellectuals similarly
argued that corporeality was not restricted to those entities
possessing bodies similar to humans, but extended to anything that
exists within the world (whatever its substance).9 Finally, Clement of
Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage, the subjects of Chapters 4 and
5, respectively, equate corporeality with possessing three dimensions
(length/height, depth, and breadth), rather than a specific material
constitution.10 These intellectuals are just a few examples of what
we might call “expansive corporealists,” that is, ancient thinkers or
traditions that were willing to grant corporeality even to entities that
were composed of rather ethereal “stuff.” This concept means that
we, as modern readers, must allow ancient terminology for “body” to
encompass a wider range of entities than our cognate terminologies
typically permit.
Significantly, ancient writers from a wide variety of intellectual
traditions included demons among the classes of embodied entities,
a point superbly laid out by Gregory Smith in his 2008 article “How
Thin Is a Demon?”11 But in such cases, what was the “stuff” of the
demonic body? Many writers of the ancient Mediterranean—Greco-
Roman traditionalists and Christian intellectuals among them—
characterized demons as possessing bodies made of pneuma
(“spirit”; πνεῦμα, spiritus, ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁ).12 In antiquity, pneuma often
referred simply to “breath” or “spirit,”13 but was also used to
describe the composition of “thin-bodied” entities (e.g., the human
soul, angels, demons). The Christian apologist Tatian, for example,
claimed that the composition of demons was “spiritual”
(πνευματικός).14 Origen of Alexandria similarly asserted that the air
in the atmosphere around the earth was of similar substance to that
of demons.15 The Neoplatonist Porphyry of Tyre also argued that
demons had bodies (or “vessels”) composed of pneuma, which
allowed these entities to change shape and become visible to
humans.16 As a final example, the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)
include spells that seem to presume the pneumatic composition of
“demonic” assistants.17
Ancient descriptions of demonic composition as “pneumatic” or
“soul-like” might imply to contemporary readers that demons were
indeed “bodiless,” or perhaps lacking “solid” material physiology. But,
as Smith aptly notes, “when it comes to demons in Roman and later
antiquity . . . tidy material divisions between mind and body are best
checked at the door.”18 Indeed, ancient writers typically
characterized pneuma as “fine material”—that is, it possessed some
form of material “stuff,” even if imperceptibly so.19 Demons’
pneumatic or “airy” physiology, moreover, was closely related to their
residence in the “intermediate” atmosphere between earth and the
heavens, a connection noted by several ancient authors.20 For many
in antiquity, therefore, the “stuff” of the demonic body was as real
and tangible as the air humans breathe and the atmosphere that
envelops the earth. “Demons . . . were thoroughly mixed up with
matter,” Smith fittingly concludes.21
Nevertheless, despite the relative popularity of expansive
corporealism, not every ancient thinker was quite so eager to extend
embodiment to ethereal entities like demons. Most famously, Plato
(and many of his intellectual successors) posited a rather strong
dualism between body and soul, arguing that the soul as an
“intelligible” entity should be distanced from the “corporeal” nature
of the body.22 What is more, we have seen already how Origen
disparages the “simple and uneducated” for equating “incorporeal”
with, so to put, “things that do not have bodies like humans” (see
previous discussion). Tertullian of Carthage makes a similar remark
with regard to the soul, noting that “the tenuousness and subtlety
(tenuitatis subtilitas) of its structure militates against the belief in its
corporeality” (On the Soul 9.6).23 Tertullian’s and Origen’s comments
both attest that, despite their own expansive corporealism, other
thinkers in antiquity often equated “corporeality” with “possessing a
body similar to that of humans”; in such cases, demons would
presumably be classified as “incorporeal” (ἀσώματος). Within early
Christian literature, we encounter a likely example of such reasoning
in the work of Ignatius of Antioch.24
Nevertheless, as Dale Martin has noted, “for most ancient
philosophers, to say that something was incorporeal was not to say
that it was immaterial.”25 Indeed, while “incorporeal” was sometimes
used to indicate that something lacked the normal “fleshly” body of
humans, this did not necessarily mean that an entity was purely
immaterial or lacking a physical constitution altogether.26 Rather,
strict immateriality or incorporeality was most often reserved for the
highest divine beings (or abstract concepts and ideas); entities that
acted within the mundane or supra-mundane cosmos were typically
presumed to have some kind of physical constitution, whether or not
it was characterized as a “body.”27 This is a significant insight for
what follows, in that even when demons are described as (or implied
to be) incorporeal, they were still often imagined to be active agents
in the world, wreaking havoc despite (or thanks to) their rather thin
physiques.
Demonic Bodies captures the diversity of early Christian portrayals
of demonic (in)corporeality by exploring instances in which Christian
writers explicitly ascribe some form of corporeality to demons (e.g.,
Chapters 3, 4, and 5) as well as cases in which it is implied that
demons lack bodies (e.g., Chapters 1 and 2). While Origen opines
that such ideational diversity is due to varying levels of intelligence
among Christians, my findings suggest that Christian demonological
discrepancies are informed at least in part by concomitant
divergences concerning the makeup of the (ideal) Christian body. Put
another way, Christian demonological constructions took shape in
tandem with concurrent anthropological concepts. My interest in the
Christian body signals my indebtedness to gender- and cultural-
studies scholarship that traces the social contingency of human
embodiment. Studies of early Christianity have drawn extensively on
this brand of scholarship,28 but one aspect of ancient embodiment
has remained relatively underexplored: the interconnection between
cultural constructions of the body and surrounding nonhuman
environments. This approach requires the marshaling of new
theoretical resources for telling fresh histories of the early Christian
cosmos.

Theorizing Early Christian Ecologies

Scholars, activists, and civic leaders are increasingly grappling with
what it means—and will mean—to be human in a time when the
bearers of that label have wrought destruction on a grand scale to
ecosystems, creatures, and global environments. Many
contemporary scholars have argued that modern constructions of
the human body as separate and disconnected from its surrounding
nonhuman environments have been primary culprits in historical
ecological malpractice. Bruno Latour famously argued in We Have
Never Been Modern that one of the distinctive “practices” of
modernity has been the creation of “two entirely distinct ontological
zones: that of human beings on the one hand; that of nonhumans
on the other.”29 Linda Nash has traced similar histories within the
realms of medicine and environmentalism, noting how (premodern)
“ecological” anthropologies typically viewed human bodies as
“malleable and porous entities that were in constant interaction with
the surrounding environment,” whereas the “modern” period
witnessed the creation “of a distinct and bounded body, clearly
separate from its environment.”30 Contemporary environmental
theorists frequently point to this distinctly “modern” view of the
body, most often traced to the thought of Descartes, as the root
cause for modern mistreatment of nonhuman nature. And so Laurel
Kearns argues, for example, that the “dualism” between human and
nonhuman has led to the “othering” of nonhuman entities and
environments (as well as humans associated with them), and thus to
their designation as entities “deserving less respect, less justice, and
less acknowledgment.”31
In response, posthumanist theoretical perspectives have
scrutinized the historical consolidation of “human” as a cultural
category, while also drawing attention to the many interconnections
between humans and nonhuman ecosystems, as part of a general
attempt at disrupting the isolation of humans from their nonhuman
contexts.32 A “posthuman” approach, then, designates “the
variegated efforts to rethink the human,” which collectively respond
“to the legacies of humanism by breaking up, fracturing, distributing,
and decentralizing the self-willing person, questioning its subjectival
unity and epistemological conceits.”33 Along such lines, Kim TallBear
calls on scholars to investigate how humans and other (nonhuman)
entities “are coconstituted with cultural, political, and economic
forces.”34 Through this process, we can begin the process of
“thinking-with” the nonhuman, such that “the domain of ways of
being and knowing dilates, expands, [and] adds both ontological and
epistemological possibilities.”35
Such “posthuman” connections are not unique to our modern
period; rather, humans and nonhuman others “have always
performed an intricate dance with each other. There was never a
time when human agency was anything other than an interfolding
network of humanity and nonhumanity.”36 The historical connections
between humans and nonhumans push us to consider not only
posthuman futures, then, but also what we might call “prehuman”
pasts—that is, how premodern humans historically conceived of their
relationship with nonhuman entities and environments in ways that
trouble human/nonhuman boundaries.37 In this way, Denise Kimber
Buell notes how “the ‘post’ of posthumanism need not indicate an
attempt to ‘get beyond’ the human but rather a marker of the desire
to question and transform what humanness can be and may
become.”38 Demonic Bodies posits that early Christian cosmologies
provide key opportunities for exploring such “prehuman” ecologies,
and that investigating ancient ecosystems has the potential both to
inform our understandings of ancient subjectivity and to dilate
contemporary theories of human/nonhuman interconnections.
Extant early Christian texts reveal the degree to which ancient
writers (and, most likely, many of their readers) imagined and
experienced themselves to be enmeshed in cosmic environments
teeming with hosts of nonhuman entities, including god(s), demons,
angels, ghosts, and nonhuman animals, to name but a few.
Nevertheless, when entities such as demons and angels have been
considered in early Christian studies, they have typically been
grouped under analyses of “supernatural” cosmologies, rather than
the “real” environments as part of which humans lived and moved.
This categorization may be due in part to the difficulty of assessing
the impact of entities, such as demons or angels, which are less
“available” to modern readers for close analysis and investigation.
Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that nonhuman entities were
no less impactful to ancient Christian worldviews and lived realities,
as the ancient Christian body “was embedded in a cosmic matrix in
ways that made its perception of itself profoundly unlike our own.”39
Ellen Muehlberger has traced similar insights with respect to ancient
angels, noting how such nonhuman entities “are real to religious
practitioners” insofar as they are capable of “influencing behavior
and the generation of new ideas because they are given parts of late
ancient Christian culture.”40 In this vein C. Michael Chin has called on
scholars to conduct multifaceted “cosmological historiographies,”
which duly appreciate that “events and actions are necessarily the
products of multiple interacting agents, only some of whom are
human.”41 Demonic Bodies investigates how Christian writers of the
first–third centuries CE created Christian modes of thought and
practice as co-constitutive with nonhuman, demonic entities. While
previous studies have emphasized the significance of demons for
issues of early Christian identity and practice, I turn attention
specifically to the demonic body (or its absence), noting how it was
part of the broader production of multispecies (i.e., human and
nonhuman) cosmological ecosystems.
My focus on demonic and human (in)corporeality builds upon the
robust scholarly interest in ideational perceptions and portrayals of
the body. In this line of inquiry, the body and its concomitant
materiality or gender/sexuality are not natural attributes, but
culturally contingent products of ideological constructions. I examine
how the body is a “performative” entity, or “a stylized repetition of
acts” that produces the corporeal “self.”42 My focus on early Christian
ritual, in particular, traces how bodies emerge through “a process of
materialization,”43 entailing “reiterative and citational” practices that
echo and allude to prior corporeal performances.44 To aid in my
exploration of the body’s relation with nonhuman entities, I utilize
the lens of “trans-corporeality,” adapted from the work of
environmental theorist Stacy Alaimo. This concept calls attention to
the ways in which “the human is always intermeshed with the more-
than-human world,” to such an extent that “the substance of the
human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment.’ ”45 Trans-
corporeality draws attention to the fact that humans are constantly
ingesting, absorbing, or coming into contact with air, water, plants,
animals, toxins, bacteria, and viruses, to name just a handful of the
nonhuman entities that constitute our most immediate
environments. According to Alaimo, considering these kinds of trans-
corporeal exchanges between human bodies and nonhuman entities
“enacts an environmental posthumanism, insisting that what we are
as bodies and minds is inextricably interlinked with the circulating
substances, materialities, and forces.”46 Posthuman here does not
gesture toward a teleology of human progress, then, but comprises
“an assertion that, to echo Bruno Latour, we have never been human
—if to be human begins with a separation from, or a disavowal of,
the very stuff of the world.”47
Demonic Bodies traces this insight into antiquity, demonstrating
how ancient Christian notions of the human body were inter-
implicated with demonic corporeality. Of course, writers in the
ancient Mediterranean, including early Christians, held to a wide
variety of views on the physical constitution, origin, and ultimate fate
of the human body. In each chapter, therefore, I provide detailed
overviews of the specific anthropologies evinced by each author or
text(s), and note how their views of the human body in particular
draw upon or contribute to concomitant views on demonic
(in)corporeality.48 In doing so, Demonic Bodies traces how trans-
corporeal relationships between humans and nonhumans are not
only characteristic of our “posthuman” present, but also an
important element in understanding our ancient “prehuman” past.
My specific focus on early Christians’ trans-corporeal relations
with demons—malevolent beings par excellence of Christian
ecosystems—is part of a conscious attempt to capture the “dark
ecologies” of human experience. Environmental theorist Timothy
Morton has noted how the foundations for contemporary
environmental awareness too often precede either from viewing
nonhuman “nature” as an entity external to the human subject or
from idealized ethics that view human-nonhuman interconnections
purely in romanticized terms.49 On the latter point, Lisa Sideris has
argued that contemporary Christian eco-theologians too often
ground their environmental ethics on notions of ecological “benign
interdependence,” which (rightly) stresses interconnections between
humans and nonhumans, but (misleadingly) implies that these
interrelationships are uniformly positive.50 Humanity’s
interconnection with nonhuman entities, however, comprises what
Morton aptly calls a “demonic proximity”—the two “become
entangled” in ways that are ambivalent and even harmful.51 One
might here think of toxic waste sites, polluted rivers, disease-
carrying mosquitoes, or carnivorous predators, all of which are part
of ecological relations—pollution, spread of disease, or predation—
that have the potential to bring harm to humans or others.
Hence a challenge for modern environmental theorists and
ethicists: how does one theorize environmental interconnection such
that our ecological “awareness” includes due acknowledgment of
these rather disconcerting ecological linkages?52 Demonic Bodies
emerges from the conviction that formulating more robust
environmental ethics depends at least in part on telling “darker”
environmental histories: our multispecies historiographies must call
attention to our trans-corporeal relations with nonhuman
ecosystems, even (or especially) when those relations are
ambivalent or harmful.
Ancient demonology may seem an odd place to turn for such a
task. What do Christian “supernatural” beings have to do with
environmental “realities”? As Morton notes, however, the modern
dichotomy between external “reality” and internal “imagination” is
problematized by ecological perspectives: “If the very question of
inside and outside is what ecology undermines . . . , [then] surely
this is a matter of seeing how ecosystems are made not only of
trees, rock formations, and pigs (seemingly ‘external’ to the human)
but also of thoughts, wishes, or fantasies (seemingly ‘inside’ our
human heads)?”53 Even those elements of human culture considered
“fantastical” or “imaginative” (e.g., religious “mythologies”), then,
can be important constituents of humanity’s environments. Stuart
Clark has noted elsewhere, for example, how Christian writers,
despite modern construals of demonic beings as “supernatural”
creatures, consistently depicted (evil) demonic entities as part and
parcel of the “natural world.”54 Indeed, as discussed previously,
numerous ancient intellectuals—including Christian writers such as
Athenagoras and Tertullian, as well as non-Christians like Apuleius of
Madaura and Plutarch of Chaeronea—argued that demons had their
“natural” abode in the “airy” atmosphere above the earth, where
their ethereal substance was most at home.55 Hence no exploration
of ancient Christian “ecosystems” would be complete without taking
account of the myriad cosmic entities—demons among them—that
populated early Christian worlds.
Ancient demonologies present an opportunity, therefore, to reflect
on how early Christians conceived of their “dark” ecological
connections with malevolent entities, and how such relations
contributed to the formation of Christian cultures. Demonic Bodies
traces in particular how early Christian perceptions of demonic
propinquity contributed to the simultaneous valorization and
marginalization of particular Christian corporeal paradigms, and thus
to the creation of asymmetric cultural valuations of the human body.
My tracing of the human body’s trans-corporeal relationship with
demons, while troubling the historical stability of the human subject,
does so as a first step in proposing new ways of understanding
human culture and its many interconnections with nonhuman others.

Outlining the Project

Demonic Bodies argues that ancient Christians described and
experienced their bodies as trans-corporeal entities, which were
caught up in a multitude of interactions with nonhuman others,
demons among them. I trace the trans-corporeal relationship
between humans and demons in three ways: physical connections,
conceptual constructions, and ritual performance. First, many
Christian writers claimed that the human body was vulnerable to
becoming physically entangled with or influenced by demonic
creatures; we see this vulnerability especially through anxieties
surrounding demonic possession or attack (Chapters 1 and 5) and
illicit demonic influence over the human mind or soul (Chapter 3), as
well as the metamorphosis of human corporeality into some kind of
“demonic” state (Chapters 2 and 4). In this way, Christians imagined
the boundaries of the Christian body as rather unstable and porous,
sometimes easily traversed or altered by ambiguously corporeal
entities such as demons.
Second, Demonic Bodies traces how conceptual constructions of
demonic (dis)embodiment informed attendant constructions of
proper and improper Christian (human) corporeality. Specifically, I
argue that Christian descriptions of demonic (in)corporeality reflect
shifts and differences in early Christian anthropology, insofar as the
attributes that characterize constructions of proper human
embodiment are frequently portrayed as inverted or deficient in
Christian representations of demonic (dis)embodiment. Ignatius of
Antioch, for example, asserts the “bodiless” nature of demons, while
simultaneously arguing for the salvific value of the flesh.56
Conversely, Clement of Alexandria stresses the “corpulent” and
“fattened” nature of demonic corporeality, to be contrasted with the
“thinned” flesh of the idealized Christian intellectual. .57 As
evidenced by these two examples, Christian disagreements
regarding the nature of the demonic body frequently contributed to
and drew upon adjacent discrepancies regarding human
(in)corporeality. I note how in this process the demonic body proved
doubly useful—as an entity with a rather unsettled (in)corporeal
nature, on the one hand, demonic bodies shifted in conversation
with the concerns and ideologies of various Christian authors and
communities. And yet, as nonhuman creatures of a higher-order
cosmic sphere, demons served Christian writers well in undergirding
their diverse anthropologies and heresiologies with more stable
cosmic foundations.
Third and finally, I outline how the threat of physical
entanglement with demons, combined with conceptual constructions
of demonic (dis)embodiment, informed particular Christian ritual
practices and thus contributed to Christian corporeal performances.
Throughout the work I use ritual to denote the way in which humans
engage in formal, rule-governed, symbolic, and performative
activities that distinguish a particular time or space as sacred or
important.58 My work examines in particular how early Christian
demonologies helped to shape (and were shaped by) ritual
discourses, which enacted “bodily dispositions” that held “practical
sense” for their practitioners.59 In this way, demonic (in)corporeality
played an important part not only in reflecting early Christian bodily
ethics, but also in reproducing Christian corporeal performances.
Through conceptual demonization and attendant ritualizations, I
argue, Christian writers assembled inequitable ecosystems whereby
particular Christian groups, rituals, or ideas were marginalized
through their linkage to evil cosmic agents.
Across these three areas—physical connections, conceptual
constructions, and ritual enactments—Demonic Bodies outlines how
demonic (in)corporeality played an important role in how the human
body took shape as a trans-corporeal, ecological entity.60 “To think
ecologically,” Levi Bryant states, “is not to think nature per se but to
think relations between things.”61 Demonic Bodies explores the
bodily relations between demons and humans, noting how these two
creatures were mutually enmeshed in cosmic ecologies, and thus
were a part of complex, multidirectional, and multi-agential
corporeal ecosystems. My emphasis on ecological enmeshment,
moreover, draws attention to the fact that, in the same way that an
organism might have multiple and variable relations with the various
other entities within its ecosystem, so also the Christian body
experienced interconnections with the demonic in numerous ways;
whether via demonic possession, attack, temptation, or
transmutation, the relation between Christian corporeality and its
demonic counterpart took on a variety of forms.
The project comprises five case studies, each of which traces the
Christian body’s trans-corporeal relations through a specific theme:
(dis)ability, physiology, changeability, animality, and abjection,
respectively. The first two chapters inaugurate the study through
examinations of early Christian traditions regarding “bodiless”
demons. Chapter 1, “Disabled Demons: Demonic Disembodiment in
Second Temple Judaism and the Gospel of Mark,” examines how the
Gospel of Mark portrays demons as impaired, disembodied entities,
closely mirroring ancient Jewish traditions that identify demons as
the residual souls of antediluvian giants. The disembodied status of
the demonic, in turn, informs their misplacement as foreign
“spiritual” entities in a fleshly world. In this regard it is notable that
two of the major exorcism narratives in Mark involve Jesus’s
interaction with “foreign” (i.e., non-Jewish) peoples. In the second
part of the chapter, therefore, I trace how the Second Gospel’s
exorcism narratives utilize Jesus’s expulsion of “foreign,” impure
spirits to delineate relations between Jewish and non-Jewish
members of the Jesus movement. The chapter concludes by tracing
how the Second Gospel constructs the human body as prone to
possession by external spirits, as evidenced in the exorcism
narratives as well as Jesus’s implicit claim to being possessed by the
“holy spirit.” While many ancient corporeal paradigms held that such
porosity was characteristic only of “weak” bodies, the Gospel of Mark
emphasizes Jesus’s masculine potency through his “binding” of the
Strong Man through exorcism. In this way, the disabled body of the
demonic emerges as a key component in the Second Gospel’s
construction of the potent abilities of Jesus the exorcist.
In Chapter 2, “Bodiless Demons: Ignatius of Antioch, the Coptic
Apocalypse of Peter, and the Demonic Body of Jesus,” I turn to
another tradition of “bodiless” demons, found in Ignatius of Antioch’s
Letter to the Smyrnaeans. There, Ignatius claims that any Christian
who believes in a phantasmal Jesus will be “just like what they
believe,” that is, they will be “without bodies” and “demonic”
(Smyrn. 2). Through this equivalency, Ignatius caricatures his
opponents’ views of Christ by equating them with a demonic
Christology. Furthermore, Ignatius condemns his opponents to a
bodiless and demonic afterlife. Elsewhere in his letters, Ignatius
emphasizes the importance of Jesus’s existence as a dyadic flesh-
and-spirit body, as well as the continued presence of Jesus’s flesh
and spirit in the Christian Eucharist. Ignatius’s citation of demonic
incorporeality, therefore, serves Ignatius well in circumscribing the
Christian community by constraining proper Christian embodiment: a
docetic Christian believes in and will become a “bodiless demon,”
and will thus lack the required corporeality for proper participation in
the orthodox Church and its unifying ritual, the Eucharist. I conclude
the chapter by juxtaposing Ignatius’s portrayal of bodiless demons
with the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter’s depiction of demons as entities
mired in the fleshly world in order to demonstrate how variant
demonologies informed divergent materializations of the Christian
body.
In the three chapters that follow, I examine early Christian
constructions of demonic corporeality that, unlike those traditions in
the Gospel according to Mark and letters of Ignatius, emphasize
demons’ possession of fine-material bodies. In Chapter 3,
“Changeable Demons: Demonic Polymorphy, ‘Magic,’ and Christian
Exorcism in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” I explore Justin Martyr’s
claim that demons, like their angelic fathers, mutated and assumed
various forms as part of their efforts to deceive humans, promote
improper worship, and inspire persecution against Christians. I argue
that Justin’s distinctive highlighting of demonic changeability
emerges alongside his counter-emphasis on the “immovability” of
the Christian God, which, in turn, functions to undercut the
polymorphic Greco-Roman pantheon’s collective claim to divinity. In
the second part of the chapter, I explore Justin’s distinctive retelling
of the myth of the Watchers in his 2 Apology, which omits the
characters of the giants in its recounting of demonic origins. In doing
so, Justin promotes a closer correspondence between fallen angels
and demons, highlighting his simultaneous ascription of polymorphic
capabilities to both angelic fathers and demonic sons. In the
chapter’s third part, I explore how Justin associates demonic
changeability with “magical” trickery, which aids the Apologist’s
constructions of proper Christian exorcism as a “simple” practice
distinct from “magical” alternatives.
In Chapter 4, “Belly-Demons: Clement of Alexandria and Demonic
Sacrifice,” I explore Clement of Alexandria’s exhortation that
Christians not mix the “body of the Lord” with the “table of demons”
by engaging in gluttonous eating habits. I note that, following Paul’s
comparable claims in 1 Corinthians, many early Christian writers
claimed that demons promoted animal sacrifice because they
consumed the blood and smoke produced as part of the sacrificial
process. In his own rendition of this claim, Clement of Alexandria
portrays the demonic body as animalistic and grotesquely “fattened”
due to its excess consumption of sacrificial fumes. Clement contrasts
the demons’ corpulence with his construal of the ideal Christian
body: chaste, thin, and constantly engaged in contemplative
practices that “strip away” the material body. The demonic body,
then, informs and undergirds Clement’s ritual program by providing a
negative stereotype of those bodily attributes that Clement urges his
readers to eschew.
In Chapter 5, “Abject Demons: Tertullian of Carthage, Roman
‘Religion,’ and the Abject Body,” I examine the intermixture of
demonic and Christian bodies in the writings of Tertullian of
Carthage. I begin by exploring Tertullian’s construction of humanity’s
dual flesh-and-spirit body in On the Soul, wherein he emphasizes the
pervasive attachment of demonic spirits to the human soul. This
demonic affliction stems, Tertullian claims, from inadvertent
participation in demonolatry via Roman “religious” rites. The only
method by which Roman citizens can remove their attendant
demonic spirit is through Christian baptism, a practice that Tertullian
views as essential in the creation of a new, demon-free Christian
body. In this way, the demonic body functions within Tertullian’s
writings as a kind of abject entity—one that is foreclosed as part of
the ritualized construction of the Christian body and yet loiters as a
threatening epitome of those elements unbecoming of Christian
corporeality. The lingering threat of the abject demon surfaces
mostly clearly in Tertullian’s On the Shows, a treatise that warns
Christians of the myriad activities contaminated by demons, which
therefore threaten to pollute the body and undo the salvific work of
Christian baptism. I note in particular how Tertullian’s citation of the
threat of demons undergirds Tertullian’s prescriptions regarding
appropriate Christian cultural practices, designed to exclude
“foreign” Roman cultural activities.
In the final chapter, “Conclusion: Christians among Demons and
Humans,” I place the study’s findings in conversation with
explorations in the humanities with regard to the “post-” and
“nonhuman.” I note there that early Christians depicted the demonic
body in widely divergent ways. Whether disembodied or corporeal,
fattened or ethereal, depictions of demonic (in)corporeality were as
diverse as the Christians who articulated them. Yet a consistent
feature of early Christian demonologies is the way in which demons
are enmeshed with their human counterparts. On the one hand,
Christian descriptions of demonic corporeality reflect shifts and
differences in early Christian anthropology insofar as they inversely
correlate to articulations of the ideal human body. In this way, the
demonic body contributed to the formation of exclusionary
environments, which, in turn, became an important part of how
Christian writers, readers, and listeners imagined, examined, and
performed their own modes of embodiment. The early Christian
body emerges, then, as a kind of “posthuman” (or, perhaps more
appropriately, “prehuman”) entity, a being that is thoroughly
enmeshed within its nonhuman cosmic environments—always
evolving and materializing in and through the concomitant
development of adjacent nonhuman entities, including demons.
Building on this insight, the final chapter concludes by reflecting
on how exploring the materializations of demons (and nonhuman
entities, more broadly) in ancient Christian literature can provide a
fruitful avenue not only for understanding antiquity, but also for
addressing contemporary cultural and ecological problems. In this
way, this project demonstrates that contemporary posthuman and
ecocritical theorizing not only has much to contribute to studies of
antiquity, but also that (ancient) history—the narratives humans tell
themselves about themselves—has an enduring importance in
informing how humans understand and interact with nonhuman
others, and thus has much to contribute to contemporary ecological
thought and practice.
 1
Disabled Demons
Demonic Disembodiment in Second Temple Judaism
and the Gospel of Mark

Apollonius of Tyana was not one for subtlety. According to his

biographer Philostratus, the neo-Pythagorean wonderworker once
helped the citizens of ancient Ephesus by putting an end to a plague
afflicting the city. Apollonius’s cure did not entail healing sick
Ephesians individually, but the removal of the ultimate source for the
disease: a demon masquerading as an old beggar in the city’s
famous theater. Apollonius confronted the plague-demon and urged
the Ephesians to stone him to death; although they initially
hesitated, they eventually realized he was a demon, showered him
with stones, and killed him. Apollonius thereafter directed the
Ephesians to remove the stones that had piled upon the demon.
Much to their surprise, what was revealed underneath was not the
body of the human beggar, but a massive dog “spitting foam from
the side of its mouth, as if rabid.” Philostratus informs the reader
that a statue of Hercules now stands “in the place in which the
apparition (φάσμα) was pelted to death” (Life of Apollonius 4.10).1
Philostratus’s vivid tale of the Ephesian plague-demon embodies
many themes found in exorcism narratives of the ancient
Mediterranean, including the association of demons with disease and
the ability of particularly powerful ritual experts to heal the afflicted.
What is particularly notable here, however, is the text’s emphasis on
the ambiguity of demonic embodiment. Did the demon actually take
on the form of a human beggar, or was this merely an appearance?
Was the form of the rabid dog the creature’s true nature, or another
deceptive facade? Does the demon’s identification as an “apparition”
mean that it did not have a body at all? Philostratus leaves such
questions unresolved, but he is not alone: as will be made evident in
the case studies to follow, the demonic body is nothing if not
polymorphic.
We can begin to appreciate the hybridity of demonic corporeality
by turning to the exploits of another first-century miracle worker,
Jesus of Nazareth. The Synoptic Gospels, our earliest extant
accounts of Jesus’s life, concur in depicting Jesus as one who—like
his contemporary Apollonius—had the ability to thwart the afflictions
of demons. But what was the nature of the creatures he expelled?
Previous treatments of New Testament and early Christian exorcism
narratives have largely ignored the nature and origins of the
demonic entities involved, preferring instead to focus their analyses
on the sociocultural, medical, or ritual elements of ancient
possession and exorcism. While such approaches have gleaned
important insights, they have sometimes viewed early Christian
demonologies in a “demythologizing” vein—that is, they have largely
ignored questions regarding the origin, nature, and activity of
demons themselves, preferring instead to examine how demons
point to other, less “fanciful” sociocultural realities.2 The bodies of
possessing demons, in particular, have received scant treatment
from contemporary commentators. This neglect is perhaps due to
the fact that possession and exorcism narratives portray demons as
usurping other (human, animal) bodies, and therefore imply that
demons lack autonomous corporeality.
In what follows, however, I note that the demons’ ostensible
disembodiment, much like the Ephesian plague-demon’s appearance
as a beggar, obscures a more manifold corporeal history—one that
includes a past as a fully embodied antediluvian “giant.” I excavate
this history through analysis of the Gospel according to Mark, our
earliest extant gospel and a text that stands as the source for much
of the early Jesus movement’s exorcism narratives.3 Demons in the
Gospel of Mark are disembodied, invasive, “impure” spirits who
desire to inhabit the human body and are able to inflict violence on
their human hosts with unnatural strength. This portrayal dovetails
with contemporaneous Second Temple Jewish demonologies,
wherein demons are understood to be the residual spirits of the
gigantic offspring of fallen angels and mortal women.
When contextualized in light of Second Temple Jewish and early
Christian mythologies, then, demons emerge as corporeally impaired
entities, dispossessed of their former (gigantic) fleshly corporeality.
This impairment informs the demons’ ultimate misplacement—
despite their “spiritual” nature, they are consigned to the earth, the
realm of fleshly bodies. In this way, demons emerge as paradigmatic
foreign, “out-of-place” entities. Notably, two of the major exorcism
narratives in the Second Gospel feature foreign (i.e., non-Jewish)
characters: the Gerasene demoniac and the Syrophoenician woman.
In the second part of the chapter, I trace how the Gospel of Mark
utilizes the exorcism of demons, cosmically out-of-place entities, in
order to demarcate relations between Jewish and foreign non-Jewish
members of the Jesus movement.
The chapter concludes by juxtaposing the disabled body of
demons with the empowered corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth,
exorcist par excellence in the Second Gospel. I note in particular
how the Second Gospel constructs Jesus’s body as porous, able to
“leak” divine power and also receive the indwelling holy spirit. While
some ancient paradigms of corporeality configured such porosity as
“weak” or too “feminine,” the Second Gospel underscores Jesus’s
masculinity and bodily potency through its depiction of exorcism, the
exemplary “binding of the Strong Man” (i.e., Satan/Beelzebul). In
this way, the mythic disablement of demons plays an integral role in
the Second Gospel’s construction of the potent abilities of the Jewish
exorcist, and thus in the construal of both the cause and remedy for
humanity’s corporeal entanglements with its demonic forces.
Another random document with
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keeping themselves busy until the shock of parting had worn off a bit
for Polly. Over our second cup of coffee she started to talk about it.
"It's a strange thing to say but I'm glad Harry's gone. I just know he
never would have been happy with me if he hadn't done it."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"He never did tell me much about his people ... no more than he told
you-all. I knew he was holding out on me but it wasn't any of my
business. These English people don't brag much about themselves
and their families. Anyway I knew he felt real bad when he got the S-
Flu because as soon as he knew he was sterile he tried to tell me to
go find somebody else. He seemed to think because he couldn't give
me children I wouldn't want him. I told him I didn't hanker to marry a
stud horse but it didn't do much good. I guess having no mother and
father and then losing his chance to have kids of his own made him
feel low. Maybe this will get it out of his head and he'll be OK," she
paused, "that is, if he ever comes back. Somehow I feel deep down
that he won't."
"Oh, don't be silly, Polly," Pat shut her up. "You got up too early this
morning. Here, have some more hot coffee."

With the coming of spring across the cold northern continents, the big
counter-offensive had begun. For years the agricultural scientists had
prepared for such an occasion and now they went into action.
Naturally it was all top secret but we were among the privileged few,
since the border-line between the world of plant pathology and the
diseases of man and animals had grown increasingly vague. It was
essential that we know of their work and they of ours. Many of the
original discoveries in virology had been made by botanical scientists
and the first virus to be crystallized, the tobacco mosaic, was a
disease confined to the plant world.
Since the Geophysical Year of 1958 and the advent of the space
satellites, the meteorologists had made tremendous advances. Using
information derived from the weather globes circling the earth, with
their data on sun-spots and radar maps of storm centers, plus the
mass of information now available through the weather stations in the
polar regions, at sea and on land, the weather predictors had become
extremely accurate. With seeding techniques, electronically
controlled, they had made a start at changing the weather, although,
up to now, little of this had been done because of a lack of
international agreements. Now they were free to try out their ideas. It
was interesting to follow in the newspapers the results of their work,
and even more interesting to see how the peoples of the world tried
to explain the various events. The great pandemics raging across the
earth had resulted in a rush to the churches and the rise of all sorts of
weird sects, prophets and calamity howlers. This frantic search for
security renewed itself when the new wave of disaster began. To
avert suspicion, for a while at least, and also because these great
forces could not easily be localised, our NATO allies had to suffer with
the Communists. Only the heads of the British Government knew,
and they, with their usual courage, had agreed to endure, with the
promise of American aid.
The first attack was a weather offensive. Using the jet streams which
flowed swiftly to the east, swarms of tiny balloons were released by
planes from the American Navy supercarriers in the Atlantic, and from
the bombers of the Strategic Air Command cruising in the
stratosphere above them. By the use of timing devices these deadly
little toys destroyed themselves and dropped the new electronic
seeders into the moisture-filled clouds rolling from the Atlantic across
Europe. The wettest spring in recorded history was the result. Fields
were almost untillable and the hay and grain crops that were planted
were never harvested. The wet weather favored the growth of fungus
and the rusts and blights so carefully cultivated by our agronomists
and seeded into the winds that blew over Europe and Asia, thrived on
what remained of the harvest. Further to the east the winds, now
emptied of their moisture, sucked water from the steppes of Siberia,
where the great new collective farms ordered by Khrushchev had torn
up the grasslands. Dust storms scoured off the topsoil. No plants
could grow. No animal could survive, lacking both food and water.
The greatest migration in living memory was the result. The trek of
the Okies out of the dust bowl of the early thirties was a mere trickle
compared to the flood of refugees that poured east into Russia or
south, down into the desert lands of the Middle East and over the
Himalayan barriers. Many died before they got to the borders of India
and the other Islamic lands. Many were killed by the reinforced border
guards determined to prevent the spread of disease and famine in
their own ravaged territories.
Of course the Communists retaliated, or perhaps it was in part the
result of our own interference with nature. That fall, early frost hit the
West Coast and blizzards screamed down from the Arctic over the
plains. Our grain crops were ruined and much of our late fruit and
vegetables. And now the "Folly of the Fifties", as one presidential
candidate had called the price support programs, paid an unexpected
dividend. From every cave and warehouse, from dumps and silos and
refrigerator rooms, the stores of grain and potatoes, butter and meat,
poured out by truck and train. Convoys of food ships had already left
for the NATO countries. The terrible death toll of the measlepox made
available sufficient food for the rice eaters of the Indian subcontinent
from their existing supplies, since the weather war had had little effect
in those regions. Africa, its own population decimated by the same
measlepox disease, was left to its rich resources.
The Reds were not yet beaten. Desperate for food, they gambled
boldly. The Soviet premier himself appealed to the United States and
Canada for aid, in a shrewd psychological move. He knew we did not
want to announce to the world that we were at war. It was doubtful if
even our own people would believe it. World opinion would be likely
to turn against us and uninformed or unbelieving governments, side
with the Communists to isolate us. We had to help them, at least in
appearance. In spite of tremendous losses the Soviets still
outnumbered us and, if pushed too far, might start the long-awaited
march into the vacuum left by the dying populations of Asia and the
evacuation of our bases, daring us to start an all-out war.
The counterstroke was a masterpiece. Supplies of flour and other
prepared foods were rushed, in great fleets of ships, to the European
ports of the Russian Empire. Every pound of flour, every ton of meat,
every cask of butter had been treated with the new tasteless and
odorless contraceptive compound which our scientists had recently
discovered. We never knew if the Russians found out why their
women were not getting pregnant ... the rate of conception drops off
in starvation in any case. It did not matter. They had two choices, to
eat or to die.

In June, six weeks after he had left Sea Island, we heard again from
Harry. Of course Polly had had letters, but purely personal ones as
Harry had been much too busy to do more than write, "I love you,
wish you were here" notes. Now, finally, he gave us some news. Polly
came bursting into the coffee room one morning waving a sheaf of
electron pictures in one hand and a bundle of closely written pages in
the other.
"I got a big letter from Harry this morning," she said to the three of us
around the table. "Would y'all like to hear the news?"
"Aw, Polly, I don't want to hear that mush," I kidded her, "Why don't
you sell it to True Love Confessions magazine?"
"You shut your big mouth, man, and open your ears."
"Go ahead Polly. Never mind funny boy here," Pat said.
"Harry says they have a big lab set up in the main hospital in Victoria
... that's the city on the island, Hong Kong itself, and they're working
shifts, twenty-four hours a day, to try to attenuate the measlepox
virus."
"Brother! What a job!" I exclaimed. "One mistake and you've had it."
"Too right, you have!" the Chief said feelingly, his long forgotten
Australian slang coming to the surface.
"They had to get out of Kowloon, he says because the refugees
sneaked through the barriers into the New Territories and spread the
disease. It was terrible because there were about three million people
crowded in there. Now most of them are dead and the police patrol all
around the island, day and night, to keep others from landing. He
says almost all the British, except soldiers, have left. They send them
to some small island first and then, if they haven't got any disease,
they can go home to England. The research team is behind barbed
wire and almost nobody is allowed in or out—but their quarters are
comfortable."
"Hot and cold running maids, I suppose," I said.
"If you were there they'd be running, all right."
"Shut up, John. Go on Polly," Pat said and pinched my arm.
"They haven't succeeded in weakening the virus yet and if they kill it
with formalin or one of the usual methods it won't work as a vaccine."
"What ways have they tried?" Hallam said.
"He doesn't say. There's one thing I don't like," she said thoughtfully.
"He has an idea that if they went into China they might find survivors
of the pox in areas where the disease has almost died down and get
some serum from them, or perhaps find that the measlepox is
weakened in those areas and could be used."
"It's too bad our agents didn't get enough vaccine for testing," I said.
"It would have saved exposing our men to that sort of danger."
"One of his ideas is to give volunteers serum from recovered cases
and then let them get the measlepox."
"You mean like giving children gamma globulin shots after they've
been exposed to measles so they'll get just a mild case of the disease
and be protected for life?" Pat asked.
"That's the general idea," the Chief said. "Then, too, he might want to
look at the animal population in the area. There's a theory that
cowpox was originally smallpox that got into cattle. Now if you get
cowpox, as milkmaids in England often did many years ago, on their
hands, you probably won't catch smallpox. That's how the legend
arose that milkmaids had lovely complexions. They didn't get
smallpox and so their faces weren't scarred like most people in the
eighteenth century. Jenner got the original idea for vaccination from
that. The same thing might apply to measlepox. If he could find a mild
form of it in some animal we could use that as a vaccine. We try to do
this in the Lab by inoculating animals. Harry wants to go out into the
devastated areas and see if nature has done it for him."
"That may be soon, Doctor," Polly said, "but I'll bet he's also hoping to
pick up news of his folks."
"Could be," Hallam agreed, "but they are very small pins in a terribly
big haystack, if still alive."
"That crazy man," Polly murmured. "I know he'll kill himself yet. If he
doesn't get the pox the Reds will catch him."
"There's not too much danger from the Chicoms right now," I said.
"The way they are dying out, the border guard must have holes in it
big enough to take a division of troops through, let alone a small
reconnaissance party."

In the early summer of 1963 Pat had completely recovered from her
miscarriage. The Chief and I had suffered nothing more than mild
colds from the FS-flu. We had set up new experiments to see if we
could temper the destructiveness of the virus with the intention of
confining its effects to the human race.
"I have no compunction about using it on the human race," Hallam
said. "The human being has free will and should be prepared to take
the consequences of his follies and work out his own salvation."
I had to agree.
One late summer day when the tests were running smoothly he said
to me, "John, I think you should take Pat out of here for a month.
There's no point in isolation now we are all recovered, and you need
a rest."
"What about you?" I said.
"I'll take a break after you get back. Besides, I want you to do a little
experimenting on your vacation."
I wondered out loud what was coming next.
"Well," he smirked, "this is a good chance for a honeymoon and you
might find out for me how permanent the sterility effects of the original
FS-flu are."
I couldn't think of a more pleasant experiment.

The United Church ceremony was a quiet one. Both Pat and I felt
that, having been married before and having subsequently made
fools of ourselves, we didn't want much fuss this time. The ceremony
was quiet but the party that followed certainly was not. Dr. Hallam had
recently moved into a penthouse apartment in the swanky new Lion
Heights district overlooking Howe Sound and the Straits of Georgia.
From the church it was a quick run out to his home, followed all the
way by the hooting automobiles of half the Laboratory staff and a
good crowd from the Hospital itself.
From the corner living room of the apartment there was a magnificent
view south to Point Grey and the University. Off to the southwest, in
the haze of late afternoon, the Olympic mountains glimmered faintly
across the water and the dark silhouette of the Island cut the western
horizon. To escape for a moment from the uproar, I had moved out
onto the rooftop garden and, with my arm around Pat, watched the
slow ending of the day. Behind us the french doors opened as Hallam
joined us. The buzz of talk and laughter, heightened by the cocktails,
broke the quiet of our thoughts and died again as he closed the doors
behind him.
"This really is a lovely spot," Pat said to him. "Will you pardon a
woman's curiosity and tell me, isn't it terribly expensive?"
Hallam grinned. "It would be except that I'm part owner of the building
and get a cut rate."
We stood there quietly, absorbed in the view, then Pat took Hallam's
arm. "Let's go in now," she said. "We will have to leave soon."
The noise came at us in waves as we opened the door. Little knots of
people were all over the rooms, talking, laughing, eating, moving
about and re-forming new groups.
"They obviously don't need us," I whispered to Pat. "Let's get out of
here." I winked at the boss and he shook both hands to us,
prizefighter fashion, as we slipped out.
The Ferguson glided into the driveway without the motor running as I
tried to escape. A roar of hand-clapping, cheers, jeers and yells broke
out above. It was too late for them to catch us so they waved and
shouted words of tipsy wisdom. A few ribald male remarks were
stifled by feminine hands and the last howls and shrieks faded back
up the hill. At the bottom I stopped and removed the inevitable tin
cans and old shoes, brushed off all visible confetti and moved on
towards Horseshoe Bay. The sloop was ready. While I started the
motor and cast off, Pat changed into slacks and sweater in the cabin
and then got busy making sandwiches and coffee. I set our course
around Bowen Island, heading for the Sunshine Coast and the long
winding fiords that split the timbered ranges.

It was hours later. At Pat's suggestion I had gone below for a rest and
then had relieved her while she did the same. We wanted to get well
away from the big city and the ocean traffic before we stopped. About
two o'clock she wandered up from below. The moon was high now
and in the clean cool light we were close to shore. Here the coast
was deserted and, as we skirted a rocky point, a small cove
appeared, the entrance barely large enough for the yacht. The moon,
going over to the west, shot its light through the gap to show a sandy
beach dimly outlined at the farther side.
"John, let's look in there. It seems a likely place to stop."
I cut the motor and glided through the entrance, trusting the smooth
unbroken surface to cover enough depth for the boat. The million
pinpoint lights of our phosphorescent track died away as we slowed.
The bowsprit almost overhung the sloping beach when I dropped
anchor.
"Plenty of depth here," I said quietly, reluctant to break the silence. "It
should be a good spot to spend the night."
Sheltered by the northern arm of the cove, the remains of an old
cabin hugged the rising slope. In front of it, in the little clearing, a few
old fruit trees, branches broken with age, spotted the grass. The
small stream that probably had tempted this early settler ran at one
side of the cleared land, the water spreading out to glitter over the
stones and sand of the beach before losing itself in the dark salty bay.
"What a wonderful place for a swim," Pat whispered, her eyes
enormous in her shadowed face.
The air was still warm, with enough breeze to discourage any
mosquitoes.
Quickly Pat stripped and stood there proudly, waiting for me. To keep
her hair dry she had put on a white bathing cap and, in that pale light,
she shone like some strange shaven statue from an old Egyptian
tomb. She moved and the illusion disappeared. Naked, I reached for
her and pulled her close. For a moment she clung to me and then,
teasingly, she pushed me away and dived over the side. The water
was cold and the chill of it on my skin soon relieved the tension the
sight of her body had aroused in me. For a while we swam and
splashed in the shallows, then I loaded the dinghy with towels and
blankets, threw in a flask of rum with some cokes to dilute it and we
went ashore. Her hand in mine, we walked around the tiny cove, the
sand coming up pleasantly between our toes and the cool salty water
sparkling on our skins. I brushed it out of my hair and Pat shivered as
the fine spray hit her bare skin.
"Better get warmed up," I said, and led her back to the clearing.
There, from a deep pool dug in the stream by that early settler, I
poured fresh water over her and rubbed vigorously with my hands to
get off the salt and warm her up. The throbbing aching torment of my
desire returned. She moved closer, her tongue wet on my lips.
In the soft grey glow of late moonlight, her face, twisted for a time by
the agony of her passion, was smiling calm and her eyes looked up at
me serenely. I rolled away from her and pulled the blanket over us.
She cuddled into my shoulder and slept.
 CHAPTER 11
The sunny days slid by as we explored farther and farther north. The
weather held fair all that month except for a few quick showers that
washed the warm decks and cooled the quiet air. There was little
good sailing weather but we didn't worry. There was fishing enough,
swimming enough, and loving enough to fill the days and nights.
In a deep side channel of Louise Inlet, I was trolling one day in the
fourth week. Pat held the tiller and the engine, throttled back hard,
barely puttered along. Then, above the noise, the sound of a more
powerful engine rose and gained rapidly in intensity. Around the bend
from the main channel an amphibian swung into view and banked to
glide down over us. It banked again, full circle, and the pilot let down
and taxied up behind our boat. I stopped the engine and waited. The
small door on the passenger side opened and a bare head stuck out.
I recognized that full, cheery face.
"For the love of Pete! It's the Chief," I yelled above the motor.
Pat nodded, not too happily. Her woman's intuition was probably
working overtime. A short time later we anchored inshore. The Boss
and his grim-looking pilot climbed aboard.
"Lord, we've had a time finding you two," Hallam sighed. "This is
Colonel Jones, United States Air Force."
I raised my eyebrows at Pat. Neither the man's flying suit nor the
plane's markings had shown any indication of their military nature.
"How do you do sir," I said, as I shook his hand. "Are you up here on
a vacation?"
"Strictly business, I'm afraid," he said crisply.
"Business? With whom?"
"With you." The lips opened and shut in his face like a ventriloquist's
dummy.
He was strictly business, I thought. "With me?" I turned to Hallam.
"What have I done now?"
He didn't smile at my feeble joke. "It's not what you've done, John, it's
what they want you to do. Colonel Jones is from the CIA."
"Oh oh, the cloak and dagger boys," I thought. "Trouble coming up."
Out loud I said, "We might as well sit down and be comfortable while
we talk. Pat, how about some beer?"
The Colonel was obviously impatient but he tried to swallow his
irritability with his beer.
"It's nice being a civilian at times," I was thinking. "I don't have to take
any more guff from the brass. This guy's obviously a West Point type
in a hurry and it must gall him to have to wait on my royal pleasure.
He wants something. Let him wait for it!"
It was a rebellious thought but I'd been prodded painfully by his
classmates on occasion in the past. I couldn't resist getting a little of
my own back.
"All three of you are cleared for Top Secret," Jones said. "I checked
before I came out here."
I took a long drag at the bottle. "What about yourself, Colonel?" I
smiled thinly at him.
Silently, stone-faced, he showed his credentials. Pat frowned at me.
She thought I was being unnecessarily cool to a guest. Rivalries in
the service meant nothing to her.
I grinned at him and the tension eased. "The old routine, Colonel. I
wouldn't want to foul up with a security officer watching me."
The stern exterior cracked as he relaxed. "I hate to butt in on your
vacation like this. I had no choice. We have a deadline to meet."
"Sounds familiar," I murmured. "Submit a complete report, in five
copies, based on information you'll get tomorrow, to reach
headquarters not later than yesterday. Well, give us the bad news."
"First let me give you an estimate of the situation as we see it. That
will put you in the picture."
"You mean I'm being framed?" I joked.
He actually smiled. "The weather and biological offensive against the
Reds are now at their height," he began, "and are proving most
successful. We anticipate they will exhaust their food reserves very
soon and will be desperate for more. If they ask us, we will give them
some this winter, under certain conditions." (He was referring to the
use of the contraceptive drug in that food, as I learned later.) "That
will give them a respite, which we can't very well avoid, and the war is
expected to continue on into 1964. By early summer, some eight
months from now, we estimate that continuation of our offensive will
drive them to the wall, since we will then inform them that we cannot
give them any more supplies from our store. It is then that we can
anticipate the hidden war breaking out into the open. Even if they
retaliate in weather and bacteriological warfare, they must know we
can win because our hoarded supplies will keep us going while they
starve. They have to plan a knockout blow and yet our G-2 people
believe they will not use atomic power. They won't use it because of
its dreadful after-effects on future populations. Even the so-called
clean bombs must affect many survivors and, in an already
decimated world, they cannot afford to have contaminated survivors
from which to rebuild the race. Also, they are sure that we won't use it
if they don't. Now, as far as we can foresee, that leaves only one
other way to achieve the knockout ... by the use of nerve gases."

"But we have nerve gases too."

"Yes, of course. However, we have information from our agents in
Russia that, as a last desperate chance, they will fire their
intercontinental missiles, plus shorter range rockets from their
submarine fleet, at every major population center and key military
target in the U.S.A. and Canada. Probably, in addition to nerve gas,
the missiles will be loaded with various deadly bacterial toxins and
bacteria, and quite likely new viruses of even greater lethal power
than the measlepox, able to attack and kill people in as short a period
as twenty-four hours. We also believe that, in the temporary paralysis
of cities, military posts and air bases achieved by the nerve gases,
they will attempt to land airborne or rocket-borne troops to capture
and hold our main centres. As you know, we are not mobilized
because there isn't supposed to be a war on. Their plan might be
fantastic enough to succeed."
"Who dreamed all this up?" said Pat, skeptically.
"It's no dream," the Colonel said. "There's a strong moderate element
in Russia today, mainly in the Armed Forces and the new managerial
classes, that is sick of dictators and war. They have contacted us and
are ready to revolt when the Reds are a bit more disorganized and
the people still more starved and discontented."
"Where do I come in?" I said.
"You are still a Lieutenant Colonel in the army reserve."
"That's right."
"The President himself, on the advice of his counsellors, asks that
you volunteer for special duty. As there is no declared state of
emergency, you cannot be recalled. In fact if you don't want to leave
Canada he can't force you to. He simply requests that you volunteer."
"That's all lovely, and very sweet of the old boy," I said sarcastically.
"Why me?"
"On the Imjin River, in North Korea, there is a large plant which is
very busy manufacturing those deadly viruses I talked about. The
Russians have quietly taken over the country, and in fact the whole of
China, since probably there are less than fifty million healthy Chinese
alive today. The crowding into communes in the Fifties really
facilitated the spread of the measlepox we hear. We think the
Kremlinites want to keep an eye on them; probably want to sterilize
with the S-Flu, those left by the other diseases. To have such a
dangerous factory well away from their own homes and close to their
enemies in Japan, as well as reasonably convenient to the submarine
pens around Vladivostok, are other likely reasons for its location
there. Whatever the reasons, the factory is there. Now, by good luck,
the senior virologist is one of the moderates who is heartily sick of all
this killing."
"Hear, hear," the Chief said. "I know exactly how he feels."
The Colonel nodded and went on. "He has agreed to give us the
biochemical formulas of the viruses plus methods of growth, how to
make the vaccine against them, and finally a sample of each culture
to work with. We believe that if we have that information ... and also
we hope to sabotage their installation ... we can defeat the attack
before it ever starts. We plan to destroy their nerve gas centers at the
same time and aid the rebellion," he concluded, "but that doesn't
concern us here."

"I still don't see what I do," I said, although I had an uneasy suspicion.
"You were a paratrooper, weren't you? And you served in Korea."
"Yes, a long time ago," I admitted grudgingly.
"And you are a virologist?"
"You know that."
"You also speak some Japanese, Korean and Chinese."
"I wish I'd never admitted it."
"We want you to parachute into North Korea with a Special Forces
Group, go to this plant, get the necessary information and sample
viruses. The information cannot be written down for security reasons
and because of this and the dangerous nature of the viruses we feel
that only a man of your qualifications can be trusted to handle it."
"That's what I was afraid of," I said.
"Will you do it?"
"In the name of heaven, Colonel!" I exploded. "Twenty minutes ago all
I had on my mind was catching a fish for supper and now you want a
snap decision that may cost me my life."
"I'm sorry, Doctor," his face froze again, "but we haven't much time."
"The hell with deadlines," I growled. "I'm not on active duty now and
no damn chairborne Pentagon pencil pusher is going to impose a
time limit on me. Let him get out and do it himself if he can't wait."
"Unfortunately you are the best qualified," he said stiffly.
"Yeah, unfortunately for me," I sneered. "How is it the guys best
qualified for the dirtiest jobs don't seem to be best qualified for
promotion too?"
"John, please!" Pat put a hand on my shoulder.
"Sorry Colonel," I choked down my anger. "You hit some raw nerves
with that best qualified remark."
"I'm sorry too, Doctor. We know you've already done more than your
share. Perhaps if you think it over for a while, you'll want to help us."
"How do you propose to go about it," Hallam said to Jones.
"Colonel Macdonald, or a substitute, will have to renew his airborne
training and get into first class physical shape. There will also be
language school to brush up on his Korean and Japanese, with some
basic Russian."
"Why Japanese?"
"It was the official language in Korea until after World War Two and
many of the older people can speak it. What he misses in Korean he
might be able to pick up in Japanese."
"How long will this take?" Pat said.
"About six months. Then there will be a month of special preparations
for the attack itself. After that we wait for the right weather and the
psychologically correct moment. The idea is to delay until the last
possible moment before the Reds are ready to attack us and pull the
rug out from under them. We hope the confusion and loss of morale
will be so great that the partisans or maquis or whatever you want to
call them will be able to rise and overthrow the communist regime."
"Adding all this up," I said, "I gather you expect the special training to
start in about two weeks from now."
"That's right," Colonel Jones said. "That's why we need an answer
soon."
"I have one week left of my vacation before I return to Vancouver. I'll
let you know then."
"Thank you. I'll leave all the necessary information with Dr. Hallam at
his office." Jones got up, bent slightly in Pat's direction and again to
me, while he gave us a formal handshake. He climbed over the side
and got into the amphibian without a backward glance.
"I wish I hadn't had to do this," the Chief said hurriedly as his big
hands reached out for ours. "Try not to let it ruin the rest of your
vacation. God bless!" He squeezed and my hand tingled until long
after his great frame had vanished into the cabin of the flying boat.

After they had gone Pat cooked the fish I'd caught and we sat down
to eat and talk things over. I hadn't committed myself in any way. My
days as an eager beaver soldier were long gone and I was
remembering the old army saying, "Never volunteer for anything." Pat
had been unusually quiet. I knew she would go along with any
decision I made but it is still not an easy thing for a woman to sit still
while her man is thinking of committing what might turn out to be
suicide.
"Want a drink?" she asked, getting out the bottles before I could
answer. She mixed us a rum collins, taking the last of the ice from our
little refrigerator.
"Well, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking just how much hell the next eight months will be."
"Hell for both of us, darling," she said. She leaned across the narrow
table to kiss me. "I'm glad you want to do it. It may not win the war but
you'd never be happy again if you didn't try."
I didn't relish the idea at all but I knew she was right. I'd always been
a volunteer. It was too late to change. I heaved up off the bench and
went on deck. The stars were out now and high overhead an Alaska-
bound plane hummed by, its green and red lights winking.
"Red light ... green light ... GO," I thought and remembered again the
quivering anticipation as I stood in the door of the C-119 watching for
a little green button to flash on. I shivered with old remembered fears
and I felt Pat's arms go around me from behind as she kissed the
back of my neck. I think she sensed my trouble. She knew how I had
sweated out jumping and the long strain of combat duty.
"Come down below, sweetheart, it's bedtime. Come and let me help
you forget. There are so few nights left."

I rolled over in the soft sandy ground and pulled hard on the risers to
spill the air out of my parachute. The breeze was dying. The spotted
cloth wavered, flapped, and the canopy collapsed. I got to my feet, hit
the box and stepped out of the slack harness. Slowly I straightened
the canopy, folded it over my arms down to the back pack and
tightened the straps over it. I picked the whole thing up and zipped it
into the carrying bag. The trucks were waiting across the drop zone. I
heaved the heavy bag up across my shoulders with the handles on
each side of my neck and started towards them. My first jump was
over. I was tired ... tired... tired and quietly proud. The first one was
past. I was a paratrooper again.
"How was the jump, Colonel?" A small black haired officer of about
my own age came up behind me. Captain Balakireff, the son of White
Russian refugees and lately of Shanghai, China, spoke with a faint
accent. His thin lips and hollow cheeks reminded me of the ascetic
saints on a Russian ikon. He should be wearing a beard, I thought.
"Pretty good, Blackie. It's been a long time."
Trudging beside him through the loose sand, a tall blond and thick
chested Lithuanian Captain called Makstutis grinned down at me.
"Need a hand with that pack, Doc," he said, completely unconscious
of the difference in our ranks.
"No thanks Mak. I may not be in shape but I'm not that decrepit."
Closer to the trucks Lieutenant Pak On, a native born Korean
imitation of Balakireff awaited us. With him was Lieutenant Kim Cho
Hup, a living embodiment of the Chinese god of happiness with his
round smiling face and the figure to go with it. For all his weight, the
result probably of too much feasting on his Hawaiian island home,
Kim was quick and tough, a veteran of the early days in Korea with
the 25th Division.
These four, all war veterans and career men formed, with me, the
officers' component of a Special Forces team. With us, as we
assembled around the trucks were twenty-five enlisted men. All were
Orientals, a few native born, but mostly Hawaiian sons of immigrants.
They too were Special Forces volunteers, qualified both as
paratroopers and rangers. Each had a specialty, weapons,
demolition, signal, engineer, medical, and each could take over at
least one other job in an emergency. They had to be fluent in one of
three languages, Korean, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese.
We jumped as a team in two sticks, led by the Slavic officers. As
senior officer I acted as jump-master in training although in the actual
attack I was to be protected rather than to command. The operations
plan was simple. We were to drop in North Korea in high mountain
country near our objective. The three whites would masquerade as
Russian officers. We hoped to pass as inspectors or medical health
officers touring the country with a North Korean Army escort. As the
Russians had taken control in China and North Korea, we should be
able to get by, at least for a while, considering the disorganized state
of that plague-tortured peninsula. A rendezvous with the agent who
had contacted the enemy virologist would be arranged. From then on
it was up to us. Afterwards we were to be evacuated by submarine
from a pre-designated spot on the coast.
We climbed into the trucks. As they rolled down the road back to our
quarters, I pulled Pat's latest letter from my pocket and skimmed once
more through its well remembered pages. Because of the danger she
was no longer working with the research project but was helping Polly
on the electron microscope.... Polly had heard from Harry.... He was
in Formosa training with the Americans and Nationalist Chinese for a
landing on the Chinese mainland ... he had sold them on the idea....
Polly was worried of course.... She was too ... would I please be
careful ... she loved me and missed me so much ... she wanted me to
come home safely.
I folded the letter and put it away. I'd be coming home all right! On
that I was determined. No damned disease, no stupid Communist
fanatic was going to stop me!
The emphasis on pure physical conditioning changed although we
continued our long marches and strenuous exercises. Now we
worked constantly in Russian or Korean uniforms, used enemy
equipment and talked Russian or Korean. It was hard at first but
gradually I achieved a basic knowledge sufficient to deceive a casual
observer.
A week before Christmas General Rawlins, the Special Forces
commander, called me into his office. He came around his desk as I
saluted.
"You're looking fit, Macdonald. The instructors tell me your team is
progressing very nicely."
"Thank you sir."
"In view of their reports I am letting you and your men off for
Christmas and New Years. Air transportation will be arranged as far
as possible. Warn your men again about security regulations. See the
Chief of Staff for the details." His normally stern face cracked into a
smile and he stuck out his hand.
"Merry Christmas," he said.

The day following my return to Vancouver was Christmas Eve. Polly

and Pat and I drove out to have dinner with Dr. Hallam in his hill-top
apartment. We found him dressed in a white chef's cap and apron
busily sugaring the top of a ham. In a moment the girls found aprons
of their own and began to get in his way. I got busy with the brandy
bottle and the egg nog.