Tying up loose ends with the ancient one
A few days after we arrived here in paradise, our neighbours across the road appeared at the end of the driveway. She, a portly old woman with her grey hair tied in a tight, high bun walked towards the village, peering over at me from time to time as if to see whether I was paying attention to her. I thought that she was waiting for me to go over and speak to her, so I began to move in her direction. He, a tiny, wizened stick of a man, clattered along behind her as best he could on a pair of rusty old hips. As I approached, she turned to face him and yelled:
"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the jobs!" He stopped and then turned in a clumsy series of teetering steps, whining like a little boy:
"I just wanna see!"
In that ten second exchange, I wrote them off. I popped him into the mental spot I hold reserved for demented and broken old men. I popped her into the voluminous cranial shelf reserved for cruel old bitches. We never spoke.
Their driveway faces my study window. Often, as I was working, I would see the old man appear in the driveway with a dog. He would walk the dog to the end of the driveway and then return to the house. After a few minutes, he would appear with a small scoop to pick up the dog crap, and then he would disappear again.
Tonight, after a feast with good friends, we sent our daughter and her friend out on a mission: find some neighbours hungry enough to take some of the masses of leftover dessert off of our hands. Surprised, I watched them skip up the long driveway across the street. I couldn't banish the thought of Hansel and Gretel as they went out of sight. I almost ran after them, but I knew they could both run very quickly if need be.
My daughter, who had heard the story of my early non-exchange with the neighbours many times, appeared a few minutes later with a big bag of apples in her hand.
"Dad, you were wrong," she said. "They're both very nice. They thanked us and thanked us and said that it was the nicest thing that had happened to them for a long time. They gave us apples. It made us think of Snow White, but we took them anyway. Want one?" A few minutes later, the man appeared at our door to thank us again. And to tell us that he was a professor emeritus of economics and political science, long retired, who was busy poring through recently released archives of information from World War II. His wife, he said, had looked after 2 acres of magnificent gardens until she had been slowed by a heart condition (other friends we've made over the last few days told us that they had seen an 8 foot high Buddha in a beautiful grotto in these gardens. We weren't sure whether to believe them). We had a long discussion about his thoughts on Himmler and ended with a promise to lunch together soon to exchange ideas.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that in 60 hours we'd be loading up the van with the last of our stuff and driving away from this house for good.
By the way, he also mentioned that they had rescued two dogs from a breeding kennel whose owner had had a breakdown. These dogs had essentially coped by themselves for 4 years, with no other care than that given by a troubled woman who tossed a pile of food among a hungry pack of 70 dogs once a day. Eventually, some of them were rescued and, after several operations to repair the damage caused by neglect and fighting and a year of careful nurturing in the hands of the Ancient One, as he called himself, two of them were well on the road to recovery. He told us that they were almost at a point where they could be left alone without engaging in the mortal combat that had been their only means of survival before being adopted.
Later, as I lay in bed with my son, rubbing his back and soothing him to sleep, another little penny dropped:
"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the dogs." Her anxiety at the possibility that the dogs might kill one another in their absence had won out over his interest in his new neighbours. I had stood on the periphery, busily stuffing them into well-worn little sockets in my small mind.
"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the jobs!" He stopped and then turned in a clumsy series of teetering steps, whining like a little boy:
"I just wanna see!"
In that ten second exchange, I wrote them off. I popped him into the mental spot I hold reserved for demented and broken old men. I popped her into the voluminous cranial shelf reserved for cruel old bitches. We never spoke.
Their driveway faces my study window. Often, as I was working, I would see the old man appear in the driveway with a dog. He would walk the dog to the end of the driveway and then return to the house. After a few minutes, he would appear with a small scoop to pick up the dog crap, and then he would disappear again.
Tonight, after a feast with good friends, we sent our daughter and her friend out on a mission: find some neighbours hungry enough to take some of the masses of leftover dessert off of our hands. Surprised, I watched them skip up the long driveway across the street. I couldn't banish the thought of Hansel and Gretel as they went out of sight. I almost ran after them, but I knew they could both run very quickly if need be.
My daughter, who had heard the story of my early non-exchange with the neighbours many times, appeared a few minutes later with a big bag of apples in her hand.
"Dad, you were wrong," she said. "They're both very nice. They thanked us and thanked us and said that it was the nicest thing that had happened to them for a long time. They gave us apples. It made us think of Snow White, but we took them anyway. Want one?" A few minutes later, the man appeared at our door to thank us again. And to tell us that he was a professor emeritus of economics and political science, long retired, who was busy poring through recently released archives of information from World War II. His wife, he said, had looked after 2 acres of magnificent gardens until she had been slowed by a heart condition (other friends we've made over the last few days told us that they had seen an 8 foot high Buddha in a beautiful grotto in these gardens. We weren't sure whether to believe them). We had a long discussion about his thoughts on Himmler and ended with a promise to lunch together soon to exchange ideas.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that in 60 hours we'd be loading up the van with the last of our stuff and driving away from this house for good.
By the way, he also mentioned that they had rescued two dogs from a breeding kennel whose owner had had a breakdown. These dogs had essentially coped by themselves for 4 years, with no other care than that given by a troubled woman who tossed a pile of food among a hungry pack of 70 dogs once a day. Eventually, some of them were rescued and, after several operations to repair the damage caused by neglect and fighting and a year of careful nurturing in the hands of the Ancient One, as he called himself, two of them were well on the road to recovery. He told us that they were almost at a point where they could be left alone without engaging in the mortal combat that had been their only means of survival before being adopted.
Later, as I lay in bed with my son, rubbing his back and soothing him to sleep, another little penny dropped:
"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the dogs." Her anxiety at the possibility that the dogs might kill one another in their absence had won out over his interest in his new neighbours. I had stood on the periphery, busily stuffing them into well-worn little sockets in my small mind.
posted by Colin at 9:23 PM
1 Comments:
I swear, you have the neatest mind.
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